My father Hans Jørgensen Wegner was born in 1914 in Tønder (then there were approx. 5000 inhabitants in Tønder), and it was also here that he spent the first 21 years of his life. The Wegner family lived directly opposite the main entrance of Christ Church in Smedegade 12, where father Peter also had his shoemaker's workshop. In other words, my father grew up with crafts close to his heart. He could, of course, borrow tools from his father, but it was rather the carpenter's workshop and the tree three houses down the street that attracted his attention. Because here, from the time he was very small, he could get the sticks and pieces of wood he needed to make his projects.
School work did not particularly interest him. On the other hand, he had always had a penchant for drawing and painting and found motifs for his watercolors in the city's surroundings. Moreover, it was the open country outside the city, especially the area around Vidåen, that attracted him. Here nature gave him the opportunity to catch butterflies and insects as well as study plants, animals and birds. And when a young Zaunking had left the nest in one of the tall city trees early, it was not unusual for him to take care of it.
The water in Vidåen also played an important role with the opportunities for sailing, swimming and diving. My father told how he and his older brother Heini had bathed in it once in November. They had hoped that their mother Nicoline would not discover it, but my father – who was not very old at the time – had come to let the blouse remain. It itched in that connection, so it was almost predetermined. Many years later, however, it was the fish, small animals and plants from the stream and the municipal facilities that he remembered, and which he reproduced with finely carved intarsia motifs on the door and drawer fronts of his so-called fish cabinet. For me, this cabinet is the piece of furniture that most clearly reminds me of my childhood in Tønder through its special selection of motifs.
At the age of 14, he takes part in a carpentry course and in the following four years learns to make furniture and other things that customers order from his master Stahlberg. He loves working with wood and therefore gets his own planing bench in the basement under his father's workshop. Here he begins to carve human and bird figures with a gouge. The wood for this is large oak logs that he finds during the renovation of the old town houses on the street. Did he then dream of becoming a sculptor? His interest in the profession must have arisen in the city, because the woodcarver Michael Laursen from Aarhus visited the Wegner family in Tønder at the request of family members to see what the shoemaker's son could do. A few years later they meet again, but now in Aarhus. In the meantime, my father has studied furniture design in Copenhagen and helped me with the design of the furniture for the new town hall in Aarhus. Laursen wanted to produce a chair designed by my father and was the first to produce such a chair in series – namely the ML-33 rocking chair. And yes, the frame is actually decorated with carved leaf vines.
By the way: When Peter (Mathiesen) Wegner trained as a shoemaker, one of the customers for whom the shoes were sewn was Count Schack.
Schackenborg Castle. May 2021, Marianne Wegner
