Peter Andreas Heiberg was a Danish author and philologist.
Background
He was born in Vordingborg, Denmark. Peter Andreas Heibergs father was the Norwegian-born headmaster of the grammar school in Vordingborg, Ludvig Heiberg, while his mother was Inger Margrethe, daughter of the vicar at the manor of Vemmetofte Peder Heiberg, a relative of Ludvig Heiberg, and Inger Hørning, who came from a family of wealthy Danish merchants. His father died when Heiberg was just two years old, and his mother moved with the children to live with her father at Vemmetofte near the town of Faxe in Zealand.
Education
This was to be Heiberg"s home until he went to grammar school, from which he graduated in 1774.
Career
The Heiberg ancestry can be traced back to Norway, and has produced a long line of priests, headmasters and other learned mentor In 1777 he took the greater philological exam, and in 1779 he left Copenhagen, presumably due to gambling debts. He then went to Sweden to join the Swedish military forces.
In Bergen Heiberg met several writers who inspired him to start writing himself.
After his return to Copenhagen, he used his linguistic skills to get a job as an interpreter. Heiberg also translated a publication by the French writer Jean-Charles Laveaux, which was highly critical towards the upper class, this was likely the reason why Heiberg chose to publish the translated version anonymously.
Many of Heiberg"s role models were French and usually marked by the ideals of the enlightenment age. His début novel Rigsdalersedlens Hændelser (1789) critically describes merchants, the nobility and the German influence on Denmark.
This novel highly angered the Danish upper class, but Heiberg kept writing similarly critical songs, articles, essays and plays (one play, Heckingborn, being translated into English in 1799 with the title Poverty and Wealth).
This political criticism led to Heiberg being banished on Christmas eve, 1799. Thereafter, Heiberg settled in Paris where he lived until his death in 1841. About his life in Paris, see Encyclopédie des gens du monde, volunteer
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