HEIBERG, PETER ANDREAS

born Nov. 16, 1758, Vordingborg, Den. died April 30, 1841, Paris Danish poet, playwright, and militant spokesman for the radical political ideas generated by the French Revolution. Heiberg worked as an assistant to a notary public in Copenhagen while composing verse and prose satires in which he attacked social snobbery and political conservatism. A representative example is his play De Vonner og de Vanner (1792; "The Vons and the Vans"). From 1787 to 1793 he published the periodical Rigsdalersedlens hndelser ("The Adventures of a Banknote") as a vehicle for his opinions. Exiled in 1800 for his writings, he spent his last 40 years in France. He was the father of the dramatist Johan Ludvig Heiberg.