In 2005, Denmark's great fairy tale poet Hans Christian Andersen would have turned 200 years - and this will be celebrated with the biggest ever national cultural event in Denmark. The fairytale is set off in Copenhagen on Andersen's birthday on 2 April 2005 with a global televised opening ceremony of international standards, and it continues until 6 December which is the day the poet and artist returned to his home town Odense as a citizen of honour.
During the celebration, Denmark will be transformed into a fairytale with cultural, entertaining international events. To find out more, go to www.hca.2005.com

Hans Christian Andersen was born April 2, 1805 in Odense on the island of Funen in what is now the heart of the Danish fairy tale district. He died on August 4, 1875, near the city he loved: Copenhagen. The intervening 70 years became what he used to describe as “the fairy tale of my life.” This poor son of a shoemaker felt at an early age that life in this harsh world must take the form of a continuous wonderful dream. His genius in mixing realism with fancy characterise all his fairy tales. As a boy, Andersen decided to write for his living and with equal portions of fear, courage and persuasiveness, he set out at the age of 14 to make himself master of his own fate.

He spent some adventurous, youthful years in the Danish capital of Copenhagen, where he first tried his hand at being a poet, then attempted to act and dance in the Royal Theatre.
He did not succeed in any of these roles.

A couple of novels and a handful of poems eventually gave him a vague reputation, but it was only with his fairy tales that he fulfilled his ambitious dreams.

Hans Christian Andersen travelled extensively through Europe and by 1840 he was already recognised abroad, his novels and fairy tales having spread his fame. On his journeys, the ever-travelling Andersen made the acquaintance of such celebrities as Schumann, Liszt, Mendelsohn, Dickens, Heise, Alexander Dumas, Jenny Lind, Balzac, and young Henrik Ibsen. Sweden’s August Strindberg declared him his unattainable ideal. Royal and princely houses invited Andersen as their guest of honour, and flags were displayed in the seaports when the teller of tales came to town. On the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1875, when he was celebrated throughout the world, British newspapers stated that he now was compared with Shakespeare and Homer.

When Hans Christian Andersen published his first slender volume of Fairy Tales for Children in 1835, while he lived in Copenhagen, he did not imagine that his stories would become popular on all five continents.
As an aging celebrity, many years later, when he was acclaimed by all nations, he wrote a few words about his original intentions in the fairy tales:

“The tales were told for children, but the grown-up person should be allowed to listen as well”

This was always his philosophy. The children understood without difficulty the elementary aspects of the tales, and into the bargain the adults were given what Andersen called “something for their minds”.

His 1835 book was really a sterling debut: The Tinder Box, Little Claus and Big Claus, The Princess and the Pea. Andersen said about these fairy tales: “I had heard them as a child in the spinning room and the garden.” But of course he transformed the primitive, original Danish folk tales into works of arts in a style only he mastered. It was no long before he was able to create his fairy tales solely from his own imagination, which was pious and satiric at the same time and which he kept intact all through his life.

Andersen’s supreme skill in being open to the inexplicable, and in letting only the voice of inspiration speak, became his real domain. ”The Story of a Mother sprang up without any reason; the idea came to me as I walked in the street, and it developed into writing. In translation, this fairy tale seems to appeal especially to the Hindus whom it has reached,”
he wrote. Also The Little Mermaid and The Steadfast Tin Soldier belong to the large group of fairy tales which he called “his own invention.”

“I am full of days – tonight!” Andersen wrote in his diary.
Like everyone he could be melancholy, irritable, angry, but also full of hope and humour, vitality and dreams. After all, the miracle about this imaginative man most unmistakably reflected in fact that despite all his weaknesses and scruples, he made dream come true. And he is remembered forever by the millions who have come to know him and love his fairy tales.