Bernhard Severin Ingemann was born on 28 May 1789 and grew up in the village of Torkildstrup on the island of Falster. His father, Søren Sørensen Ingemann, was a minister. As the youngest of nine children, B. S. Ingemann was loved, protected, and spoiled by everyone around him. In the posthumously published Bernhard Severin Ingemanns Levnetsbog (Bernhard Severin Ingemann's Autobiography, 1862) he paints a happy and peaceful portrait of his early childhood in which "alle Eventyr var sande og alle Sandheder Eventyr" (all fairy tales were true and all truths were fairy tales). When his father died on New Year's Eve of 1799, at the portal to the new century, his mother, Birgitte Swane Ingemann, was forced to leave the parsonage and move with the many children to Slagelse, in Zealand, where B. S. Ingemann enrolled in grammar school. The change shocked the imaginative and sensitive boy, who had never before experienced organized schooling. His distrust strengthened after he was persuaded, against his will, to pursue law school at the University of Copenhagen.
Ingemann's father's death and the loss of his childhood home became symbols of a transition from a peaceful and stable time to a period characterized by war, economic crisis, and political upheaval.
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