Viggo Julius von Holstein-Rathlou, Danish literary historian with sun helmet and fixed ideas

Abstract

Viggo Julius von Holstein-Rathlou, of landed gentry, was hired by the Royal Library after earning his degree in Nordic Philology and was involved in the founding of the Society for Danish Language and Literature, for whose edition of Thomas Kingo’s writings he was given responsibility but was removed from that task some years later. His 1917 dissertation on Kingo’s worldly writings resulted in a bitter conflict regarding quality and protectionism, an offshoot of the eternal conflict between Brandes’ Modern Breakthrough and Social Conser­vatism. Holstein-Rathlou became permanently attached to the National Library in Aarhus and soon took part in the de­bate on Southern Jutland’s affiliation both before the vote and after the reunification. As the poeta minora he was, he agitated for and wrote poetry about a Denmark extending to the Dannevirke fortifications but dreamt about drawing a boundary even further south – and brought himself into a new conflict as leader of the Danish-South Schleswig library activity. The nationalistic sentiments radicalized him and led him in the late 1930s to Den­mark’s National Socialist Workers Party, however distancing himself from its “German” attitude to the Jewish question. His poetry and other activities then took on a Nazi aspect. After the Liberation he was interned and on a questionable basis, sentenced to a longer imprisonment. And in a new polemic, he attacked all of the sen­ten­ce’s premises. From then on there was little heard from Holstein-Rathlou, whose poetic urge just resulted in a handful of translations of early Nordic literature.