Copenhagen

The Danish capital where Kierkegaard was born and died and never left for long: the city against which he railed, and to whose bishop he devoted his final pamphlet war.

Copenhagen is a compact Baltic city built on islands and channels, and it was too small to contain Kierkegaard's arguments without reverberating. He was born here in 1813, educated here, engaged to Regine Olsen here, and spent his life attacking the city's comfortable Lutheranism from within. His campaign against Bishop Mynster and the State Church, waged through a series of pamphlets he printed himself, made him a scandal in the very streets where he walked daily. He never left for long. He died in 1855 in a hospital in this city, his work barely translated, his reputation still disputed.