Nationalisme, disciplin og folkelighed i 1800-tallets Danmark

Resumé

Nationalisme, disciplin og folkelighed i 1800-tallets Danmark

[Nationalism, Discipline and ‘Folkelighed' in Nineteenth-Century Denmark]

By Niels Kayser Nielsen

Physical education in Denmark had its beginnings in the last quarter of the 18th century. During the 19th century, as a concomitant to the growing enthusiasm for nationalism, it spread widely among ‘folk’- orientated circles: physical education and gymnastics came to be counted among the instruments by which the population were roused and raised to a sense of nationhood within a comprehensive civilising endeavour. In this connection Grundtvigianism played no small role. It is the thesis of this article that this endeavour is an important but often overlooked factor in the record of Grundtvigian influence in 19th-century Danish society, and that the Grundtvigian view of gymnastics as a ‘folk’-orientated way of ridding society of an indifferent and unmanageable substratum had its roots in the rationalist enlightenment of the last quarter of the 18^th century.

The first Danish initiatives in this direction occurred in the provinces as a corollary of the work of the progressive landowners, and primarily of the brothers Christian Ditlev Reventlow and Johan Ludvig Reventlow on their estates of (respectively) Pederstrup on Lolland and Brahe Trolleborg in South Funen, as inspired by German philanthropic physical culture with which they had become acquainted in their youth. This culture had as one of its aims to inculcate a “moderation of the passions” by, among the rest, “corporal education”. It was believed that moral improvement would not get very far unless education had a firm corporeal anchorage.

This thinking was overtaken in the first half of the 19th century by a more militarily orientated philosophy, represented particularly by V. F. Nachtegall and Frederik VI; but following the Three Years' War it was resumed within the Grundtvigian regime which, however, turned its back upon rigid militaristic discipline and an exclusively physically characterised training of the civil body, directing its effort instead towards conditioning of both soul and body, in recognition that they are intimately bound together. For better and for worse, therefore, the Grundtvigian tradition of popular education has much to thank Nachtegall and Frederik VI for.

With the emergence of the rifle club movement, and with it a voluntary principle of physical culture, it became possible for militaristic self-discipline and idealistic self-sacrifice to go hand in hand, with nationalistic enthusiasm as a common denominator. Within this movement the interests of the state and the wishes of civilian society to have a hand in things could exist side by side. In this respect the Grundtvigians played an important role. And when in the period of the Provisional Finance Acts in the 1880s the rifle club movement was split, it was thanks not least to Grundtvigian lobbying that the parties could come together again in the 1890s. It was not in the interests of Grundtvigian circles that there should be any split within the cause of popular nationalism.