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Clemens Petersen
(October 2, 1834 - May 21, 1918) Denmark

Clemens Petersen

Critic

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Petersen made his debut as an actor in 1851, but failed. In 1857 he was the first to obtain a degree in aestethics at the University of Copenhagen. He began a brilliant career as a reviewer for the culturally and politically important daily newspaper Fœdrelandet. His reviews, however, generated a largely hidden enemity. In 1869, Petersen suddenly left Denmark.

He supposedly left the land at the request of the police, as there were rumors that he had affairs with boys at the school where he was a teacher. After a short stay in Vienna, Petersen emigrated in the US, where he remained for the next 35 years, living in near poverty from poorly paid literary jobs on Danish emigrant newspapers.

The press was silent on the matter. Petersen was determinedly forgotten as "an aesthete now living in America", or "the critic who was helped from gaol to America". The exiling of Peterson signalled the installation in Denmark of the homosexual man, an unmentionable, artistic, double-faced and hysterical abuser of boys with tendencies to commit suicide or emigrate to America. In certain circles a "clemens" became the polite synonym for a pederast.

In 1904 literary friends financed his return to Denmark, but he remained forgotten.

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