Danish poet, playwright, and militant spokesman for the radical political ideas generated by the French Revolution.

Heiberg worked as an assistant to a notary public in Copenhagen while composing verse and prose satires in which he attacked social snobbery and political conservatism. A representative example is his play De Vonner og de Vanner (1792; “The Vons and the Vans”). From 1787 to 1793 he published the periodical Rigsdalersedlens hændelser (“The Adventures of a Banknote”) as a vehicle for his opinions. Exiled in 1800 for his writings, he spent his last 40 years in France. He was the father of the dramatist Johan Ludvig Heiberg.