ABSTRACT
The verb at danne is derived from Older New Danish dan, meaning peculiar, characteristic, arranged; from Middle Low German dan, the preterite participle of don, to do, passes into German as tun and into English as do. The lexical meaning in Danish of the verb at danne is to produce or compose a whole, to generate, to depict or represent (in pictures), to give an account, to create something,1 whereas the noun Dannelse in its contemporary connotation refers to a general knowledge of specific cultural domains such as art, language, literature, music, and history, connected either with an advanced development of the mind or with a cultivated way of life. Indeed, Molbech specifically mentions one of the meanings of Dannelse as “the higher development of the gifts of the soul and (its) proficiencies, culture.”2 Bildung, the German word which has as its root either the Old High German bildunge or Middle High German bildunga, both meaning creation, portrait, or figure,3 actually sprang from either mystical theology or the speculative philosophy of nature,4 and, indeed, once absorbed by the field of philosophy in the second half of the eighteenth century, it ended up consolidating itself as the German concept for culture and/or education, thus also becoming the source from which Dannelse took much of its content.
