Elias Bredsdorff, 90, writer, enemy of Nazis

COPENHAGEN, Denmark--Elias Bredsdorff, a biographer who sought tobring fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen out of the nurseryand present him as a serious adult writer, has died. He was 90.

Mr. Bredsdorff died Aug. 8 at his home in Copenhagen. The funeralwas held Saturday.

Mr. Bredsdorff was the author of what is considered a landmarkbiography of Andersen, his 1975 Hans Christian Andersen: The Story ofHis Life and Work, which sought to establish the 19th century writeras a serious literary figure.

"Bredsdorff presented how full of conflicts [Andersen] was andthat he also had dark sides in his life and works," said professorKlaus P. Mortensen, a leading expert on Andersen.

Andersen, the son of a poor shoemaker's apprentice, wrote dozensof fairy tale classics before his death in Copenhagen in 1875,including The Ugly Duckling, The Emperor's New Clothes and The LittleMermaid.

For Danes, Andersen was always thought to have as much appeal toadults as children--an attitude Mr. Bredsdorff sought to spreadabroad.

"The British and Americans . . . have pushed him into the nurseryand locked the door on him," Mr. Bredsdorff said in the biography'spreface.

Born in 1912, the youngest son of a high school headmaster, Mr.Bredsdorff got a degree in Danish and English language fromCopenhagen University in 1938.

During his student years, Mr. Bredsdorff was an outspoken opponentof Nazism and a communist. He broke with the Communist Party in 1939when the Soviet Union invaded Denmark's Nordic neighbor Finland.

During Nazi Germany's occupation of Denmark in 1940-45, Mr.Bredsdorff worked for the resistance movement as publisher of illegalleaflets and as a fund-raiser.

After the war, he moved to England where he took up a position asprofessor of the Scandinavian department at Cambridge Universitywhere he stayed until his retirement in 1979.

He moved back to Denmark and continued to publish books, includingbiographies on Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde and several Danishauthors, and was a prominent figure in public debate through hisarticles in the newspaper Politiken.

Mr. Bredsdorff is survived by his wife, Anne-Lise Neckelman, ason, a daughter and three stepchildren.