[1] Hedvig Antoinette Isabella Eleonore Jensen was born on December 4, 1867, in Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein in the then Kingdom of Prussia.

[2][3] Her mother, Eleonora Cecilie Christine Marie Olsen, was a circus artist born in Finland and was of Norwegian ancestry.

At the time of Elvira Madigan's birth in 1867 her parents were not married to each other, and they toured with the French circus director Didier Gautier's "Cirque du Nord" in Germany and Denmark.

The number became a sensation, and in the following years the girls appeared as "daughters of the air" in circuses and in variety rooms across much of Europe, including in Berlin, Paris, London, Brussels and Moscow.

[7] After an appearance at Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen in 1886 before the Danish royal family, the girls were each awarded a gold cross by King Christian IX of Denmark.

[9] Sixten Sparre, who was married and had two children, fell madly in love with Madigan, who was considered an extraordinary beauty, with an excellent figure and almost meter-long blond hair.

According to a letter that Elvira's mother later wrote to the Danish newspaper Politiken, Sparre threatened to shoot himself if Madigan did not do as he wanted.

After suffering a nervous breakdown, Madigan finally gave in; on May 28, 1889, she secretly left her family at the circus's stop in Sundsvall.

The two went on to Stockholm, where Madigan's mother made a failed attempt to catch the couple by taking a steamboat from Sundsvall.

Hedvig The couple were buried at Landet's cemetery in the middle of Tåsinge on July 27 in the presence of a large number of locals and summer guests.

The event was interpreted as saying that the couple had to take this step because of the class society of the time and the prevailing sexual morality.

Among other things, the Danish author Holger Drachmann wrote the tribute poem "Til de to" (To the two) under these premises.

Already in the first press releases on the drama, this connection to the event in Austria was made six months earlier, and other newspapers continued to spin on this thread, perhaps mostly because this version was what the readers wanted: the all-consuming love, stronger than death, in addition, between a man of noble birth and a woman of very humble lineage (circus performers stood very low on the social scale).

According to Grönqvist, he may have suffered from bipolar disorder, and his systematic waste, his renunciation of the family and the values his social class traditionally represented (Sparre posed far left politically in the last few years), and finally the love affair with Madigan should then be seen as the rash of his illness.

[20] In 1943, Åke Ohberg directed the first Swedish film version of Elvira Madigan with Eva Henning and himself in the lead roles.

[21] In 1967, Bo Widerberg made his film adaptation, Elvira Madigan, with Pia Degermark and Thommy Berggren in the lead roles.

The same year, Poul Erik Møller Pedersen also directed a Danish film, with Anne Mette Michaelsen in the title role as Elvira Madigan and Søren Svejstrup as Sixten Sparre.

[citation needed] In 1990, the "Circus Elvira Madigan" by Jan Wirén and Lars-Åke von Vultée premiered in connection with that year's edition of the Kristianstad Days.