Soren Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard’s finances cannot be examined in detail because there are
too many blank spots and black holes in the surviving records. But both the
major headings and the bottom line can be determined quite definitely: The
fortune Kierkegaard inherited in 1839 totaled 31,335 rixdollars; his interest
and dividend income from stocks and bonds totaled about 6,500 rixdollars;
the income from his writings was in the neighborhood of 5,000 rixdollars;
and he earned 2,200 rixdollars on the sale of the family house. Of this grand
total of 45,035 rixdollars, he left just about nothing at his death in 1855.
The only things remaining were his personal effects and furnishings, his
collection of books, thirty bottles of wine in the cellar, and a credit balance
of 599 rixdollars with Reitzel. The money had disappeared in seventeen
years, which means that Kierkegaard had spent an average of 2,600 rixdollars
a year.
What happened to the money? The answer is simple: Kierkegaard had
an enormously high rate of private consumption. And the surviving bills
speak their own unambiguous language about the lifestyle of a connoisseur.
There are bills from book dealers; from bookbinders; from various hatmak-
ers; from Agerskov and Schmidt, drapers and silk mercers; from Ku ̈nitzer,
a tailor; from Sølverborg, a shoemaker, who, for a pretty shilling, soled
Kierkegaard’s special boots, installing flexible cork inlays. There are also
bills from various artisans and five receipts from F. W. Ahlstrand, a barber,
for “attendance in connection with shaving.” This “attendance” might set
fantasies dancing, but in fact it was then not unusual for barbers to shave
customers in their own homes, for which customer Kierkegaard paid four
rixdollars in 1850–51. The oddest things in this bundle of bills, however,
are the fifteen receipts for membership dues for various associations and
societies and clubs of a rather esoteric sort. These included the Art Associa-
tion, of which Kierkegaard was made member number 201 for the tidy
sum of two rixdollars in ready silver, thereby automatically becoming a
participant in a “lottery drawing for a work of art”—and amazingly, on
February 3, 1855 he won an oil painting,The Italian Woman and Her Child,
by Elisabeth Jerichau Baumann. Kierkegaard gave the painting to his
brother-in-law, Henrik Ferdinand Lund, explaining that “you shall have
the picture as a reward for never having read a word of what I have written.”
He paid three rixdollars in ready silver for membership in the Athenæum,
a private library. It is not surprising that Kierkegaard was also a member of
the Society for the Promotion of Danish Literature, but what remains a
mystery is why as late as 1850, by which time he was often complaining
about his straitened financial circumstances, he would have spent four
whole rixdollars for membership in the Society for the Promotion of Gar-
dening. And the situation becomes utterly beyond comprehension when