The Thief
The incredible story of the man who stole the Golden Horns
The Thief
The incredible story of the man who stole the Golden Horns
NORD ACADEMIC
The Thief
The incredible story of the man who stole the Golden Horns
By Ulrik Langen
Translated from Danish by Anne-Kathrine Rosenkilde after Ulrik Langen: Tyven. Den utrolige historie om manden, der stjal guldhornene
English edition: © 2024 Ulrik Langen and Nord Academic / Gads Forlag
ISBN: 978-87-12-07540-0
1st edition, 1st printing
Cover: Harvey Macaulay, Imperiet
Graphic design and typesetting: Demuth Graphic
Cover image: the Golden Horns, Glob’s copies. The National Museum of Denmark.
Photo by Lennart Larsen, CC-BY-SA. The original image has been edited.
Prepress: Narayana Press
Printing and binding: ScandBook
Printed in Sweden, 2024
This book is protected under applicable Danish law with regard to copyright. Copying may take place only in accordance with the law. This means that copying for teaching purposes may be undertaken only on the basis of an agreement with Copydan Writing. Quoting from the book in reviews is permissible if the book is properly cited as a source.
This book is generously supported by Konsul George Jorck og Hustru Emma Jorck’s Fond
The Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen
Read about Nord Academic’s climate compensation of our book production at nordacademic.dk
nordacademic.dk
PREFACE 7
Table of Content
PART I · THE SON OF A PARISH CLERK 9
WEAVERS AND PARISH CLERKS 10
AT THE COURT 22
THE BUZZ OF THE CITY 35 AN ILLEGAL MOVE 48
CHRISTIANSHAVNS SQUARE 63 CELLMATES 82
PART II · THE CRAFTSMAN 97
A GUARDIAN ANGEL 98
FAMILY 111
HORNS 123
THE GRINDER 139
THEFT 147
PAGODAS 162 AT A LOSS 173
INTERROGATION 189
THE CHEST OF DRAWERS 200
THE EFFICIENT POLICE 211
REWARD 223
PART III · LIFE IMPRISONMENT 231 DECEPTION 232
UNREST 243
ILLEGAL HANDS 255
DEAD HORSES 266
RIOTS 279
REUNION 294
Postscript 2015 306
Postscript 2024 315
Acknowledgements 320
Sources and Literature 322
Notes 334
PREFACE
The year is 1799. A group of visitors is getting ready to enter Det Kongelige Kunstkammer (the Royal Danish Cabinet of Curiosities). The whitewashed Kunstkammer building is located next to Christiansborg Slot (Christiansborg Palace), which remains a dismal and blackened baroque ruin since the fire in 1794.
Although Det Kongelige Kunstkammer is the King’s private collection, it is still possible to experience its wonders. Those interested can arrange a tour with the art curator, Spengler, who is responsible for the collection. The curator is an old man, who isn’t quite up to the task anymore, so he’s entrusted his colleague, Clerk Johan Philip Gall, with the responsibility of conducting the tours. Gall has worked at the Kunstkammer since he was a young boy. He knows the collection like the back of his hand. Several times a week, he borrows the curator’s key, opens the doors, and invites visitors inside on a tour.
Goldsmith and Watchmaker Niels Heidenreich frequently visits the Kunstkammer. He knows Gall and is allowed to accompany the guests whenever he pleases as they tour the collection, which is overflowing with objects arranged in a messy and seemingly random order.
The visitors gather around Gall, all ears when he stops, gestures with his arms and tells stories about a Rubens painting, a giant scorpion preserved in alcohol, a mummy, a taxidermied baby whale, a Chinese porcelain figurine, or any of the other countless rarities in the collection.
In the so-called antiquity cabinet, Gall pauses in front of a display case. He opens the glass door and takes out two large horns. They are made of the purest gold, fairly heavy, and adorned with distinctive ornaments, figures, and animals: particularly snakes, but also large fish with eagles on their backs, dogs, and indistinct creatures with collars. Amongst them are fantastical creations, snake-and-human hybrids, centaurs, creatures with bearded human heads.
The pure human figures are depicted with raised arms or bent, spread-out legs. Some figures sit on top of each other, looking like crosses, and a few of the men have three heads. Almost all the male figures are naked, including the mounted soldiers on the long-tailed horses. And then there are all the weapons. Knives in clenched hands, spears, bows and arrows, menacing-looking curved swords, axes, and clubs, along with more peaceful ornaments with floating balls, flowers, triangles, stars, and zigzag ribbons.
The figures interact with each other and with the snakes, fish, and birds. Some are playful and mischievous, while others are threatening and ready for war. The decorations are like vines of secrets and concealed messages. They speak a different language; they are mysterious, captivating, and private, all at the same time. It is almost as if they are mocking the viewer.
The visitors get to hold the horns and examine them closely while Gall explains that these ancient horns were found in Gallehus, near Tønder in South Jutland, and – perhaps – are made of artificial gold. Like so many before him, Niels Heidenreich is mesmerised by the horns, their grandeur and weight. The first time he lays his eyes on the two horns, touches them with his two hands and sees the wondrous figures, the seed is planted for a crime that will never be forgotten.1
PART I THE SON OF A PARISH CLERK
WEAVERS AND PARISH CLERKS
The story begins in Foulum, a village near Viborg, and is tainted by drinking, infidelity, and divorce. Niels is born on 8 June 1761. He is baptised six days later at Tjele Kirke (Tjele Church), where his father, Otto Nathansen, serves as the parish clerk. The church is not a village church but a part of Tjele Gods (Tjele Estate) located south of the hilly landscape surrounding the eight-kilometrelong Tjele Langsø (Tjele Lake). Once, there was a village near the small Romanesque church but, in the 1500s, the estate owner abolished the village and incorporated its lands. Now the church sits right next to the estate owned by Captain Christian Ditlev von Lüttichau.
The church’s pastor and parish clerk live in Foulum with the approximately 100 people – young and old – who make up the parish.2 When the residents of Foulum are to attend church, they have to travel more than two kilometres by wagon or on foot along the muddy road to Tjele.
The Nathansen family have been clerks and weavers in Tjele and Nørre Vinge parishes for three generations. Niels’s father is the youngest of six children. He had a sister who died as a child, another sister who was born blind, and three brothers, all weavers who live in the area. Otto follows in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. At the age of 18, he becomes assistant to his father, who, as the schoolmaster in Nørre Vinge, teaches the parish’s children. Five years later, in 1758, Otto marries 20-yearold Anne Birgitte Sørensdatter, the daughter of a blacksmith at
Tjele Gods.3 On that occasion, the father passes the parish clerk’s position in Tjele on to Otto.
The following year, Otto and Anne Birgitte have a daughter, and two years later, Niels is born. At some point, for unknown reasons, the old parish clerk begins to use the name Heidenreich, which his son also adopts.4 In 1764, the clerk and his wife bury their five-year-old daughter. She is one of the one-third of children who don’t reach the age of ten.5
Being a parish clerk can be a laborious and unappreciated job. As a graduate of the Latin school and trained within Christianity by the bishop, it is the clerk’s job to pass on the Christian faith to the parish’s children and adults – and, more importantly, to instil in them the virtues of good citizens. The absolute monarchy in Copenhagen wants parish clerks to be capable officials who, armed with Latin, command respect and admiration from the common people. However, reality paints a different picture.
The parish clerks of the 1700s are a mixed bag, and the government’s desire for an educated corps of clerks remains wishful thinking. At one end of the spectrum, there are men who have been hired without any qualifications other than their experience as teachers. They are originally farmers, craftsmen, sailors, footmen, and weavers, to mention a few. For them, this job as a parish clerk is a step up the social ladder. Because of their diligence and intelligence, they have advanced. The Nathansen family falls into this category, with Niels’s great-grandfather having advanced from glove-maker to parish clerk.6
At the other end are the theological students. They have never wanted to be parish clerks but often take the job out of necessity because they can’t afford to continue their studies. Those who have obtained their theological degree become clerks in the hope of one day securing a vacant clergy position. However, many
never reach that point and grow increasingly bitter about their fate as the years go by.
The parish clerk’s salary is often so meagre that they can’t make ends meet without additional income. It is partially paid in kind, such as grain, bread, meat, and eggs. The monetary salary consists of the donations collected during holidays when the congregation goes to the altar to give money to the pastor and, on their way back down the church aisle, pass by the parish clerk and give him his wages. The clerk can gauge his popularity by what he receives. In other words, the clerk is left out in the cold if the congregation walks back through the church without acknowledging him. On top of that, downturns in agriculture come at a cost. Cattle diseases and poor harvests always mean that there is less money left over for the parish clerk.
In the area where Otto serves as parish clerk, the wages are among the lowest in the country, and it is common for farmers to cheat the clerk, so he doesn’t receive the provisions he is supposed to. This constant struggle to collect his wages is one thing; another is the social marginalisation that many clerks endure. A parish clerk is a partially or fully educated man among the uneducated common people. On the one hand, he is in close contact with the parish’s farmers, relies on their payments, and often finds himself materially worse off than they. On the other hand, he isn’t part of the farmers’ community because of his work, education, and connection to the church. Being a parish clerk can be quite lonely.
Whether this is why Otto Heidenreich turns to alcohol is hard to say. There can be plenty of reasons to seek refuge in the haze of alcohol. In the 1700s, considerable alcohol consumption is a common part of life, and heavy drinking is prevalent in all social strata, which is why it takes a lot for it to have any professional
consequences for parish clerks. Nevertheless, there are limits to how intoxicated one can be in God’s house, and unfortunate and embarrassing incidents are regularly reported. Of the clerks dismissed during this period of time, approximately one-sixth are due to alcohol-related issues.7
Infidelity
One reason for Otto’s drinking might also be found in his marriage. In 1766, a former dragoon from the garrison in Randers arrives in Foulum. His name is Christen Hansen. Like many in the Nathansen family, he is a weaver, which is why he is simply referred to as Christen Weaver. In November, he marries Johanne Pedersdatter, the widow of weaver Johan Nathansen – the deceased older brother of Otto, the parish clerk. When Christen Weaver marries the widow, life tenure on a house in Foulum falls to him, which means that the estate owner transfers the right to use the house from the late Johan Nathansen to the weaver. A year later, the widow and the weaver have a son named Hans.8
However, everything is not a bed of roses. Christen Weaver and the clerk’s wife, Anne Birgitte, fall in love. Foulum is a small town where everyone knows everyone, if they aren’t related, so it is virtually impossible to hide a love affair. Rumours begin to circulate about Christen Weaver and Anne Birgitte’s relationship. Apparently, the two are so careless that the villagers are horrified to the point that they complain to the pastor and beg him to do something about it. Such affairs bring shame to families and foster conflicts in a village like Foulum. After all, she is the parish clerk’s wife. It isn’t an easy matter for the pastor, but the rumours and complaints about Christen Weaver and Anne Birgitte are so many and persistent that he has to take action. He summons Christen Weav-
er so he can ask him to put an end to the relationship, but Christen refuses to meet with the pastor. So the pastor complains to the provost about the forbidden relationship and Christen’s reluctance, and the provost escalates the matter to the Bishop of Viborg.
The Bishop can do little more than issue admonitions. He cannot know, as he explains in a letter to the provost, whether something illegal has truly taken place between the weaver and the clerk’s wife or whether it is just “slander of wicked people”. It is hard to forbid them from being in the same room “merely because of village rumours”. The Bishop urges the pastor to make them see sense and understand the “heinous sin they are committing” if the rumours are indeed true. If they are guilty, in the future, they must ensure to “keep themselves unenamoured with each other” and repent for what has transpired between them.
As for Christen Weaver’s obstinacy, the law states that he must pay fines if he refuses to meet with the pastor. If he continues to resist, the estate owner must step in and enforce proper conduct on his tenant. According to a royal ordinance, the estate owner is obliged to assist the pastor in “curbing the evil”, as the Bishop concludes in his letter to the provost.9
In December 1768 – just under seven months after the Bishop’s admonitions – Anne Birgitte gives birth to a daughter named Christiane Ingeborg. Although the parish clerk is listed as the father in the church register, there are probably doubts as to who the father is. Christen Weaver and Anne Birgitte do not seem to stop seeing each other.
Separation
There are no changes to neither the parish clerk’s drinking nor his marital problems. In fact, he is so desperate that he formally
resigns from his position. The pastor happily accepts, so it is likely that Otto Heidenreich was encouraged to submit his resignation. The parish clerk’s inability to put an end to his wife’s scandalous behaviour undermines his status. He has to go. However, this leaves the family in a financially and socially precarious position: the clerk’s income is gone, and the family no longer has the status of the office to protect them. In a much later reflection, Niels mentions that his father’s relinquishment of his calling causes Anne Birgitte to “fall into great mental distress”. She is even “very dissatisfied” with her husband’s behaviour.10 At Christmas 1770, Anne Birgitte gives birth to a son, Søren, who dies three weeks later. Once again, it is uncertain who the father is.
Although Otto Heidenreich has given up his role as a parish clerk, he continues for a little while longer as schoolmaster. Teaching the ABCs and catechism to peasant children is something he can probably manage despite his drinking. It is probably not much fun being taught by a drunken schoolmaster in a time when memorisation and corporal punishment are the order of the day. Nor is it easy being the son of the drunken schoolmaster. Niels later blames his father for the family’s financial ruin. Everything is spent on alcohol.
Eventually, Otto and Anne Birgitte separate. It doesn’t happen often that a parish clerk and his wife separate in a small Jutland village. Divorce is not common in the 1700s, although it does occur more often in the last decade of the century. For this reason, Otto and Anne Birgitte don’t officially divorce but enter into a kind of mutual agreement to remain married while living separate lives.
Anne Birgitte takes Niels and his younger sister with her to Randers, where she moves in with a relative. Interestingly, this coincides with Christen Weaver unexpectedly leaving his wife
and children and going to Randers in May 1771. Christen Weaver leaves behind a considerable debt, and the moment he leaves Foulum, he also breaches his tenure agreement. Consequently, a clerk arrives, seals the house and catalogues the household items. Then the estate owner, Captain von Lüttichau, issues a notice.
In the notice, it is stated that Christen Hansen, upon “his escape, was dressed in a green frock coat, dark travel coat, and a black wig, with a silver-tipped Spanish cane in hand”. He had “left in the company of the former parish clerk Otto Nathansen’s wife from Foulum” and “her 12-year-old son, whom she had with her”, which means that Niels is described as being two years older than he actually is. The coat Christen Hansen wore was common men’s attire, a sort of coat that ends at the knees, with sleeve cuffs and a row of buttons.
The notice summons all those to whom Christen Weaver owes money to come to the house in Foulum and collect what is owed.11 Due to the notice, Anne Birgitte and Christen Weaver leave Randers. Initially, no one knows where they have gone.
After a while, Christen Weaver with the black wig and Spanish cane vanishes, while Anne Birgitte is employed as a manageress on a large estate further south.12 However, she doesn’t stay there long but embarks on a nomadic life with Niels and Christiane, a life marked by desperation’s improvisations and twists of fate. Most traces of their travels are lost, but it is certain that Anne Birgitte, Niels, and Christiane live in Hamburg for a little over a year, possibly staying with relatives. It is uncommon for a mother to travel abroad with her small children. It is undoubtedly during this trip and the following period of travelling that mother and son form the bond that will have a decisive impact on Niels. Mother and son are now bound together – not only by blood but also by an unspoken agreement of silence and action.
After returning to Denmark, Anne Birgitte, Niels, and his younger sister show up in Lundum, near Horsens. Meanwhile, Otto Heidenreich has been fired from his job as a schoolmaster due to negligence. Without work, and severely alcoholic, he is aided by a nephew who allows him to move in with him. Despite his slow decline, the parish clerk can still be of use. When sober, he teaches his hospitable nephew the art of weaving, which is, after all, a family tradition. However, after a couple of years, the clerk leaves his nephew and travels aimlessly from place to place. Neither Niels nor Anne Birgitte knows anything about his fate. To them, he ceases to exist the moment they leave Foulum.
Mathematics
Anne Birgitte and her children settle down in Lundum in the rugged, high-altitude landscape a few kilometres northwest of Horsens. Here, Anne Birgitte lives on alms and the little pay she receives from occasional jobs; in the long run, though, it isn’t enough, and so she sometimes borrows money from the villagers. As her debts grow, she tries to make ends meet by travelling the area, “seeking work among strangers”, as she puts it. In one place, she is even referred to as a “wandering mother”, a woman without a home.13
Niels is sent out to a farm in Lundum, where he works primarily as a shepherd boy and is responsible for the farm’s horses. The salary consists of food, clothing, and a handful of pennies a year. Looking back, Niels recollects that “the farmer was happy with me because I was good at everything he wanted me to do”.14 The little money Niels earns, he gives to Anne Birgitte. Years go by like this.
Back when his parents were still together and the family lived in Foulum, Niels learnt to read at a basic level, but he knows nothing of the memorisation that is considered fundamental learning. Since Foulum, he hasn’t been to school. After serving a few years with the farmers in the area, he reaches an agreement with his current employer that he will be allowed to go to school in exchange for a reduction in his already modest salary. The teacher is the local parish clerk in Lundum, who quickly realises that Niels has an exceptional talent for mathematics.
The clerk lends the boy a mathematical textbook: Søren Matthisen’s Compendium Arithmeticum, or Guide, whereby one can be taught in the shortest and easiest Way the proper use of the Art of Arithmetic. This covers everything from common rules to interest calculations, logarithms, equations, and geometry. The book also has an appendix with 85 printed templates for formal letters of all kinds: well-drafted powers of attorney, requests for estate settlements, summoning letters, termination notices, promissory notes, rental and purchase contracts, and wedding, maternity, and funeral notices. Niels carefully studies these templates and later in his life he will show how such letters can be used.
Niels carries the book with him everywhere and reads it whenever possible. Even when he’s working in the field, and in the evenings, he stays up late and teaches himself algebra. When the other children in the village are playing, Niels sits with a small blackboard and does calculations.15 However, he doesn’t stop at fractions and equations. After spending some time in Hamburg with Anne Birgitte when he was nine years old, he learnt to speak German, so now he teaches himself to read and write in German. There is no stopping him.
But the foundation of all learning in the 1700s is Christianity, which means knowing the main Christian texts: The Lord’s
Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Creed. There is also catechism, which allows children to familiarise themselves with the important articles of Christianity through learning the questions and answers printed in Erik Pontoppidan’s Truth to Godliness
There is no way around the confirmation preparation that Niels begins at the age of 14. The following year, under the medieval arches of Lundum Church, he is confirmed. In retrospect, Niels casually summarises his rapid learning and Christian education as follows: “Within two months, with a desire to learn and the ability to do so, [I] reached a point where [I] learnt as much as was needed for [my] confirmation, as well as to write and to do arithmetic”.16 According to a later statement, it takes him less than a month: “I read diligently, early and late, even stayed up many nights, and to everyone’s amazement I learnt in the first month everything that was required for confirmation”.17
He probably didn’t teach himself everything from scratch within a month, but there is no doubt that Niels shows exceptional talent from an early age. In the coming years, there will be many more skills that he will need to teach himself.
During Niels’s confirmation preparations, Anne Birgitte disappears from Lundum for a long period of time with his younger sister Christiane. In Tørring, 30 kilometres away, Anne Birgitte gives birth to another daughter. On 22 March 1775, Marie is baptised in Tørring Kirke (Tørring Church). The godparents are listed as a maid from Tørring Kro (Tørring Inn), Anne Birgitte’s daughter Christiane, a Jens Schytts, and a Mads Willumsen’s wife.
Church records are abundant with “nomadic” and “wandering” women who have their children baptised and recorded in the sections for illegitimate children. But Anne Birgitte can “with due proof” prove that she is “the wife of Otto Nathansen, who
had been parish clerk of Tjele and Vinge congregations in Viborg Diocese, from which office he was dismissed, whereupon the wife now seeks work among strangers”. Because the marriage to Otto is not officially annulled, Anne Birgitte can argue that the new-born daughter was born in wedlock: a Solomonic solution that gives the pastor, Anne Birgitte, and the unknown father an alibi.18
When Anne Birgitte returns to Lundum, her newborn child is formally legitimate. A penniless single woman with an illegitimate baby belongs at the absolute bottom of the social ladder. With the Tørring pastor’s approval in hand, she can take a slight step up.
Niels is now so academically strong that he can get a job as a teacher with the parish clerk in the neighbouring village of Vinding. The salary is free board and ten Danish rigsdaler a year: a rather modest salary, but a far better job than working on the local farms. Even though he only has to teach the peasant children the most basic reading and arithmetic skills as a teacher at the clerk’s house, it is nevertheless quite an achievement for the drunken parish clerk’s son that he can now support himself as a teacher because of his self-study. He has followed in his father’s footsteps. But he stays away from alcohol.
What is more, according to his own statement, he feels such “joy and comfort” with mathematics that when he isn’t teaching, he continues his self-study and pores over geometry and trigonometry with Peder Horrebow’s Danish Treasures, the history behind Geometry and Navigation and a German maths book by Christian Wolff, which a family member bought him in Copenhagen.19 The more basic arithmetic skills are perfected with Christian Cramer’s book Arithmetica tyronica, which also discusses a peda-
gogical learning system – something Niels can use when teaching at the clerk’s school.20
Niels says that he quickly “knew more about arithmetic than the parish clerk or anyone else in the entire region”.21 The teaching also runs smoothly; he “taught the children on behalf of the clerk as the schoolmaster, so he was quite happy with him”.22
He is doing well.