35 Facts About Regine Olsen

Regine Olsen's parents were Terkild Olsen, councilor of state and department head in the Finance Ministry, and Regine Frederikke Malling Olsen.

Regine Olsen later recalled that upon this first meeting Kierkegaard had made "a very strong impression" upon her and a friend recalled Regine Olsen being enraptured by the words and way in which Kierkegaard spoke.

Regine Olsen's father granted Kierkegaard his blessing, and the two became engaged to be married.

Regine Olsen began his seminary studies, preached his first sermon, and wrote his dissertation for his magister degree.

Regine Olsen sensed that Kierkegaard's ostensibly busy schedule was a pretence for avoiding her, an action which pained Kierkegaard deeply to do.

Kierkegaard's letters have survived, but, aside from a few lines, Regine Olsen's letters seem to have been destroyed.

Regine Olsen was brown, well-shaped, and a person superior to her rank; her features were regular and her eyes sparkling, fit to raise love in any man whose heart was not prepossessed by another passion.

On 11 August 1841 Kierkegaard broke off the engagement believing it would be torturous for Regine Olsen to be his companion because there was "something spectral about me, something no one can endure who has to see me every day and have a real relationship with me".

Regine Olsen sent Olsen a farewell letter along with his engagement ring.

Regine Olsen did not want the engagement to end, fearing it would strengthen Kierkegaard's growing melancholy and depression although to envision Kierkegaard as a husband was foreign to her thoughts.

Kierkegaard seems to have genuinely loved Regine Olsen but was unable to reconcile the prospect of marriage with his vocation as a writer, his passionate, introspective Christianity and his constant melancholy.

Regine Olsen's father tried to persuade him to reconsider after assessing Olsen's desperate condition, claiming that "It will be the death of her; she is in total despair".

Regine Olsen was crushed by the whole affair, soon falling ill as a result.

Regine Olsen was equally "in despair, utterly desperate" and angered, with Kierkegaard recalling how she "took out a small note on which there was something written by me which she used to carry in her breast; she took it out and quietly tore it into small pieces and said: 'So after all, you have played a terrible game with me".

The story of the engagement became a source of gossip in Copenhagen, with Kierkegaard's flippant dismissal and apparently cruel seduction of Regine Olsen becoming wildly exaggerated.

Kierkegaard would later beg for Regine Olsen to forgive him for his actions.

Regine Olsen wanted her to be able to stand on her own with or without him.

Regine Olsen wanted one thing from Regine that she would not give, forgiveness.

Regine Olsen's forgiveness certainly cannot justify me eternally, no more than a person's implacability can harm anyone but himself, but her forgiveness is a part of a divine procedure.

In 1849 Kierkegaard sent a letter to Regine Olsen expressing his sorrow and pleading for forgiveness.

Regine Olsen outlived Kierkegaard by almost half a century; she died in March 1904 at the age of eighty-two.

Kierkegaard never fully recovered from his failed relationship with Regine Olsen, remaining forever smitten with her, writing in a letter addressed to Regine Olsen he said:.

On 16 April 1843 Kierkegaard was leaving Vor Frue Church when he saw Regine Olsen who nodded to him which Kierkegaard understood to mean she had forgiven him.

On 3 November 1847 Regine Olsen married her former tutor, Johan Frederik Schlegel, in the Church of Our Saviour in Copenhagen.

The world, Regine Olsen, is a killing machine, each thing searching for some smaller thing, greased and driven by the grist wheel of cruelty.

Regine Olsen found the journey to be troublesome citing the "complete spiritual apathy" as the worst element in her letter to her sister and confidant Cornelia.

Regine Olsen found it hard parting from her mother Regine Frederikke, now a widow of six years after the death of her husband Terkild; Maria her eldest sister whose house Olsen and friends would frequent in summer; and most importantly her sister Cornelia who Olsen was closest to in age and nature.

Frederick would soon become ill and die on 8 June 1896, a time in which Regine Olsen was equally ill dealing with depression and influenza.

In 1897, Regine Olsen moved to Frederiksberg to live with her older brother.

Regine Olsen is buried in Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen, along with both Kierkegaard and Frederik Schlegel.

Regine Olsen had a simple youthful longing to see her Fritz again, and yet she repeated with sincere conviction Kierkegaard's words to her: 'You see, Regine, in eternity there is no marriage; there, both Schlegel and I will happily be together with you.

Regine Olsen occupies a central role in Kierkegaard's thought and writings, and indeed a unique position in the history of all of Western philosophy.

Kierkegaard's failed relationship with Regine Olsen influenced his views on marriage, love, commitment, authenticity, and perhaps above all, faith and relationship to God.

The story has strong parallels to Kierkegaard's relationship to Regine Olsen and has often been taken to be a fictionalization of it, intending to portray Kierkegaard, as cold and callous and Regine Olsen, innocent and victimized.

Fear and Trembling has frequently been seen as analogous for Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen's relationship mirroring the tale of Abraham sacrificing Isaac.