Peter Andreas Heiberg

Peter Andreas Heiberg (born Nov. 16, 1758, Vordingborg, Den.—died April 30, 1841, Paris) was a Danish poet, playwright, and militant spokesman for the radical political ideas generated by the French Revolution. Heiberg worked as an assistant to a notary public in Copenhagen while composing verse and prose satires in which he attacked social snobbery and political conservatism. A representative example is his play De Vonner og de Vanner (1792; “The Vons and the Vans”). From...