Jørgen Hæstrup

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Jørgen Hæstrup (born August 9, 1909 in Viborg ; † April 12, 1998 ) was a Danish historian and writer who dealt in particular with the Danish resistance movement in World War II and received the Søren Gyldendal Prize in 1961 .

Life

Hæstrup, son of a cantor , grew up in Odense and Fyn in addition to Viborg , and graduated from high school in 1927 at Odense Katedralskole. He then began studying history and the Danish language at the University of Copenhagen , graduating in 1934 with a master's degree . He then became a teacher at Sct. Knuds grammar school in the Hunderup district of Odense, before he became involved in the resistance movement against the German occupation forces during the Second World War . Because of this activity he had to go underground in September 1944 and lived in hiding in Copenhagen until the end of the occupation .

In 1947, Hæstrup began collecting materials on the Danish resistance movement, receiving a doctorate in November 1954 at Aarhus University with a dissertation entitled Kontakt med England 1940-43 on contacts made with Great Britain during the war from 1940 to 1943 PhD in philosophy . His dissertation praised the resistance movement during the occupation, which the former resistance fighters recognized, but also brought criticism from historians such as CO Bøggild-Andersen and Sven Henningsen.

In 1959 he presented a continuation of his dissertation with the title Hemmelig alliance , so that he had now written a comprehensive two-volume historical account of the Danish resistance movement. In the second book, he presented in particular the distribution of weapons between active and inactive resistance fighters, but also the role of the anti-communist officer groups , the so-called "O-groups", who then received most of the weapons. This meant that Martin Nielsen, a chief editor of the communist newspaper land og folk , the then commander of the Army , Lieutenant General Viggo Hjalf treason accused, whereupon the latter Nielsen for libel sued. This trial, which was also the subject of a debate in the Folketing , ended with Nielsen being sentenced to three months' imprisonment and payment of damages to Hjalf.

While he had been doing his research mainly as a private scholar until then , this changed in 1960 when Hæstrup was appointed scientific director of the State Archives together with the state archivist Johan Hvidtfeldt, which was funded by the Danmarks Nyeste Historie (DNH) publishing house in the amount of one million Danish kroner received. In 1961 he was awarded the Søren Gyldendal Prize. In the following years the DNH publisher published several of his books on the history of the occupation, such as Besættelsens Hvem-Hvad-Hvor (1965) and Til landets bedste ... Hovedtræk af departementschefstyrets virke 1943-1945 , in which he describes the handling of the then Defense Minister Søren Brorsen with the occupation situation.

On May 23, 1979, Hæstrup, who also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Odense in 1976 , was knight first class of the Dannebrog Order .

His two books Kontakt med England 1940-43 and Hemmelig alliance appeared in 1977 in an English translation under the title Secret Alliance .

In his research, Hæstrup was a clear representative of the so-called "consensus line" in research during the occupation period, which assumed that there was a general consensus among the Danish population in the fight against the German occupiers, although the question of means was viewed differently. This thesis of the “consensus line” has been increasingly called into question since 1979, in particular by the research of the historian Hans Kirchhoff .

more publishments

His other publications include the books:

  • 1940 [Nittenhundredefyrre] -1945: Dette skete under Danmarks frihedskamp , 1960
  • From occupied to ally: Denmark's fight for the freedom 1940-45 , 1963
  • Dorene åbnes , 1973
  • The 4th våbenart , 1976
  • Musik for små penge: træk af musiklivet i Viborg omkring 1920 , ISBN 8774921991 , 1976
  • Krig and besættelse. Odense 1940-1945 , ISBN 8774923021 , 1978
  • Ad omveje - studieår i København 1927-34 , autobiography , ISBN 8719101538 , 1981
  • Dengang i Danmark. Jødisk ungdom på træk 1932-1945 , ISBN 8774923757 , 1982
  • Vildnis og "Grundtvigsplan": om finansieringen af ​​modstandsbevægelsen , ISBN 8774927515 , 1990
  • En af de mange , ISBN 8774928449 , 1991

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. openlibrary.org
  2. Hans Prieme in: Historisk Tidsskrift , (1983) 1