Hedebygade

Facts

Childhood street

By Jacob Bjerring-Hansen, Direktør for Bornholms Museum (13 stories)

" This Vesterbro property is typical of its time. A larger part of the backyard environment has been left after urban renewal than elsewhere in Copenhagen. But don't be fooled; the original backyards from the 1880s never had this much light and air. In some backyards, you could stretch out and shake hands with your neighbour in the house opposite. The backyards were not just for bicycles, prams, washing, boys in home-made go-carts and girls skipping. They were micro-societies with toilets, rubbish, pets, sometimes horses and cows, and small craftsmen's and manufacturers' workshops and factories. "

Partly a public place

Selected entry

The back buildings produced a star

Story written by Jacob Bjerring-Hansen

Time / Periode 1886

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In the backyard you could see only a small square patch of sky where sometimes a single star would shine". The star in no. 30 was authoress Tove Ditlevsen, who was born in 1917 and grew up in a back building. In her autobiographical book "Childhood Street" (Barndommens Gade) she described the backyard children's humble dreams of another life: "Now the children of the street are asleep. Their breaths meet in the stifling bedroom where brother and sister innocently press close to each other in the narrow bed. She dreams of having a brown velvet coat and living in the front building so she never has to run across the dark backyard again." "