Erna Juel-Hansen


Erna Emilie Louise Juel-Hansen née Drachmann was a Danish novelist and early women's rights activist. She introduced gymnastics into the educational curriculum and co-founded Denmark's first kindergarten.

Biography

Born on 5 March 1845 in Copenhagen, Erna Emilie Louise Drachmann was the daughter of the physician Andreas Georg Drachmann and Vilhelmine Marie Stæhr. She was the elder sister of the celebrated poet and dramatist Holger Drachmann with whom she maintained a close relationship. She would have followed in her father's footsteps as a doctor but as a woman was not admitted to medical school. Instead, she adopted her father's interest in gymnastics, studying both theory and practice completed by a study trip to Paris in 1866. She was later trained as a schoolteacher at N. Zahle's School.
In the late 1860s, she taught at a gymnastics institute for girls which had been founded by her father. At the same time, she became engaged to Niels Juel-Hansen, published in 1881 under the pen-name Arne Wendt, covers the teenage fantasies of young women in a rather rudimentary way, her En ung Dames Historie is a much more daring and gripping account of a woman's early encounters with romance. With its realistic accounts of a girl's erotic experiences with an artist, it proved very popular. The problems faced by adult women as they grow older are behind her later novels, Terese Kærulf and Helsen & Co., both partly biographical.
Juel-Hansen was also involved in promoting women's rights, becoming an active member of both the Danish Women's Society and Studentersamfundet in 1883. In 1905, she became one of the first women to join the board of Copenhagen's Liberale Vælgerforening.
Erna Juel-Hansen died in Hornbæk on 39 November 1922.