Anna Hansen
1895
Hansen family. Left: Maria, daughter of Peter Hansen from her first marriage. May 25, 1895
Children: Marianne, Emmanuel, Leo, Vladimir.
Anna Hansen
A. Hansen's grave
A. Hansen's Memorial plaque
Peter Hansen
Marianne Hansen, daughter
Leo Hansen, son
Anna Vasilievna Hansen was born on December 20, 1869, in Kasimov, Ryazan', Russian Federation and was the thirteenth and the last child of her parents. Of the 13 children, only two survived and grew up - Anna and her elder sister (their age difference was about 20 years). When Anna turned 3 years old, her family moved to Saint Petersburg, where her father went to private service.
Anna Vasilievna learned to read from her mother at the age of four and immediately became addicted to reading. She was very incapable of needlework and very capable of learning, so her parents sent Anna to the gymnasium to be a teacher in the future. She did especially well in the Russian language and literature, in foreign languages, history, and geography.
Anna Vasilievna graduated from the Gymnasium in the spring of 1887 with a silver medal. The seven-year Gymnasium did not give Anna even the right to be a "home teacher"; for this, it was necessary to exchange the gymnasium certificate for a "diploma" from the Ministry of Public Education. The cost of this operation was twelve rubles which were not available for Anna and her family at that time.
After graduating from the gymnasium Anna Vasilievna started working: she arranged homу libraries, took correspondence, and corrected student notebooks. At the same time, she responded to an advertisement in a newspaper about hiring a secretary and an assistant in housekeeping, which was published by Peter Hansen, who also lived in Petersburg at that time. A year later, in 1888, they got married, and Anna Vasilievna, having studied the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian), became his active assistant and co-author.
For the first four years, their collaborative literary works came out with the sole signature of her husband (Peter Hansen), but since 1894 the spouses started signing their translations "A. and P. Hansen". They were first to translate Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tails from Danish (1893-1895). In 1909-1912 the Hansen published 13 books Fjords, which included translations of 30 modern Scandinavian authors. Independently Anna Vasilievna translated mainly poetry: One Thousand and One Nights by H. Drachmann, Henry V by W.Shakespeare, Peer Gynt by H.Ibsen, Jarl Hakon by A. Oehlenschläger and many other.
After the October Revolution, Anna Vasilievna stayed in Soviet Russia. Member of the editorial board, editor of the publishing house World Literature (1919-1925), secretary of the council of the All-Russian Society of Translators and Writers (1919-1923), member of the board and treasurer of the Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) department of the All-Russian Writers Union (1920-1932).
Anna Vasilievna was loyal to her Motherland. When in 1917 her husband Peter refused to come back to revolutionary Russia from his business trip to Denmark, she also flatly refuseв to live her country and left alone in a Soviet Russia. Anna several times visited her husband in Denmark - but she always returned home. 1928 was declared a year of the 50th anniversary of the translation work of Peter Hansen in the Soviet Union - but even this will not make the hero of the day return to the country where he lived for 30 years, and whose language became native to his six children.
Anna Vasilievna met her husband Peter at the age of 18. A year later they got married despite the 23-year difference in their age. Anna gave birth to four children - one daughter Marianna and three sons: Emmanuel, Leo, and Vladimir. Moreover, she also brought up a stepdaughter Maria - P.Hansen's daughter from his first marriage.
Marianne followed in the footsteps of her parents and became a translator. In 1941 51-year old Marianne Hansen went voluntarily to the front and served as a military translator.
Emmanuel emigrated to Latvia and settled there.
