The Hirschsprung Brothers

June 22, 2013

On my first night in Copenhagen I noticed a sign that said “Hirschsprungs Samling.”

For most of you that would mean nothing, but I once wrote a book chapter on Hirschsprung disease*, so I was intrigued. I couldn’t remember whether Harald Hirschsprung was Danish and I wondered if the sign had some sort of medical significance? Later that evening I looked him up on the internet and found out that he was a Danish specialist in intestinal diseases who was effectively, Denmark’s first official pediatrician. He was the first Director of the Copenhagen Children’s Hospital who got into a fight with the Queen because he refused to put biblical quotes above each child’s bed.

But I digress. The sign in question pointed to an art museum! Harald Hirschsprung’s brother, Heinrich  Hirschsprung, inherited the family tobacco business, and made a fortune, which he spent collecting Danish impressionist art.

On my last morning in Copenhagen, I took a brief tour of this jewel of a museum, where I was introduced to the work of artists I had never previously known. The painting below is a Hirschsprung family portrait by the Danish artist P.S. Kroyer (1851-1909).

Like Mogens Ballin (see posting of September 2012), the Hirschsprungs were originally German Jews. My maternal great grandfather owned a tobacco factory in Dresden, the center of the tobacco industry in the early twentieth century. I couldn’t help but wonder if the Hirschsprungs and the Himmelfarbs ever crossed paths?

*In case you were wondering, Hirschsprung disease is a congenital disorder in which nerve cells do not properly migrate to the lining of the intestine, so affected infants have severe constipation. It is more common in people who have Down syndrome. Sorry to get so clinical!