Yet another of Thurah’s fellow students issued a rejoinder with his
Rhymed Epistle to “Defensor fidei,” Alias Theology Student Thurah, from Theol-
ogy Student Th. L. The initials “Th. L.” concealed a twenty-six-year-old
student of theology named Thomas Lange, who spent his time in busy
idleness, producing ephemeral verse and amateurish comedies for the stage
while also functioning as part-owner of the Heaven Cafe ́, an establishment
in the middle of the university quarter, at the corner of Købmagergade and
Store Kanikkestræde. (This latter position allowed Lange to style himself an
innkeeper.) Lange’s poem was not nearly as well-turned as Thurah’s, but
the seventh of its fourteen stanzas did manage to make the point that it must
have been Kierkegaard’s criticisms of Grundtvig that had caused Thurah to
rush into print:
You’re an official Grundtvig poet,
And therefore you can understand
Your duty, and you surely know it:
That Søren Kierkegaard be banned.
Why ever did that foolish man
Say, “Grundtvig? Ideal? He fell below it!”
If Søren had but clenched his jaws,
We’d all be free of poems like yours!Strange as it may seem, Thurah was bold enough to reply to these rejoinders
with a little pamphlet titledWhy Do It This Way? The Premises Underlying
the Matter. C. H. Thurah vs. Dr. S. Kierkegaard. Here Thurah made an at-
tempt to defend his perfidious poem in pathetic prose: “Dr. Kierkegaard
mocked Our Lord....Hetook God’s name in vain and spoke of him
in foolish, frivolous tones. He distorted the Word of God and called it
gibberish....Hepassed himself off as God’s instrument. In the name of
God, he jeered at humanity. He misused the name of God, making it serve
as a cloak for wickedness, so that he might ensnare the weak and vulnerable.
He must first of all be forced to remove this cloak and come out into the
open, where he can be branded as a mocker of God.” Thurah’s pamphlet,
dated October 6, 1855, once again put him in the public eye, and Gold-
schmidt—who, as time passed, had become so solidly bourgeois that he was
now able to pass moral judgment on the follies of misguided youth—wrote
the following in his journalNorth and South: “Theology student Thurah has
used swinish language to attack S. Kierkegaard.”
Thurah had a number of sympathizers at Regensen College, and they
did their best to demonstrate their contempt for Thomas Lange, who lived
directly across the street in Eler’s College. Whenever Lange would show
himself at his window or appear in the street, he was met with shouts and