N.F.S. Grundtvig - as a Political Thinker : As a Political Thinker [1 ed.] 9788757497090, 9788757431414

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OV E KOR S G A A R D

N.F.S. Grundtvig – as a Political Thinker DJØF P U BL I SH I NG

N.F.S. Grundtvig – as a Political Thinker

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Ove Korsgaard

N.F.S. Grundtvig – as a Political Thinker Translated by Edward Broadbridge

DJØF Publishing Copenhagen 2014 Denne ERJ er omfattet af lov om ophavsret. Uanset evt. aftale med Copy-Dan er det ikke tilladt at kopiere eller indscanne siden til undervisningsbrug eller erhvervsmæssig brug. Bogen er udgivet af Djøf Forlag (www.djoef-forlag.dk)

Ove Korsgaard N.F.S. Grundtvig – as a Political Thinker This translation by Edward Broadbridge of the original Danish edition N.F.S. Grundtvig, DJØF Publishing, Copenhagen 2012, is funded by The Grundtvig Study Centre, The Grundtvig Foundation and Grundtvisk Forum, Copenhagen, Denmark. First English Edition 2014 © 2014 Worldwide rights owned by DJØF Publishing, Copenhagen, Denmark. Cover: Bo Helsted Print: Scandinavian Book, Aarhus Printed in Denmark 2014 ISBN 978-87-574-3141-4

Sold and distributed in Scandinavia by: DJØF Publishing, Copenhagen, Denmark Email: [email protected] www.djoef-forlag.dk Sold and distributed in North America by: International Specialized Book Services (ISBS) Portland, USA Email: [email protected] www.isbs.com Sold in all other countries by: The Oxford Publicity Partnership Ltd., Towcester, UK Email: [email protected] www.oppuk.co.uk Distributed in all other countries by: Marston Book Services, Abingdon, Oxon, UK Email: [email protected] www.marston.co.uk

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Contents Contents N.F.S. Grundtvig Editorial preface .......................................................................

7

PART I ........................................................................................

9

Chapter 1. Grundtvig’s influence and relevance .............. Grundtvig’s life – A brief biography ..................................... ‘In all parliamentary matters I think of the English’ ...........

11 14 16

Chapter 2. From the age of the estates to the age of the people ......................................................................................... The people versus democracy ................................................ ‘From caste system to equality in all civil relations’ ........... Grundtvig’s contract theory ....................................................

21 21 23 26

Chapter 3. Nation and people: An imagined community ................................................................................. ‘Democracy’ as a term of abuse .............................................. ‘People’ as a watchword ..........................................................

31 34 35

Chapter 4. Grundtvig’s concept of freedom ....................... Religious freedom, freedom of conscience ........................... Civil freedom ............................................................................. Personal freedom, bodily freedom ......................................... Freedom of competition ...........................................................

39 39 43 46 49

Chapter 5. From united monarchy to national state ......... German unification – a threat ................................................. Elite democracy – a threat ........................................................

55 58 62

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

Chapter 6. Constitutionalism versus common law ..........

67

Chapter 7. Grundtvig’s importance as a political thinker ........................................................................................ Should Loki have the same freedom as Thor? ..................... Grundtvig’s importance for political science ....................... Grundtvig’s importance for politicians ................................. Grundtvig as a historical person and as a legend ...............

73 76 78 80 82

PART II .......................................................................................

85

Chapter 8. Nordic Mythology or Symbolic language developed and illuminated from a historical-poetic perspective (1832) ..................................................................... Rhymed letter to our Nordic next-of-kin ..............................

87 87

Chapter 9. Within Living Memory (1838). Lectures on the history of the last half-century 1788-1838 .................... 91 On Freedom, 2 July 1838 .......................................................... 91 On Germany and the German Spirit, 26 October 1838 ....... 102 Chapter 10. Speech to the Schleswig Aid Society ............. 113 14 March 1848 ............................................................................ 113 Chapter 11. Parliamentary speeches .................................... 123 Speech to the Upper House (landstinget), 12 July 1866 ....... 123 16 July 1866 ................................................................................. 129 Biography ................................................................................... 133 Bibliography ............................................................................. 135

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Editorial preface Editorial preface Grundtvig as a Political Thinker was published in Danish in 2012 in a series on classics of political science by DJØF Publishing. The books in this series are short introductions to a number of leading political scientists such as Karl Marx, John Rawls, Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas. Even though it is uncommon to regard N.F.S. Grundtvig as a political thinker, it makes good sense to include him in the company of these classic thinkers. He is beyond comparison the person who over the past 150 years has been – and continues to be – cited in political debates in Denmark. Grundtvig is not known abroad as a political thinker; it is his educational writings that over the years have attracted international attention. The Grundtvig Study Centre at the University of Aarhus has published a broad selection of Grundtvig’s educational writings in a new translation with the title: The School for Life. N.F.S. Grundtvig on Education for the People, Aarhus University Press 2011, translated by Edward Broadbridge, who has also edited the book together with Clay Warren and Uffe Jonas. Grundtvig’s writings on national identity and political ideas are also being dealt with in an international publication entitled Building the Nation. N.F.S. Grundtvig and the National Identity, McGill-Queen’s University Press 2014. The book is edited by John A. Hall, Ove Korsgaard, and Ove K. Pedersen and has contributions from Francis Fukuyama, Anthony D. Smith, and John L. Campbell among others. It draws comparisons with other political thinkers such as J.G. Fichte, J.-J. Rousseau, and Adam Smith. Ove Korsgaard, February 2014

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PART I

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Eugéne Delacroix’s painting ‘Liberty leading the people’ from 1830 was inspired by the Paris rebellion that year. Though viewers are left in no doubt that revolution is a raw, brutal affair, the painting manifests with overwhelming power the people’s will to victory. The woman carrying the Tricolore forward illustrates the dynamic, progressive nature of the historical process. In similar fashion, Grundtvig has become an icon of the people’s fight for freedom – with the crucial difference that Grundtvig’s vision eschewed violent revolution in favor of an evolutionary process, with the education of the people as the means to ushering in ‘the age of the people’.

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CHAPTER 1

Grundtvig’s influence and relevance Chapter 1. Grundtvig’s influence and relevance Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783-1872) is rightly regarded as the single individual who has had the greatest importance in the formation of the Danish nation – the process known in English as ‘nation-building’. In arguing this I make two claims that run as red threads through what follows. First, that the building of a nation is a process of both creation and formation. And second, that the building of the Danish nation takes place in Grundtvig’s lifetime – with himself laying the foundation. In his work On Mankind in the World from 1817, Grundtvig concerns himself with the social order into which he has been born, pointing out that the ‘family’ as kin is a historical category. He believes that as the bearing element in the social body ‘family’ has not quite outlived itself, even though he is convinced that it is only a matter of time. He nonetheless refuses to contribute to the process: 1 “I (see) very well where this knot will come undone through history, namely in the dissolving of the ties that link parents and children. The ties are visible, but I cannot loosen them, and would not attempt to do so even if I could. For they are the tenderest spot in the family, which would probably not survive their examination. And even if the society of kin and station is more or less obsolete, it has not yet 1. There is not included footnotes in connection with sayings of Grundtvig. It appears from the text from which they originate.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

died out”. In the event, Grundtvig failed to keep his promise not to intervene. Indeed, he became a kind of spiritual guide for many of those who were leaving the ‘family body’ and the ‘household body’ in order to join the ‘national body’. Grundtvig was born into a society where the concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘people’ were not yet linked. This happened only after the French Revolution. 2 In the Dictionary of Old Danish (1300-1700), ‘people’ is a family concept: “my people and my father’s house with fathers, family, and mothers, my first kin, my great-grandfather, my family founder”. The Dictionary of Old Nordic carries a similar definition, listing ‘people’ as “kindred, persons belonging to one’s family or lineage” as well as the “household, persons belonging to one’s house and its housekeeping”. Thus ‘people’ has roots that go much deeper than Herder’s and Rousseau’s concepts. The difference is an important one, but it is the change from people as kin or household to people as a political and culturally sovereign body that constitutes the great watershed in the history of Europe. In Denmark, Grundtvig has acquired a name as the nationbuilder – to an extent that is hard to parallel elsewhere. If we compare him with other personalities, it is not difficult to find politicians or political philosophers who have played a major role in building a state – in the USA and Canada for instance, but also in France and the United Kingdom. Nor is it difficult to point to poets and writers, preachers and songwriters who have helped in building a national identity, in both Eastern and Central Europe, as well as in Germany and Ireland. But it is difficult to find individuals who have been prominent on both levels. The closest would probably be Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson in Norway or Rabindranath Tagore in India; in both cases their significance shares features with Grundtvig’s importance for Denmark. 2. Cf Liah Greenfeld: Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, 1992:6.

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Chapter 1. Grundtvig’s influence and relevance

In relation to classic political thinkers such as John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, and Hannah Arendt, Grundtvig stands out in two ways. In the first place he has left us with no systematic presentation of his political theory. He has developed it in a multitude of writings on educational and social philosophy as well as in his songs, where a number of his most characteristic statements are to be found. In ‘Far higher are mountains’, for instance he writes the oft-quoted words: “In this lies our wealth, on this tenet we draw:/that few are too rich, and still fewer too poor.” Second, Grundtvig was not just a theorist. He was also politically active, formulating most of his political ideas from the rostrum in the Lower or Upper House of the Danish parliament. On the other hand there is a kindred tie between Grundtvig and the above-mentioned political thinkers in their interest in normative political problem areas, including ethical questions and their grounding. When we consider all that has been published on Grundtvig’s life and influence, the treatment of his contribution as a political thinker and active politician has been remarkably limited. He is completely missing in Poul Meyer’s Politics – Basic Elements of Political Science, (Politik – Statskundskab i grundtræk) from 1959 and in subsequent textbooks on politics and political science. Likewise, it is symptomatic that the three prominent Danish theologians, Hal Koch, P.G. Lindhardt, and Kaj Thaning in their monographs of Grundtvig from 1959, 1964 and 1971, respectively, either completely ignore or only skim this side of his activities. Yet despite the fact that neither political scientists nor politicians have dealt in earnest with Grundtvig’s political thought and activity, he is without doubt the one person to whom Danish politicians have most often referred in the past 160 years. A string of leading politicians have not only cited Grundtvig; they have also gained inspiration from his normative social philosophy. How then do we explain this paradox that Grundtvig is almost completely absent from political theory and yet extremely present for a number of leading politicians across the

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

political spectrum today? Is it perhaps because political science is the preserve of civil servants, who are not concerned with normative problems, while politicians are forced to be so?

Grundtvig’s life – A brief biography As the last of five surviving children, Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig (called Frederik) was born on 8 September 1783 in the village of Udby (85 km south of Copenhagen), where his father, Johan Grundtvig, preached a pietistic Lutheran Christianity from 1776 until his death. Grundtvig’s mother, Marie Bang, was a strong-willed, practical woman, who traced her lineage back to the famous Danish warrior Skjalm Hvide (c.1040-1113). After private tutoring in the vicarage, Frederik, aged nine, was sent away to Jutland to be prepared for Aarhus Grammar School by a family friend. Academically he went from success to success, gaining a first-class degree in Theology from Copenhagen in 1803 aged only 20. From 1805-08, while in-house tutor to Carl, the young son of Constance Steensen-Leth, Grundtvig conceived a barely suppressed passion for the lady of the manor. He sublimated his feelings by studying Nordic mythology and German literature and aesthetics, and with the publication of Nordic Mythology in 1808 he entered the Copenhagen literary scene. When his aging father then called him back to Udby as curate in 1810, Grundtvig was so torn between a literary career in the city and family duty in the sticks that the existential crisis brought about his first nervous breakdown. In the event he chose to help his father until his death in 1813, whereupon Grundtvig moved back to Copenhagen and eked out an existence as an occasional preacher. But his fiery temperament hindered his appointment to any vacant benefice, and in resignation he withdrew to a marginalized position for the next 10 years, supported by a small royal grant (and much later a benefice in Copenhagen). Back in his study Grundtvig read and

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Chapter 1. Grundtvig’s influence and relevance

wrote widely and developed a new philosophy of life that found expression in his literary masterpiece, New Year’s Morning (1824). The long poem can be read as a reflection on Grundtvig’s own life so far and as an expression of his powerful will to self-interpretation and to a coherent philosophy of life that included mythology and Christianity. Sensing, somewhat precociously, that he carried within him a whole new epoch he calls himself in the poem “Luther the Little”, that is, a prophet who carries a whole new epoch within himself. The following year, in response to a major work on church history by Professor H.N. Clausen, Grundtvig published a vitriolic attack, The Church’s Retort, which brought down a libel case on his head. When he lost this and was placed under lifelong censorship he resigned his living and gratefully received a further royal grant to study in England during the summer and autumn of 1829, 1830, and 1831. These trips proved crucial to Grundtvig’s views on life, society, and education. He believed the Viking spirit had survived in England, where he was astounded by the practical energy he witnessed – just as he was dismayed by the negative effects of industrialization. His experiences translated into his most original work, Nordic Mythology (1832), a wake-up call to build a new society based on the common experience of being a citizen of Denmark, with a common history and language rather than a common faith: “Human comes first and Christian next”. Here too are his famous words in defense of freedom for all people, “Freedom for Loki as well as for Thor”. On this canonical work rests the People’s High School movement. In late summer 1835 Grundtvig set to work on the monumental task of renewing the Danish hymnbook. Already by the royal jubilee of 1836 he had published the first volume of Songbook for the Danish Church, which included many of his own hymns. The following year his censorship was revoked and in 1838 he gave a series of public lectures on Danish history of the past 50 years seen from a European perspective. These were so successful that a new public lecture series fol-

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

lowed in 1844-45 on Greek and Nordic myths. In 1839 Grundtvig became pastor of Vartov Church in central Copenhagen and gathered around him a congregation of likeminded Christians, including royalty, who turned him into something of a cult figure until his death at the age of 88 in 1872. Grundtvig’s family life underwent major changes in the course of his long life. With his first wife Lise Blicher, whom he married in 1818, he had three children in the 1820s: Johan, Svend, and Meta. In the same year that Lisa died (1851) he remarried the 30-year younger widow, Marie Toft, much to the outrage of even his supporters. Marie died in 1854 after giving birth to their son Frederik. In 1858 Grundtvig then married the wealthy widow Countess Asta Reedtz, who was 43 years his junior. At the age of 76 he fathered his last child, Asta, born in 1860. In the course of his long life Grundtvig became almost a legendary figure. He is an inescapable reference-point whenever themes such as people, nation, democracy, freedom, church, and education are to be discussed. And interpreting Grundtvig has been a battlefield ever since his death in 1872.

‘In all parliamentary matters I think of the English’ In this book it is Grundtvig’s political activity and ideas that are in focus. His political interest was aroused in earnest in the latter half of the 1820s, due to three main factors. First, he was convicted of libel in 1826 and sentenced to lifelong censorship, meaning that all his publications had first to be screened by the police. Second, he felt provoked by, and therefore protested against, the tough line that the authorities were taking with the new religious movements of the time, the so-called “godly assemblies”. And third, he was much inspired by his reading of the British periodicals Westminster Review (1824-27) and Ed-

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Chapter 1. Grundtvig’s influence and relevance

inburgh Review (1820-27). In these periodicals Grundtvig met the British liberalist ideas on church and school, ideas which he pursued personally with the three lengthy trips to England in 1829, 1830, and 1831 that introduced him to modern society. His horror at the shadow side of industrialization was offset by his enthusiasm for the power and energy that confronted him in England, and which he expressed in the phrase ‘boxing and steaming’. Whether or not Grundtvig ever witnessed a boxing match we do not know, but he wrote enthusiastically about the power of the steam engines that he saw on the factory floor and personally experienced on the railways of England. This meeting with modern society sharpened his understanding of the importance of the liberal view of freedom for economics, politics, education, the church, and spiritual life. Grundtvig is difficult to place within the history of ideas. He was deeply inspired by both British liberalism and German idealism. He was influenced by German philosophers such as Herder, Fichte, and Hegel, but it is equally clear that John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and the freedom ideals of British liberalism also made an impact. As regards his political ideas, however, England was his greatest inspiration. In 1839 he stated in a speech on church freedom: “In all parliamentary matters (I) think of the English”. He went on to make this abundantly clear from the rostrum of the Danish parliament in 1855, six years after democracy was introduced into Denmark through the constitution of 1849: “In answer to the question of my love for England I say that the greater part of my disagreement with the other gentlemen in the house is because I have most certainly not gained my political upbringing in or from France, but in and from England”. It was not just the influence of England but also developments in Europe and Denmark that formed the background for his entrance onto the political stage. Political events on the European mainland, especially the July revolution in Paris in 1830, played a major role. The liberal, national, and democratic ideas breaking out in various countries also reached Denmark,

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

where in 1830 a battle-call was published arguing for a free constitution for the two duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. In 1831 an act was passed to establish advisory assemblies in Denmark, which led to Grundtvig’s developing his ideas on politics and education. He was gradually realizing that these new pre-democratic institutions could benefit the country, provided their members acquired better opportunities for education. This involved a new form of high school, a People’s High School, based on the language of the people. Grundtvig formulated the revolutionary idea that one could become an enlightened and educated person through the language of the people. This ideal – inspired by Herder – led him to direct a long and vehement attack on the academic schooling of his time, which demanded Latin as the entry ticket to education and a good career. Since attendance at the Latin schools was limited to a small minority, the link between Latin and education inevitably opened up a major divide between ‘the educated elite’ and ‘the common people’. As Grundtvig wrote, he was attempting to “link the culture of the educated to that of the people”. It is significant that he wrote most of his educational works in the years between 1831 and 1847, i.e. in the period between the announcement of the advisory assemblies in 1831 and the change in the political system to democracy that took place in 1848-49. Although Grundtvig did not participate in the mass march to the King’s palace to demand democracy on 21 March 1848, he was eager to become a member of the assembly that would draw up the new constitution. In the general election he failed to gain a seat in Nyboder, Copenhagen, but was later elected as a deputy at a by-election in Præstø. Grundtvig could barely restrain himself at meetings of the constitutional assembly. He was among the most frequent speakers and took the rostrum over 200 times on all kinds of subjects. He was a member of parliament – with a few breaks – from 1849 to 1858, and he was nominated and elected in three different constituencies, in Præstø in 1849, in Skælskør in 1853, and in Kerteminde in

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Chapter 1. Grundtvig’s influence and relevance

1855, where he remained until the election of 14 June 1858. Grundtvig then retired at the age of 75. However, when the constitution was due for revision in 1864 he resumed his political activity and was elected Lower House MP for East Jutland in 1866 at the ripe old age of 82. 3 The reason Grundtvig is given credit for so many apparently conflicting views is that during a long life he both experienced and contributed to one of the greatest transformation processes in the history of Europe – a transformation that saw historical events such as British industrialization, the French revolution, and German romanticism. Today we regard the nation-state, democracy, and a constitution as the foundation of all political theory, but this was not the case in Grundtvig’s day; they were established during his lifetime, as Denmark moved from a united monarchy to a nation-state and from autocracy to democracy. Just as the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of Communism in 1989 forced political thinkers to face up to new challenges, so did the transformations of the 19th century force Grundtvig to rethink the positions he had adopted earlier in his life. Since nation-building constitutes the heart of his political theory, it is this that I shall now focus on rather than his changing views on various other subjects.

3. See p. 123ff.

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In the picture, from c. 1600, God in his ‘cloud’ gives a scepter to the king, a book to the clergy, a sword to the nobleman, and a flail to the peasant, signifying the rank and division of labor in the 4 estates of the realm. Grundtvig directed a massive attack on this idea of rank, calling it a ‘caste system’. By contrast he was proud of the way in which the absolute monarchy had been introduced in Denmark in 1661. A contract had been drawn up between the king and the estates whereby the latter expressed their homage to the former and his successors as absolute sovereigns. Some 2,200 nobles, pastors, citizens, and peasants in Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and the Faroes signed the Sovereignty Act, which is without parallel in the history of constitutional law. Denmark was the only country in Europe where the king was given a popular legitimacy to exercise autocracy.

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CHAPTER 2

From the age of the estates to the age of the people

Chapter 2. From the age of the estates to the age of the people

The people versus democracy

For Grundtvig it was not the conflict between absolute monarchy and parliamentary democracy that formed the poles of his political philosophy, but rather the estates of the realm against the people of the realm. To understand Grundtvig’s contribution to the formation of the Danish nation it is therefore necessary to outline their conceptual basis and composition. Society in Grundtvig’s time was hierarchically structured – with the king at the top of the pyramid. Below him came the four estates, each with its own function, special rights, and specific duties. Society still followed what was regarded in the Late Middle Ages as a divinely ordained order of rank and division. In catholic times the first ‘estate’ was the clergy, since the church was regarded as the essential intermediary in the salvation of souls. The second estate was the nobility or landed proprietary, whose purpose was to defend the realm. These two estates enjoyed a privileged position and regarded themselves as free. In contrast, the third and fourth estates, the citizenry and the peasantry, were deemed ‘unfree and of humble birth’. The task of the citizenry was to trade, while that of the peasantry was to till the soil. At the Reformation in 1536 the clergy lost its privileged position, leaving the nobility as the sole ‘free’ estate. As a result, the nobility’s position in society over the next 100 years was so

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

dominant that some historians even speak of ‘the age of absolute nobility’. Their privileges were laid down in coronation charters: Only the nobility could sit on the Royal State Council (rigsraad), a gathering of 20 or so nobles who supposedly acted as representatives of the entire people, supervised the king’s power, and gave their consent to important decisions like the imposition of taxes and the declaration of war. Finally, the nobility held a monopoly over the appointment of the country’s lord lieutenants, whose task it was to oversee the crown estates and act as the highest authority in both civil and military matters. The landed proprietor was the policeman on his own estate and could arrest people and then punish them, once a judgment had been passed. In the peasant’s eyes therefore the proprietor was not only a man of noble rank, he was also the public authority. In the ‘estates society’ the household was a central institution, in fact society was constructed on households. Each of these contained a head of the house and a number of staff. The ‘father’ and the ‘people’ were twin concepts – no father without a people, and no people without a father. In the society into which Grundtvig was born, the word ‘people’ was primarily used about the fourth estate, that is, the peasants, villagers, and servants. It was not commonly used to cover all four estates. At the same time the Danish word folk was applied to all manner of people; there were seafolk and firefolk, harvestfolk and courtfolk – but only seldom were their Danish folk. The division into estates was so extensive that when the Danish language replaced Latin in the Late Middle Ages, no designation existed for the population as a whole! When the Danish kings addressed all their subjects, they referred to them not as ‘the Danish people’ but as the estates. For instance, in a North Jutland decree from 1466 the following formula is used about the estates: “bishops, abbots and ordinary clergy, knights, journeymen, merchants, pea-

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Chapter 2. From the age of the estates to the age of the people

sants, and common people of Jutland”. 1 Not until the patriotism of the 18th century was the concept of the estates seriously threatened by the concept of ‘the nation’. In his major work from 1808, Thoughts on a Patriotic Education, the historian Laurids Engelstoft, an exponent of this patriotism and a source of inspiration for Grundtvig, pointed out that a new understanding of the concept of ‘nation’ was under way: “To some degree England was the first and for a long time the only nation that with unprejudiced impartiality opened the temple of honor for all classes”. 2 Gradually this inclusive concept of nation gained ground in other countries, including Denmark, where according to Engelstoft it served to strengthen social cohesion in the country. For the more the estates’ privileges are eroded, “the more society’s inner strength increases”. 3 With the arrival of national romanticism in the early 19th century came the idea of the people as an organism – bound together by a common language, a common history, and a common culture. The estates lost ground to the concept of a people in transition, with Grundtvig becoming a major leader. In the parliament that voted the Danish constitution into being in 1849, Grundtvig proclaimed: “The age of the estates is over, now it is time for the age of the people”. And the age of the people required the education of the people for the nationbuilding to begin.

‘From caste system to equality in all civil relations’ In article after article in his periodical The Dane (1848-51) Grundtvig was ruthless in his criticism of the estates’ treat1. Aksel E. Christensen: Danmark, Norden, Østersøen 1976: 265. 2. Engelstoft 1808:266. 3. Engelstoft 1808:182.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

ment of the common people, who seem “to exist like domestic animals for the sake of the other estates”. What he wanted in essence was to turn the estates on their head and install the peasantry as the core of the nation! As he wrote, “By raising the lowest of our estates to a preeminence we are literally setting the peasant above the lord of the manor”. Though this formulation might seem distasteful to Grundtvig, it expressed an irreversible and welcome trend of the times. In his view the transition marked the change from “slavery to freedom, from a caste system to equality in all civil affairs, and from secrecy to openness in everything that has to do with the needs and the common good of the whole!” Openness and freedom of speech and the press thus became cardinal points in Grundtvig’s political philosophy. Transformation from the age of the estates to the age of the people meant that education would now have to play a far greater role in the relation between the individual and society. Where before the church was closely related to the state, it was now the school that moved into the center of society. The promotion of schooling, says Grundtvig in his unpublished book, On State Education, from 1834, is for every government “the most important task of the state, since its well-being depends on this, both now and in the future”. Grundtvig uses the concept of ‘school’ in its extended sense, and goes so far as to call his own times ‘the age of the school’. From this follows ‘the age of the individual’. Compared with the Classical and the Middle Ages, the age of the school sees the individual moving further center-stage than at any other time in history. And with this change come both joyous possibilities and dangerous consequences. The French Revolution in 1789 showed how dangerous the latter could be, as the individual desire for freedom had clashed fatally with the state’s guardianship of the common good. The desire for freedom can lead the individual to cut himself off from social life and become his own master, thereby breaking the underlying structure that links the individual to the people and to the whole of humankind.

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Chapter 2. From the age of the estates to the age of the people

Despite the experiences of the French revolution, and the danger that individual freedom may undermine society’s essential sense of the common good, Grundtvig does not argue for less freedom than before, but for more. To be a member of society involves shouldering a responsibility for the common weal, and this is best ensured if society grants freedom to the individual to bear that responsibility. Grundtvig’s social philosophy builds on the liberal idea that only through freedom can the individual voluntarily impose restraints upon himself. Grundtvig does not advocate a total individual freedom; in the long run this would lead to the dissolution of society. For the social citizen unlimited freedom has no place. Absolute individualism is incompatible with the idea of a society, since every society depends on the ties between the collective and the individual. Society always rests on a certain basic agreement concerning the common good, as Grundtvig emphasized in On State Education, “for where such a basic agreement cannot be traced, no civil society has ever existed, only a master-race and a slave-race in a sharp opposition that together may be called a state but is in no way what we are talking about here, since in such circles ‘the right of the strongest’ is without doubt the basic law”. How then does one go about establishing this essential ‘basic agreement’? The French political philosopher Montesquieu had faced the same fundamental question before Grundtvig. In his major work On the Spirit of Laws (1748) he introduced love as an essential power. He speaks of social spirit as a political virtue that can be defined as a “love of the laws and the fatherland”. 4 Grundtvig similarly regarded love as a driving force for reform which contributes to the building of the nation. In this context both Montesquieu and Grundtvig do not use ‘love’ in the sense of ‘love for each other’, for example for one’s neighbor, but in the sense of ‘love for what 4. Montesquieu: On the Spirit of Laws, 2001/1748.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

one has in common’. What Montesquieu emphasizes is the laws and the fatherland; what Grundtvig is referring to is the ‘four-leaf clover’ of the people and the king, the mothertongue and the fatherland.

Grundtvig’s contract theory Although formally Denmark remained an estates’ society until the democratic constitution of 1849, the old order was breaking down some time before then. An important step in this process was the introduction of Absolute Monarchy in 1660, which marked the change from an elected monarchy to a hereditary monarchy and the ending of the requirement that the elected monarch should sign a coronation charter. When Frederik III’s charter of 1648 was discarded, the foundation of his rule was thereby invalidated. In response to the estates’ promise to grant him the rights of both succession and autocracy, which in 1661 was signed by some 2,200 nobles, pastors, citizens, and peasants, he agreed to promulgate a new inheritance act. This was drawn up by Frederik himself and his Lord Chamberlain, Peder Schumacher, (later Griffenfeld). The result was the Royal Danish Constitution of 1665 – the only constitution in Europe that ever enshrined the principle of Absolute Monarchy. The theoretical basis for autocracy as a form of government was formulated by the English political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, in his famous work Leviathan (1651). Autocracy, he wrote, rested on a contract between the king and the people. It is important to note that Hobbes’ use of the word ‘people’ differs fundamentally from the concept of the ‘multitude’, as he made clear in On the Citizen (1642): “In the last place, it is a great hindrance to Civil Government, especially Monarchical, that men distinguish not enough between a People and a Multitude. The People is somewhat that is one, having one will, and to whom one action may be attributed; none of these

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Chapter 2. From the age of the estates to the age of the people

can properly be said of a Multitude”. 5 On this point Grundtvig was in full agreement with Hobbes – as indeed he was with the Danish-Norwegian Ludvig Holberg, who argued in The Core of Morality or Introduction to Natures and Knowledge for the Common Man (1716) that the introduction of autocracy should be seen as an agreement between a ruler and his people. The king undertook to care for ‘the public weal’, while the people promised to obey him. Hereafter it was the task of the king to ensure the common good and thus a just and civil society. Holberg believed that it was this move that marked the end of the estates society – and in particular the privileged position of the nobility. In his view the weakening of the power of the nobility had freed all the Norwegian, Danish, and German members of the Danish monarchy in the sense that they were now placed on an equal footing under one master. Grundtvig applied the same contract theory to the introduction of autocracy into Denmark. It was not the king who had seized power in 1660; power had been ‘handed over’ to him by the people, a circumstance to which Grundtvig often returned in his writings. To understand his view of autocracy it is important to note that in the Royal Danish Constitution of 1665 there are two figures who legitimize autocracy: The king’s sovereign power is mediated directly by God, while the people have transferred ‘absolute power’ to the king. In arguing for his contract theory Grundtvig distanced himself from the theocratic idea that the king enjoyed his power ‘by the grace of God’. In Grundtvig’s view it was ‘a gift from the people’, and obliged the king to do everything in his power to promote ‘the common good’. Grundtvig’s skepticism towards democracy was linked to this idea of ‘the common good’. If society is to hold together, it requires an authority charged with promoting precisely ‘the common good’. Grundtvig believed that it was the king who was best able to do this. He 5. Hobbes 1949:135.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

was not blind to the possibility that – like everyone else – the king could be egoistic, ambitious, and self-serving. But this would not have a destructive effect on society, for unlike everyone else the king was not open to the temptation to separate his own interests from those of his country, since “power, reputation, and welfare” were closely connected with how his kingdom proceeded, as Grundtvig proclaimed in his earliest political work, Political Considerations from 1831. Grundtvig championed what the Norwegian historian Jens Arup Seip has called a “popular monarchy”, the core of which Grundtvig himself summarized in the watchword: “king’s hand and people’s voice – both strong, both free”. 6 Grundtvig’s recurrent examples of how the Danish autocracy worked better than other forms of government included the king’s abolition of adscription in 1788 and the ban on the slave trade in 1792. The former, Grundtvig argued, had secured a much freer position for the common people than was the case in, say, England and France. Already in his early work, World Chronicle, from 1812 Grundtvig wrote: “The lord can no longer pull the peasant out of his manor, like a horse out of the stable every morning only to let him stand idle, pull the cart, or be put to the trot at his discretion”. Now it was the lord himself who had to “ride the wooden horse at his pleasure, or use it for the young master’s gymnastics”.

6. Cf. Tine Damsholt: “‘Hand of King and Voice of People’ – ”, 2014.

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Adopted on the Prussian model the Advisory Assemblies were set up by the acts of 28 May 1831 and 15 May 1834. The Assemblies met for the first time in 1835 and then on a biannual basis until 1848. One immediate cause for the decision to establish them was the widespread unrest in Europe around the July Revolution in France in 1830, creating political waves in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. The Advisory Assemblies also fulfilled the promise of Frederik VI (reigned 1808-39) to the Vienna Congress in 1815 to introduce an estate of the realm constitution for Holstein, which the Congress ceded to the German Confederation. To avoid raking up the delicate question of the relation between Schleswig and Holstein the King decided that they should both have an assembly: Holstein in Itzehoe, and Schleswig in Schleswig city. Moreover there were also to be assemblies for the mainland of Jutland in Viborg and for the islands, including Zealand and Funen, in Roskilde, near Copenhagen. The assemblies consisted of representatives of the estate owners, the peasant farmers, and the city landowners. They could not make binding decisions, being only advisory assemblies to the King.

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CHAPTER 3

Nation and people: An imagined community Chapter 3. Nation and people: An imagined community The invisibility of the nation is a central idea in modern theories of nationalism. The Irish-American anthropologist Benedict Anderson has summarized the idea elegantly and effectively in calling the nation an ‘imagined community’. 1 Nations are not visible. They do not exist in the same way as elephants or volcanoes. We cannot through empirical surveys give an objective description of a nation. Nations are subjective, or rather inter-subjective phenomena, since they are a product of their members’ idea of holding something in common. More generally we can say that it is the sharing of common ideas that constitutes the fuel that powers a society to drive forward. Such ideas should not be interpreted in a narrow, intellectual way; they are broad and inclusive, and comprise common knowledge and experience, common intelligence and feelings, common symbols and a common imagination. Yet these ideas alone are not enough to make a society cohesive; they must be symbolized in order to be maintained, and institutionalized to provide essential stability. For example, if belief in Christ had not been anchored in the Bible as a text and in the Church as an institution, Christianity would surely never have gained its universal significance. In Denmark the nation was rooted in institutions such as the people’s church, the people’s school,

1. Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities, 1983.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

the people’s high school, the people’s libraries, the people’s parliament, and the people’s political parties. Of course Grundtvig did not call nations and peoples ‘imagined communities’, but he came close to the thought in The Danish Rhymed Chronicle (1834) when he argued that “nationality and the mother-tongue (...) belong to the poetic realities on earth”. His understanding of ‘the people’ did not grow out of his association with empirical individuals but through his study of history. This can be seen in his monumental work New Year’s Morning (1824), which consists of 312 stanzas divided into 8 songs. The crucial breakthrough in the text happens at the beginning of the seventh song: “The voice of the people was heard o’er the land/In legends and songs to the children’s delight”. 2 The voice to be awakened is that of the people, but they were not to be identified with the present age, where the people’s voice was silent. The people’s voice that Grundtvig had heard came from history, and he saw it as his task to unite ‘the people with the people’. In other words, on the basis of his studies of history Grundtvig constructed ‘a Danish people’, whom he then made into his model, that is, a cultural category. He did so primarily for the common people, who should regard themselves no longer as the fourth estate but as a full and valid part of the people in Denmark. Grundtvig was far from being alone in conceiving of the ‘people’ as a concept that served to constitute a community. Normally it is Herder who is credited with the establishment of this new understanding of the ‘people’. But I should like to refer to the Italian philosopher-historian Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), whose understanding of the ‘people’ was a great source of inspiration for Herder – and thus for Grundtvig too. In his major work New Science from 1725 Vico argued that the freedom of the people means ‘the freedom of the people from

2. Grundtvig, New Year’s Morning, 2009/1824.

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Chapter 3. Nation and people: An imagined community

their masters’. 3 And he asked who are the people, and what is required to make ‘the people’ free? For ‘the people’ do not exist a priori as an empirical reality; they only gain an existence as an entity through reflection and self-awareness. By way of illustration Vico referred to the Greek statesman Solon, who urged “the plebeians to reflect on themselves and recognize that they were of the same human nature as the nobles and should therefore be set on an equal footing with them as regards civil rights”. Vico was convinced that “it is a universal fact that the plebeians among every people, from Solon’s reflection onwards, transformed the republics from aristocratic to democratic [republics]”. 4 Grundtvig’s view of popular education was deeply allied to Vico’s. He encouraged the underclass members to reflect on and recognize themselves as more than just ‘the humble folk’, for they too were part of the Danish ‘people’. Grundtvig had no faith in either the scholars or the peasants as rulers of the land, for that required persons who were self-aware. In his article On Civil Education he wrote: “The common people can just as little represent themselves as govern themselves, even if we filled the state council with them. In order to do so, they need a higher education to leave their station behind spiritually and no longer be common people”. They would then be a people with a new form of consciousness. They must stop thinking of themselves as an ‘estate’ and start thinking of themselves as a ‘people’. For Grundtvig there was a qualitative difference between the ‘common people’ and the ‘general public’, primarily one of consciousness and education. When the common people think of themselves as the general public, they are no longer an estate. Grundtvig also employed the tandem phrases ‘people’ and ‘multitude’, or ‘people’ and ‘masses’ to clarify this qualitative difference between the two 3. Vico 1998:523. 4. Vico 1998:199.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

consciousnesses. Much later, Habermas would similarly underline how the transition from nations of nobility and nations of people ultimately presupposes a ‘change in consciousness’. 5 The transition from a society where the multitude/peasantry and the people were synonymous concepts, to a society where they are more or less antagonistic, required an enormous mental adjustment. The transformation can be compared to that from paganism to Christianity in Denmark 1000 years ago and from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism 500 years later.

‘Democracy’ as a term of abuse To understand Grundtvig’s view of democracy it is important to remind ourselves that for over 2000 years the word ‘democracy’ was used almost exclusively either as a neutral or as a negative designation for a specific form of government. In The Republic, for example, Plato quotes Socrates as saying that democracy arises “when the property-less class defeats the opposing party and kills all those who do not save themselves by fleeing their country”. Plato’s criticism of Athenian democracy has remained the mother of all criticism of democracy. In his Theory of the State Aristotle defines democracy as an illegitimate form of government on a par with tyranny and oligarchy. Nor do the Roman writers, Polybius and Cicero, have much to say in its favor. Right up to the Enlightenment and the American and French Revolutions democracy remained unpopular. It was regarded as an extreme form of government, unsuited to being implemented. Even a political thinker like Rousseau, later to be feted as the great philosopher of democracy, regarded the idea as impracticable. In The Social Contract from 1762 he wrote “that in the strictest sense of the word, no democracy has ever 5. Cf. Jürgen Habermas: Politisk filosofi, 2001.

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Chapter 3. Nation and people: An imagined community

existed, and indeed never will”. According to Rousseau democracy requires a small state, great simplicity in habits and customs, and great equality of wealth. And he came to the famous conclusion that “Were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic; so perfect a government is not for men.” 6 Rousseau’s central position in the history of ideas is due rather to his emphasis on the people as a community in possession of sovereignty. More than any other event the French Revolution marks the transition from the aristocratic to the democratic epoch, meaning from guardian rule to self-rule as a political and educational ideal. The democrats in France were in agreement first and foremost in their opposition to the aristocrats. Yet the French Revolution itself helped to push the concept of democracy into the background in the political rhetoric and theory, due not least to the reign of terror in 1793-94 which reinforced the old association of democracy with disorder, anarchy, and mob rule. For Grundtvig the French Revolution had almost a determining importance. When he gave his series of lectures under the title Within Living Memory in 1838, it was the French Revolution that was his central point of reference. His manuscripts show that he had great insight into the course of events during the revolution as well as a thorough knowledge of the persons and various factions in the dispute. Grundtvig saw the French Revolution as a disaster, since it ended in the reign of terror.

‘People’ as a watchword Grundtvig was far from alone in his criticism of democracy. As Jeppe Nevers has demonstrated in his analyses of historical concepts, ‘democracy’ was not in fashion when Denmark ac6. J.-J. Rousseau: The Social Contract, 2002/1762.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

quired its democratic constitution in 1849. The word ‘democracy’ did not appear in the wording, and it was seldom used by the liberal bourgeoisie who led the revolution in 1848-49. For the National Liberals it was not a question of introducing a ‘democratic’ constitution. That is how the Danes – with some degree of justification – have chosen to regard the move, but for the key players such as D.G. Monrad and Orla Lehmann it was more a matter of reining in autocracy through a new constitution, in other words of creating a constitutional monarchy. Yet even though they did not fight for a democratic constitution, Monrad and Lehmann had a strong faith in the people as the only legitimate foundation for the power of the state. The famous Danish critic, Georg Brandes, was later to employ the same argument as Grundtvig, Monrad, and Lehmann. In 1884 he gave a speech on the constitution in which he clearly distinguished between the people and democracy: “While I wish with all of my heart to serve the people, I cannot say that I will serve democracy.” He makes a point of stating, “I am not a democrat; in other words I do not believe in the value of majority voting. But of course I admit the necessity of allowing the majority to decide the issue where it is a question of the people’s right to self-determination”. 7 It was the concept of a ‘people’ and not of ‘democracy’ that was the sticking-point in Danish political discourse in the 19th century. This is bound up with the fact that in its early days the concept of a ‘people’ developed in the struggle not for democracy but against the estates as a fundamental principle. In the 19th century this concept of a ‘people’ was electrified from being a fairly new political catchword into a firm political principle to an extent that is hard to understand today. We take the link between people and democracy for granted, but in Denmark it was only at the start of the 20th century that ‘democracy’ made serious inroads into the language of poli7. Brandes 1978:7.

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Chapter 3. Nation and people: An imagined community

tics. If we tighten the screw, we might even say that it was during and after the Second World War that the concept of democracy was electrified in the same way as the concept of a ‘people’ in the 19th century. Even though Grundtvig dismissed ‘democracy’, he predicted in Within Living Memory that sooner or later the people could themselves choose their government. In his view, the French Revolution and ‘Napoleon’s tyranny’ had given people and princes the experience of how interdependent they were. That is why at the beginning of the 19th century the princes had made every effort “to arouse and encourage the spirit of the people, educate their subjects as to their common good, and improve their circumstances.” Grundtvig was never in any doubt that such efforts to educate the people would have historical and universal consequences. “To reorganize bourgeois societies in the people’s spirit” demanded “an awareness of history” that was not yet present. When Grundtvig warned against democracy as a form of government in Political Considerations (1831), he argued for the first time for a high school for all the people. Despite his strong royalist views he clearly sought a model that would enable the common people to join the political process. The king may have been in a position to find good and able people who could run the country better than an uneducated peasantry, but the latter needed to be educated in order to participate actively in political life. Once they had been through this process, they could at some point in the future establish an effective rule of the people. Rome was not built in a day, he said time and again. Democracy could not be introduced from one day to the next. It required patience, which in Grundtvig’s view was the greatest form of courage.

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In the fall of 1839 Grundtvig joined a small committee to work for the abolition of slavery in the Danish West Indies. The committee had been established at the request of circles and individuals in Britain who were working for abolition. In 1841 the famous philanthropist Elizabeth Fry and her brother Joseph Gurney visited Copenhagen. They had become known internationally for their work on prison reform as well as on slavery. The two quakers also met Grundtvig, who had been asked to interpret by the Queen of Denmark. The day after their departure, on 31 August 1841, Grundtvig gave a lecture in the organization ‘Danish Society’, where he spoke movingly of Elizabeth Fry, who had left a “deep and refreshing” impression on him. He was particularly moved by “the general love of humanity that shone in her gaze”. Grundtvig participated in the committee’s work until after all Danish slaves were freed in 1848.

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CHAPTER 4

Grundtvig’s concept of freedom

Chapter 4. Grundtvig’s concept of freedom In all nation-building the concepts of nation, people, state. freedom, and faith are central. In this context we shall examine Grundtvig’s concept of freedom, where he distinguishes between three forms: 1) religious freedom (freedom of conscience), the spiritual element, 2) civil freedom, which finds expression in civil society and the free market, and 3) personal freedom, which includes bodily freedom. The latter two forms are inextricably bound up with the first, which in Grundtvig’s opinion has found its best expression among the English.

Religious freedom, freedom of conscience “If I were a statesman, then above all, freedom of religion would be my watchword.” These words appear in Grundtvig’s major work, On Freedom of Religion from 1827. Here he constantly refers to conditions in England, including the liberal journal Westminster Review, where an intense debate was raging on freedom of religion. John Stuart Mill, a regular contributor, wrote in 1826: “... religion can never be safe or sound, unless it is left free to every man’s choice, wholly uninfluenced

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

by the operation either of punishment or reward on the part of the magistrate”. 1 In Denmark Grundtvig became the champion of religious freedom. He could see, as he wrote in Important questions to Denmark legal professionals (1826), that in the eyes of the state it must be “an incalculable advantage to have subjects whose religious views are uniform and in harmony with the constitution [...] but it is well known that this harmony must either create itself or remain unattainable”. Faith and force, church, and civil relations had for far too long been confused, and religious freedom would strengthen the state, as he highlighted in On Freedom of Religion, since freedom of conscience “of psychological necessity nourishes honesty and promise-keeping, which is so indispensable to the state”. Where there is freedom, the manifestations of life will display themselves, and this is crucial to the maintenance and development of society. In addition to honesty and promise-keeping come the manifestations of life such as sympathy, mercy, sincerity, and fidelity. As a Christian, Grundtvig naturally insists that these manifestations of life only exist in their pure form in God, but since, as he said in his speech at the King's funeral in 1839, we are created in the image of God, the words “God be praised” mean that in human nature “we find traces of glory and tracks of light”. The formation of a Danish nation required the confusion between state and religion, church and school to be untangled. An individual’s relation to church and faith should not have any civil consequences, in Grundtvig’s opinion. In his preface to Manual of World History (1833) he wrote: “I have gradually learned to make a sharp distinction between church and school, faith and knowledge, temporal and eternal, and I am certain that just as the church must reject any attempt by the

1. Q.f. Kaj Baagø: “Grundtvig and English Liberalism”, 1955.

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Chapter 4. Grundtvig’s concept of freedom

state and the school to reform it as they please, so it is equally unjust to force a church form on the state or the school”. It is worth noting that in the 51 lectures under the title Within Living Memory Grundtvig deals with Christianity in a single lecture. He argues that Christianity should not be mixed up with the question of the organization and development of society, “so wherever civil affairs are to be truly regenerated and take hold, we must leave Christianity completely out of the equation as being absolutely free and unpredictable”. Christianity should no longer be the norm for the organization of society. For Christianity and in a wider sense religion to bear fruit in the life of society it must be set free of any other relation, otherwise both society and religion will be crippled. As a spiritual reformer, Grundtvig is the spokesman for religious freedom and a radical liberalization of church life. For him, freedom of conscience (religious freedom) was the fundamental freedom, since it represented spiritual freedom. Religious freedom was important for both religion and society, and only thus could it play a positive role. So Grundtvig made the breaking of the parish-tie a major theme of his reform. Citizens were not to be bound to their parish church and their parish priest, but should be free to choose the priest and the church that their faith and their conscience prompted them towards. Freedom of conscience should encompass not only the congregations but also the pastors, who should have a broad freedom to administer the rituals and the possibility of choosing whom they would serve. The state church was not to be regarded as a faith community but as a civil organization without any monopoly on interpreting “the tenets of faith”. In 1855 the breaking of the parish-tie passed into law, and even though it was not solely thanks to Grundtvig, he deserves a large share of the credit. Grundtvig’s understanding of the relation between church, state, and school led to a confrontation with the way the catechism was taught as the foundation for socio-ethical upbringing by the church and the school. Ever since the Reformation

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

in 1536 the condition for receiving Holy Communion had been a knowledge of Luther’s Shorter Catechism; but with the introduction of confirmation in 1736 this condition had been tightened to mean the passing of a public examination in Luther’s work. Holy Communion denoted the entry into not just church life but also social life, in that a number of civil rights were linked to receiving it, such as the swearing of oaths, the office of godparent, and even marriage itself. Grundtvig fought tooth and nail to remove this link between confirmation and civil rights. In On Freedom of Religion (1827) he argues for a civil confirmation, for it is not a common religion but a common language and a common history that should ensure the essential homogeneity in society: “Whereas civil unity can be the living principle of the state, as is the case when people share a common language and history, the government could and should enact a law for civil confirmation”. It should no longer be necessary to take an oath of religious commitment to the state; instead young people should be “civilly confirmed, and thereby take an oath of faith in the state”. In other words confirmation should not aim at incorporation into church life, but – and without the least regard for the confirmand’s faith – at “admission into civil society”. Rather than teach matters of faith the school should provide an introduction into what it means to be a decent citizen in society, which is “the same for Christians, Jews, and heathens and should have nothing to do whatsoever with the question of faith”. Similarly, in parliament 1850 Grundtvig protested at the obligation to be married in church. Instead civil matrimony should be required for one and all, “so that freedom of religion can be effected”. There should be no distinction between marriages, such as calling marriage between a Christian and a Jew “a special kind of marriage” – as it was deemed. From the parliamentary rostrum he criticized the house for imposing specific obligations on mixed marriages in connection with child-rearing. In his view the civil validity of marriage should “be made completely independent of any sort of ceremony or

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Chapter 4. Grundtvig’s concept of freedom

so-called ‘wedding’ either in church or synagogue” (“Hear, hear!”). Whether or not the couple in addition to civil matrimony “wish to be married in church and if so in which church” must be left to themselves to decide. Grundtvig was way ahead of his time on such matters as civil confirmation and marriage; not until 1909 was confirmation annulled as a condition for church marriage, and not until 1922 was freedom of choice introduced between church and civil marriage. Until that date church marriage was obligatory for all church members, which in practice meant the entire population of Denmark. On the question of child baptism Grundtvig was equally adamant that this should be a voluntary choice, outside the state’s jurisdiction. Not until 1857 was obligatory baptism abolished – even though by then the practice of sending the police to find children and have them baptized by force had been discontinued. On the matter of church tax Grundtvig was utterly opposed to the idea that everyone, whatever their faith, should pay into the national church. He could not, he said in the Constitutional Assembly 1849, “see any possible reason why those who do not avail themselves of the teachers or organizations in the national church should answer for them or any other church”. To be forced to pay for a church or a faith community that one had no feeling for was for him quite unacceptable. Nationbuilding for Grundtvig was characterized by religious pluralism, i.e. by various religions.

Civil freedom In parliament Grundtvig fought on a broad front to abolish a number of state institutions. Conscription was to be terminated and all military defense turned over to volunteers. He also supported the greatest possible economic freedom and led the move to make guild membership voluntary. Freedom of church and school was a particular concern for him; he op-

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

posed all compulsory education and school attendance. For Grundtvig it was not the state institutions but the ‘free’ institutions that especially contributed to the building up of the social capital needed to maintain a sense of national community. One of the controversial aspects of his demand for freedom was his view of social security. Was he perhaps an opponent of social welfare? This depends on how one defines ‘social security’. If it is defined as the system introduced into Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia after the Second World War, then we may criticize Grundtvig. He protested against the maintenance clause in the constitution and was deeply critical of a state welfare system. In particular he opposed a state pension system for civil servants, which he feared would force the state to its knees – a matter that in recent years has become insistently relevant in a number of European states. His ideal society – “where few are too rich and still fewer too poor” – is therefore not an anticipation of the welfare state. On the other hand, he argued that the poor should be given better opportunities to support themselves – primarily through action on land reform which would ensure that few had too much land and fewer too little. Moreover, any help to the weak and sick should be anchored in a local, family-like commitment. As pastor in Præstø parish (1821-22) he had taken great pains to look after those who were dependent on the parish for their upkeep. The essence of Grundtvig’s view of freedom is to be found in his introduction to Nordic Mythology (1832) in the poetic formulation: “Freedom for Loki as well as for Thor”. 2 The two Nordic gods, Loki and Thor, had their differing views of the world, but both should enjoy the same freedom. Despite his strong criticism of egoistic tendencies in Loki’s understanding of freedom, Grundtvig awards him a special place. For it is Loki with his challenging and teasing wit who makes sure that 2. See p. 88; The School for Life, 2011:49

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Chapter 4. Grundtvig’s concept of freedom

the battle is waged with words and not swords. Grundtvig argues for a freedom that is not merely tolerant of those who think different but actively sees them as the condition for a living interaction of opinions. It is nevertheless often overlooked that Grundtvig operated not with two mythological figures but with three, the third being the wolf Fenris. Alone let us bind up the ravenous beast who seeks to devour the good that is born! The one-handed Tyr stands firm with his honor, 3 while, powerless, Loki can only show scorn!

The ‘ravenous beast’ is Fenris, who must be tethered if society is not to go to ground. But this cannot happen free of charge. Fenris will only allow himself to be bound for a third time, if one of the Aesir (the gods of war and conquest) puts an arm into his jaws. Someone needed to be willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of unity. The god Tyr undertakes the sacrifice, and when, to the joy of the Aesir, Fenris is unable to break the chain binding him, he bites off Tyr’s arm. The moral is that there are destructive forces in society that need to be tethered, for freedom is not total. Even though Grundtvig may be regarded as liberal by a fairly long stretch, he was extremely cautious about the emphasis on personal rights in liberalism that in the final instance secure freedom. For how is patriotism to develop unless egoism is set aside in favor of commitment to the community, as is the case with Tyr? Such a sacrifice is hard to demand of a liberally-minded person, for liberalism rests on an ethical individualism that does not chime with such individual sacrifice on behalf of a collective common good of the people or the nation.

3. See p. 89; The School for Life, 2011:50.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

Personal freedom, bodily freedom In the above-mentioned work On Freedom of Religion (1827) Grundtvig for the first time touches on the subject of slavery. He links it initially to demands for abolition and the call for “human rights”, and later in the lecture series Within Living Memory (1838) he discusses the freedom of the negro and the abolition of slavery “as one of Europe’s finest hobby-horses”. In 1792 Denmark, a slave nation in its colonies, had forbidden all trade in negro slaves, but not slavery as such. Around the year 1800 there were still some 30,000 slaves in the Danish West Indies. In the USA and many European countries there were those, especially Quakers, who were working for the abolition of slavery. The growing opposition led the lower house of the British parliament to introduce a law against slavery in 1792, but this was rejected by the Upper House. Various initiatives were taken over the following years, not least in the establishment of anti-slavery societies, including the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, with the aim of encouraging also foreigners to support the move. This had a long-term effect on Grundtvig, who in 1839 joined a small committee advocating abolition, stating: “Many of our citizens share our wish that also in the Danish islands slavery should in a good way cease as soon as possible, so we invite like-minded people to gather in order to consider further to what extent this wish can reasonably be achieved by us through establishing a society”. 4 In 1843 the scientist and politician J.F. Schouw reorganized the committee, with Grundtvig declaring that he would continue “with pleasure” as a member. Among the new members were Bishop D.G. Monrad and the French Reformed priest J.A. Raffard. Together with Grundtvig’s old opponent, Professor H.N. Clausen, the committee took the political initia4. K.E. Bugge: Grundtvig og slavesagen, 2003:70.

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Chapter 4. Grundtvig’s concept of freedom

tive to raise the subject with the advisory assembly in Roskilde. When it failed to receive sufficient backing, Grundtvig was deeply disappointed: “... my impression is that Roskilde has treated the case, or rather left it untreated, with more than indifference”. 5 In the closing phase from 1845 to 1848 Grundtvig continued to take part in the work of the committee, which in turn put pressure on the advisory assemblies. In Denmark, 1848 was the decisive year in the movement to free the slaves. On 3 July the governor of the Danish West Indies, Peter von Scholten, stood before a slave gathering in Fredrikssted on the island of St. Croix and spoke the famous words, “Now you are free. You are hereby emancipated”. The abolition of slavery was approved by the Danish government in a proclamation signed by Frederik VII on 22 September. In the constitutional assembly the question of compensation was raised, and in the ensuing debate it was pointed out that the slave-owners had had a right of possession to their slaves and were therefore demanding compensation. Grundtvig responded on 14th December with the following remark: “The reason why I ask for the assembly’s attention right now is simply that I too belong to those who worked for the abolition of slavery on the Danish West Indian islands, so I cannot help speaking against the question that has been repeatedly raised that we should accept that people can have a full right of ownership of their fellow human beings. On behalf of myself and I would imagine all friends of humanity I therefore protest 6 against this.”

Grundtvig’s attitude was that personal freedom must precede the economic interests that were linked to the slaves. Grundtvig’s statement to the constitutional assembly was carried in

5. K.E. Bugge 2003:128. 6. K.E. Bugge 2003:183.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

an English translation in the West Indian newspaper, the St. Thomas Times on 27 January 1849. Grundtvig’s involvement in the abolition of slavery rested on his belief that personal freedom also involves bodily freedom. He clearly had Hegel in mind in his criticism of a freedom that is centered on the inner, spiritual freedom. The idea that spiritual freedom can exist alongside bodily servitude goes against all experience and common sense. Fortunately, we could learn from the British, who had abolished slavery in 1833 with reference to the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 as the foundation of freedom on the grounds that no one should be deprived of bodily freedom without a legal judgment. Grundtvig commented in The Dane 1849, “The English believe that to have one’s body in one’s power is the essence of freedom”. It was not only Hegel who failed to see this crucial point; the same was true of many Christians. “What the English call bodily freedom (Habeas Corpus) has been held cheap by the scribes because they failed to appreciate human nature and life’s enterprise and cruelly misunderstood the deep but mysterious truth that the body only exists for the sake of the spirit and time only exists for the sake of eternity”. As the Grundtvig scholar Kaj Thaning convincingly demonstrated, in the final count Grundtvig’s view of freedom rests on the principle of reciprocity: “Only those are free who allow their neighbors to be with them”. 7 In other words no one is free unless their neighbor is free. Grundtvig’s concept of freedom contains an ethical dimension that goes beyond the formal freedom allowed by law. For him, reciprocity considers not only the individual’s freedom but that of two or many people. The concept is inter-subjective and dialogical, a belief that is inextricably bound to his idea of competition.

7. Kaj Thaning: “Grundtvig and the Constitutional Assembly”, 1949:38.

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Chapter 4. Grundtvig’s concept of freedom

Freedom of competition In Danish it is possible to say at slå sig sammen in the sense of ‘to join forces’. The literal meaning of the Danish is ‘to hit one another together’, a strange but interesting expression. Why the verb ‘hit’? Does this not lead to enmity rather than friendship? Why not just ‘come’ together’ rather than ‘hit’? Grundtvig finds a deep wisdom in the phrase, however. In Hal Koch’s discussion of Grundtvig’s concept of freedom he makes the important point that this did not grow out of liberalism’s understanding of freedom. It rests on the idea that battle or struggle (in Danish ‘kamp’) is the manifestation of the spirit, and that “therefore life must be allowed to express itself in battle”. 8 Grundtvig’s concept of battle is a bridge-building category; it is through battle that the spirit is transformed into deed in the sense of action. In the wider perspective of the history of ideas Grundtvig loosens the concept of ‘spirit’ from its ancient link to religion and attaches it instead to communication. Grundtvig’s views on struggle and battle are best seen not just in the famous phrase, “Freedom for Loki as well as for Thor”, but in the context into which this is placed. It then becomes clear that for him there is a connection at the deepest level between freedom of thought and freedom of faith, and then between struggle and battle. “Freedom our watchword must be in the North! Freedom for Loki as well as for Thor. Free is the Word in the spirit’s new world, which the Word has created on this earthly shore, this country of learning, of thought and of faith, and yet of things visible most like a strand, where only in wind are white mountain-tops seen, and only in battle does life make a stand,

8. Hal Koch: Grundtvig, 1959.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig where even when power is hidden in steam, loudly it shouts: My life is to fight! A sea of learning, of thought and of faith, which, lived without freedom, is dark as the night, but which, as with powers competing for rank, 9 resembles a billowing meadow of grass ...”

The freedom that Grundtvig extols is freedom of competition with words as weapons. By 1832, when he wrote the above, Grundtvig is no longer so concerned about whether one has the right view or the right faith. What is crucial is that faith is living, and it can only be so where there is struggle and battle – and they in turn are dependent on freedom. To fight and to compete are fundamental conditions of humankind. It was an important cultural and political commitment for Grundtvig to show his contemporaries in the Nordic countries that they had roots in an ancient culture that could measure itself against Ancient Greece – also when it came to the idea of struggle and battle. The Greek word for this was agón, which was applied to many battle-games and had a significant cultural meaning – the Olympic Games being the most famous of the many similar contests that were held in Greece. Grundtvig did not take over the Greek concept but formulated his own – Nordic – concept. And he emphasizes that this form of contest builds on an ethic whose purpose is a process of reciprocal learning and cognition. For Grundtvig, single combat is a battle-concept that builds on two principles, namely order and freedom. To establish the right relation between these two contrasting principles is the prerequisite for a life-giving battle. Such a battle is incompatible with the French concept of freedom or the German concept of order. Freedom presupposes order, but order does not presuppose freedom. Freedom without order leads to anarchy;

9. See p. 88; The School for Life, 2011:49.

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Chapter 4. Grundtvig’s concept of freedom

order without freedom leads to tyranny and stagnation. 10 However, Grundtvig continues a fragment from 1847, “with a Greek concept of order and a Nordic concept of freedom, things are quite different; for then we can imagine a free manifestation of power according to reciprocally accepted laws in a specified circle; for that was how it was both with ‘single combat’ in the North and the Greek ‘Olympic games’”. In the constituent assembly Grundtvig underlined the importance of single combat both in parliament and in the public space. It was crucial to “keep the public debate open on what may be worthy and beneficial for the fatherland, so the parties in the single combat of words exercise ‘fair play’”. It is rare for Grundtvig to switch to English in order to explain what he means. But here he uses the gentleman’s and sportsman’s concept of fair play to make clear the importance of a free political debate in which various viewpoints are expressed. A year later he emphasizes in The Dane that it was not “until my trips to England (1829-31) that I reached a firm and living perception of “the freedom of the word””. Grundtvig sees the joust with words – “word-combat” – as a competition that benefits the whole of society. Competition in politics presupposes pluralism and disagreement, for without these assumptions there is nothing to discuss. In parliament Grundtvig expressed himself colorfully and often with humor, a parliamentary style he had become acquainted with in 1843 during his fourth trip to England when he visited the British parliament. He refers a number of times to its free form as an ideal in political life, and he even mentions that he was accused in the Danish parliament of being “a joker”.

10. In his Speech to the Schleswig Aid Society 1848 Grundtvigs says: “... we ought to choose the lesser of two evils, and freedom without order, at least since I first saw England, has always been for me a lesser evil than order without freedom”. See p. 113.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

When Grundtvig writes, “My life is to fight,” he raises a central question: Where are the limits for the fight, so that it does not end in destruction and death rather than peace and freedom? It is not easy to find examples of this peace perspective in Grundtvig’s early writing. He employs a range of battle images which he justifies as being necessary to arouse slumbering forces. His dilemma is that that on the one hand he encourages the fight, while simultaneously setting limits for the battle. Grundtvig himself later saw the clash and changed his mind from his youthful self, as he underscored in Within Living Memory (1838): “I have simply given up my former claim that the more fighting there is, the more life there is. I clearly see now that this should be: the more fighting there is, the more is life in danger, which may mean therefore, the more death”. Grundtvig’s battle-philosophy builds in the final instance on the distinction between logos and dia-logos, where logos is divine reason and dia-logos is conversation. Instead of logos Grundtvig as a rule speaks of the word. However, as he writes in Elementary Christian Teachings, we need to remember “that ‘logos’ in Greek corresponds to ‘word’ in Danish”. For Grundtvig, logos – the word – carries a double meaning as the Word of God and as human speech. We do not have direct access to the great logos of the Word but must manage with the small logos, whose truth must be tested through dia-logos. Logos is the Spirit, dia-logos is its manifestation form. The world cannot be surveyed from a panoptic point, but must of necessity be seen through different eyes. Truth only appears via the interplay between truths. Using a modern concept we might say that for Grundtvig enlightenment is a discursive concept, a battle concept. We know only in part, and no one can claim to possess the absolute truth. Although truth can therefore never come into human possession, it nevertheless is alive and at work in our efforts to attain it. In Grundtvig’s mythology it is Thor who represents this battle for truth. Without truth as the highest lawmaker

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Chapter 4. Grundtvig’s concept of freedom

and yardstick the foundation for meaningful discussion will crumble and the battle for truth will be pointless. Grundtvig often refers to “the principle of contradiction”, which he also calls “the eternal fundamental law of truth”, whose logic is quite simply that truth and love are better than lying and deception. According to Grundtvig, man finds himself placed in a series of contradictions between truth and lying, light and darkness, life and death. However, these are not of a dualistic but of a hierarchical character. Light and darkness, for example, are not two equal powers in Grundtvig’s cosmology. Light is of a different quality than darkness; darkness is the absence of light. He sees built into the cosmos itself a hierarchical relation between life and death, light and darkness, life and death. Hierarchies may be inevitable but they are not always reasonable. It is essential to distinguish between natural hierarchies and pathological hierarchies. The most basic hierarchical relation is that life is preferable to death. It has a higher value than death. Of course, the argument that death is better than life also builds on a hierarchy, but Grundtvig would have regarded such a hierarchy as pathological. The natural, reasonable thing is to regard life as better than death, truth as better than lying, and light as better than darkness. Although Grundtvig clothes his life philosophy and his political theory in a different clothing from Habermas, and would not have fully shared Habermas’ rationalism, he would have agreed that ‘communicative action’ is more fundamental than ‘strategic action’. Where the latter aims at a unilateral effect on others, the former aims at a reciprocal understanding with others. In the final instance communicative action is founded on a dialogical concept of truth, which Habermas in Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns from 1981 calls “the unforced force of the better argument”.

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In the 1840s, the united Kingdom of Denmark-Germany included three southern duchies: Lauenburg, Holstein, and Schleswig. The question became urgent: Was it possible in one and the same process to introduce democracy and keep the Danish-German united monarchy together (Norway had been lost to Sweden in 1814)? Democracy demanded that the people were sovereign, not the monarch, but who constituted ‘the people’ when Denmark-Germany stretched all the way to the River Elbe in North Germany? When the monarchy fell in March 1848, a three-year civil war broke out in which both Grundtvig’s sons fought. Finally, Denmark lost the war to Bismarck’s forces in 1864 and all three duchies were ceded to Prussia/Austria. 200,000 Danish-minded people came under German rule.

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CHAPTER 5

From united monarchy to national state

Chapter 5. From united monarchy to national state In this chapter we shall look more closely at Grundtvig’s view of nation-building in the light of the multinational united monarchy into which he was born. We shall also follow his path from being a critic of democracy to becoming the spokesman for a broadly founded democratic government. After the loss of Norway to Sweden in 1814 the framework for a united Danish-German monarchy that included Schleswig and Holstein plus the North Atlantic islands was laid down at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Most of the European monarchs gathered to bring order to the European house after the French revolution and the upheavals of the Napoleonic wars. These events had dealt a death blow to the Westphalian system of states from 1648. The basic reason was that in 1789 France had introduced a new concept of sovereignty, placing the people above the monarch. One of the major questions in Vienna was therefore how the old constitutional system could be restored. There was initial success in keeping the lid on the liberal, national, and democratic ideas, but from 1830 they regained momentum, causing the fundamental question to be raised in Denmark: Was it possible in one and the same process to introduce a free constitution while simultaneously retaining the Danish-German united monarchy? And if the old state form could not or should not survive, what should replace it? In spring 1848, when ‘the European Spring’ rolled out of Paris and spread across Europe – from Palermo to Vienna, from Bu-

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

dapest to Berlin – the debate blazed up too at a number of large gatherings in Copenhagen; the first meeting was held on 11 March at the Casino Theater, where the incorporation of Schleswig into the kingdom of Denmark was a major subject of debate. At a meeting on 14 March in the Schleswig Aid Association Grundtvig gave a speech in which he submitted a form of political credo, declaring that he was not only very much royally minded but that he had lately noted that it was not enough for him to have a monarch: “... I would love to be a little king myself and see nothing but other little kings running around me, provided we have learned the noblest art of all: the royal art of controlling oneself”. 1 He then gave his perspective on the events in Europe. He acknowledged that the political upheavals would create a new political order and he defended himself against the charge of patching up forms that time had destroyed. In mentioning events in France, which he regarded as “the most ticklish place” in his speech, he said: “That is how I regarded the latest French upheaval which in a moment crushed one of the most sophisticated political machines in Europe and hatched in an hour the simple but deep wisdom that human life demands its rights: its essential nourishment, its beneficial freedom, and its high dignity under all forms of government. When it has the choice, it naturally chooses the form that on the merits of the people, the time, and the place is most likely to reconcile itself with the inalienable rights of human life and to best secure the same inalienable human freedom, essential equilibrium, and ever-increasing enlightenment”. 2 After thus establishing that the events of recent weeks involved a decisive change of system, Grundtvig returned to “another ticklish place”, namely Denmark’s border. Some would draw it at the Elbe River near Hamburg, others would draw it at the Eider River 60 miles north, while still others 1. See p. 114. 2. See p. 115.

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Chapter 5. From united monarchy to national state

would draw it at the King’s River (Kongeåen) a further 120 miles to the north. The most nationalist Germans on the other hand would incorporate the whole of Denmark into Prussia! In his History of the German Language (Geschichte der deutschen Sprache) from 1848 the German folklorist Jacob Grimm claimed on the basis of his linguistic studies that “the unruly (Jutland) peninsula” was in fact German and only temporarily under Danish administration. But this would all change in the near future, he said, “As soon as Germany reorganizes itself, Denmark cannot possibly survive as before”. 3 The possibility that Denmark in the worst case could be wiped off the map – as Poland became in 1795 – was a threat that is often forgotten these days. At the time it had to be taken seriously. The bone of contention was Schleswig. Should Schleswig together with Holstein be incorporated into the German Confederation or into the Kingdom of Denmark? The National Liberals in Copenhagen wished to detach Schleswig from Denmark and incorporate it into the German Confederation, where Holstein was already a member. Both solutions would involve a problem with the minority. Either many German-minded people would be forced into Denmark, or many Danish-minded people would have to become German. Grundtvig supported a third, liberal, model, which took into account the disposition of the people in question: “Facts are stubborn things, as the English say, and it is a stubborn fact (...) that the land of Denmark stretches only so far as the language is spoken, and certainly no further than people wish to speak Danish, in other words, somewhere that no one knows in the middle of the duchy of Schleswig”. 4 Grundtvig was thus opposed to the demand from the gathering at the Casino Theater that Schleswig should be annexed by Denmark. If that happened, it would lead to war, he said. But the National Liberals’ 3. cf. Inge Adriansen 1990: 52. 4. See p. 116f.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

assembly would not hear of it, and a few months later Grundtvig gave in The Dane (1848) his political views a poetic form: Of a ‘people’ all are members who regard themselves as such, those whose mother-tongue sounds sweetest and their fatherland love much ...”

German unification – a threat Grundtvig was not alone in arguing that the people of Schleswig should be consulted on their future political affiliation. At the meeting on 11 March 1848 the writer Meir Goldschmidt had expressed a similar view, which was also publicly supported in the opposition paper, the Copenhagen Post. However, Grundtvig and Goldschmidt disagreed on the position of Holstein. Goldschmidt wished to retain the United Monarchy, much to Grundtvig’s chagrin. It would be a misfortune for Denmark, if the German-speaking duchy, a member of the German Confederation, remained in the kingdom, for this would undermine the chance for the Danes to become an independent nation at a later date. Grundtvig was glad, as he underscored in Within Living Memory (1838), that from time immemorial Germany had been divided into small states (a view that Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, France’s Francois Mitterand, and Denmark’s Poul Schlüter retained on the reunification of Germany in 1989). For if all those who spoke German gathered “under one hat, under a German Emperor Napoleon, it would be a power far more fearsome to the human eye than France at its most dangerous”. 5 Grundtvig was convinced that the unification of Germany would lead to the appearance of a “monstrous German war machine” and produce an extremely

5. See p. 104.

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Chapter 5. From united monarchy to national state

aggressive major power in Europe. It would endanger Denmark’s future to retain the German-speaking Holstein in the kingdom. In the heated debate on Holstein Grundtvig lapsed in The Dane 1849 into an unworthy criticism of Goldschmidt by deviating from his otherwise very positive view of the Jews and telling Goldschmidt to pipe down, for as a Jew he should be regarded as merely a guest in Denmark. The most controversial subject in 1848 was therefore not so much the form of government as the form of state. Should the United Monarchy be retained, should Schleswig be incorporated, or should Schleswig be divided with the north becoming Danish and the south becoming German? As we have seen, Grundtvig did not wish to keep the United Monarchy, but nor did he support the demand of the National Liberals for a border at the Eider River: In The Dane 1848 he made his position clear: “Right from the start I have stated that under no circumstances, either justly or advantageously, can Denmark incorporate the entire duchy into the kingdom, nor under any name or pretext whatsoever append it to the kingdom”. He urged the National Liberals never to think about south Schleswig again, for it had become too German. Yet he was well aware that he would find it difficult to gather support for the idea of dividing Schleswig – which ultimately is what happened after First World War in 1920. He ruminated on how such a solution could be put together that did not involve the incorporation of Schleswig but rather a kind of sovereignty over it – equivalent to Britain’s sovereignty over Canada within the Commonwealth. Such a solution also raised the question of how Denmark should relate to the quadro-lingual and multi-national Schleswig? Should a Danish policy of assimilation be put in place or should the various nations be able to maintain their cultural and linguistic distinctions? Grundtvig was utterly opposed to the assimilation policy of the National Liberals; instead he sought to establish a People’s High School in Flensburg based on the four languages that he operated with: Danish, Low German, Frisian, and Anglian.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

Grundtvig realized that four languages created difficulties. However, people should not fight these “but settle for putting the best to work and leaving the rest to the people themselves, to the future, and to Providence”. All compulsory church and schooling should of course be abolished, “so that whoever is dissatisfied with the language or the teaching in the public church and school can freely seek his education and edification where he expects to find them”. In other words there must be complete cultural and religious freedom. In practice, all legislation and administration would have to be limited to Danish and Low German, and all members of the highest courts as well as all lawyers should be able to speak both Danish and Low German, “and at least one of each of these two professions should be able to speak Frisian as well”. Many might argue that Grundtvig was right in his judgment, but then they would ask, “where do we find the judges, lawyers and pastors who are willing to tread this presumably natural yet new and untrodden path?” There could be no expectation that the university in Kiel would train such people, so Grundtvig proposed instead “a People’s High School in Flensburg”, which would constitute “the navel of the duchy”. He envisaged a school where students could acquire the cultural and linguistic skills that were necessary for the positions of power in the border area. Grundtvig had a high estimation of all things Danish – at times unbearably so – and a correspondingly low view of all things German. “If I were a German,” he wrote, “I would make sure that all the un-Danish elements in Schleswig should be either obliterated or Danicized or should slave for us; but since I am a Dane I go in precisely the opposite direction”. The Danes should not fall into the same ditch and demand assimilation of everything un-Danish in Schleswig, but acknowledge other people’s right to be themselves on their own historical, popular, linguistic, and cultural conditions. It is Grundtvig’s hope “that the un-Danish Schleswigians, far from being obliged to pursue the Danish element in any way, should by no means

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Chapter 5. From united monarchy to national state

have to pass for being what they neither are nor wish to be”. For Grundtvig it is un-Danish to demand cultural assimilation. At the end of the Danish-Prussian civil war on the issue, when the Danish government set about Danicising Schleswig, Grundtvig disapproved of the ordinances on language of 1851 which aimed to make the German-speakers in Schleswig speak Danish. Again he protested against Greenland being regarded as a colony. The country was a dependency and therein lay a recognition of the Greenlanders’ right to their own nationality. Grundtvig regarded the ‘people’ as the subject of history – Marx later substituted class for people. Throughout his authorship Grundtvig emphasized that the Danish people form part of the greater story of the history of the human race. In his early work On Learning and its Advancement (Om Videnskabeligheden og dens fremme) from 1807 he vehemently denies that true patriotism can ever “bid people extend their limits by tying themselves to a country’s boundary posts.” In the much later work from 1847, The People’s Culture and Christianity he warns against an “un-Christian and anti-Christian nationalism”, while in Within Living Memory he distances himself from the national-revolutionary German gymnastics educator, Turnvater Jahn, who instilled in the youth “a limitless national pride with deep scorn for all things foreign”. Grundtvig regarded nationalism as a decadent version of patriotism, linked to self-assertiveness of the nation combined with scorn for the foreigner. The innate goal of the educational process of the people, its telos, is in the last resort the universally human. Nowhere does Grundtvig state this direction more clearly than in his last great educational work A congratulation to Denmark on the Danish dimwit and, the Danish highschool from 1847, where he expresses the hope that the Danes will acquire “all that is foreign which is nonetheless human, and will therefore in no way eliminate or suppress what is human. Instead they should fill up what Danishness diligently holds open for them, so as not to miss out on the universally human. For it is there

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

that everything pertaining to the people will naturally and finally find its goal and its explanation”. Seen in an international and comparative context Grundtvig is rightly regarded as one of the most important nationbuilders of all. But does that make him a nationalist? The answer depends on how the concept is defined, for there are various forms of nationalism. Grundtvig was of course nationalist insofar as he was a supporter of the Danish state and the Danish people, but he rejected the expansive nationalism of the National Liberals. If we distinguish between an ethnocentric and a polycentric form of national consciousness, Grundtvig was in substance polycentric, though with a few ethnocentric departures. The historian Uffe Østergaard argues that from an international perspective Grundtvig’s nationalism is remarkably liberal and anti-chauvinist. 6

Elite democracy – a threat It was not just on the question of Schleswig that the National Liberals and Grundtvig held differing views. The same was true of their view of the common people. Where Grundtvig was inspired by Herder’s people’s nationalism, the National Liberals were heavily influenced by Hegel’s state nationalism and the attendant idea that the will of the people should be administered by the cultured elite. In effect they wanted a form of elite democracy, for they saw themselves as the elite that should run the state. The idea was formulated most clearly by Orla Lehmann, who in a speech given in Vejle in 1860 sharply criticized the Peasants’ Friends movement which he saw as an abuse of the general right to pursue interest politics: “When Denmark accomplished the bold venture to transfer power to all the people in 1848, it was not in order to place the 6. Uffe Østergaard: “Denmark: A Big Small State”, 2006.

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Chapter 5. From united monarchy to national state

administration of the state in the hands of the uneducated peasantry”. Of course the peasant farmers had the right to vote, but the real power belonged with “the educated, the wealthy, and the intelligent”. After the catastrophic defeat to Prussia in 1864 the idea that the people represented a threat to democracy received fresh impetus, and Grundtvig took to the rostrum again. Even though he was now 83 years old, he threw himself into the fight to prevent the privileged classes from appropriating power in the Upper House. The fact of the matter was that after the loss of both Schleswig and Holstein Denmark was left with the problem that it now had two constitutions: the first from 5 June 1849 and the second from 18 November 1863. Revision of this situation was marked by the battle to make someone accountable for the defeat in 1864. Was it the National Liberals, or was it “absolutism dressed in a peasant’s coat” – a phrase used by several speakers in the Lower House about the common people, who were accused of abusing their power? Grundtvig resumed his political career by getting himself elected to the Upper House as the left-wing spokesman opposed to revising the constitution of 5 June 1849 to limit parliamentary eligibility. The constitution had been founded on a general franchise to the Lower House, but this right was now due to be limited so that the landed proprietors could assume control of the house. Grundtvig’s view was that the general franchise was so valuable for society “that once a people had come into legal possession of it, they should not let it go at any price”. With the proposed new electoral laws the people would get “an Upper House that, at least in the people’s eyes, is so far from being rooted in the general franchise that they think its real taproot is in privilege, the purse, and arithmetic, three things that at least in Denmark will never be “of the people””. 7

7. See p. 131.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

In one of his last speeches Grundtvig was close to inciting a popular rebellion. He anticipated that the undemocratic Upper House – despite the people’s wish for “everyday peace and calm” – might persuade the people that “since it had to be so, one should rather fight hard for life for a while than only have the choice between a straw death and suicide”. 8 Despite Grundtvig’s opposition, the constitutional bill, known as “Estrup’s constitution”, passed through both the Upper and the Lower House. In the latter, A.F. Tscherning, the senior member, had also opposed the bill, and on 26 July the two senior politicians now made a final attempt to stop the bill by seeking an audience with the King to prevent the royal signature from passing it into law. But their approach was rejected. When parliament was prorogued, Grundtvig and Tscherning each received its vote of thanks in which the entire opposition to the bill expressed the “warmest acknowledgement of all their efforts in our public life and particularly of their work on the constitutional question. 9 In his final speech to the Upper House on 16 June 1866 Grundtvig took the representatives of the upper class to task. During the debate on the constitution several of them had asked: “Who are ‘the people’”. Grundtvig used this last opportunity to tell them: “It is my simple thought that inasmuch as we are all elected by the people, we all have the right to speak in the name of the people under our personal responsibility”. The spokesmen for the upper class found it difficult to reconcile themselves to the idea of speaking ‘in the name of the people’, since they did not regard themselves as ‘of the people’. Grundtvig on the other hand had a clear understanding that in a democracy political legitimacy is only achieved by referring to the people and the nation.

8. See p. 127. 9. Q.f. Poul Dam: Politikeren Grundtvig, 1983.

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Chapter 5. From united monarchy to national state

The people versus the elite, and the people versus the masses constituted the twin poles of Grundtvig’s political philosophy. In this context it is worth noting that also through the 20th century ‘the masses’ have been a recurrent subject in (mass) psychology and social philosophy, particularly in the reorganization of Europe after the First World War. In the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 the liberal principle of ‘the people’s right to self-determination’ was laid down as an international standard. As a result, in a number of monarchies the masses (the peasantry) at a stroke went from being subjects to becoming citizens in republics. Unfortunately, the result was unable to establish stable democracies in the inter-war period, on the contrary. With the exception of Czechoslovakia the peasantry was not successfully integrated into functional democracies in Central and Eastern Europe. 10 Grundtvig was far from alone in motivating the successful integration of the Danish peasants into the new democracy after the fall of the king as absolute monarch in 1848; but his constant insistence on the necessity of education during the process was without doubt a contributing factor. His prime purpose was to advance the idea among ‘the masses’ that they belonged to ‘a people’, and this required popular education and enlightenment and a new form of schooling in the People’s High Schools. Even though Grundtvig’s own plans for a school at Sorø never came to fruition, the first such school, Rødding People’s High School, opened in 1844 and many more were to follow. But it was not until after ‘the great disaster’ of 1864 that this type of school really got off the ground. Between 1864 and 1872 no fewer than 50 of them were established, the majority of which also included agriculture on their curriculum. The slogan ‘from peasant to people’ was often applied right into the middle of the last century as the goal for the education of the young men and women at the People’s High Schools. 10. Cf. Jan-Werner Müller: Contesting Democracy, 2011.

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The Constitutional Assembly of 23 October 1848, which gave Denmark its popular constitution the following year, was later painted by Constantin Hansen, in 1860-64. Grundtvig was not present but was included in the painting! He was not elected until the following month in a by-election in Præstø. The painter has nevertheless placed him in the vanishing-point, thereby acknowledging that the new democracy should build on Grundtvig’s view of life and the people.

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CHAPTER 6

Constitutionalism versus common law

Chapter 6. Constitutionalism versus common law Although it is often the case, the history of democracy cannot be written without including the tense and controversial relationship between democracy and constitutionalism, both in the past and in the present. Constitutionalism is a central concept for understanding Danish political history in the 19th century. It stands for government by law or for limited government, as opposed to an arbitrary rule. The limitations may be imposed on the monarch or the people depending on which political system is adopted, a monarchy or a democracy. Thus in principle constitutionalism can exist without democracy – and vice versa. The freedom of the individual is secured through fundamental rights of freedom being incorporated into law and the state constitution. The fathers of the Danish constitution sought to limit the king’s power through just such a constitution, a ‘mixed’ one that embraced both monarchic and democratic elements. In the event, the National Liberals fought for a constitution that would limit the monarch but not seriously allow ‘the people’ any political influence. The battle-line between Grundtvig and the National Liberals was not drawn between democracy and absolute monarchy, but between constitutionalism and common law. Judgments under common law are based on common sense and start with the case in question. The United Kingdom has no written constitution but a set of written and unwritten laws which lay down how the kingdom is governed. As British colonization

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

absorbed large areas of the world into its power, so was its common law system introduced into the colonies. To this day nearly all the Commonwealth states employ common law justice. The powerful inspiration of the British political tradition meant that Grundtvig had a very critical attitude towards constitutionalism as a political idea. And as so often before, he drew on a proverb to clarify his view, this one being ‘Clothes make the man’’. That at least is what the tailor says, but he is making a mistake and he knows it. For he knows that “Man makes the clothes’. Similarly, there are people who say that that it is the constitutional forms that make the free people. But according to Grundtvig, they too are speaking against better knowledge. For deep down they know that it is the free people who make the constitution – and, of course, in their own image. Grundtvig warned against any superstitious belief in the importance of forms; for this can only lead to disappointment, since even the best and most beautiful forms will be crushed at some point. What is impressed upon the heart is therefore more important than what is impressed upon paper. In his article, “On Constitutions and the State Constitution in Denmark” in The Dane 1848, Grundtvig expands on this: “If we know, and who does not know that lives in Denmark, that so long as we are not driven together like cows and sheep but voluntarily keep one another’s company, then it is always for the sake of some kind of fellowship – for the best common interest rather than the worst. In that little adage lies the only good constitution for all peoples and kingdoms on earth. Such a constitution also has the great advantage that it is as large as life, for even where it was never put on record, it was impressed on all the people’s hearts”. Here Grundtvig lines up with Rousseau, who in his Considerations on the Government of Poland from 1772 emphasizes that the only thing that can se-

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Chapter 6. Constitutionalism versus common law

cure stability in Poland is to install the republic “in the hearts of the Poles”. 1 The fundamental principle in Grundtvig’s thinking is that the heart is more important than the constitution. So how did he regard the new Danish Constitution, when democracy was introduced in 1849? The answer is that he was ambivalent: “if by a constitution we could re-create a people where all the rich were generous, all the poor were frugal, all the lazy were diligent, and all the squanderers were thrifty, then of course we ought to do so today rather than tomorrow”. But that is not possible. If we still try to re-create people with the help of the law, it will only end in “a great misfortune”, says Grundtvig in The Dane 1848. On the one hand he supported the freedom rights that the 1849 constitution adopted; on the other hand he thought there was something “un-Danish” about it in the way it was marked by French and German thinking. In the event, Grundtvig voted neither for nor against it, justifying his decision with the words in The Dane 1849: “I ought not to vote against such a constitution, since that would put me in line with those whose views I least wish to share, those who want less civil freedom and more civil inequality than the constitution contains. Yet nor could I vote for a constitution which in my opinion is not to the taste of the Danish people and therefore may well do more harm than good”. The possible harm was that the constitution could easily come to lock any development into outdated forms. The purpose of a constitution is that it should apply for a lengthy period, decades or centuries, as is the case with the US constitution of 1787-89. And it should be harder to change than any other law. But as far back as David Hume philosophers have doubted the correctness of such a principle, for it is unreasonable that the dead should bind the living. The Danish constitution is extraordinarily difficult to change. Any change 1. J.-J. Rousseau: The Government of Poland, 1992/1772.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

must be passed by parliament, which must then be dissolved and the new constitution ratified by a newly-elected parliament. Finally a referendum must be held at which a majority of at least 40% of all franchised citizens must vote yes to the change. Since society and its citizens undergo constant changes, it is possible that a glaring disparity can arise between form and content. To take just two of these disparities today, Paragraph 3 of the Danish constitution states: “Legislative power is with the king and parliament jointly. Executive power is with the king. Judicial power is with the courts”. But while in 1849 there was a king, Frederik VII, today there is a queen, Margrethe II. There is no provision for her in the constitution! Second, executive power is not with the king but with the government. The only task of the monarch here is to formally sign parliamentary decisions into law. So a gap has arisen between the text of the constitution and how representative government, democracy, functions. The constitution is thus extremely capacious. To what extent this is a problem depends on whether one regards the constitution as a set of written legal rules, or as an expression of unwritten, generally accepted, norms. Grundtvig would undoubtedly have applauded the view that the Danish constitution should be regarded not only as a judicial but also as a social phenomenon in which the judicial dimension is only one of several aspects. As we have seen, Grundtvig was critical of the National Liberals’ focus on constitutionalism in the middle of the 19th century. In the political history of Denmark during the 20th century constitutionalism was no longer a central concept; but after the Second World War, the Federal Republic of Germany adopted a constitution with a strong streak of constitutionalism in it. In the wake of the experience with Hitler, who was encouraged on his path by a number of referenda, the new constitution aimed at limiting the power of the people, for instance by abolishing the referendum as a political instrument. It was not until the development of the European Union that constitutionalism again became a central concept in the social

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Chapter 6. Constitutionalism versus common law

debate. Thus in Denmark an intense debate came about between two professors of constitutional law, Hjalte Rasmussen and Henning Koch. In his article, “Constitutional Laxity and High International Economic Performance: Is There a Nexus?” Rasmussen argues that fortunately constitutionalism has not made any inroads into Denmark; the Danes prefer to be governed “not by law but by man”. 2 Koch agrees that by and large this is the case, but regards it as a major problem! In his article, 3 Koch points to Grundtvig and his influence as the explanation for Danish exceptionalism: “It is simply not possible to overestimate the profound – and partly unconscious – impact Grundtvig has had on the minds and souls of the Danes all the way until today”. But where the implementation of Grundtvig’s ideas in practice contributed to the building of the nation under the slogan: “What is lost abroad must be won at home”, Koch is in no doubt “that Grundtvig’s dominant and beguiling words and metaphors constitute a fair share of the explanation for the Danes’ widespread xenophobia of today”. Though he may have a point over Grundtvig’s criticism of constitutionalism, it is wrong in my opinion to make Grundtvig responsible for any xenophobia that may exist in Denmark. This form of angst appears to thrive under every European clime that is unaffected by Grundtvig’s ideas.

2. Hjalte Rasmussen: “Constitutional Laxity and High International Performance”, 2008. 3. Henning Koch: “Staging Constitutional Identity: The Danish Play”, 2014.

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Grundtvig’s Church at Bispebjerg in Copenhagen was built in memory of the pastor, poet, and popular educator, N.F.S. Grundtvig. The foundation stone in the church’s south-west corner was laid on Grundtvig’s birthday on 8 September 1921. Five masons built the tower, which was consecrated on 11 December 1927 and used temporarily under the name Tower Church, while the rest of the nave and the crypt were finished. The completed building was consecrated on 8 September 1940.

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CHAPTER 7

Grundtvig’s importance as a political thinker

Chapter 7. Grundtvig’s importance as a political thinker The most remarkable observation about Grundtvig’s continuing influence after his death is that there is a whole range of divergent interpretations of his life, his ideas, and his influence. He had barely been laid in his grave in 1872 before there was disagreement and division between left-wing and right-wing ‘Grundtvigians’, a division that has continued almost as a principle to this very day. Already in 1875 Professor of Church History Frederik Hammerich published Grundtvig and the United Left, an Account and a Testimony, followed in 1876 by Pastor Niels Lindberg’s Grundtvig’s Political Standpoint. Whereas the right-wing Hammerich claimed that Grundtvig differed from the United Left, the left-wing Niels Lindberg argued that there was agreement between Grundtvig’s views and those of the United Left. In the 1930s a number of right-wing Grundtvigians expressed strongly anti-parliamentarian views, and some even saw national socialism – especially in 1933 – as a renewal of the national community, for Nazi ideology had a number of core concepts in common with Grundtvigianism, including the people, the people’s spirit, and the people’s education. The People’s High School principal Aage Møller, together with Pastor Anders Nørgaard, and the founder of the new Danish Unity Party Arne Sørensen, argued for a concept of ‘the people’s culture’ (folkelighed) that built on a clear rejection of liber-

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

alism. In 1937 Sørensen wrote in the magazine Tidehverv: “We must all learn today that liberalism is dead, but we can and must fight for our freedom on an entirely different foundation. The serious struggle in Europe today has to do with man’s spiritual freedom, freedom of conscience, freedom in God. As long as freedom is mixed up with 19th century liberalism, which is something quite different, broad misunderstandings will result”. 1 It would be hard to distance oneself further from Grundtvig’s English-inspired view of freedom. One of the main left-wing spokesmen in the inter-war period was the leading Social Democrat Frederik Borgbjerg. As Minister of Education in 1933 he gave a speech on the 150th anniversary of Grundtvig’s birthday in which he spoke of Grundtvig as the bulwark against these anti-democratic trends: “He was a true son of the century of Enlightenment and an ‘apprentice to the Germans’ (...), but it was not Bismarck’s and Hitler’s Germany he supported. The reason why the Danish people cannot now be infected by Nazism and fascism is not least thanks to Grundtvig’s massive contribution to education”. 2 Borgbjerg spoke of how Grundtvig “became a glowing supporter of a free people’s democracy and the most extensive franchise”. Borgbjerg’s view was taken up by another Social Democrat, Hartvig Frisch, whose book Plague over Europe (1933) set Nordic democracy up against totalitarian ideologies. It was the peasant farmers who “created political democracy – the honor is theirs. And it is the labor movement that has built on this and laid the foundations for ‘social democracy’”. 3 Frisch dedicated his book to Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning, whose residence on Kanslergade had acquired legendary status since parties from the left, the right, and the

1. Sørensen 1937:97. 2. Borgbjerg 1933. 3. Hartvig Frisch: Pest over Europa, 1933

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Chapter 7. Grundtvig’s importance as a political thinker

center had met there to agree a common policy on 30 January 1933 – the same day that Hitler came to power in Germany. With the Nazis in power the battle for the concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘people’ became more intense. For Hitler, ‘people’ was a racial category, and the primary task of the state was to ensure that the race was kept pure. The methods employed were forced removals or genocide, the success of which would entail a ‘reconstruction’ of Europe on racist principles. The Nazis’ concept of ‘leader’ (führer) also meant that the people were demoted from sovereign to follower status. One of those who expounded this text was the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, who became a party member in 1933 and Principal of Freiburg University. Heidegger spoke of the “self-willed consciousness of the community” as a problem in all democracies, which could only be solved when the will of the leader and the will of the people were regarded as twin concepts. According to Heidegger, a community comes into being when the leader transforms the people into a following. Even during the many years in which Grundtvig energetically supported the monarchy, he never pleaded for such an understanding of the people, as can be seen from his famous adage: “king’s hand and people’s voice – both strong, both free”. For Denmark to succeed it was essential that the Social Democrats threw themselves into the battle being waged in the inter-war period to secure the concept of ‘the people’ for democracy. It is significant in this context that Prime Minister Stauning’s party program, Denmark for the People, made ‘the people’ a core concept in the Social Democratic Party. Borgbjerg, Frisch, and Stauning knew how dangerous it was to surrender the concept to totalitarian ideologies; their strategy was therefore to distance themselves from the racist and antisemitic definition of ‘the people’ and ‘the nation’ by binding

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

an indissoluble tie between the social, the national, and the democratic question. 4

Should Loki have the same freedom as Thor? After the Second World War intense debate arose concerning Grundtvig’s relation to British liberalism. It crystallized into three main views: 1) that Grundtvig was conservative and anti-liberal (Erik Møller), 2) that Grundtvig became liberal at the end of the 1820s under the influence of British liberalism (Kaj Baagø), and 3) that Grundtvig did indeed become liberal, but not liberalist (Kaj Thaning). A principle discussion on democracy was also waged after the Second World War around Grundtvig’s famous words: “Freedom for Loki as well as for Thor.” Should the bad be allowed the same freedom as the good in a democracy? In other words, should the Nazis have had the same political freedom as any other to implement their plans? Almost the entire Danish intellectual elite was asking this question in 1945-46 and all agreed that the distinction was between attitudes and actions. In a democracy there is no question of unconditional freedom of action – but can freedom of attitude then be unconditional? Or should democratic freedom be limited in order to protect democracy against a danger such as fascism? 5 Professor of Church History Hal Koch, Professor of Administrative Law Poul Andersen, and the famous architect Poul Henningsen argued for the absolute freedom of expression, while Professor of Philosophy Jørgen Jørgensen and resistance fighter Mogens Fog, both communists, argued that democracy has the right to defend itself. Democratic freedom is not freedom for anything whatever, but only for what is compatible with the mainte4. Ove Korsgaard: The Struggle for the People, 2008:78 5. The following quotes are from Rasmussen & Nielsen 2003.

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Chapter 7. Grundtvig’s importance as a political thinker

nance of democratic benefits. As Jørgensen said, “Grundtvig’s dangerous maxim: ‘Freedom for Loki as well as for Thor’ cannot in my view be a motto for a democratic society, only at most for an anarchistic one”. Mogens Fog added that those who referred to Grundtvig’s motto “were helping to put democratic rights at risk, since they were allowing their enemies to grow strong”. Koch, Andersen, and Henningsen took exception to this understanding of democracy. Prohibitions and restrictions on freedom of expression would be counterproductive, and could easily attract people to the forbidden fruit. This in turn raised the controversial question as to who decides what is ’against the interests of democracy’. In Grundtvig’s thinking: Who is Loki and who is Thor? Would it not always be the governing majority that determined the issue? According to Andersen, restricting democracy in order to defend it would lead to the suppression of all political opposition. “In that case there is more bite in the Old Man’s ‘Freedom for Loki as well as for Thor.’ All political views must be allowed to be argued, even attempts to subvert democracy”. Such a prohibition against anti-democratic attitudes and parties was also the first step on the slippery slope for Henningsen: “If we make a move on freedom of expression and political freedom, we shall be making a hole in the only dyke that defends the rule of the people”. Much better to offer education, he said: “An educated democracy is and will be the first weapon to be used against the dangers of Nazism. It has the advantage of expanding and promoting democracy instead of limiting it”. Henningsen also pointed out that Grundtvig put himself forward for parliament at a very high age in order to vote against increased penalties for blasphemy and pornography, “for he was a democrat”.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

Grundtvig’s importance for political science Finally we shall examine Grundtvig’s relevance to central questions of political science, as well as how Danish politicians refer to and make use of him. Why does he not figure in the surveys of political theorists or in the university curricula for political science? By way of an answer, two factors need to be considered. First, Grundtvig was not a systematic theorist á la Kant, Hegel, Rawls etc. Second, political science – as the name suggests – is more concerned with the state and its institutions than with the people and the nation. It is nevertheless interesting that a number of political thinkers in recent years have begun to thematize the concept of ‘a people’ again, such as the American philosopher John Rawls, the Italian political thinker Giorgio Agamben, the American literary critic Michael Hardt, and the Italian political philosopher Antonio Negri, as well as the German Jan-Werner Müller, specialist in the history of political ideas. According to John Rawls a theory of ‘the state’ is not enough, for instance. In Law of the Peoples (1999) he underlines the necessity of positing a theory about ‘the people’. Otherwise we cannot take a firm hold on a regime’s “moral character”. He defines ‘the people’ as a unity of state, territoriality, morality, and memory. Where a state is governed by interests, a liberal people are governed by moral considerations. “What distinguishes people from states – and this is crucial – is that just peoples are fully prepared to grant the very same proper respect and recognition to other people as equals”. 6 This means that in the last resort Rawls justifies the liberal, social, internal structure with the aid of the concept of ‘people’. According to Agamben, modern history is characterized by a struggle between two understandings of the concept of 6. John Rawls: Law of the Peoples, 1999:35.

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Chapter 7. Grundtvig’s importance as a political thinker

‘people’: people as outcasts and people as sovereign. In his book Homo Sacer he emphasizes: “Every interpretation of the political meaning of the term ‘people’ must begin with the singular fact that in modern European languages, ‘people’ also always indicates the poor, the disinherited, and the excluded. One term thus names both the constitutive political subject and the class that is, de facto if not de jure, excluded from politics”. 7 Grundtvig’s entire activity may be regarded as one long effort to merge these two contradictory elements. According to Hardt and Negri, ‘people’ is neither a natural nor an empirical unit. We cannot find our way to a ‘people’ by counting their heads. On the contrary, a people is the product of the representation mechanism of national democracy. But when the nation is weakened by the authority that is linked to the new super-national power that they call the ‘empire’, the representation mechanism is similarly weakened. And in Hardt and Negri’s view, this will mean that democracy will gradually free itself from the nation and attach itself to the empire. Thus they distinguish between democracy based on the principle of the people’s sovereignty and democracy based on what they call ‘the multitude’. They oppose any philosophy that applauds ‘unity in diversity’. However, it is worth noting that they do not thereby intend the multitude to be regarded as the masses or the crowd. Just as Grundtvig distinguished between the people and the masses, they distinguish between the multitude and the masses. In contrast to the masses and the crowds ‘the multitude’ is organized, and they claim it as an active, self-organized agent. 8 In his book Contesting Democracy. Political Ideas in TwentiethCentury Europe (2011) Jan-Werner Müller shows that throughout the 20th century ‘the people’ was the central bone of contention. Totalitarian ideologies, communism, fascism, and na7. Georgio Agamben: Homo Sacer, 1998:176. 8. Hardt and Negri: “Globalization and Democracy”, 2002:326.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

zism all subscribed to the main player in political democracy democracy, ‘the people’, and they all similarly argued for a form of equality that is a fundamentally democratic principle. Thus the Italian political philosopher Giovanni Gentile called fascism the most valid form of democracy, since the fascist state “is a people’s state, and, as such, the democratic state par excellence”. 9 It is common to regard the outcome of the Second World War as a triumph for democracy, but, as Müller notes, the opposing view is also valid – that control through democracy gained much ground after the conflict. The European states, for instance, adopted a declaration of individual human rights against the encroachment of the state. Nor was it only Germany that acquired a constitutional court which was accorded wide-ranging control of the legislation; similar institutions appeared in other European countries. Seen from this angle, the fascist and Nazi excesses were not the product of too little democracy, but of too little control over the people. The problem was not the citizens’ lack of freedom, but the freedom of the masses to run amok without being stopped. Grundtvig shared this fear of the masses, but rather than trying to check them, he made wholehearted efforts to educate them as a means to developing the essential self-control.

Grundtvig’s importance for politicians Although Grundtvig does not play a particularly large role in the field of political science, Danish politicians are sedulous in referring to him and positioning themselves accordingly. Thus in 2002 the Social Democrat, Svend Auken, wrote in a newspaper: “For many of us Grundtvig’s idea of people, freedom, and the common cause still constitutes an important ideological foundation. The extraordinary thing about Grundtvig’s 9. Cf. Jan-Werner Müller, Contesting Democracy, 2011:106.

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Chapter 7. Grundtvig’s importance as a political thinker

significance, which makes its presence felt up to, and on the strength of, the modern welfare system, is that it contains influences from both the right and the left; in fact we would benefit from a modern debate on Grundtvig’s impact today. But it must not just end in empty words. I would like the legacy of Grundtvig and its quality for future use to be the subject of a debate on principles.” According to Auken, Grundtvig was one of the pillars of the modern welfare society. In their day, the left-wing Grundtvigians stamped their mark on both the Social Democrats and the Social Liberal Party, while the right-wing Grundtvigians sat heavily on the Liberal party. The reason why Danish legislation in the areas of school and church looks the way it does is due not least to Grundtvig’s inspiration. In 2005 the Prime Minister of Denmark, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, gave a lecture on Grundtvig and Kierkegaard in which he admitted he had problems with the Grundtvig that the left wing had claimed for their own in the 1960s. But that he later changed this view as a result of reading Kaj Thaning’s biography, Grundtvig, published in 1983 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Grundtvig’s birth: “I recognised the old Grundtvig,” he said, “he had come home after his forced visit to the socialist ideologies of 1968”. Rasmussen had found his way back to “those sides that I intuitively had sensed during my upbringing on the farm back home.” In particular, Rasmussen was struck by Grundtvig’s insistence on the necessity of freedom. Thus, whereas left-wing Auken emphasizes equality, rightwing Rasmussen underlines freedom as Grundtvig’s greatest legacy. But these two are not alone in citing him to support their political views. Esben Lunde Larsen, MP for the Liberal party, has examined the use of Grundtvig for reinforcement of MPs’ political views in their parliamentary speeches between 2001-07. No fewer than 11 prominent politicians from both left and right have – with different emphases and varying background knowledge of Grundtvig – drawn on him to support

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

their views, particularly on 1) freedom, including freedom of religion and freedom of thought, 2) the cause of the common people (folkelighed) and the governance of Danish society, and 3) the link between the Danish character (danskheden) and freedom. 10

Grundtvig as a historical person and as a legend Grundtvig is both a historical person and a legend “in Grundtvig’s fatherland”, as the saying goes. Of course there are those who would wish him out of existence. Thus Professor of International Politics Erling Bjøl once jokingly said that he lived in France because he could not bear to live in Grundtvig’s fatherland. But the main trend has been an ongoing attempt to keep Grundtvig on one’s side in any discussion – for example on ‘Danishness’, Danish identity, the Danish church, the public schools, and not least the People’s High Schools. To refer to Grundtvig is to give legitimacy to an argument. He is drawn on just as heavily in problems that he never faced – and never could have faced, such as the EU and immigration. Whether Grundtvig would have voted against Denmark joining the European Union in the referendum in 1972 – as many claimed he would – we can of course never know. But what is often forgotten is that on crucial points Grundtvig changed his mind as a result of new social challenges and problems, for example on the 1849 constitution. He abstained from voting then, but defended it vigorously in 1866. Nor can we know what he would have made of the migration of foreigners into Denmark, though we do have the following famous words from 1848 to guide us: “Of a ‘people’ all are members/who regard themselves as such,/those 10. Esben Lunde Larsen: “An Ongoing Influence”, 2014.

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Chapter 7. Grundtvig’s importance as a political thinker

whose mother-tongue sounds sweetest/and their fatherland love much”. It is the play between freedom and obligation that characterizes so much of Grundtvig’s ideas. Grundtvig, then, is one of the great nation-builders. He more than anyone in Denmark contributed to the transformation from the estates assembly to parliamentary rule. Today, however, the question is whether the ‘age of the people’ is in fact ebbing away. According to Professor of Ethnology Thomas Højrup, the ‘people’ are no longer the subject of history – in the same way that the working-class no longer is. We have just not realized it yet. According to Højrup, many Danes live with the illusion “that we are still living in an ‘age of the people’ and that the international system consists primarily of people”. 11 If this is indeed the case, then Grundtvig’s days of glory as legend and legitimizer may well be coming to an end. Although his reputation will in no way be reduced to being merely a representative of a particular age, he has to a great extent incarnated the age of the people up to now. Thomas Højrup is making an important point, yet I doubt whether we can say goodbye to ‘the people’ just yet. 12 These days we may be more positive about constitutionalism than Grundtvig ever was – and for good reason – but this does not change the belief that ‘the people’ will continue as the core constituent of the political system, if it is still to be called ‘democratic’.

11. Thomas Højrup: Dannelsens dialektik, 2002. 12. Ove Korsgaard: The Struggle for the People, 2008.

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PART II

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Fenris grew up in Asgard. In the beginning the wolf was small and harmless, but it grew rapidly and frightened by now the Norse gods. The wolf had to be tied so they could control it. Only then Tyr promised to keep his hand in the wolf’s mouth while the rope was put on it – as mortgages if there would be something devious in the game – Fenris surrendered. As the rope tightened on its neck – and the rope kept! Tyr lost his hand. The Nordic myths were – as Grundtvig wrote – symbols of the powers within the mind. This same insight led Freud, th Jung and other psycho-analysts of the 20 century to turn to myths in order to describe the powers and energies of the psyche as they discovered them in their studies of its recesses. Grundtvig and the People’s High Schools were deeply occupied by myths, especially the Nordic myths of Odin and Thor, Tyr and Loki, Frey and Freya, the Aesir and the Giants. These were seen as moral stories that confronted students with the need to pursue the common rather than the individual good. The illustration is from Vallekilde People’s High School, founded by Ernst Trier in 1865.

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CHAPTER 8

Nordic Mythology or Symbolic language developed and illuminated from a historical-poetic perspective (1832)

Chapter 8. Nordic Mythology or Symbolic language ...

Rhymed letter to our Nordic next-of-kin ... Yes, you sons of a giant race! understand we are most blessed: 1 each upon his own last formed, freedom is what serves us best, freedom not as water, fire, hunger, plague, or war’s distress, freedom not as wolves and bears, but full-grown human sons, no less, who with their common sense are fit for this illusory world of cares, 2 where no stepmother e’er again turns children into wolves and bears, but where a handful, more like beasts, put on a face as folk do most;

1. A shoemaking metaphor. 2. In a Danish ballad of magic, a wicked stepmother (a werewolf) turns children into wild animals.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig they cannot grasp what freedom means, and only of their wrong can boast; they take revenge not just on foes but on all happy folk and free; these beasts of men make bold to claim their spiritual nobility! Freedom our watchword must be in the North! Freedom for Loki as well as for Thor. Free is the Word in the spirit’s new world, which the Word has created on this earthly shore, this country of learning, of thought and of faith, and yet of things visible most like a strand, 3 where only in wind are white mountain-tops seen, and only in battle does life make a stand, 4 where even when power is hidden in steam, loudly it shouts: My life is to fight! A sea of learning, of thought and of faith, which, lived without freedom, is dark as the night, 5 but which, as with powers competing for rank, resembles a billowing meadow of grass, and dazzles with manors and cloud-reaching mountains where Aesir and Alfa and dwarves all can pass, raises itself above what hands can reach, 6 or even the eye of the high-flying bird, and, as in the land of the Aesir, arouses a reverence deep for the true living word! 7 Alone call him ‘free’ is that man who would seek

3. i.e. in the form of breaking waves. 4. This is possibly a reference to the innovation of steam-engines, which Grundtvig experienced on his England trip in 1829. 5. Grundtvig was influenced considerably by the competitive nature of English society and the spirit that animated it. 6. The endless sea of learning, thought, and faith reaches even beyond the sight of the eagle (the human spirit) sitting in the branches of Yggdrasil, the immense ash-tree at the center of the universe. 7. ‘The true living Word’ refers to the divine logos and its use in spoken language, a key concept in Grundtvig’s idea of genuine education.

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.

Chapter 8. Nordic Mythology or Symbolic language ... to liberate Fenris to fight Ragnarok, 8 so long as the father 9 instead of the wolf, is freely allowed all his words to unlock! 10 Free then be Loki, as Bragi and Thor, for giants imprison the swift-wingéd word; battle-gods all, by knowledge provoked, roused from their slumber to victory spurred! Freedom for all that from spirit is sprung, that never is changed but is outraged by chains; when hidden the worst thus appears to be bound but only is tamed where’er Thor’s hammer reigns. Therefore, you noblest of souls, far and near, on skerries of self-will let us never stand; alone let us challenge with spirit and word what cannot be touched or seized by the hand! 11 Alone let us bind up the ravenous beast who seeks to devour the good that is born! The one-handed Tyr 12 stands firm with his honor, 13 while, powerless, Loki can only show scorn!

8. ‘Ragnarok’ denotes the eschatological events that signal the end of the world. 9. i.e. Loki. 10. Bragi, son of Odin, is god of poetry and eloquence, and the greatest of all poets. 11. i.e. the Fenris wolf of self-will. 12. In order to help the gods shackle Fenris, Tyr, the god of war, puts his hand in the wolf’s mouth and has it bitten off. In Grundtvig’s symbolism he represents honour – in contrast to self-will. 13. Loki cannot take revenge for his son’s humiliation.

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The first major result of Grundtvig’s trips to England in 1829-31 was a new mythology, Nordic Mythology or Symbolic Language (1832). In particular the lengthy introduction seems to be the direct fruit of Grundtvig’s experience of England. In autumn 1838 he gave a series of 51 public lectures at Borch’s Hall on the history of Europe since the French Revolution of 1789. The lecture series marked a public breakthrough for Grundtvig and his ideas among the academics. Five years later he returned to the hall and from November 1843 until the middle of January 1844 he gave lectures on the similarities between Greek and Nordic mythology. Johan Thomas Lundbye’s drawing from 1843 captures the circle of deeply concentrating listeners of both sexes.

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CHAPTER 9

Within Living Memory (1838) Lectures on the history of the last half-century 1788-1838

Chapter 9. Within Living Memory (1838) ...

On Freedom, 2 July 1838 Gentlemen! Freedom is better than any gold! Though all the world were golden, nothing with freedom can compare to it we are beholden! We can easily agree that this simple saying in our ancient Rhymed Chronicle 1 is both beautiful and true; but it is nevertheless far from certain that we can agree on what freedom is. For freedom is like fire, which, as the Greeks say, is both the mother of all art forms and the condition for every masterpiece, and yet when we have too much of it, it brings about general destruction. What complicates the question of freedom even more for us is of course those German philosophers who do not much care about how things hang together and fall apart in the world of the senses, but ask only what all things actually are if not in 1. Rhymed Chronicle, a collection of poems about Danish kings, is the first book to be printed in Danish in 1495.

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themselves then in the idea of them, meaning in their own heads. It does not help that the very same philosophers comfort us by saying that if their ideas do not fit into the world of the senses, then we are not to worry, they will create a world according to their own ideas, once they have worked them out! This is no use to us, gentlemen, for all things being equal we can predict that we shall not be alive on that day. Not only are Leibnitz and Wolf dead, but Kant is dead, Fichte is dead, and Hegel is dead, without it becoming clear how they could start this transformation. Admittedly Schelling is in a sense alive, but he has long ago given up if not understanding Creation then at least occupying himself with it, and anyway, in his world the outlook for freedom is doubtful. As far as we know, according to his ideas, freedom perishes in necessity. In this event as in so many others, we would do better to follow the advice of the English. It may sound somewhat blunt and cold but at least it contains both meaning and freedom, for they say, as we know: “Help yourselves!” This reminds us of what we were losing track of in those German speculations: namely, that the major question which the French Revolution attempted to solve and which all the peoples of Christendom must soon agree on is not how freedom and necessity or freedom and coercion relate to each other in the world of ideas or appear best in a philosophical structure. Any sensible people will leave that to the scholars to agree or disagree on. The major question is this: What is best for civilized society (which is quite different from the scholars’ republic): freedom or slavery? And what improvements do a constitution, or legislation, or public institutions need and can receive at any given time or in any given place for the common good! For the common good is naturally the unalterable, even though unwritten, fundamental law. That is why, gentlemen, the English advice to “Help yourselves!” – however cold it may sound – is in this case the wisest and friendliest advice that can be given to any people. The French have given us quite different advice, namely: “Copy us, everyone!” But expe-

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rience has taught us that this is unwise. Indeed it is strange that Rousseau – who is the political oracle of the French and has made all the gibes he can about English freedom – gives the French not French but English advice. For he declares that any civilized people such as the French that has allowed itself to be enslaved, is not capable of what he calls ‘freedom’, and that the English, who are only free in the moment they elect their Members of Parliament, use their freedom so badly at that point that they should obviously never have had it! In passing, we can see that it is sheer madness to blame Rousseau for the French Revolution, whether in order to denigrate or praise him. He would doubtless have protested against his French eulogists if he had experienced them. For even though this “citizen of Geneva” – which he not only called himself but took pride in actually being – was far from immune to ‘writer’s vanity’, every reasonably gifted writer knows there is far too much self-denial in listening to eulogies that clearly show one has been read superficially but on the other hand misunderstood completely. So, gentlemen, according to the reasoning of both the English and Rousseau, it is madness in civil matters to copy a foreign people, however wise they are, until one has first managed to transform both oneself and one’s country in their image and likeness. And since, for as long as they exist, there is likely to be a very great difference between England and France, Germany and Denmark in the inhabitants’ language, thought, ability, and desire, the constitution and legislation which best suit the one of these countries cannot possibly suit the others. If we could think about this for an hour or two to find out what suits us best in the civil sense, that time could hardly be better spent, since it is now our turn to take up a specific attitude on this question. And the specific attitude we take up will have incalculable consequences for our successors, indeed for Denmark, until the end of the world. However, if I were to think that just by sitting down somewhere for an hour or two and thinking how everything could

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best be organized in Denmark to make the ‘great discovery’ – to tear down all that stood in the way of my plan so that I and my good friends and all our helpers were free to do as they wished – if I were to think that, then I would be an intolerable, conceited schoolmaster – or rather a great fool! And if I nevertheless had the power, the fire, and the wisdom to charm many and just for a moment play the master, then I would definitely bring misfortune on Denmark for the indefinite future. The question would then be whether Denmark would ever feel happy again. Do you think, gentlemen, that this is only true because I am a slow-witted brain, who cannot grasp the great ideas of the day and lasting aims of the state? Or because I do not know enough about the nature and the history of the Danes, about the natural resources of the land and the people and the historical development that has so far taken place? Or about the stage that we have reached at present, the goal that we desire and can reasonably achieve, and about the steps we need to take towards it? Do you really think this, gentlemen? Or would you rather agree with me that that we are all either so slow-witted or so ignorant of the nature and history of the Danes that a very large committee and a whole national assembly if it were allowed to govern would fare just as I would myself, for the simple reason that even if all the people put their ignorance together, no wisdom would come of it? This is a perfectly natural thing that one would think everybody should be able to predict, but which most people find difficult to believe despite the evidence of experience. So do I believe that there is anything to be gained by thinking about this matter? Is it just that since things went wrong in France, and since we cannot possibly gain anything by imitating even the wisest Frenchman, it is therefore best to leave it all to fate or to the king and his colleagues as to whether there should be any improvements in Denmark – and to circumstances in the future as to whether there can be? No, gentlemen, I have never said that, and what follows from what I have said is simply that we at least need to be far better educated

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than we are about the “common good” before it would be advisable to give us the power of life and death over a state constitution, over legislation, over all public institutions. We need first and foremost an educational establishment for these things, if we do not already have one. And this is what I mean by a People’s High School 2 and its civil necessity for our times. For without progressive popular education, neither king, colleagues, people’s councils, nor national assemblies are capable of knowing and embracing what is best for the people in general. The French revolution has demonstrated this need as clear as sunlight, I say. There is no need to prove that wise people should never pull down their house, however poorly they are furnished, before they know whether they can build a better one – and know where they will be staying until it is ready. So it is obvious that the French were foolish to take sovereignty from the king without preventing it from falling into the hands of the mob. For the mob could tear down everything, but could not build anything up except the guillotine – for all the heads that did not think like their heads! Perhaps things had got so bad in France that it was necessary to turn to the most desperate of all antidotes to political aberrations, as the guillotine undoubtedly is. I say ‘perhaps’ because it is no use crying over spilt milk; but this was France’s misfortune, one that we cannot possibly envy them and must be glad that we have avoided. That matters have never got so out of hand in Denmark we can see with sleep in our eyes! Even if every other people under the sun were waking up after a doze like the one that all the European peoples have taken through the previous centuries and were finding it necessary to blindly tear everything down and let chance decide what was to be built in its place – even if that were so, which I in no way believe – we 2. On Grundtvig’s inspiration the first People’s High School opened six years later in Rødding in 1844.

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ought to take the time to rub our eyes and see the matter from all sides before we make any major repairs on the sophisticated machine that experience has taught us it is easy to smash to pieces but much more difficult to put together again. This is so much more the case with the Roman education that we have been plagued with for centuries, whose only strength was to tear down – as our great poet 3 at the beginning of the century wrote: To destroy everything is nothing but negation, To build up, that is for the coming generation.

What has for the most part allowed us much better time than all other peoples to be truly awake and to use our mature reflection on before we begin to experiment with new arts is, as I have previously said, not our great intellect but our good fortune! For we had just lain down to sleep in the 17th century like everyone else, when we were rudely awakened at night by the enemy in our land and the enemy at the gate in the form of an unfortunate (we thought then) but fortunate (we think now) Swedish War against Karl Gustav. Admittedly we fell asleep again once the storm had passed, but not before we had taken the helm away from the King’s Council, which was only selfserving while the ship ran against the wind, and confided only in the King – whose own advantage and honor lay in him steering as best he could. It is also very strange that when in 1660 the clergy and citizenry of Denmark in a sense declared for a National Assembly and ceded absolute power to the King, they were not thinking only of themselves but commended the oppressed peasantry to His Majesty’s paternal favor and royal care.

3. From ‘Trip Across the Great Belt’ by Adam Oehlenschläger (17791850), great Nordic romantic poet.

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Indeed, gentlemen, the more I compare the Danish National Assembly and Revolution of 1660 with the French Revolution of 1789, the more I must admire ours, and the clearer it becomes for me that revolutions – which after the chaos of the Middle Ages were unavoidable – fare about as well as smallpox: The earlier you get it, the easier it is to overcome, but if you reach adulthood it can easily prove fatal. If we ask what made the French situation desperate, it was not the national debt and the absolute monarchy but the self-assumed authority, rights, and freedoms of the nobility, the clergy, and parliament. The King was powerless to prevent this because he needed them against the citizenry and (as it is rightly said in the National Assembly) against the 96 per cent of the people whom they had, especially from the days of Louis XIV, made common cause against to oppress and suck dry. If we regard in this light the three famous resolutions of 17 June, whereby the spokesmen for the citizenry declared for a National Assembly, claimed the right to vote taxes, and took over the entire national debt, then it is clear as sunlight that they were thereby declaring the national debt payable. They were also saying that the only thing in these resolutions and in the Tennis Court Oath 4 (not to be separated until they had given the realm a fixed constitution), the only thing that was not compatible with absolute monarchy was the National Assembly’s control of taxation, a control that had never been granted the King of France and over which parliament protested against when he wished to tax the nobility and the clergy. If the King, instead of discarding the National Assembly’s resolutions, had applauded them but otherwise negotiated with the Assembly to hold absolute power untrimmed on condition 4. The oath taken on 20 June 1789 in an indoor tennis court by the self-styled National Assembly members “not to separate and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established”.

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that all were taxed equally, that capable men of all classes enjoyed equal access to all posts, and that a free people’s voice was now the constitution of the realm – if the King had done that and the National Assembly had been wise and unassuming enough to enter the agreement, there is every reason to believe that all the horrors of the Revolution would have been avoided and France would have been far happier and had a much firmer constitution than at present. If we ask Thiers 5 what was intolerable about the start of the Revolution, it was that the nobility and the clergy owned around two-thirds of the free land, so the final third had to carry all the land tax as well as the manorial dues, the tithes, and so on. Moreover all the high ranks, civil, clerical, and military, were in the exclusive hands of the nobility and a few families, so the taxes on trade were borne almost solely by the poor and were collected with much cruelty; even tradesmen and craftsmen could not move without privileges. Finally, all legal proceedings lay in the hands partly of the nobility and the clergy and partly of the lawyers, who purchased their seats in Parliament and sold the rights again at an exorbitant price. Now I know very well that it is pointless to say what would have happened if people had been different from what they were – as they would have to be in order to behave differently. And it is impossible to say that if Louis XVI and the National Assembly had done what they had no wish to do, much bad could have been avoided and much good achieved. But it is not pointless for us to look at what caused the French disaster, and it is gratifying to see that we are free of what in particular caused it, for we were liberated through the power of the absolute monarchy which our National Assembly granted the king

5. Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877), French statesman, historian, and founder of the Third Republic as its first president (1871-73).

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in 1660. When our People’s Council 6 came together in 1835, there was a strange similarity to the French Assembly in 1789, for in both places it was exactly 175 years since the voice of the people had been seriously consulted. Fortunately that similarity is the only one! For though we called them the Advisory Assemblies they had no authority and were not assemblies in the more political sense: they contained neither nobility nor clergy with any authority; only property-owners and taxpayers were called in and constituted from the outset merely a council. They found that the clergy’s conditions were difficult rather than excellent; they found that the nobility was almost unrecognizable, interspersed as it was with peasant farmers and citizen squires; they found that the so-called free manor charge was in fact taxed; they found that the peasants’ circumstances were much improved with access to nearly all offices and ranks open to all the people; and they found that the King was both powerful and willing to carry out all the improvements that might still be deemed necessary, or at least useful, as soon as he found them adequately explained and he considered them timely. So you see, gentlemen, it is not my view that the People’s Council found everything to be as they wished. I even believe that we lack for more than they realized. But my opinion, indeed my full conviction and considered argument, is that they discovered – and the more they looked, the more they realized – that everything which elsewhere reduced the people to despair had already been done away with here! The path was opportunely cleared for all the improvements that civil society needs and is capable of receiving. Indeed, in the Council’s view the security was already assured for them to be imple6. An alternative name for the four Provincial Advisory Assemblies set up by Frederik VI in 1834 to advise him as the absolute monarch. The work of the Assemblies led to the introduction of democracy in Denmark in 1849.

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mented as soon as they had been maturely considered and prepared. So I wish to offer this conviction of mine to all my countrymen who lack it, partly because it is my own, partly because I am sure that nothing in the whole wide world could contribute more to Denmark’s happiness, and partly because anything else would fall short of the purpose. Since it was precisely the privileges of the nobility and the clergy together with those of the citizenry and the boroughs that made the situation in the state organizations of the new Europe so desperate when seen from the people’s level, it follows that wherever these privileges have been more or less abolished, the free people’s voice and a People’s High School are all that are needed to bring all civil matters into a natural balance in the calmest, cheapest, and happiest manner. They will advance and safeguard all the civil freedom that can exist alongside the common good. And just as it was only a paternal absolute monarchy that could pave the way for this happy situation, so is it only this that can ensure permanence and utilization: and I am claiming that a comparison of the recent history of France and Denmark clearly demonstrates this. Every new revolution in Europe will make this even clearer, yet I must on behalf of the people wish that this may not happen, and on behalf of Denmark that we must be content with the confirmation that experience has lent this truth. We must regard a paternal absolute monarchy and the free people’s voice as our immovable foundation within which the one does not contradict but confirms and enlightens the other. The raising of taxes is an ancient people’s right and can be combined with as much power from the king which he in his person can live with. In particular the example of England teaches us that if the people’s voice is consulted on all commands, the realm is best served with the king having the determining voice, for then the mistake will hardly ever be made that the rich find the opportunity to turn the whole burden over to the poor. Moreover, what we call the legislative power is clearly not an isolated power which can be separated from

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what we call the executive power, but rather a jewel in the royal crown without which it loses its luster and swiftly loses all its importance. The power of legislature – for that is not a power but a right – is the king’s right, and no educated people will ever actually expect true freedom from kings who themselves lack it. I venture to say that the history of the world teaches the same as that of Denmark; that when the King’s hands are tied, it is not the people but their oppressors who acquire freedom of speech and a free hand. On the other hand, a king who can rightly say he is the freest man in the country, a king who is just that because the people made him so, cannot possibly fancy that he has the right to everything that power and opportunity afford him, but must feel for as long as there is a drop of noble blood in him that he is called to make his entire people as free and happy as he can. Then the crown that is settled on his head is pleasurable to bear and the legacy that is only won by the deeds of free men is undying honor! So what genuine civil freedom remains incompatible with the King’s freedom? I have often asked that question of those who claim that popular freedom is irreconcilable with absolute monarchy. And I have also asked that question of the history of the world without receiving any other answer than the one I could have given myself: that if we assume that true popular freedom comes from being one’s own law-maker, then of course popular freedom cannot be reconciled with the King being the law-maker. I shall not dwell here on the question of whether a people can ever in fact give themselves laws – except the Parisian mob in the reign of terror. Nor shall I underline that when the English parliament or the Norwegian parliament make laws, the people alone have elected their lawmakers, in which case we might just as well say that they give themselves laws when they elect the king as their law-maker. I shall merely note that the more law-makers there are in a country, the more personal considerations and prejudices must be expected to make their presence felt. And I shall name what I call the main elements of civil freedom so that we can

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consider how best they can be granted and protected under a single, or many, law-makers. The freedom that not only I but all serious people least can do without is, I believe, freedom of conscience. The other main element of civil freedom that I value is freedom of enterprise. The third main element is what we must call personal freedom, or bodily freedom.

On Germany and the German Spirit, 26 October 1838 This evening, gentlemen, I shall be informing you about ‘Germanity’ as it whistled and roared about our ears in the years 1815-20. But to keep my conscience easy I must first of all remind you that I have a reputation for being almost as bitter an enemy of the Germans as of the Romans, of the holy as of the unholy Roman Empire. And since, according to the proverb, there is no smoke without a fire, I myself presume that in this matter as in many others I lack to some degree any historical impartiality! Nevertheless, you must not believe that it is as bad as many of my books may conclude, partly because one often reads somewhat superficially and partly because I have found it unwieldy for everyday use to weigh all my words in a balance. First of all, I am not talking about the Germans as a people, but only about my incompatibility with the way of thinking which, on the evidence of experience, comes most naturally to the Germans. Second, I believe that among the Germans there may be, and have been, far better people than I myself. And third, I think that Germany has of late deserved much credit for the freedom and enlightenment of Europe. So all in all, the Germans will hardly find anywhere outside Germany and Denmark less anti-German feeling than in me. My whole quarrel with the Germans is about their determination to make me a German – or to regard me as a fool! I

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give as good as I get and I do not wish to be either! Instead I assert that Denmark is no more the tail of Germany than the Norse spirit is a sprite serving Imperial German reason. On the contrary, Denmark is a sovereign entity which has performed a multitude of great deeds that German reason could not emulate, and will continue to do so. I am willing to admit that everybody can be good in their own right; but German reason has so far not stopped there, and that is why we are at war over Denmark and the Nordic spirit. Time must decide who is right, for in the world of the spirit the stronger will always prevail. Germany deserves much credit for freedom and enlightenment in modern Europe. Mankind is greatly indebted to her, a fact that we must always proclaim and appreciate, whatever else we dislike about the German mentality. And in particular we dislike her influence on our situation. For that always results in us violating our own nature, which is anything but German. Denmark's ancient quarrel with Germany is also purely a question of freedom and independence. The Germans simply cannot accept this, since they have got it into their heads that after all Denmark belongs to the German empire. Denmark thinks and speaks Low German just like Holstein, and should therefore like Holstein politely agree to think and speak High German, no matter what argument you draw from history or nature in our defense. Just as Emperor Frederick Redbeard in the 12th century attempted to force our Valdemar the Great to recognize him as Denmark's feudal overlord, so do German letters of the 18th and 19th centuries also attempt to force us into admitting that, in spiritual terms, Denmark was a province of the Holy Roman Empire. We might well rebel against Germanity in our language and mentality, just as the old Danish kings did against His Imperial Majesty, but we could never have the right to secede, and could never gain anything but disgrace by doing so.

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No matter how much we implored the stern judges to realize that we can barely pronounce sich, let alone understand the German philosophers, we still got the answer: this was our own fault; this was the fruits of our disobedience, softness, and lack of proper discipline. Moreover since all our objections were derived solely from experience, and were therefore merely empirical, they could not shake the rational deduction the Germans had made: namely, that just as all the Romance languages were merely corruptions of Latin, so were all the Gothic languages, which ought to be called ‘Germanic’, merely distortions of German! Even though they might stretch a point in the case of the proud, strong mountain-dwellers of Norway and Sweden, they could not possibly allow a land such as Denmark, inwardly and outwardly as flat as a pancake, to stick its chin out and demand a status as high as the Scandinavian mountains. This is the relationship that Denmark, or at least I, have with the Germans. So I cannot pass myself off as an impartial judge of their nationality or their national character. But then I do not wish to be a judge! I wish only to express my opinion as freely as any German expresses his, namely, that Europe must be glad that from time immemorial Germany has been so chopped into pieces, and that, however impressive it may be, it is still split downwards and crosswards. For if you consider all the heads that think and speak German under one hat, all under a German Emperor Napoleon, it would be a power far more fearsome in human eyes than France in her most dangerous period. The Germans would be far harder taskmasters in consequence of the fact that, as I see it, they are far more serious and thorough. So if in the years 1815-20 Germany was indeed swarming with secret societies whose purpose was to overthrow all the old thrones and unite the whole of Germany into either a prodigiously large republic or an equally large empire, then it was to the benefit of all the world and especially Denmark, that the frightful plot was strangled at birth. And yet I cannot help

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Chapter 9. Within Living Memory (1838) ...

thinking that it was all a feverish dream, or a pure figment of the imagination, or, as seems most likely, a bit of both. We have done the Prussian government an injustice – just as it has done an injustice to many people and to the whole of Germany. For there was a witching-hour over the whole of Europe which nobody could do anything about, and all became frightened of their own shadows. And, to be sure, the Prussian monarchy was frightened of its shadow, since it rested only on brute force – a very slippery foundation! What seemed to make the position of the Prussian monarchy precarious was the fact that from 1807 and 1808, when Napoleon divided it, and especially in 1809, when the new university was founded in Berlin, Prussia had been the secret refuge for all those who had fretted over oppression and had wished to rebel. The Prussian government had consistently added fuel to the fire, since in a general people’s revolution it saw the last possible hope against the encroachment of France. Firebrands like Fichte 7 in Berlin and Steffens 8 in Breslau had inflamed the student population; also in Berlin but under the guise of gymnastics exercise another giant figure, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, 9 had inured the youth to the hardships of war and imbued them with limitless national pride and deep scorn for all things foreign. Finally, a secret society was at work under various names, of which the League of Virtue (Tugend-

7. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), co-founder of the philosophical movement known as German idealism. Famous for his speeches Reden an die deutsche Nation (1807/08) (Speaking to the German nation) in connection with the French troops in Berlin. 8. Henrik Steffens (1773-1845), Norwegian-born Danish philosopher, scientist, and poet, whose nine lectures in Copenhagen in 1802 (which Grundtvig attended) introduced German romanticism to Denmark; champion of individualization. 9. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852). In response to Napoleon’s humiliation of his country Jahn founded gymnastics associations (Turner schools) to emancipate the fatherland.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

bund) 10 is the best known, extending its activities on all sides. However much or however little all this contributed to the rebellion in 1813 and its fortunate outcome, 11 it did contribute something and was credited for much. Steffens followed Blücher’s 12 headquarters all the way to Paris; many students followed on, and Jahn himself led a troop of hard drinkers. During the war a new incendiary from the Rhine entered into Prussian service with his Rhenish Mercury, 13 as the Parisians are said to have called the fifth great power that opposed them. When we put all this together, add that and even after the Congress of Vienna, 14 popular constitutions were introduced throughout Germany – allowing for as much freedom of faith and thought, of speech and writing, of trade and conduct as possible – we can clearly see that the Prussian monarchy, with its Polish, Saxon, Pomeranian, and Rhenish elements could not but find the leadership of the liberal and popular party most inconvenient. So it became frightened of itself and its fiery troops, who continued to set fire to things however much they were told to keep a cool head, since coolness served everyone best. The trivial reason for if not great events then at least for great fright, much trouble, and thick minute-books was the student party at Wartburg on 18 October 1817, which we must

10. The League of Virtue (1808-10) was a 700-member secret political society dedicated to reviving the national spirit. 11. In the War of the Sixth Coalition (1812-14), a massive European coalition finally defeated Napoleon and drove him into exile. 12. Count Gebhard von Blücher, (1742-1819), Prussian field marshal who defeated Napoleon I at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 and again at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 with the Duke of Wellington. 13. Newspaper founded in 1813 to combat Napoleon. Edited by Joseph von Görres (1776-1848), German writer and journalist. 14. The Congress of Vienna (1814-15) redrew the political map of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars.

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Chapter 9. Within Living Memory (1838) ...

therefore study a little more closely than was otherwise necessary. 1817, as we know, was the anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, and the students in Jena were firmly determined to hold a celebration of the occasion on 18 October, which was also the anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig that saved Germany from Napoleon. This double celebration was to be held at the ancient castle of Wartburg near Eisenach, renowned since the Middle Ages for a poetry competition 15 over the merits of France and Germany and famous since the Reformation for Luther’s stay there when he was outlawed, or, as it was said, “declared” excommunicated by a deed of the Roman realm. The students of Jena invited students from all over Germany, but it was naturally only the Protestant universities who paid any heed, and even then so little heed that the whole flock only amounted to between 400 to 500, half of whom were students from Jena. They walked in their fine German costumes from Eisenach up to the old castle, held political speeches, sang old Lutheran hymns, gave the church blessing, ate and drank, and then attended evensong in Eisenach with the local militia – pious and impious all mixed together – ending with a big bonfire on the beacon close by. Since it was in 1517 Luther had thrown the papal bull into the fire, a number of students, without previous agreement it seems, decided to throw on the fire a number of books they did not like, or at least their titles, as well as a corporal’s baton, a stiff whip, and a soldier’s corset, which round and about in North Germany was important in times of war. In happier days this would have been laughed at, especially in North Germany where they were used to regarding many more high jinks as inseparable from student life. But in those 15. The first legendary Sängerkrieg was a contest among minstrels at Wartburg castle in Thuringia in 1207. Poems from the Sängerkrieg form an important collection of Middle High German literature.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

murky, suspicious, heavy days this was taken as a clear sign of a terrible conspiracy that would soon lead to a revolution just like the French, or even worse! This was not least because the students at Wartburg had actually taken the sacrament to do their best towards a more serious life and study, and towards the abolition of all the so-called student societies 16 at the universities and the establishment of friendly links between all German students. When governments treat such trifles as affairs of state, they make them so in a sense, and by accusing all the students of creating a hostile atmosphere towards it, the Prussian government inevitably brought about just such an atmosphere among many people. An exhaustive investigation failed to discover any such conspiracy, even less a fermenting rebellion, and it is clear as sunlight that the statesmen were fencing with their own shadows, for, as Görres 17 points out in his forbidden work, Germany and Revolution, we must recognize that the reason the revolution never took place was not the statesmen’s doing. For they did not just exchange notes on the Wartburg festivity, they also banned publication of a student newspaper in Jena, which was strictly against the law in the Grand Duchy of Weimar. And soon it turned out, in 1818, that the Congress of Aachen actually called a halt to the introduction of the popular constitutions that had been solemnly promised to the whole of Germany, abolished the freedom of the press, and placed all the universities, and in particular the professors, under special surveillance by the police. When we consider the role that books and universities had played in Northern Germany over three or four centuries, and

16. The Danish word here – landsmandsskaber – denotes the student societies, membership of which was linked to the area from which one came. Rivalry between them was inevitable. 17. Johann Joseph von Görres (1776-1848) was a German political writer and literary historian.

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Chapter 9. Within Living Memory (1838) ...

that press freedom and so-called academic freedom – the only kind of freedom that the Germans truly appreciate and honored in a way even in the 16th century – should now be lost in the 19th, and lost at the very moment that people were quite rightly expecting all the freedom that could exist alongside respect for the royal thrones and for the common good – this was clearly so unreasonable that the very thought of it made a North German writer commit the crime of lèse-majesté against the German Pallas Athene. The idea actually came from Russia or Turkey, for it first came to light in an article by Alexander Stourdza, 18 a Russian minister but son of a Boyar in Moldavia, which in the Turkish war of 1788 became Russian. This outline of Germany’s constitution at that time should have been a secret, for it was only printed in 50 copies for the diplomats in Aachen. Nowadays governments never keep anything secret that they want to become public, so the whole of Europe read about the Moldavian wisdom in both German and French. Two students from Jena challenged Stourdza, claiming he was slandering the universities; and when he excused himself by saying he was following higher orders, this naturally only made enthusiasts for a scholarly Germany desperate. But it was another Russian minister, not from Moldavia but Weimar, who had long been the emperor of the theater in half of Europe and was still well-reputed among the German reading public, August Kotzebue by name, 19 who followed Stourdza and claimed that Emperor Alexander had sent him to Germany to gain reliable intelligence on German literature and learning. The out-and-out German party now turned all

18. Alexander Stourdza (1791-1854), drafted the text of the Treaty of Vienna, claiming that it represented “the entry of Christian charity into the sphere of politics”. 19. August Kotzebue (1761-1819), German dramatist and writer who also worked as a consul in Russia and Germany.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

its fury on Kotzebue and called him a traitor, partly because they saw him as the heart and soul of the dreadful council but also in particular because he was easier to oppose than the Tzar of Russia. At this juncture, on 23 March 1819, a student from Jena, Karl Sand, 20 assassinated Kotzebue. This provided the perfect occasion to implement all Stourdza and Kotzebue’s proposals – and more. Not only were the Turner schools closed, but Jahn the schoolteacher was unceremoniously thrown into prison. Six years passed before he was acquitted and freed – on condition. Censorship was introduced, and all professors placed under special police surveillance. Something was also established the like of which Germany had never seen before: a Central Inquisition Committee, which sat in Mainz from 1819 to 1828. It is beyond question that this committee disturbed the calm of Germany far more than all its professors and students without bringing about any other result than that the whole episode was attributed to “witchcraft and false alarm”. By contrast it was very real that in 1818 the inhabitants on the other side of the Rhine, feeling that they had lost a great deal of free movement by being incorporated into the Prussian monarchy, asked the King for the popular constitution that had been promised them and which they so badly needed. The King, however, responded by saying that he had indeed promised them such a constitution, but he had never said when they should get it, so it was impertinent of them to demand it of him and useless to do so as he would not grant them it until he found the time right! Görres had stood at the head of the application, so that was the end of the friendship between him and the Prussian government. And since he further wrote of the ministers’ excellent grasp of how to bring about a revolu20. Karl Sand (1795-1820), university student executed in 1820 for the murder, but became martyr in the eyes of many German nationalists.

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Chapter 9. Within Living Memory (1838) ...

tion, only a timely escape to Paris saved him from Jahn’s fate. (Later, in 1827, he became a professor at the new University of Munich, where he is still living.) When we add to this the persecution of the Jews, which unfortunately reached us on more than paper, 21 then we have seen more or less all the European news we have had to enjoy ourselves with in the years 1815 to 1820; and you must admit that this is an impoverishment. You may well wonder at all the abolitions imposed on nothing; for a wayward student party and a single assassination are undoubtedly such everyday events that they are rarely mentioned except in the most local of newspapers, on a police poster, or in a legal judgment. For even though we were actually all like people being drenched in cold water, we nevertheless fancied that the whole world was in flames, and no one was any longer sure of their lives, let alone there being a king on his throne. What happened to the fool also happened to the wise man: for the more we think about protecting ourselves and the more keenly we imagine all kinds of circumstances, the clearer it becomes that nothing is certain in this world except that sooner or later we shall all lose everything that we have. And that is an inconsolable matter when one is advanced in years and has made it a matter of conscience to take every possible precaution against this.

21. In 1819 persecutions of Jews broke out in Copenhagen and a few other cities, which Grundtvig sharply condemned.

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In 1848 the European Spring was in the bud, leading to what has been called ‘the Era of the Common Man’. Everywhere in the major European cities – from Paris to Budapest, from Palermo to Vienna, from Berlin to Copenhagen – people took to the streets, built barricades, shouted slogans, and demanded political and social rights. Kingdoms and duchies went under, and new national states were formed. In Copenhagen a series of meetings was held in March 1848. At a meeting on the Schleswig question on 14 March Grundtvig gave a speech calling for the division of Schleswig according to local national sentiment. On 21 March 1848 15,000 people joined a march to the royal palace at Christiansborg with a so-called ‘address’, written by Orla Lehmann and concluding with the ominous words, “We implore Your Majesty not to drive the nation to self-help out of of desperation”. From the uppermost window Grundtvig watched the mass procession that led to the fall of the absolute monarchy in Denmark.

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CHAPTER 10

Speech to the Schleswig Aid Society

Chapter 10. Speech to the Schleswig Aid Society

14 March 1848

In recent years, whenever I have heard the saying, “It is a time of change” being used, I have always had to smile, for in my view it has been a very quiet time. Since 1830 people have started up the moment a leaf was turned, but then they have sat down again when they realized that the heavens had not fallen. Indeed in the age that I am tempted to call Metternich’s 1 and weiter nichts (no one else’s, ed.), all the way from 1815 to 1848, it has been a very quiet time. But now the time has become if not what we call ‘orderly’ then at least very much ‘on the move’. I do not regret this at all, since we ought to choose the lesser of two evils, and freedom without order, at least since I first saw England, has always been for me a lesser evil than order without freedom. But with all this in mind I ought barely to open my mouth to speak freely about matters concerning Denmark and Schleswig. For it is precisely when people are on the move that we must begin to guard against what our mouths say. In particular our eloquent youth must be on the watch, since in a genu1. Wenzel von Metternich (1773-1859), politician and statesman, Foreign Minister of the Austrian Empire from 1809 until the liberal revolutions of 1848 forced his resignation.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

ine time of change the speaker with a fiery tongue walks between gunpowder barrels, and before he knows it, a single wild spark can blow both them and him to bits. 2 But our garrulous old man must also be careful about saying what he likes, otherwise he will fare much like the so-called independent members in parliament who have no party behind them so they do say what they like – yet no one is listening! I call that dire straits under which to speak freely and in that case would rather keep absolutely silent. However, even though I have no party behind me, what gives me the courage to speak up in a time of change with the hope of gaining a hearing is of course the ladies. For when I have them before my very eyes, I do not ask for anything behind me, but make bold to believe I have a good match 3 in front of me provided I do not ask for more than a hearing! For on this point I believe the ladies and I agree (if only all the gentlemen would too!) that so long as we can have our way, we do not begrudge others having theirs. So until further notice the ladies here who have come to listen will doubtless be a match for me who have come to speak. Indeed so emboldened has the ladies’ presence made me that what I would otherwise probably desist from in our time of change I now make light of! I shall therefore begin with a kind of political confession of faith by saying straight out that I am not only royally minded, but more recently I have noticed that I am more so than I ever realized myself!. Now it is no longer enough just to have a king, now I would like to be a little king myself and see nothing but other little kings running around me, provided we have learned the noblest of all arts: the royal art of controlling oneself. Naturally I want to see noth-

2. Grundtvig warns here against the National Liberals’ clamor for an Eider-state, meaning the whole of Schleswig included in the Kingdom of Denmark. 3. Here Grundtvig puns on the Danish word parti, meaning both party (political) and match (marital).

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Chapter 10. Speech to the Schleswig Aid Society

ing but small queens of Denmark around me too, not just where I am going to speak but everywhere, so long as they have that little self-control (even if they are wearing crowns), and no claim on the government but in all modesty settle for not a powerless but nevertheless only an advisory voice. I had no expectation at all of this free, royal position in the cottage when I could not even find it in the castle. Least of all had I expected it of the artificial so-called free forms which, when they gained absolute power and the right to rule without restriction, would make us all slaves, leaving us with only the freedom of death at the cost of life. So it warms my heart on behalf of the entire human race, and especially of the ladies and myself, that we dare to hope the golden age of all artificial forms and extremely complex machines is now over. In that case they may – like their martyrs, the two machine engineers, Louis Philippe 4 and Guizot 5 – settle for charity in England and a suitably long but also extremely boring German funeral sermon from the Federal Diet in Frankfurt! This is how I regard the latest French upheaval which in a moment crushed one of the most artificial political machines in Europe and hatched at once the simple but deep wisdom that human life demands these rights: its essential sustenance, its beneficial freedom, and its high dignity under all forms of government. When it has the choice, it naturally chooses the form that at the time and according to the nature of the people, time, and place can best be reconciled with these essential human rights and best ensure our indispensable human freedom and ongoing enlightenment. Well now, that was the most ticklish point I had to touch on! It has passed off alright, and although I suspect the gen4. Louis Philippe I (1773-1850), King of France from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. 5. François Guizot (1787-1874) French politician and historian, Minister of Education 1832-37 under Louis Philippe I.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

tlemen for suspecting me of wishing to rivet together forms that time has destroyed, I still hope they have heard that it is far from my thinking and perhaps even farther from theirs. However, there is another ticklish place that I cannot help touching on, and that is of course Denmark’s border. Some would draw this at the Elbe, others at the Eider and still others at Kongeaa, whereas the deadly serious Germans think that in that area there is only one realm, “das Reich”, meaning that in fact Denmark has no borders whatsoever and that Greater Germany extends at least to the Sound 6 if not to Finland and way up into the Gulf of Bothnia! 7 I shall not dwell on where I would like to set Denmark’s border. In the 18th century which I come from, the most erudite Germans set Emperor Joseph II’s 8 pious wishes among the stars, because the pious man wished both the Bohemians and the Hungarians to become German, but the 19th century in which we are all living has, all things being equal, shown that the same pious wishes have no power on earth. So we justifiably hope that this will also be the case with the pious wishes from the people of Schleswig-Holstein that the whole of Denmark, or at least Schleswig, should be incorporated into the German Confederation. But if so, we must also accept that this too is the case with our pious wishes that the whole of Schleswig-Holstein, or at least Schleswig, should be incorporated into the Kingdom of Denmark. For facts are stubborn things, as the English say, and it is a stubborn fact (...) that the kingdom of Denmark – whatever the case in days of yore – does not stretch a foot longer than to the border with the duchy of Schleswig. The land of Denmark

6. Stretch of water between Denmark and Sweden. 7. Gulf between Sweden and Finland, the northernmost arm of the Baltic Sea. 8. Joseph II (1741-90), Holy Roman Emperor 1765-90, relatively enlightened absolute monarch.

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Chapter 10. Speech to the Schleswig Aid Society

stretches only so far as the language is spoken, and certainly no farther than people wish to speak Danish, in other words, somewhere that no one knows in the middle of the duchy of Schleswig. Both of these facts – that the Kingdom of Denmark which we have in black and white should stretch to the Eider no longer does so, and that not even all those who still speak Danish in the duchy of Schleswig appear to want to continue to do so – these are naturally for me, as for all those I could expect to meet here, a very tiresome matter! But what can be done? There appears to be nothing we can do about these stubborn facts, however much we bang our heads against them – just as the Schleswig-Holsteiners bang their heads against the fact that since Holstein is inside the German Confederation and Schleswig outside, then as a duchy Holstein is more separate from Schleswig than it is from, say, not Lauenberg but Bavaria and Würtemburg! The question now is, having admitted the intransigence of these facts, what can we do justifiably and with a chance of success to assert our ancient claim to the whole of Schleswig and assert the Danes’ inalienable right to the duchy of Schleswig to stand alongside the Germans’ claim in every respect. To this I answer that we must do everything within our power to restore the Danes in Schleswig to the state of equality which we have lost through many unfortunate circumstances as well as great neglect and indifference. We can already do a considerable amount by loosening the ties between Schleswig and Holstein that we ourselves have knitted and by making good what we have done wrong, so that Schleswig really does gain a half-Danish, half-German government, justice, church, school, and people’s council. But can we not somehow here and now incorporate the duchy of Schleswig into the Kingdom of Denmark without caring what Holstein or Germany in general, or Schleswig it-

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

self, may say? Well, last Saturday evening here in Casino 9 most of the gentlemen agreed that this could be done, and although the ladies present here this evening look very peaceful, I do not think that the peace in their faces – as in Lamartine’s open letter 10 – can be taken to mean that even if we put on gauntlets (as the French did in Antwerp), we would not have to call it ‘war’. Nevertheless, both Holstein and Germany in general take this to be a declaration of war, and I must not call it merely a war but a very unjust, unreasonable, and unfortunate war against the duchy of Schleswig, for we could not win anything but could instead perhaps lose everything that a people can lose. The gentlemen will doubtless say that this is because I am not a hero. And they would be right – inasmuch as in many regards I am a coward! But on the one hand there are more cowards in Denmark than me, and on the other hand such a small, exposed kingdom as Denmark often plays the coward’s role out of cleverness. Lastly, my fear and warning against war with the Schleswigians does not come from me being a coward, but truly because I am more liberal than the majority. It is by no means every war over Schleswig that I dread or deprecate, for if either the Schleswig-Holsteiners or their expected auxiliaries from down there wished to scare us out of separating the ancient Danish duchy of Schleswig from the ancient German county of Holstein, or threatened us to allow the Germans in Schleswig to set their feet on Danish necks, I would say: The life and honor of Denmark are very much at stake here, just as much as if the enemy was at the gates of the capital, so now it is kill or cure! On the other hand, if without Schleswig’s permission, we go a step further and under whatever name or pretext add or clap it into the Kingdom of Den9. Grundtvig refers to the meeting on 11 March in the theater hall Casino, which was dominated by the National Liberals. 10. Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), French writer, poet, and politician who helped to found the Second Republic (1848-51).

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Chapter 10. Speech to the Schleswig Aid Society

mark, then I would say: That will never work! Even if it passed off what might be called smoothly in France, I know that the view in Schleswig would for the most part be that it would do harm! My liberal thought is this: that if, as the jurists will soon teach us, even the right to dead things can become time-barred and only an act of violence can reclaim them, this must be even truer of a time-barred right to living people that cannot be maintained by force without treating them like runaway slaves. That cannot possibly benefit anyone else than the slave-dealers, which it is not to the Danish taste to be or to resemble, God be praised! So if I also had the power with this hand but against the will of the Schleswigians to bang down the boundary post to the Kingdom of Denmark so deep along the River Eider that the Schleswig-Holsteiners with all their friends from the Roman Empire should cease to rock it, I still would not do so, especially for the valid reason that it could never be in Denmark’s interests, but only do immense damage to Denmark to absorb painfully both German and un-German. They will never become Danish any more than an Irishman will ever become English, and they would therefore always create division and never increase but always diminish Denmark’s combined force! This then was a ticklish matter, and I would never have got away with it if I had not had the ladies in view, for they know much better than I do how it helps to deal in black and white, be it genuine old love-letters that would oblige people to love one, or a kiss without love in a German diversion that would cause great harm if it were introduced into Denmark. What remains for me to say is, as all can see, so innocent and innocuous that it will pass off smoothly, perhaps even too smoothly through the one ear and out the other! But I am used to that, so even if the ladies were not present, I would state boldly: It is as clear as sunlight (that is my saying, I am told) that in the Kingdom of Denmark in the present circumstances, there must be an aid society for the Danes in the duchy of Schleswig. It is equally clear as sunlight that a society which is

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

to arouse, strengthen, and consolidate the Danes in Schleswig must be a genuinely Danish society, consisting therefore of people from throughout the kingdom who themselves wish to continue to speak Danish, who dare to do so unashamedly when facing the Germans, and who will endeavor to do honor to the Danish name and the Danish language.

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The English writer Edmund Gosse recounts a visit to Grundtvig’s church in Vartov, a month before Grundtvig’s death in 1872: “Suddenly, and when we had given up all hope, there entered from the vestry and walked rapidly to the altar a personage who seemed to me the oldest human being I had ever seen. Instantly absolute silence prevailed throughout the church, and then there rose a sound as though someone were talking in the cellar below our feet. It was the Bishop praying aloud at the altar, and then he turned and addressed the communicants in the same dull, veiled voice. He wandered down among the ecstatic worshippers, and stood close at my side for a moment, while he laid his hands on a girl's head, so that I saw his face to perfection. For a man of ninety, he could not be called infirm; his gestures were rapid and his step steady. But the attention was riveted on his appearance of excessive age. He looked like a troll from some cave in Norway; he might have been centuries old.”

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CHAPTER 11

Parliamentary speeches

Chapter 11. Parliamentary speeches

Speech to the Upper House (landstinget), 12 July 1866 1 I have asked to speak in the knowledge that if I have ever felt the need to ask both God and my fellow human-beings for the right to speak, then it is on this stand today and in this parliament. I would never have arrived at this point had I not held what many would call a superstitious belief in words, in living words, as well as what I myself would call a specific belief in what good words can achieve when they find good ground. And from one generation to the next good words never found better ground than in the heart of the Danish people. I really do believe that wherever else good words may find good ground, nowhere is better than in the Danish parliament. Here both the government and parliament, or at least one of them, could not allow at least at this moment a matter to be dropped that had come so close to a decision as the constitutional proposal we have been called together to adopt or dismiss. However removed the eminent ministry and the honorable parliament may be from sharing my belief, they will hardly doubt that I am speaking now because I believe in my case! For no one who is serious, more or less able, and acquainted with parliamentary conduct, would agree to be interrupted in 1. Grundtvig is 82 years old at this point.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

his peaceful old age and draw on his remaining strength merely to add an impotent “No” to a proposal already adopted. If this nevertheless had been the case (and it has often been so) ... if this drawn-out, tiresome constitutional question had been thoroughly debated and clarified so there was nothing more to add, and the cooked-up objections were falling on deaf ears in the ministry and the parliamentary majority, who were not only minded but determined to end the unpleasant party strife so that the people and the government could finally find the peace, after the misfortune that has struck our country, to work for the common good – if indeed this were the case, then my gullibility on this rostrum would be truly a laughing matter. But I venture to say that this is not so, that this is a strange mistake, and that if the honorable parliament will grant its senior member a little patience, I hope already today to prove that a new element will be added to the parliamentary debate when I as a member take the stand on behalf of the unchanged constitution of 1849. I do so as a senior parliamentarian who although not among the idolizers of the old constitution has nevertheless participated actively in its genesis. I have never belonged, nor wish to belong, to any party of whatever observance unless the nickname ‘idolizer’ is applied to the entire population of Denmark, who, in order to survive against foreigners and what always belongs with the foreign element, must take its own side. I used the words, “if the honorable parliament will grant a little patience”, and even though I hope parliament knows that as an elderly orator I do not make a habit of testing the patience of my audience too severely, I must nonetheless request a little patience, as I cannot promise to be brief. For this matter, in being regarded and treated as a party matter, is now being seen in such a distorted light that I cannot wait just to see it little by little set in its proper light. At the present stage of the case and in this house it might seem completely superfluous to demonstrate that this is not a party matter and never could be so, unless we lamentably must regard the government and the people as opposite parties. But

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Chapter 11. Parliamentary speeches

for safety’s sake I must remark in passing that at least now – when we can clearly see that the terrible party which it was claimed must be prevented at any price from controlling this house, that this terrible party with the greatest of efforts could not place any of its leaders in this house – those who have truly been frightened must be smiling a little at this and also at the folly of wishing to prevent all possible abuses of life. I also venture to hope that they will agree that there ought to be an imminent danger to the common good on a completely different level to make them move towards changing the constitution, a constitution that half the people are fighting for and the other half are giving up on out of fear and despondency. It must be this house that is the stumbling-block in the old constitution. There would otherwise have to be in the composition of this house something quite different that exposed the common good to imminent danger, or something in the projected new upper house that was a significant gain for the common good, something that has so far been concealed from the eyes of its most well-intentioned observers. The question must therefore be scrutinized, and if I am not greatly mistaken this close examination will be first and last about the question that in the present century and most obviously in the last few decades has become increasingly urgent, namely, that of the general franchise and its relation to the character and freedom of the people. The question must be elucidated not only in general but especially in its main issue, which is its relation to the Danish people, to its legality, to its interests, to its requirements, and to its application of freedom. Such a discussion is doubly necessary in this case. The talk here is not of introducing the general franchise but of abolishing it. We are being urged to change the basic premise, and on top of that to move backwards with a brand-new Upper House, despite the proven fact that in the composition of the Upper House – which we have the honor of constituting and are now about to demolish – the general franchise is employed in such a mild form that one would expect it to be shown some mercy, even in its oppo-

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

nents’ eyes. We must conclude that even the government must have been concerned at restricting the legally binding voting right from the fact that from the outset we have been continually enjoined to accept that the general franchise for parliament would continue to be untrimmed in every way. But this great reservation about limiting a legally valid voting right only became striking when we discovered what appears to have so far been overlooked, namely what a strange difference it makes according to experience. Shall we, as in England, merely resist the old restrictions on the franchise even when with the pressure of time, and even when one is forced to succumb to old father time, one only extends it inch by inch? Or shall we, as in France under the last Bourbon kings (sad memory), set out to limit the franchise that is already in the people’s possession and has won its approval? This latter seems all the more to arouse great misgivings as much in our statesmen as in the unfortunate Bourbons’ fortunate successor, 2 whom we not unreasonably regard as the shrewdest statesman of the time. He not only praises the general franchise and the widespread respect for the people but clearly sees them as firm supporters of his throne, his power, and his freedom. It has been said, maintained, indeed proclaimed, throughout the country that the main reason for passing the constitutional change in front of us should be in order for us to achieve peace, but I can see no serious purpose in this unless it be the purpose that even though such a limitation of the legally valid franchise among any other people would inevitably create a very dangerous and incessant alarm, things would go differently here in Denmark, and the compliant, peaceful Danish people would doubtless settle down once they saw that there were no better conditions available to them. I shall not dwell any longer on what a great sin it would be to threaten such a compliant, peaceful people away from their right to vote, which they 2. i.e. King Christian IX (reigned 1863-1906).

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Chapter 11. Parliamentary speeches

have never abused and which there is no reason to assume that they ever would. It is no use confusing politics with morality, I say. Although it is very true that over a number of centuries the Danish people have been so inordinately peaceful that they settled for a quiet death when they could not properly enjoy a quiet life, I must impress upon you that since this has indeed been the case, a closer examination is required of whether we dare expect the same of them from now on! Or whether in this century of ‘the people’s culture’ the life of the Danish people has not awakened with power and to the very prospect of an undemocratic Upper House strangling all forms of the people’s self-realization! ... And whether this will not compel the people to see that however much they are fond of everyday peace and quiet, they may buy even gold too dearly! So if the choice must be made, it is better for a while to fight hard for life than only have the choice between dying in one’s bed or by one’s own hand. I have heard that it is supposed to be only this actual Upper House that the former Ministry demanded should be feared for taking up a hostile position to the people and parliament and the general franchise, and that this is in no way the case with the proposed Upper House that by agreement is now on the agenda. But if that is so, then I venture to say that the proposal must be examined at a much deeper level than has so far been the case. For as it appears now, with the complicated and artificial method of election, neither the people nor I find it anything other than unreasonable that there will always be a born majority in sharp conflict with the people, against all things ‘of the people’ and against the general franchise. It appears to have been overlooked what irreparable damage this will do to the land and the realm! It is perfectly obvious the minute one thinks about it that we in Denmark do not have the resolutions that as far as I know they have everywhere else where there is a bicameral system. We have neither a united parliament nor any other legal means by which, even if the King and the people were in complete

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

agreement about this, to compel a privileged and stiff-necked Upper House! ... The honorable and learned member who has just sat down has now for a second time contradicted what I have said: that the Danish people had never abused their franchise. But he took this to be the equivalent of my saying that they had shown complete political wisdom in all their conduct! I have to say that I did not think I should have to tell such a learned gentleman that these two things are so far from being one and the same that they might be said to be the opposite of one another! At any rate it is clear that just as one could very much misuse the right to vote whether or not one is politically intelligent, so is it equally clear that unless one is politically intelligent one can easily avoid abusing that right! This is what I am getting at. Otherwise I am in complete agreement with the honorable gentleman that unfortunately the Danish people have indeed lacked the political wisdom that we would sincerely have wished for them on many occasions and many upheavals, and that they are still very far from possessing it. But that is true not just of those who are either known as peasants or whatever expression one wishes to apply to the vast majority of the population! I am certain that it is also true of those who have occupied our ministries! And there is no special failing in these people that justifies them being deprived of their legally valid right to vote! Moreover, the honorable speaker said that he did not like the old Upper House because it had not fulfilled the intention that lay behind its formation – and that he considered there to be more likelihood of this being achieved with the new Upper House. To this I say, in the first place this is a matter of taste; and moreover that is not the main question, and in this regard there must be something new in my speech for the honorable gentleman. For what ran throughout my speech and argumentation was – as I recall how we talked about it in the Constitutional Assembly – that it is not a ques-

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Chapter 11. Parliamentary speeches

tion of whether the plan in the old Upper House was to organize such a house as the present one. The talk then was of organizing the two chambers in such a way that the one should be so much slower as the other was swift, that the best vehicle was one with a bolting horse and a stubborn horse! So as far as I am concerned, that is not the question here; the question is whether it is wise to establish two Chambers or Houses in direct competition! Or alternatively, and according to the whole enlightenment and mood of our times, whether it is wise to establish an Upper House that was much less ‘of the people’ than the one that was being rejected! To this I have yet to hear the slightest response! And this belongs with those things that have so far not been found worthy of closer consideration. ...

16 July 1866 At the first reading of the constitutional bill I attempted to establish that before the new constitution could be passed by the Danish parliament, there ought to be a far deeper inquiry into the relation between the old and the new constitution. For no one is in any doubt that it is a matter of great misgiving to change a constitution. And since this change must not be generated by force or threat but only after mature deliberation, it will also be clear that there is either something dangerous or damaging in the old constitution which requires its removal, or there is something beneficial and satisfactory in the new constitution that is missing from the old one – without the new one lacking anything that would be as great as in the old one. I applied this basic principle to the present Upper House and to what it is proposed must follow from this, and I had to do so because the composition of the Upper House has been the core of the dispute on this occasion. Consequently, I believed that since the present Upper House, if only moderately, is based on the general franchise – in that elections are carried out if not

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N.F.S. Grundtvig

directly then at least indirectly by all those who have the right to vote for the Lower House – the inquiry should actually look at the nature of the relation between the general franchise and both the government and the people. This is particularly necessary in Denmark where we live and where the people undoubtedly at present not only have the right to retain an Upper House organized as at present but also an obligation to hold on to it. In this regard I found no more than what can be called a ‘hearing’ anywhere! The eminent Ministry did not seem at all interested in the idea of anything that was older than the agreement which had twice led to a majority for the constitutional bill and which could only lead to this for a third time. As for the opposite side of parliament, they made a forceful and repeated claim that everything I asked to be investigated already had been thoroughly investigated, and everything that I had mentioned had been weighed and found wanting! I could not assess whether what I had said really had been investigated: about the relation between the general franchise and the people’s culture and what a people’s government can wish and demand, compared with what a wise government is best served with. I cannot assess whether this has been proven, and I have therefore again had to place the two Upper Houses in the description side by side to compare them meticulously. I say now as clearly as possible what makes me choose the old one! And I ask the gentlemen on the other side – who wish to be regarded as solely in pursuit of common sense – to express at least as clearly what it is that makes them prefer the new Upper House. I shall say quite briefly, and I hope quite clearly, that I prefer the present Upper House because it is the people’s right to retain it, and it is my further conviction that this is the will of the people! I also prefer it because it has its roots in the general franchise, and because experience teaches us that no government, especially in our day, can succeed and thrive without having the people’s voice behind it. And finally I prefer it because nowadays, since the previously limited franchise is to be extended everywhere, as far as I know no government

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Chapter 11. Parliamentary speeches

has ever gone unpunished that has set out to limit the franchise that the people already legally own and appreciate. It is now the turn of the noble gentlemen on the other side to say equally clearly why they prefer the newly-proposed Upper House, an Upper House that, at least in the people’s eyes, is so far from being rooted in the general franchise that they think its real taproot is in privilege, the purse, and arithmetic, three things that at least in Denmark will never be “of the people”.

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Biography

Biography 1783 (8 Sept.) 1792-98 1798-1800 1800 1802-03 1803 1805-07 1808-10 1811-12 1813-21 1821-22 1822-26 1826 1826-38 1829-31 1831 1832-39 1839-72 1848-49 1849-1852 1853-58 1866 1872 (2 Sept.)

Born at Udby Vicarage Pupil at a Vicarage in Jutland Attended Aarhus Grammar School Undergraduate at Copenhagen University Attended lectures by Henrik Steffens Graduated in theology Tutor at Egelykke, Langeland Studies – and tutoring – in Copenhagen Curate at Udby Vicarage Dedicated himself to writing in Copenhagen Pastor of Præstø Pastor of the Church of Our Saviour, Copenhagen Resigned from the pulpit Placed under censorship Visits to England Applied preacher at Frederik’s Church, Copenhagen Unpaid preacher at Frederik’s Church, Copenhagen Pastor of Vartov Member of Constituent Assembly Member of Lower House (Folketinget) Member of Lower House Member of Upper House (Landstinget) Died in Copenhagen

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Bibliography

Bibliography Adriansen, Inge (1990) Fædrelandet, folkeminderne og modersmålet (Fatherland, Folklore and the Mother-tongue) Sønderborg. Agamben, Giorgio (1998/1995) Homo Sacer, Stanford University Press. Blondel, Jean (1998) Democracy and constitutionalism, United Nations University Press. Borgbjerg, Frederik (1933) Social-demokraten, 9.9. 1933. Brandes, Georg (1987) Udvalgte skrifter, bd. 9, (Selected Writings, vol, 9) Tiderne Skifter. Broadbridge, Edward et al (2011) The School for Life. N.F.S. Grundtvig on Education for the People. Aarhus University Press. Broadbridge, Edward et al (2014) Living Wellsprings: The hymns, songs, and poems of N.F.S. Grundtvig. Aarhus University Press. Bugge, K.E. (2003) Grundtvig og slavesagen (Grundtvig and the Slave Question). Aarhus Universitetsforlag. Baagø, Kaj (1955) “Grundtvig og den engelske liberalisme” (Grundtvig and English Liberalism), i Grundtvig-Studier. Dam, Poul (1983) Politikeren Grundtvig (Grundtvig the Politician), Aros. Damsholt, Tine (2014) “‘Hand of King and Voice of People’ – Grundtvig’s ideas of democracy, nationhood, and the responsibility of the self”, in John A. Hall, Ove Korsgaard and Ove Kaj Pedersen (ed.) Building the Nation. N.F.S. Grundtvig and Danish National Identity, McGill-Queen’s University Press. Christensen, Aksel E. (1976) Danmark, Norden og Østersøen (Denmark, the North, and the Baltic Sea), Den danske historieforening, København. Engelstoft, Laurits (1808) Tanker om Nationalopdragelsen (Ideas on National Education), Gyldendal. Frisch, Hartvig (1933) Pest over Europa (Plague over Europe), Forlaget Fremad. Greenfeld, Liah (1992) Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Harvard University Press. Grundtvig, N.F.S. (1817) Danne-Virke bd. 2 (Dannevirke vol. 2). Copenhagen. Grundtvig, N.F.S. (1826) Vigtige Spørgsmaal til Danmarks Lovkyndige (Important Questions for Denmark’s Legal Experts), København.

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N.F.S. Grundtvig Grundtvig, N.F.S. (1831) Politiske Betragtninger med Blik paa Danmark og Holsteen (Political Consideration with a View to Denmark and Holstein), København. Grundtvig, N.F.S. (1834) “Den danske Rimkrønike”, i Den Nordiske Kirke-Tidende (The Danish Rhymed Chronicle in Nordic Church Times). Grundtvig, N.F.S. (1839) Tale til Folkeraadet om Dansk Kirkefrihed Speech to the People’s Council on Danish Church Freedom), København. Grundtvig, N.F.S. (1847) “Lykønskning til Danmark med det danske Dummerhoved og den danske Høiskole” (A Congratiolation to Denmark on the Danish Dimwit and the Danish High School), København. Grundtvig, N.F.S. Danskeren (1848-1851) Danskeren I, II, III (The Dane). Grundtvig, N.F.S. (1968) Grundtvigs Skoleverden bd. 1-2 (Grundtvig’s Educational World, vol 1-2), Gads Forlag. Grundtvig, N.F.S. (1877) Mands Minde (Within Living Memory). Karl Schønbergs Forlag, København. Grundtvig, N.F.S. (1877a) “Mindetale over Kong Frederik den sjette” (Commemorative Speech for King Frederik VI), i Grundtvig, Kirkelige Leilighedstaler (Occasional Church Speeches), København. Grundtvig, N.F.S. (1983) Statsmæssig Oplysning (Education for the State), udgivet af K.E. Bugge og Vilhelm Nielsen, Arnold Busck. Grundtvig, N.F.S. 2009/1824: New Year’s Morning. Translated by Kristian Schultz Petersen. Copenhagen, Vartov. Habermas, Jürgen (2001) Politisk filosofi (Political Philosophy), Gyldendal. Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio (2001) “Globalization and Democracy”, in Olwui Enwezor et al (ed.) Democracy Unrealized. Dokumenta 11_Platform 1. Hatje Cantz Publishers. Højrup, Thomas (2002) Dannelsens dialektik (The Dialectic of Cultural Education, Gyldendal. Koch, Hal (1959) N.F.S. Grundtvig, Gyldendal. Koch, Henning (2014) “Staging Constitutional Identity: The Danish Play”, in Challenging Identities, Peter Madsen (ed.), Taylor & Francis/Routledge, New York. Korsgaard, Ove (2006) “The Danish Way to Establish the Nation in the Hearts of the People”, In John L. Campbell, John A. Hall, and Ove Kaj Pedersen (ed.) National Identity and the Varieties of Capitalism. The Danish Experience, McGill-Queen’s University Press. Korsgaard, Ove (2008) The Struggle for the People. Five Hundred Years of Danish History in Short. Danish School of Education Press.

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Bibliography Korsgaard, Ove (2014) “Grundtvig became a Nation-Builder”, in John A. Hall et. al. Larsen, Esben, Lunde (2014) “An Ongoing Influence: The Political Application of Grundtvig’s ideas in the Debate on Danish Society, 2001-2009”, in John A. Hall et. al. Montesquieu, Charles de (2001//1748) On the Spirit of Laws, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Maryland. Müller, Jan-Werner (2011) Contesting Democracy. Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe, Yale University Press. Nevers, Jeppe (2011) Fra skældsord til slagord. Demokratibegrebet i dansk politisk historie (From Term of Abuse to Watchword. The Concept of Democracy in Danish Political History), Syddansk Universitetsforlag, Odense. Rasmussen, Anders Fogh (2005) Kristeligt Dagblad (The Christian Daily) 30. november 2005. Rasmussen, Hjalte (2008) “Constitutional Laxity and High International Economic Performance: Is There a Nexus?” in John L. Campell, John A. Hall, and Ove Kaj Pedersen (ed.) (2006) National Identity and the Varieties of Capitalism. The Danish Experience, McGillQueen’s University Press. Rasmussen, Søren Hein og Niels Kayser Nielsen (2003) Strid om demokratiet (Dispute about Democracy), Aarhus Universitetsforlag. Rawls, John (1999) Law of the Peoples, Harvard University Press. Rousseau, J.-J. (2002/1762) The Social Contract, Yale University Press. Rousseau, J-J. (1992/1772) Considerations on the Government of Poland. The Bobbs-Merrill Company. Indianapolis and New York. Sørensen, Arne (1937) Det tredje Standpunkt (The Third Standpoint), Dansk Tidsskrift 1. årgang. Thaning, Kaj (1949) “Grundtvig og den grundlovgivende Rigsforsamling” (Grundtvig and the Constitutional Assembly), Grundtvig Studier. Thaning, Kaj (1972) N.F.S. Grundtvig. Translated by David Hohnem. Det danske Selskab, Copenhagen. Vico, Giambattista (1998/1725) Den nye videnskab (The New Science), Gyldendal. Østergaard, Uffe (2006) “Denmark: A Big Small State”, in John L. Campbell, John A. Hall, and Ove Kaj Pedersen (ed.) National Identity and the Varieties of Capitalism. The Danish Experience, McGillQueen’s University Press.

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“I SHALL BEGIN with a kind of political confession of faith by saying straight out that I am not only royally minded, but more recently I have noticed that I am more so than I ever realized myself!. Now it is no longer enough just to have a king, now I would like to be a little king myself and see nothing but small kings around me, provided we have learned the noblest of all arts: the royal art of controlling oneself.” Grundtvig 14 March 1848

9 788757 431414

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