How Danish is Tivoli?

Abstract

LOOKING AT THE ENORMOUS AMOUNT of Tivolis H.P. Raup has discovered in the United States, 1 an European should almost think that life is only fun over there. On second thought he knows better, of course. It was only by means of hard working and thoroughly digging in telephone-directories, theatre-histories and other rather unusual toponymical sources that the author could produce a survey of the dispersal of the name Tivoli in America and the rest of the English speaking world. Regarding the denotata, it was clear that most of the Tivolis were theatres, cafes and restaurants, especially those with garden arrangements. Furthermore, Tivoli was used to denotate settlements, natural areas and even barbershops and beauty salons. According to Professor Raup, the use of the name Tivoli for places of entertainment was derived from Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. As for the settlements, he was less clear and thought also of the possibility that the name could have been introduced by Italian immigrants or by tourists. So he offered us two ways of finding an answer to the question of why we find the name Tivoli so largely spread in the United States and elsewhere: the Italian way and the Danish way. It is about the latter that I should like to make some remarks, because I think that there are not only several ways which lead to Rome, but also to Tivoli. Thanks to Arthur Frommer's on 10 Dollars a day, every American visiting Europe knows that he ought to visit Tivoli Gardens when he is in Denmark. But tourism was a luxury for the happy few in 1843 when this Copenhagen pleasure garden was founded. So its fame should mainly have been spread by Danish immigrants. Unlike Sweden and Norway, the immigration from Denmark to the United States was rather scanty before the seventies of the previous century. 2 This is already a reason to throw some doubt upon the Danish origin of early Tivolis. When we look at the history of the Copenhagen Tivoli the case becomes even more complicated. On the occasion of the centenary of this now world-famous entertainment garden, Carl C. Christensen wrote an article about Tivoli,