1. Hans Jonatan was an escaped slave, soldier, farmer and trader.
11 Facts About Hans Jonatan
1. 2.
Hans Jonatan was born enslaved on the plantation of Constitution Hill on the island of St Croix in the Caribbean, which had become a Danish colony in 1733 when purchased by the Danish West India Company from France.
3.
Hans Jonatan's paternity is uncertain, but Palsson argues in his biography that his father was a white Dane, Hans Gram, who was the secretary of his owners for three years; his mother was Emilia Regina, a black 'house slave' who is first recorded in 1773 at the St Croix plantation of La Reine, where she was presumably born.
4.
Hans Jonatan was enslaved by Heinrich Ludvig Ernst von Schimmelmann and his wife Henriette Catharina.
5.
In 1801, at the age of seventeen, Hans Jonatan escaped and joined the Danish Navy.
6.
Hans Jonatan participated in the Battle of Copenhagen, for which he received recognition.
7.
Subsequently, Henriette had Hans Jonatan arrested, claiming that he was her property and that she had intended to sell him in the West Indies.
8.
Hans Jonatan escaped again, and his fate remained unknown to the Danish administration.
9.
Hans Jonatan took over the running of the trading post in 1819.
10.
An English edition titled The Man Who Stole Himself: The Slave Odyssey of Hans Jonatan Jonathan was published in 2016.
11.
The musical was written by Rasmus Mark Pedersen and Ulrik Trolle Schwartz, and Hans Jonatan was portrayed by Haile Grangaard Bach.