ORIGINAL LETTER BY KIERKEGAARD, ONE OF ONLY EIGHT KNOWN ON PRIVATE HANDS

KIERKEGAARD, SØREN.

Original handwritten letter for ”Min Kjære Carl” [i.e. My Dear Carl], signed ”din Onkel K” [i.e. Your Uncle K.].

Dated ”Berlin.” ”D. 8 Dec. 41”.

8vo. Closely written in a small, neat, Gothic script on both recto and verso, 34 lines to each. Two vertical and three horizontal folds. Neat restoration to a few of the folds. All words are legible, and the letter in overall very good condition.
SKS notes that it goes for all letters that have been folded to an envelope and sealed that the opening of it has caused small damage to the manuscript. In this case, the damage is absolutely minimal, with a tiny paper flaw at the second horizontal fold at lines 3-4 from the bottom (see SKS note 3 to Letter 171).


A lengthy and truly magnificent original handwritten letter from Kierkegaard to his nephew Carl Lund, written during Kierkegaard’s first stay in Berlin right after the termination of his engagement to Regine. Original letters by Kierkegaard are of the utmost scarcity and only eight are known on private hands.

In all, 318 of Kierkegaard’s letters are known, either preserved or otherwise rendered. Of these, 21 are now lost, and of the 297 still extant ones, 289 are in public institutions, almost all in Denmark. The remaining eight letters are on private hands, this being one. Needless to say, letters by Kierkegaard hardly ever appear on the market, and we have been able to trace merely two at auction or in the trade over the last 50 years.

SKS has divided all of Kierkegaard’s letters into 14 groups, of which one contains the letters to the Lund family, consisting in 37 letters sent to Kierkegaard’s nephews and nieces, being children of his sisters Petrea (married to Ferdinand Lund) and Nicoline (married to Christian Lund). Of the 37 letters, eight are written during his seminal first stay in Berlin. The earliest of these letters is the present one, for Carl Lund, dated December 8, 1841, less than six weeks after Kierkegaard left for Berlin.

We know from Henriette Lund (see her Erindringer fra Hjemmet) that it was of great importance for Kierkegaard to correspond with his nephews and nieces while he was abroad. Shortly before he left, he gathered his nephews and nieces and collectively urged them to write to him while he was away. They all agreed, but in tears that he was leaving the country – as was Kierkegaard himself. And they kept their promises, as is evident from the Kierkegaard letters that are still preserved. Sadly, none of the letters from his nieces and nephews have been preserved. Kierkegaard had a very close relationship with his nieces and nephews and undoubtedly wanted to stay in contact with them to follow their development, keep in touch with his family, and to uphold the close connection with them while abroad. But the correspondence was also important to Kierkegaard for another reason. He hoped to hear news about Regine. And the more he could rely on news from Copenhagen, the more he could hope to hear glimpses of news, however small, about his one big love, the one he left Copenhagen because of.

Having broken off his engagement (see more about Regine and the engagement below, after Section II in vol. II), Kierkegaard almost immediately flees Copenhagen and the scandal surrounding the broken engagement. He leaves for Berlin, the first of his four stays there, clearly tortured by his decision, but also intent on not being able to go through with the engagement. This, his first stay in Berlin, is one of legend. It is a determining factor for his life as an author, with Regine as the inevitable and constant backdrop. It is here that it all really begins. It is here he begins writing Either-Or, parts of which can be read as an almost autobiographical rendering of his failed engagement.

Kierkegaard left for Berlin on October 25th, 1841 and returned on March 6th, 1842, with large parts of the manuscript for Either-Or in his suitcase. We have the young existentialist genius in the making, broken and awoken by a self-torturing decision to leave his only beloved, spending four and a half months in a foreign city having fled a horrifying scandal in his hometown and finding himself as an author. This is possibly one of the most interesting and moving periods in Kierkegaard’s personal life, and holding in one’s hand a letter from him from this period cannot but move the heart of any Kierkegaard enthusiast.

The present letter, written merely six weeks after having left Copenhagen, is both interesting and in many ways touching. It is written for Kierkegaard’s then 11-year old nephew Carl, who was the youngest living child of Nicoline and Christian Lund (see Index of Personal Names for the Lund family tree) and is affectionately signed “Your uncle K”. The letter is warm and personal and shows us a side of Kierkegaard that we never see in his presentation inscriptions and that is not evident in his printed works.

We see him as a caring uncle, one who makes sure to mention things from Berlin that are amusing for a child to hear about – vivid descriptions of things you would not see in Copenhagen. Of Thirgarten and of various animals here. Of how in Berlin they use dogs to pull carriages with milk from the countryside, like small horses, and how once, Kierkegaard saw a young boy acting as coachman for one of these carriages, speeding through the city. We also see him as an engaged uncle, who knows his nephew well and also cares about his intellectual progress. He is obviously concerned with Carl’s writing and spelling abilities, but he also tells him not to worry too much about writing well enough or spelling correctly – “you write
very well and with the exception of one letter, everything is so grammatically and calligraphically well that a Master of Arts could have put his name to it”.

It is clear that he is not writing to a very young nephew, but to one who is old enough to understand slightly philosophical considerations, such as musings over time passing – “Time changes everything, and so it has also… changed you… In the light of this, you can now also understand how much it pleases me that you, in spite of this complete transformation, this metamorphosis… will remain unchanged in your relation to me”.

The provenance of this extraordinary letter, perhaps the only Kierkegaard-letter one will ever have the opportunity to buy, is the Høyernielsen-family, descendants of Kierkegaard’s sister Nicoline.

The letter is no. 171 in SKS. SKS 28: 281-82.

Order-nr.: 62333

DKK 250.000,00