Grundtvig 1848-50

Abstract

Grundtvig 1848—50. By Erik Møller.

Chief events in the history of Denmark in the years 1848—50 are the fight for the retention of Slesvig over against the German separatism, and the passing of the new constitution with responsible government. Also in the life of N. Fr. S. Grundtvig these events lead to a new awakening, though he did not feel it like that, when it first began. He had been a firm adherent of absolutism, and furthermore feared that after the death of Christian VIII the realization of his plans of a “high school” at Soro would be indefinitely delayed.

For that matter, his mood had been dark already during the preceding years. As he wrote to a friend, he had not planned the education of his sons “in accordance with the present moment, but with the new times I am ex* pectant of”. The sons, however, had their own views; his family circle became the scene of a hitherto unknown division of opinions, and this presumably caused him to doubt the feasibility of the work to which he had devoted his whole life. As to the great events which happened during these years, the views of the sons also differed from his own. Grundtvig was, and had always been, opposed to human beings taking the law into their own hands, and the strong popular movements during the early months of the year 1848 were not immediately pleasing to him. On the other hand, he was dissatisfied to be outside the development of events, and to all intents and purposes the Sles*vig*Holstein revolt, the fighting of which for the time being united all Danes, came for him as a kind of release.

His means of appealing to the public was at that time a new periodical: Danskeren (The Dane), chiefly written by himself and meant to be “a real Danish weekly”, the great, constantly recurring antithesis being for him “the life of the people and the death of the people”, “Danish and German”. It was a very strange publication with long*drawn heavy articles, and often Grundtvig treated in a poetical form the same subjects which he had already dealt with in prose. Many of the articles are, however, universally interesting from the point of view of the development of Grundtvig as a writer, thoughts from his former writings being here taken up for renewed discussion. But as to actual politics the attitude of Grundtvig is pronouncedly critical and pole* mical; he will not show “blind” confidence in the new “March*Ministry” as also demanded by his sons.

That which chiefly occupied Grundtvig from the very beginning, was the question of the position of Slesvig. His point of view was at that time that “Danish country at the most extends as far as Danish is spoken”, that “the people of South*Slesvig one and all bear hatred to us,” and that “the germanised confounded South*Slesvig should never be incorporated with the kingdom of Denmark”. Working along these lines Grundtvig was naturally, during these months, attracted by the thought of the division of Slesvig, as was also proposed by the British government.

But gradually he came to take a more comprehensive view. He demanded that the war should be carried on more actively, while at the same time he was against conscription for general liberal principles; furthermore, he was of opinion that the government considered the numbers of the army to be of excessive importance. But whatever Grundtvig’s other views were, he still

hoped for assistance from Great Britain, whose people he regarded as Nordic; here he suffered disappointment, but on the other hand the energetic support which Denmark received from Sweden*Norway rather surprised him.

On November 6th, 1848, Grundtvig had let himself be elected as a member of the Constituent Assembly. He justifies this step by saying that “at least he knew more about things than most people”, but the real explanation was his well*known desire to have a hand in what was going on. He first and foremost regarded himself as the spokesman of all that was Danish, and was unwilling to join any definite party — “Some regard me as conservative, because I adhere to the bridge (between past and present), and others call me revolutionary, because in fact I want to cross the bridge to a brand*new civic order”. For that matter Grundtvig had no deep*rooted confidence in the re* presentative body of which he had become a member. He was properly speaking of the opinion that it was more fitted “to confuse or stifle” than “ to voice public opinion”, and he consequently attached great importance to the addresses sent in to the Assembly as expressing the “voice of the people”.

In particular he went in for general cultural freedom: freedom of press and religion, being opposed to all compulsion, “the bloodthirsty goddess of general conscription” as well as compulsory education, and he also turned against all that savoured of a modern welfare*state. In the actual work of the Assembly he had no great belief; he foresaw that the constitution would become “as self*contradictory and bear the same distinct traces of a principle of false equality and actual abandonment of liberty as brought about by the law of general conscription”.

This, however, did not mean that Grundtvig was uninterested in the de* bates in question. He took eagerly part in them, and spoke on the most varied questions. He proposed numerous amendments of which, however, only one was carried into effect, viz. the beginning of § 79: “The entire admini* stration of justice shall as soon as possible and to the largest possible extent be made public and oral”. He spoke against the second*chamber system and class*representation, at the same time that he discussed the possibility of special representation for the peasantry and other individual groups of the population. Most peculiar is his attitude towards the question of franchise. The universal European reaction, which had followed the disturbances in 1848, had fostered an inclination to relinquish the manhood suffrage in force at the elections to the Assembly in the autumn of that year.

He did not look upon suffrage as one of “the inalienable rights of man, or indispensable civic privileges”, but he was unwilling to take retrograde steps, and “act so unwisely . . . as to deprive the people of the least fraction of the suffrage, which had been accorded it unsolicited; which it had used, only used once, and we cannot say disabused in electing us”. He knew no example, under orderly conditions, of the suffrage being peacefully repealed when once accorded to a people.

Here the point of view of which Grundtvig made himself the spokesman, was victorious, but everything considered he did not like the constitution as eventually adopted. He did not take part in the final division on the bill and was as a matter of fact bitterly disappointed. He also saw that the general trend of the Assembly was against him; on March 22nd he took his son Svend into his confidence: “My way of thinking seems still to be too old or too young or both for my people”.

The point of view of Grundtvig as regards constitutional government was by no means clear, and when in the fifties he became a strenuous defender of the new constitution, this was partly because, as in 1849, he was unwilling to take retrograde steps, partly because the attempts to alter the constitution made part of the carrying through of the constitutional rearrangement of the Danish Monarchy. These attempts Grundtvig looked upon as part of the conflict between Danish and German; and on that point his opinions were formed once for all.

On December 4th, 1849, Grundtvig was elected a member of the first ordinary Danish Parliament, and here he again fought for his rights of freedom, when a bill for a new press*law was introduced.

On February 26th, 1849, Grundtvig had tried to stop the debates on the constitution, so that the representatives of the people would be able to concentrate on the fight for Slesvig, the “advice for deed” now being the one thing needed. The chief object was “the quenching of the godless and lawless insurrection in the Duchies” ; peace*negotiations would be of no avail. As he could not make any headway in the Assembly, he started in ≫Danskeren≪ a fervid campaign for the resumption of hostilities, so that “our fatherland could be saved, although this should come about by a sudden change almost resembling a miracle”. When the armistice was really denounced in the month of April, he demanded that the army should not for a moment “delay to press hard upon the enemy”, and later on he was of opinion that the success* ful sally from the fortified town of Fredericia justified his point of view. At that time he looked at things in the way that if “Providence”, as was his opinion, had “maintained and preserved Denmark, this could not possibly have been to no purpose”, and consequently the country also had a future. There is here a characteristic difference from Grundtvig’s point af view during the war in 1813, when he thought that Denmark could only be saved through the people’s conversion to the fear of God, but this change is closely connected with the whole of Grundtvig’s spiritual development during the inter* vening years.

After the victory of July 6th Grundtvig, who rarely realized the difficulties ahead, hoped that it would be possible quickly to obtain an honourable peace, and consequently the new armistice of July 10th was a terrible blow to him. Both the armistice itself and its consequences were during the following months subjected to violent criticism on his part, while at the same time he evidently had the feeling that public opinion was not with him, and that he was not understood. This also made itself felt in his own family. The sons were decidedly of a different opinion, and so as it seems was his wife; this undoubtedly contributed to their estrangement during her last years.

However, Grundtvig followed his own line. In the spring of 1850 he demanded a “quick resolve” as to the continuance of the fighting, and gave the “lack of ability and spinelessness of the ministry as the only explanation of the desperate position of Denmark”. For that matter, the Danes now really got their chance, with the withdrawal of Prussia by the peace of July 2^nd 1850, and after the victory at Isted over the “insurgents” Grundtvig was of opinion that peace might be brought about in a trice; otherwise he was inclined to conclude an armistice for 10 or 30 years with the Slesvig*Hol* steiners, so as to leave Denmark “in peaceful possession of South*Jutland”. Anything like such a position was, however, the last thing to which the Germans would be ready to consent. In the meantime a change had likewise taken place in Grundtvig’s views regarding the conditions of Slesvig, and the attitude to be adopted to its mixed population. Already from the winter 1848—49 his views of the position of the Duchies had assumed a more juridical*historical character, and now in 1850 he thought that “irrespective of the disposition of the inhabitants and the language spoken, the Danish right of possession to Slesvig is undisputable”. The Danish king was to govern the country and the administration to be carried on by Danish officials. In years to come this became the standpoint of Grundtvig, and in the fifties he was the immovable spokesman of “Denmark as far as the Eider”, the frontier*river towards Holstein. Only after the great German victories in 1864, 1866 and 1870—71 he returned to a point of view closely allied to the thought of division such as he had entertained in the summer of 1848, only now more pronounced. He was and remained in everything the man of facts.

In the years 1848—50 Grundtvig was thus brought into close contact with practical politics and with actual life, which to him always was the essential and all*important thing. He never came to exercise any great influence on the march of events, but the views he propounded show the intransigent idea in its purity, the same which during these years created difficulties in the way of the solution of the Slesvig*question on national lines. As to his personal development the period 1848—50 was, on the other hand, of the greatest importance. This was to some extent bound up with events in his private life, such as his friendship with Mrs. Marie Toft, who later became his second wife, and all of this contributed to the new phase of his authorship, such as we meet it in the important works: “Christen* hedens Syvstjerne”, “Kirke*Speil” and “Den Christelige Bornelardom”. These works more particularly express his interest in church history and are tant* amount to a further elaboration of his religious views.