Grundtvig som europæer

Resumé

On Grundtvig as a European

By William Michelsen

The purpose of this short article is to point out that Grundtvig’s ideas about nationality problems in Europe were totally different from the Swiss blueprint for a solution, which M. A. Goldschmidt favoured; this is what lies behind the acerbity of Grundtvig’s answer to Goldschmidt’s provocative article »National« in the latter’s periodical »Nord og Syd« of October 1849.

Already in 1838 Grundtvig had opposed the idea of a Scandinavian federation. And on 14 March 1848, in his first speech about the Schleswig question (printed in Grundtvig’s periodical »Danskeren« and quoted in the above article by Morten Bredsdorff), Grundtvig explicitly demanded an agreement for the German, Danish and Frisian minorities in the Duchy of Schleswig (Southern Jutland). In a subsequent article in his periodical Grundtvig developed this idea, thus going even further than the legislation concerning the national rights of minorities after the First and Second World Wars. He did not, on the other hand, during the war of 1848-50 advocate a partition of Southern Jutland in accordance with a plebiscite. It was not until after the loss of Southern Jutland and the Peace of Prague in 1866, the fifth clause of which secured this right for Southern Jutlanders, that its was also mentioned by Grundtvig. His articles in »Danskeren« show altogether how realistic his ideas were regarding the national question in Southern Jutland.

In a postscript it is emphasized that Grundtvig never formulated a sentence such as: »You are a Jew, what are you doing among us?« This is only Bredsdorff’s - understandable, but given the context far too harsh - interpretation of Grundtvig’s words. What Grundtvig opposed and protested against in his reply to Goldschmidt in 1849 was - as in all his speeches, songs and articles on the nationality question - »everything that alienates a people from itself« (including the Jewish people), that is, the academic, internationally-orientated alienation of the great majority of the people.

Morten Bredsdorff replies briefly that everyone can judge for himself what Grundtvig meant by the words quoted. To him, the essence of the matter is the impression that they made on the sensitive Jew Goldschmidt.