Axel Laurent-Christensen

Axel "Lora" Laurent-Christensen (born April 27, 1895 in Jørlunde , † March 20, 1968 in Aarhus ) was a Danish doctor who mainly worked in Greenland .

Life

Axel Laurent-Christensen was born in a small village south of Slangerup as the son and second of six children of the village teacher Martin Julius Christensen and his wife Adolfine Rosaline Laurent. He was a model pupil and attended a private secondary school in Frederikssund from the age of 11 . In 1912 he began studying medicine, which he temporarily paused because he was active as a corps and auxiliary doctor in the Estonian War of Independence in 1919 . During his studies he also worked in various hospitals in Denmark in order to be able to finance the education of his siblings. In 1922 he finished his studies.

He then worked as an auxiliary doctor before he was appointed to Aasiaat as a district doctor in June 1923 . In 1927 he returned to Denmark for the time being, where he worked in hospitals in Aarhus and Hornsyld and received surgical training from Holger Thorborg. In 1930 he moved back to Greenland and became a district doctor in Qaqortoq . He filled this position for the next 20 years. During this time he also sat for the legislative period from 1933 to 1938 in Sydgrønlands Landsråd , where he was represented by Pavia Høegh in 1936 and 1938 . In 1947 he was made a knight of the Order of Dannebrog . He was also a member of the Greenland Commission . He carried out complex operations in the primitive conditions that the Greenland hospitals had to offer, and for this he also traveled to East Greenland. He learned Greenlandic and encouraged the poverty-stricken Greenlanders to practice handicrafts, which he then sold on. After the war he was briefly in Poland , where he helped with the reconstruction.

Due to a lack of career opportunities, he moved to Aklavik in northern Canada in 1950 , where he worked for another five years. As the northernmost doctor on the continent, his field of work included the entire north coast of Canada. He then wanted to be employed in Alaska , but the law required that he had previously worked in the United States . As a result, he sought a position as a doctor in the main part of the United States, but had to wait a year because of bureaucratic difficulties. He spent this time on archaeological and ethnographic study trips to Mexico , Guatemala , El Salvador and Honduras . In Mexico he also visited Frans Blom in Na Bolom . Upon his return, he worked in tuberculosis hospitals in Maryland . However, his wish to come to Alaska was no longer fulfilled. In 1963, at the age of 68, he suffered a heart attack and had to retire. He traveled to Haiti and began to work again, this time in a missionary hospital.

After a year he moved to a niece in Cairo and then to Houston . He then returned to his home country and lived in Copenhagen from the end of 1967 . When he suffered another heart attack shortly afterwards while on a trip to Morocco , he came to his sister-in-law in Aarhus for treatment, where he died of a third heart attack in March 1968. He was buried at his own request in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Axel Laurent Christensen at nabolom.dk
2. ^ Church records Jørlunde 1892-1910 (p. 11)
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Bent Harvald, Kirsten McCord: Om Axel Laurent-Christensen in the Tidsskriftet Grønland (edition 2000/2)
4. ↑ Axel Kjær Sørensen: Denmark-Greenland in the Twentieth Century (= Meddelelser om Grønland . Man and Society. 34). Danish Polar Center, Copenhagen 2006, ISBN 87-90369-89-0 , ( digital copy (PDF; 3.35 MB) ).
5. ↑ Dødsfald in Atuagagdliutit from 28 March 1968