Peter Hansen
1921
Peter Hansen
Children: Marianne, Emmanuel, Leo, Vladimir.
Hansen family. Left: Maria, daughter of Peter Hansen from her first marriage. May 25, 1895
Anna and Peter Hansen
young Peter Hansen
Peter Hansen was born on September 30, 1846, in Copenhagen, Denmark. According to the old Scandinavian tradition adopted the boy got three names: Peter Emmanuel Gotfrid. His surname was the most common and even the most widespread in Denmark - Hansen. It originates from the name Hans (Ivan), so in some way, the Hansen in Denmark and the Ivanovs in Russia can be considered as the same thing.
Peter Hansen graduated from a real school in Copenhagen, then he attended lectures on literature, art history, philosophy at the University of Copenhagen. By this time, Peter Hansen was fluent in English and even became interested in literary translations.
After graduating from school, Peter Hansen studied acting and made his debut in 1865 on the stage of the Royal Theater in Copenhagen. He spent there 6 years of his life. In 1871 he moved from Denmark to Russia and for about 10 years he served in Omsk and Irkutsk at the Northern Telegraph Agency.
Then a tragedy happened - the young wife of Hansen, Maria Aleksandrovna Engelfeld, dies of tuberculosis, leaving in his arms Peter's son and little daughter Maria. To get rid of painful memories, the Dane moved to Saint Petersburg in 1881, where he headed the telegraph school, taught telegraph and English.
Having learned the Russian language perfectly over these years, Peter Hansen began to translate Russian literature, which was then popular all over the world, into his native Danish. First, he translated The Ordinary Story by Goncharov, then he started working on Leo Tolstoy. In a letter from June 8, 1878, Goncharov noted the lack of "the spirit of the living and conversational language." After these words, Peter Hansen returned to translations into Russian only in the 90s.
In 1885-1897 in Denmark a number of fiction, journalistic, and philosophical works by L. Tolstoy were published in Hansen's translations, including Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, Death of Ivan Ilyich, Kreutzer Sonata. Peter Hansen described meetings with Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana in his essay called Five Days.
It was quite difficult to combine simultaneously his teaching work, translating, housekeeping and raising children. Therefore, one day Peter Hansen announced a search for a secretary and an assistant in housekeeping. This way he met his future wife Anna Hansen. She has learned Danish and started to help her husband with translations. Together they created a whole library of Scandinavian translations into Russian, the largest of them are the collected works of Ibsen and Andersen.
In 1917, Peter Hansen went to Denmark. In the last years of his life, he published articles about Russian and Danish writers and the Russian theater; worked on memories of meetings with L. Tolstoy, Vl. Solovyov, I. Goncharov, G. Ibsen, G. Andersen, etc.
Peter Hansen was married twice. His first wife gave life to two of his children: Maria and Peter and tragically died of tuberculosis. In 1888 he married his second wife - a young woman Anna Hansen. By the way, they had a 23-year difference in their age. Anna gave birth to four children - one daughter Marianna and three sons: Emmanuel, Leo, and Vladimir.
Maria 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.
In 1937, Leo Hansen was arrested and shot on the so-called "List of German spies No. 1".
Emmanuel emigrated to Latvia and settled there.
In 1911, 18-year-old middle Volodya tragically died from careless handling with weapons.
