Henrik Jørgen Huitfeldt-Kaas

Henrik Jørgen Huitfeldt-Kaas (1862)

Henrik Jørgen Huitfeldt-Kaas , until 1881 only Huitfeldt (born February 2, 1834 in Christiania , † May 18, 1905 in Christiania) was a Norwegian genealogist, heraldist and archivist. In general he is only called HJ Huitfeld-Kaas.

His parents were the copyist Valentin Wilhelm Hartvig Huitfeldt (-Kaas) (1795–1881) and his wife Anne Margrethe Brochmann (1801–70). On August 14, 1865, he married his second cousin Hanna Lovise Charlotte Huitfeldt (October 5, 1845– February 17, 1876), daughter of Bailiff Hans Jørgen Hansen Huitfeldt (1806–1857) and his wife Fredrikke Ambjørnsen (1815–1897).

Huitfeld-Kaas belonged to one of the oldest noble families in Norway. He took his name affix “Kaas” after he inherited the Kaasenlund Fideikommiss in 1881, which amounted to 116,000 Danish kroner and was the replacement for the Kaasenlund parent company in Funen , which had been sold in 1803.

He received private tuition at home and passed the artium exams in 1852. He then studied law for a while in Christiania, but then shifted to his historical interests and attended lectures on Old Norwegian, Anglo-Saxon, and Gothic. He was interested in document research and family history. He was also a member of the student intellectual debating club Det lærde Holland .

In 1858 he became an assistant in the Reich Archives. In 1896 he finally became the Reich archivist and chairman of the commission that was to organize the relocation of the Reich Archives to Akershus Fortress . But the plan was never implemented. He worked in the Reichsarchiv when it developed into a scientific institution. During this time he wrote a family story in Latin. He also researched the Sibbern family and made a number of contributions to Danmarks Adels Aarbog (year book of the Danish nobility) and to the Danish-Norwegian personal history Tidsskrift . He also wrote De nulevende Adelsslægter i Norge (The noble families living in Norway today). As an archivist, edited a number of key sources on Norwegian history. He also edited Volume 16 of the Diplomatarium Norvegicum and was co-editor of Volumes 5-15 and 17. In the Diplomatarium he explained some documents, but not in accordance with his other important source edition, the Norske Regnskaber og Jordebøger (Norwegian Land Accounting Books . 3 volumes 1885-1896). In particular, he published Bishop Eystein's Bodenbuch and Nils Stub's records of the Lagting in Oslo from 1572 to 1580 . In the heraldic field, he wrote a work Norske Sigiller fra Middelalderen (Norwegian seals of the Middle Ages). The work is of great importance because a number of the seals depicted by it are no longer preserved.

The theater was of particular interest. He wrote the book Christiania Theaterhistorie about the history of Christiania's theater life before 1809.

Honors

Huitfeld-Kaas had been a member of "Videnskabs-Selskabet i Christiania" (Scientific Society in Christiania today "Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi") since 1874. In 1895 he became a 1st class knight of the Order of St. Olav . He was also the commander of the Danish Order of Dannebrog and Knight of the Swedish Order of the North Star .

Remarks

1. ^ Township was a single judge in cities that did not have a collegiate court.
2. ↑ The "Examen artium" was the regular entrance examination for university, which required knowledge of Latin and Greek. So it corresponded to the Abitur, but was accepted by the university until 1883.

literature

• Terje Bratberg: Article “HJ Huitfeld-Kaas” in Norsk biografisk leksikon , accessed on February 9, 2010.