The hatters' tale ...

Once upon a time there was a hatter. Infact, there were lots of hatters... Although this may sound like a fairytale, it is not a story told to children, it is history!

In the old days, the town was teeming with craftsmen. After all, it was the second largest town in the kingdom. Some of the noblest of craftsmen were the hatters - at least according to themselves ... And of course there were both rich and important hatters, and poor and unimportant ones. There were also mad hatters, but as everyone knows madness is bestoved equally on both the rich and the poor, although the poor probably suffer the more on account of madness - their own as well as that of others. Whether the madness of hatters stem from family traits or from the chemistry of their trade, is another matter.

To the apparantly unimportant hatters we may count Reiter Steensen, who with great certainty would have been forgotten, unimportant and poor, was it not for his relation to a poet who was born in the town in equally poor circumstances, but who later rose to great fame – not only in the town, or even in the kingdom, but in the entire World. As a matter of fact, the poet was surrounded by hatters from a very young age and perhaps that is why he would later always be portraited wearing a tall and beautifully crafted tophat.

As is was, Reiter became the illegitimate father of the poet’s aunt, who unfortunately died as a child. Hence, her mother was the poet’s maternal grandmother, who later married another unimportant hatter, Jørgen Sigvard Rasmussen. Besides being unimportant, Jørgen was also an exceptionally unfortunate hatter, as he did not actually work as a hatter, but as a night watchman, which got him involved in great misfortune when he one night fell victim to the ill will of some of the more important town dwellers' offspring who mocked him and took his weapon from him. He had to leave town on that account, humbled and humiliated.

However, another misfortune, the poet though, was when once he along with his family was invited to a party at the house of the former hatter's journeyman, Christian Philip Schenck: This hatter had become a porter at town's gaol, where the party was held, and food and drink was served by the prisoners, apparently much to the poet’s disgust and dismae.

But, as fate has it, as an infant the once to be poet slept in a bed that was made from a wooden scaffold. But what has that got to do with hatters, one may ask? Well, the scaffold was one that a master hatter had bought from the estate of a late count: It was said that it had been used to carry the dead body of said count. Now the wood had been recycled to make up a young poet’s bed.

The hatter, who was called Jens, was a master of his trade and had inherited his father’s hat business some 25 years before the poet was born. Infact, as a civil captain of the town's guard, he could consider himself very important indeed.

Anyway,  the case about the wooden scaffold probably came about since Anne Marie, the poet’s poor mother, worked as a servant maiden to the hatters, in their home, which is still there today, situated between the town’s old church and the stream that surrounded the town, where she would wash the  cloth of hatters and other town folk.

Hence, it was only natural that Jens became Godfather to the infant poet, when he was baptised in the town's great church. However, Jens’ youth was behind him at the time of the poet’s christening, and his son Henrik had already taken over the hat business the year before – he too was now a master hatter. But faith could have wanted it differently.

A couple of years before the birth of the poet, Henrik had fathered a child out of wedlock, a crime apparently not uncommon among hatters, as this story have already revealed. Henrik had to pay a great fine of two silver coins, and never married the unfortunate girl, Kirsten, who gave birth to his child.

However, Henrik must have redeemed himself in the eyes of the town’s people, and in the eyes of the king as well, because when he died at a high age - then as an important royal hatter appointed to the court - his passing was lamented in the town's newspapers by poetry...

Alas, the faith of a poor hatter as expected often falls far from that of a royal one, but in the end, a poet has the power to turn even a mad hatter into a king. And to the poet, Reiter, Jørgen, Christian Philip, Jens and Henrik were probably all important hatters playing a rôle in shaping his own true story.

Written by Søren Bertil Fabricius Dorch (1971-), greater grandson of Jens and Henrik, who were of course, Jens Henrichsen Dorch (1760-1812) and Henrik Jensen Dorch (1782-1867). Reiter Steensen was an apprentise hatter at Dorch's hatfirm. The role of poet was played by Hans Christian Andersen of Odense.

Sources: Odense City Museum e.g. publication 1 and publication 2, and Dorch's family legend ...

CVR: 39726955