Ingolf Elster Christensen

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Ingolf Elster Christensen
Monument to Christensen at Flåm train station .

Ingolf Elster Christensen (born March 28, 1872 in Førde ; † May 3, 1943 ibid) was a Norwegian lawyer, officer, civil servant and conservative politician .

Life

Christensen comes from a family of officers and civil servants. He graduated from high school in Bergen in 1889 and then went to the Norwegian Military Academy , where he graduated as an officer in 1893. From 1894 to 1896 he served as an adjutant in Bergen, then went to Christiania (now Oslo ) to study law in record time. He then worked as an assessor for the district judge of Sogn og Fjordane . In 1899 he was admitted to the bar. In the same year he went to the Ministry of Defense, where he worked as a captain until 1906. Again as a lawyer he was u. a. Secretary of the Committee for the Creation of a New Army Order (Norway had become independent in 1905). In 1907 he went back to the Ministry of Defense, most recently as head of department. In 1910 he became the district president of the Nordre Bergenhus district (since January 1, 1919 the district was called Sogn og Fjordane), and he held this office until 1930.

Christensen dealt with national and military, but also agricultural issues. So in 1916 he published the work Fædrelandet i verdenskrigens lys (German: The Fatherland in the Light of the World War) together with his brother, the writer Hjalmar Christensen . Both wanted Norway to be on the side of the German Reich. In the periods from 1922-1924 and 1925-1927 he was a member of the Høyre im Storting . Here he sat down u. a. against cuts in the defense budget under the Mockwinkel government . He himself was Minister of Justice in the government of Ivar Lykke from March 5, 1926 . After a cabinet reshuffle on July 26, 1926, he was Minister of Defense until the end of the government on January 28, 1928. In 1930 he took over the office of governor of Oslo and Akershus .

When in 1940 the German Reich invaded Norway as part of the Weser Exercise company and King Håkon VII and the government fled Oslo, he stayed in the capital. After Vidkun Quisling proclaimed a government headed by himself, the Supreme Court justices, who also remained in Oslo, took the initiative to create an alternative. With the support of the German ambassador Curt Bräuer , the Administrasjonsrådet was deployed on April 15, 1940. Christensen became its chairman. His experience as an administrative officer and not least his explicitly pro-German attitude were probably the decisive reasons that made him a candidate for this position. He was also considered a favorite for chairing a government against that of Prime Minister Johan Nygaardsvold, who fled the country . This possibility was considered with the Reich Commissioner Josef Terboven in the so-called Reichrat negotiations. This involved judges from the Supreme Court and the majority of the Storting Presidium. Christensen was also involved in these negotiations in the background and is said to have got them going again several times. Ultimately, the negotiations failed and on September 25, 1940 Terboven set up so-called Kommissariske statsråder (German name: Commissar State Councilors ), almost all of which belonged to the Nazjonal Samling (NS). This was also the end of the Administrasjonsrådet and the political end for its chairman Christensen. In 1941 he was replaced as district president by the Nazi man Edward Stenersen. He spent the last part of his life in seclusion on his parents' farm in Førde.

Honors

Ingolf Elster Christensen of 1912 was knighted Order of St. Olav beaten and was a member of the French Legion of Honor . As he was very committed to the Flåmsbana , there is a memorial in his honor at Flåm train station .

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