Soren Kierkegaard

states: “Outwardly, my life has had so little in the way of unusual events
that it could be summed up in a few lines. And as for my inner life, not
only would it be no easy task to present it reasonably truthfully, but there
is also a certain bashfulness associated with this sort of undressing in the
presence of others. And a great deal of what has moved me most profoundly
will seem childish and ridiculous to most people.” We must therefore not
expect intimate confessions from Mynster; there were certainly enough
weaknesses to display, “but I am not so vain as to seek to attract attention
to myself by telling about every weakness and flaw of which I am aware.”
Jakob Peter Mynster was born November 8, 1775, the youngest son of
ChristianGutzonMynster,ajuristandlateranofficialatFrederik’sHospital,
who died of consumption at the age of only thirty-five. Shortly afterward,
Mynster’s mother, Frederikke Nicoline Christiane, who had been left with
two sons, five-year-old Ole Heironymus and Jakob Peter, who was two,
married the head physician at the hospital, F. L. Bang, subsequently also a
professor of medicine. “My first journey,” Mynster writes, “was thus from
the one side of the hospital to the other.” The marriage was short-lived:
Frederikke died when Jakob Peter was four years old. She left a letter to
each of her two sons. In one, she cautioned Ole against his “great flighti-
ness,” while to Jakob Peter she wrote, “Right from your earliest childhood
you have displayed an exceedingly stiff and inflexible temperament that has
brought many tears to my eyes. And even though there has been notable
improvement, I still sometimes notice that you would rather be punished
than give way.” Mynster could remember standing before his parents’ grave
when he was young; shortly thereafter bothNikolaj Church and its adjacent
cemetery were destroyed in the great fire of 1795, “and now the place is a
meat market.”
HeadPhysicianBangremarriedshortlyafterward,onceagaintoawidow,
buttwoyearslatershe,too,diedattheageoftwenty-seven.Justfivemonths
later Bang married for the third time, now to a girl of sixteen summers
named Louise Hansen; she was the daughter of a pietistic pastor, though
this circumstance had not dampened her passionate nature. She was full of
zest for life, generous, though also hysterical—“often attacked by the most
severe convulsions”—and she gave birth to nine children, five of whom
died at an early age. With all this, the management of the household was
somewhat neglected, so the mother-in-law, a respectable lady, had to be
brought in, and she brought along two more daughters of her own.
“My father, a little, corpulent, animated man, and quite friendly—when
nothing was the matter—was sanguine of temperament,” Mynster wrote
with respect to his stepfather, with whom most probably everything was
the matter. “Everything easily made a powerful impression on him. Every