Soren Kierkegaard

Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard.
“In his old age, an old man who was
himself enormously melancholic had
a son who inherited the whole of his
melancholia,” the son wrote in his
journal in 1846. As an eleven-year-
old boy, Michael Pedersen left a pov-
erty-stricken existence on the moors of
Jutland and moved to Copenhagen,
where he quickly learned how to make
money as a merchant of woolen goods,
and he subsequently established him-
self as a businessman, an investor, and
a speculator in real estate. At about
the age of forty he withdrew from the
business world to dedicate himself to
more intellectual pursuits. Seeking
support in the biblical story of Job, his
tortured imaginative faculty conjured
up the notion that God would punish
him by causing his children to die
before they reached the age of thirty-
four. Only two of his seven children
survived him.

Ane Kierkegaard. Michael Peder-
sen Kierkegaard’s first wife died after
two years of marriage. A year later he
impregnated his domestic servant, Ane
Sørensdatter Lund, whom he then
married in haste. Almost nothing is
known about her. Søren Aabye never
mentioned her, and Peter Christian
mentioned her very rarely. According to
what little information is available, she
was a pleasant, chubby little lady with
a steady and cheerful temperament.
She could not write, and someone had
to guide her hand when she signed
official documents.