Hans Christian Andersen Bidding Farewell to His Mother and Grandmother 
at the Town Gate of Odense. From a Painting by Valdemar Neiiendam, 1911 
Hans Christian Andersen 
By Hans Brix 
One of the chief tenets of Romanticism was a belief in the miracle 
as an underlying principle in life. People longed to experience and 
observe the marvelous, and when they were brought face to face with 
the wonder of hidden treasures concealed beneath an insignificant ex¬ 
terior, they believed they had seen a glimpse of the eternal truth upon 
which all things rest. 
From this point of view, Hans Christian Andersen’s life is the 
very essence of Romanticism. Sprung from the lowest class in so- 
