Dagmar Hansen

Dagmar Julie Augusta Hansen (12 November 1871 – 13 April 1959), a Danish cabaret-singer and stage-performer, became a national sensation as Denmark's first "pin-up girl".

Early years Hansen, born 1871 in Rungsted, Denmark, as the daughter of a blacksmith. showed promising stage talent at an early age. Daniel Krum, the Ballet Director of the Royal Danish Theatre asked her (aged 10) to join the company; however, her father refused to allow it. She also began singing in the Saint Stefan's Church choir at the age of 13.

Hansen matured physically at an early age as well, and she received her confirmation one year earlier than usual. and Vilhelm Bissen's sculpture from 1890, En Jægerinde.

Hansen's performances as an erotic singer brought her into conflict with the public sense of morality. In 1899, she was forbidden from performing in the capital city of Copenhagen. In 1900, when she began to build a villa in the Copenhagen suburb of Hellerup, the neighbors circulated petitions to prevent it. However, she obtained the support of Frederik VIII, King of Denmark, who allowed her to give performances in a revue in Charlottenlund just outside the city. Her success continued, and the transportation to Charlottenlund soon gained the nickname "The Dagmar Train". Hansen also traveled and gave guest performances in Hamburg, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Holland, Hungary and Sweden.

Marriage and later life In London in 1906, Hansen married a German businessman 14 years her junior, 21-year-old Max Moritz Fritz Heinemann. They lived in Hamburg until the outbreak of World War I, when the German Army drafted Heinemann and sent him to the Western Front. Hansen returned to Denmark and continued her career as an operetta singer. After the war, her husband, ill from mustard gas, moved to Denmark with her.

Hansen's sister died in 1925. Hansen, who never had children of her own, took guardianship of her sister's children and raised them. In 1928 Hansen retired from the stage. Her husband died in 1954 and she moved to a home for the aged in her hometown of Rungsted, where she died in April 1959 at the age of 87. She is buried at Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen.