Moritz—Jonathan Hviid

Moritz—Jonathan Hviid is a relationship defined by an old artistic friendship and its eventual collapse. Their history reaches back to the Conservatory in 1933, but when Smilla reads a letter from Jonathan to her father, that shared past emerges as a record of resentment: Jonathan remembers a failed career, a neglected child, and a friend who stopped visiting.

Friendship and the Conservatory

Jonathan recalls that he and Moritz studied together at the Conservatory, beginning in 1933, a year he anchors to both Arnold Schoenberg’s conversion to Judaism and the Reichstag fire. In his account, that charged historical timing seems to suit Jonathan’s own life: he describes himself as marked by “the most awful timing.” Their connection is presented not through a scene of reunion but through Jonathan’s retrospective inventory of the years they shared.

That inventory makes art the ground of their early association and a source of later bitterness. Jonathan composed “Silver Polyps” for eight flutes and wrote a piano concerto whose intended sound depended on old-fashioned iron hot plates placed on the strings. The concerto was never performed. Jonathan sets these unrealized works against the narrow-mindedness of postwar Denmark, where, he says, even Carl Nielsen was considered too controversial. His letter makes the failure of his career part of the history of the friendship, though it does not establish that Moritz caused that failure.

Jonathan’s Family and Resentment

Jonathan’s account turns from composition to domestic life. He says that his wife supported the family by taking a teaching job in Greenland while he continued to compose. Their son grew up in poverty and neglect: Jonathan describes holes in the boy’s clothes, red eyes, no bicycle, and beatings at school when hunger left him too weak to defend himself. He condemns the priority given to his artistic ambition, declaring that adults have betrayed their children.

The letter’s accusation is sharpened by its addressee. Jonathan tells Moritz that he has not visited for ten years and hopes his fortune will suffocate him. He compares Moritz’s apparent emotional damage to the boy’s lasting scars. The son, now a scientist, is remembered as handsome, cold, and persistently interested in money; Jonathan likens his stubbornness to Schoenberg’s, but distinguishes the composer from the boy by saying that Schoenberg was not cold. The assessment is Jonathan’s, conveyed through an angry letter rather than independently confirmed narration.

The Letter and the Broken Tie

Smilla reads the letter aloud in the car, its handwriting almost illegible. Its opening addresses “Jørgen,” whom she identifies as her father’s first name, and calls him “you cheap little barber's assistant.” She explains that Victor has always been temperamental. The letter therefore reaches Moritz through Smilla’s reading, and the history it offers is shaped by Jonathan’s forceful, personal voice.

Jonathan says that he and Moritz went to the Conservatory together, that he later visited the family, and that after the family returned from Greenland he saw them only once. He then states plainly that he broke off ties with Moritz. The cause is not reduced to one quarrel: his testimony gathers professional disappointment, the family’s hardship, Moritz’s long absence, and anger over the boy’s upbringing into a single indictment. His final remarks about illness, aging, and betrayal underline the distance that has replaced their former association.

Narrative Significance

Because the friendship is reconstructed from a letter read years after the last visit, Jonathan’s account functions as intimate testimony, not a neutral biography of either man. Its specific memories—the Conservatory, the never-performed concerto, the family’s home in Bronshøj, and the solitary later visit—give substance to a rupture that would otherwise be only an assertion of estrangement. At the same time, the letter’s insults and sweeping judgments expose how completely Jonathan has organized the past around grievance.

The relationship also places Moritz’s private history beside Smilla’s investigation and her thoughts after Isaiah’s death. The novel does not show the former friends reconciling; instead, their bond survives in documents and recollection, with Jonathan’s account reaching Moritz’s daughter through a page that has gone unread or unheard until she reads it aloud.