The Danish communist lawyer Carl Madsen attended a private middle school from 1914 to 1918, alongside children of the local bourgeoisie. In his 1973 autobiography Fortids møre mur, he looks back on his schooldays with enduring resentment, portraying his teachers as embodiments of nationalism, religious hypocrisy and petty authoritarianism. Through a series of vivid classroom anecdotes, he moves from personal grievances to a broader critique of the chauvinism, colonialism, moral prudery and punitive discipline of early twentieth-century Danish society.

Madsen challenges the familiar image of Denmark as a tolerant, egalitarian and peaceable society. Instead, he presents a country whose professed civility and moral superiority conceal the same structures of exploitation and domination found in every other capitalist society. To Madsen, Denmark’s comparatively limited (and often glossed over) record of imperial violence, reflects not an absence of oppressive impulses but the limits of its power to inflict harm.

Written more than half a century after the events, his account retains the anger of the schoolboy while drawing on the political convictions of the adult. The result is both a polemic against the prejudices and power structures of his time and a self-portrait of a man whose lifelong hostility to authority was shaped, in part, by his experiences at school.

When I went to private school in 1914, it was simply because the school system was such that I had to attend one to take the middle-school examination, which I needed in order to qualify for the matriculation examination. Had there been a municipal middle school in Lyngby, I would undoubtedly have been sent there. But instead, at the age of eleven, I was uprooted and transplanted to Thyssen’s school in Lyngby, where my classmates were the children of doctors, engineers, wholesalers, manufacturers, merchants, lawyers, master craftsmen, and the like. And in this unfortunate upper- and middle-class milieu I was to remain — with a year’s interruption — until I graduated from Vestre Borgerdyd School in 1922.

[…]

I have few memories of my schooldays in Lyngby that seem worth the bother to recount.

The school was owned by the theologian Hans Thyssen — if, indeed, he was a theologian, rather than merely a theology student too stupid to pass his ordination exams — and by Vilhelm la Cour[1], the historian who later became so well known and who, I believe, is still alive. I have heard nothing of his death, and apart from my father, he is probably the only one of my childhood teachers still living.

Vilhelm la Cour became famous during the war for managing to incur the Germans’ displeasure through his lectures and writing.

He acquired a modest martyrdom on the cheap, in the form of a couple of short prison sentences.

The man was a raving lunatic. A thoroughly deranged chauvinist. At least, that was how he was when he taught me history in middle school during the First World War, and there is nothing to suggest he ever changed.

He was so full of sickening Danishness and stale reverence for tradition that it oozed out of every orifice.

His lessons were all about Denmark and Danishness, about the fair-haired, blond, blue-eyed Nordic folk-high-school types. They were about racism and a Denmark stretching to Hamburg. He was loud and utterly insufferable. I could never stand the bastard.

Had things gone according to his deranged militaristic brain, a rearmed Denmark would have taken on the German panzer armies on the 9th of April[2]. For the sake of Denmark’s “honour”, he wanted us to fight that hopeless battle against a vastly superior enemy to the last man.

During the occupation, I was a prisoner in Vestre Prison for a time[3], where he was also being held. This must have been on one of those occasions when Horserød Camp was cleared out and we were transferred to Vestre Prison. I remember him strutting along the prison gallery, without so much as a glance or a greeting for us, whom he hated every bit as much as he hated the Germans.

On one occasion, during our exercise period in the yard, we staged a demonstration and sang, among other things, the “Internationale”, much to the Germans’ fury and the encouragement of our comrades in the cells of the prison’s German section. Some of them were awaiting a death sentence.

La Cour had his cell window open. When the strains of the “Internationale” reached him, he slammed the window shut with a bang, ostentatiously making his displeasure known. A prison guard later told me — though I have had no way of verifying whether it was true — that he had lodged a complaint against us with the Danish prison authorities.

Hans Thyssen was a different breed of man. A narrow-chested, pale, wall-eyed, miserly, sanctimonious schoolmaster, with a thin, reddish goatee. He had inherited the school from his father, or perhaps simply taken it over. He conducted the morning hymn-singing in the gymnasium and led us in prayer before we went about the day’s work.

Just as I remember la Cour’s history lessons, so do I remember Thyssen’s religious instruction.

When we reached the fourth year of middle school, he wormed his way into the dangerous territory of sex education, where we fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds were probably at least as well versed as he was. He told us that God had inflicted the torments of venereal disease on mankind to keep us from immorality. Gonorrhoea — which we called the clap or the drip — and syphilis were God’s judgment. Agonies beyond measure, ending in madness: that was the Lord’s punishment for breaking His Sixth Commandment.

“And because that is how things are, children, scientists and doctors may ponder and investigate as much as they please. The Lord will never allow a means to be found to avert divine punishment of the sinful man.

We were also told that masturbation destroyed the spinal cord, and that this vice would send us to the madhouse while we were still alive, and to hell when we were dead.

I remember that we ended the lesson by singing a hymn by Grundtvig.

He who has helped us to this day Will guide us on tomorrow; He wills our good in every way, His strength outlasts our sorrow. He knows the depths of all that is, And love’s profoundest mysteries Lie open to His searching eye.

Thyssen and la Cour were such different men that they simply could not get along.

La Cour was given to grand gestures. That was very much part of his madness. He was also hot-tempered. Capable of flying into a quite uncontrollable rage.

I remember some of his fits. When one took hold of him, the uproar shook the whole school. Plaster fell from the walls, and doors slammed as he banged them shut behind him. The windowpanes rattled. All the while, Thyssen would be cowering in some hiding place, scared out of his wits.

It ended in a split, and I got a new history teacher. A small, pleasant, and fairly ignorant man named Alsbo.

I remember him mostly because of the Danish West Indies.

Denmark was a mini-empire back then, possessing three small islands in the Caribbean: St Croix, St John and St Thomas. They were nothing but trouble, and selling them had been mooted on several occasions. The Negro population had little appreciation for Danish rule, which had probably been no better than that of the great colonial powers. If anything, it had been worse.

We are, after all, distinctly prone to racism. The inept brutality of Danish rule and the merciless exploitation and impoverishment by our upper classes of Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and the tropical colonies have certainly done nothing to enhance our standing among the oppressed and degraded peoples living under the Danish Crown. Wherever we could — and we proved remarkably capable in that respect — we made ourselves hated through misrule and master race mentality.

That is why our empire has crumbled. Iceland broke away. The Faroe Islands will no doubt do the same, and we have, for all practical purposes, ceded Greenland to the United States.

The formal sovereignty we still retain has been abused to destroy the Eskimo population.

During the First World War, we were unable to hold on to the three West Indian islands and therefore we sold them to the United States for 25 million dollars. There was a good deal of patriotic hullabaloo at the time, but in the end the sale was approved by referendum in December 1917. Whether the West Indian Negroes, whom the whole affair concerned more than anyone, were consulted alongside the Danish population, I cannot remember[4].

What I do remember very clearly, though, is the morning after the referendum in Denmark, which had returned an overwhelming majority in favour of approving the sale. Alsbo came into the classroom with tears in his eyes.

“Children,” he sobbed, “Denmark has become smaller.”

I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I’ve always had a loose tongue.

“Yes, but at least we’ve got some brass in the till.”

That was too much for him. Alsbo rushed over and, in a fit of rage, slapped me six times across the face. Three on each side of the head. As I learned then, and on a particular occasion later in life, it was dangerous to provoke a teacher with a strong sense of patriotism.

Whether I would have got away with just the six slaps, I don’t know. But the punishment was cut short by a furious snarl from beneath the school desk where I was receiving Alsbo’s patriotic instruction.

We had a wonderful red Irish setter. During my first year at Thyssen’s school, my sister once took it along when it came to bring me something I’d left at home. An essay, my lunch, or whatever it happened to be.

Once the dog realised where I’d vanished to — it never liked being separated from me — there was no chance of keeping it at home.

The moment it was let out, it would bolt straight for Thyssen’s school at a full gallop. It knew exactly which classroom I was in. It never made a mistake. It could open doors with its front paws, rising up on its hind legs to do it.

It was an everyday occurrence for the handsome red dog to come barging into the classroom sooner or later and settle under my desk, from where nothing would induce it to move as long as I remained in my seat.

In time, the teachers resigned themselves to this, which also gave the dog an opportunity to register its opinion of the sale of our last tropical possessions.

Beatings were fairly common at the sanctimonious Thyssen’s school. I don’t recall ever being ill-treated by head teacher Møller in Rudkøbing, but at Thyssen’s it happened to me on several occasions.

The cane affected the boys differently. It was considered proper to show no sign of being troubled in front of your classmates, and most of the boys probably felt the sting but not the humiliation. I did. The ritual was always the same.

The punishment took place in Thyssen’s office. First, he delivered a stern moral lecture.

Then: “Turn around. Bend over.”

The blows followed. I believe there was an official code of corporal punishment. The pious theologian laid into me with all his strength, and the cane drew red stripes—four, five, six of them—across my thighs and buttocks.

The pain was bearable, but not the humiliation, nor the seething hatred I felt for the little beast.

Only Thyssen or la Cour wielded the cane, but slaps across the face were dished out indiscriminately in the classrooms.

One of our teachers, who taught arithmetic and gymnastics, must have had a sadistic streak. His name was Møller. He had a disfiguring skin condition. His hair was a solid cake of grease and dandruff. His breath stank. His lessons were punctuated by a steady stream of slaps, and they were hard.

At Brede Factory School, my father occasionally administered corporal punishment, but very, very rarely. And I do not want what I have said about the use of the cane at Thyssen’s school to be misunderstood, either. It was not frequent, and certainly not what anyone could call abuse. Not in the least. By the standards of the time, the few strokes that were dealt out were well deserved.

Most of the boys, I imagine, were not particularly affected by it. Once the pain was over, the slaps were forgotten.

But that was not how I felt. The few times I was punished left me with an indelible hatred of Thyssen and his sanctimonious school. A hatred I can still recognise in myself as I sit here in my old age writing these lines. It was not that I bore a grudge against a teacher who, in a fit of temper, like Alsbo, slapped me a few times. No, it was the coldly calculated moral humiliation of the cane that I have never forgotten—and never forgiven.

I do not think I am particularly sensitive, but I have an allergy to punitive authority.

I hated and despised that wretched, sanctimonious school and its incompetent teachers so much that I defied my parents and refused to continue studying for my matriculation exam under Thyssen.

One consolation was that my role as the model boy, who was expected to know everything and be able to do everything, soon came to an end. I carried on in the same vein through the first year of middle school, as I had at Brede School, but after that I drifted into the more comfortable existence of the mediocre majority.

Danish original text

Når jeg kom i privatskole i 1914, var det simpelthen, fordi skolesystemet var sådan, at jeg måtte i privatskolen for at få mellemskoleeksamen, og den skulle jeg have for at blive student. Dersom der havde været en kommunal mellemskole i Lyngby, ville jeguden tvivl være sat i den. Men nu blev jeg med mine 11 år rykket op og omplantet til Thyssens skole i Lyngby, hvor kammeraterne var børn af læger, ingeniører, grosserere, fabrikanter, købmænd, sagførere, håndværksmestre og den slags. Og dette uheldige over- og mellemklassemilieu skulle jeg - med et års afbrydelse - forblive i, til jeg i 1922 blev student fra Vestre Borgerdydskole.

[…]

Om min skoletid i Lyngby har jeg ikke meget i min hukommelse, som jeg synes, det er umagen værd at fortælle.

Skolen ejedes af teologen Hans Thyssen - hvis han da var teolog og ikke bare havde været teologisk student, der var for dum til at tage sin præsteeksamen - og af den senere så kendte historiker Vilhelm la Cour, der vist lever endnu. Jeg har ikke hørt, at han skulle være død, og bortset fra min far, er han sikkert den eneste af min barndoms lærere, der er i live.

Vilhelm la Cour blev berømt under krigen, fordi det lykkedes ham at pådrage sig tyskernes unåde ved foredrag og skriverier.

Til spotpris fik han et lille martyrium i form af et par kortvarige fængselsstraffe.

Manden var bindegal. En fuldstændig forrykt chauvinist. Sådan i hvert fald, da jeg havde ham som historielærer i mellemskolen under første krig, og intet tyder på, at han har forandret sig.

Han var så fuld af vammel danskhed og muggen traditionstro skab, at det piblede ud af alle åbninger.

Hans undervisning var om Danmark og danskhed, om lyse, blonde og blåøjede højskolenordboer. Den var racisme og Danmark til Hamborg. Han var larmende og fuldstændig ulidelig. Jeg har aldrig kunnet døje den karl.

Var det gået efter hans skøre militaristiske hoved, havde et oprustet Danmark den 9. april taget kampen op mod de tyske panserarméer. For Danmarks »ære«s skyld ville han, at vi skulle have ført den håbløse kamp mod overmagten til sidste soldat.

Under besættelsen var jeg en overgang fange i Vestre fængsel, mens han også sad der. Det har været ved en af de lejligheder, hvor Horserødlejren blev ryddet, og vi ført til Vestre fængsel. Jeg husker ham spankulerende hen ad fængselsgalleriet. Uden et blik eller en hilsen til os, som han hadede mindst så meget som tyskerne.

Ved en eller anden lejlighed demonstrerede vi under en gårdtur og afsang blandt andet »Internationale« til forbitrelse for tyskerne og opmuntring for vore kammerater, der sad i cellerne i den tyske afdeling af fængslet. Nogle af dem afventede en dødsdom.

La Cour havde sit cellevindue åbent. Da »Internationale«s toner lød ind til ham, smækkede han demonstrativt sit vindue i med et brag. En fængselsbetjent har fortalt mig - om det passer, har jeg ikke kunnet kontrollere - at han klagede over os til den danske fængselsledelse.

Hans Thyssen var en anden menneskeart. En trangbrystet, bleg, vindøjet, nærig og skinhellig skolebestyrer med tyndt rødligt fipskæg. Han havde arvet eller overtaget skolen fra sin fader. Han ledede morgensangen i gymnastiksalen og bad bønnen, inden vi begav os til dagens dont.

Som jeg husker la Cours historietimer, mindes jeg Thyssens religionsundervisning.

Da vi kom i fjerde mellem, slimede han sig ind på seksualundervisningens farlige gebet, hvor vi 14-15 årige vel sagtens var mindst så forfarne, som han. - Han fortalte os, at gud havde lagt kønssygdommens pine på menneskene for at holde dem fra usædelighed. Gonorré - sandklodser eller dryppert kaldte vi den - og syfilis var guds dom. Pinsler uden måde, endende i vanvid, det var herrens straf for at bryde hans 6. bud.

  • Og fordi det er sådan, børn, kan videnskabsmænd og læger gruble og granske som de vil. Aldrig vil herren tillade, at der findes midler til at afværge gudsstraffen over det syndige menneske.

Vi fik også at vide, at onani ødelagde rygmarven, og at denne last endnu i levende live ville føre os i galehuset, og når vi var døde, til helvede.

Jeg husker, at vi sluttede timen med afsyngelsen af Grundtvigs salme

Han, som har hjulpet hidindtil, Han hjælper nok herefter. Han altid kun det bedste vil, Og han har almagts kræfter. Og han så grundigt alting ved, At selv til bunds i kærlighed. Ser klart hans forsyns øje.

To så forskellige mennesker som Thyssen og la Cour kunne ikke gå i spænd.

La Cour var stor i slavet. Det var just et træk ved hans galskab. Og han var hidsig. Kunne blive ganske ustyrlig.

Jeg kan huske nogle af hans anfald. Når de kom over ham, var der larm i skolen fra kælder til kvist. Pudset faldt fra væggene, og dørene bragede, når han hamrede dem i efter sig. Vinduesruderne klirrede. Mens det stod på, gemte Thyssen sig forskræmt i en eller anden tilflugtskrog.

Det endte med skilsmisse, og jeg fik en ny historielærer. En lille, rar og temmelig uvidende mand, der hed Alsbo.

Ham husker jeg mest på grund af de vestindiske øer.

Danmark var dengang et miniimperium, der ejede tre små øer, Sankt Croix, Sankt Jan og Sankt Thomas, der ligger i det Karaibiske hav. Der var et evigt vrøvl med dem, og det havde flere gange været på tale at sælge dem. Negerbefolkningen værdsatte ikke det danske styre, som formentlig heller ikke har været bedre end de store kolonilandes. Snarere værre.

Vi har nemlig udprægede anlæg for racisme. Det danske styres uduelige brutalitet og vor overklasses ubarmhjertige udbytning og udsultning af Island, Færøerne, Grønland samt de tropiske kolonier har visselig ingen kredit skabt os hos den danske krones undertrykte og nedværdigede folk. Hvor vi har kunnet - og i den retning formåede vi en hel del - har vi gjort os forhadt ved misregime og herrefolksmanerer.

Derfor er vort imperium smuldret. Island løsrev sig. Færøerne vil vel sagtens gøre det, og Grønland har vi reelt afstået til USA.

Den formelle suverænitet, vi har i behold, er misbrugt til ødelæggelse af den eskimoiske befolkning.

Under den første verdenskrig kunne vi ikke fastholde de tre vestindiske øer og solgte dem derfor til USA for 25 millioner dollars. Der var i den anledning en del nationalt rumleri, men det endte med, at handelen blev godkendt ved folkeafstemning i december 1917. Om man foruden den danske befolkning også spurgte de vestindiske negre, som sagen dog mest angik, erindrer jeg ikke.

Jeg husker derimod meget tydeligt morgenen efter folkeafstemningen i Danmark, der havde givet stort flertal for godkendelse af salget. Alsbo kom ind i klassen med våde øjne.

  • Børn, sagde han hulkende, Danmark er blevet mindre.

Det kunne jeg ikke tie stille til. Jeg har altid haft en løs mund:

  • Ja, men så har vi til gengæld fået slanter i kassen.

Det var for meget. Alsbo for hen til mig og stak mig i hidsighed seks øretæver. Tre på hver side af hovedet. Det var, som jeg nu og ved en bestemt senere lejlighed, erfarede, farligt at tirre en fædrelandsbevidst pædagog.

Om det var blevet ved de seks lussinger, ved jeg ikke, men afstraffelsen blev afbrudt, da der lød en rasende hundesnerren under det skolebord, hvor jeg modtog Asbos nationale belæring.

Vi havde en dejlig rød irsk sætter Den ledsagede engang i det første år jeg gik i Thyssens skole, min søster, da hun skulle bringe mig et eller andet, jeg havde glemt hjemme. En stil, min skolemad, eller hvad det nu kan have været.

Da hunden havde opdaget, hvor jeg var forsvundet hen - den skiltes nødigt fra mig - var det umuligt at holde den hjemme.

Slap den ud, stak den sporenstregs og i strakt firspring af sted til Thyssens skole. Den vidste i hvilket klasseværelse, jeg var. Tog aldrig fejl. Den kunne åbne døre med forpoterne, når den rejste sig på bagbenene.

Det var en ganske dagligdags foreteelse, at den kønne røde hund på et eller andet tidspunkt brasede ind i klassen og lagde sig under min plads, hvorfra den ikke lod sig fordrive, så længe jeg sad der.

Det affandt lærerne sig efterhånden med, og derfor kunne den også give sin mening til kende om salget af vore sidste tropebesiddelser.

Der blev tævet en del i den hellige Thyssens skole, og mens jeg vist ikke var ude for overlast hos overlærer Møller i Rudkøbing, hændte det nogle gange hos Thyssen.

Spanskrørsafstraffelsen virkede forskelligt på drengene. Det hørte til dekorum at lade uanfægtet overfor kammeraterne, og de fleste af drengene følte vel kun svien, men ikke krænkelsen. Det gjorde jeg. Ritualet var et fast. Afstraffelsen foregik på Thyssens kontor. Først holdt han en formaningstale.

Så: - Vend dig om. Buk dig.

Derefter faldt slagene. Jeg tror, der fandtes et afstraffelsesreglement. Den hellige teolog lagde kræfterne i, og spanskrøret tegnede røde striber - fire, fem, seks - over lår og sæde.

Smerten var til at udholde, men ikke ydmygelsen og ikke det kogende had til det lille bæst.

Prygl med spanskrør tildeltes kun af Thyssen eller la Cour, men i klasserne faldt øretæverne jævnt og trindt.

Vi havde navnlig en regne- og gymnastiklærer, der må have haft visse sadistiske tilbøjeligheder. Møller hed han. Han led af en skæmmende hudsygdom. Hans hår var én kage af fedt og skæl. Hans ånde stank. I hans timer faldt der til stadighed øretæver, og de var hårde.

I »Brede Fabriks Skole« forekom det, at min far foretog afstraffelser, men kun meget, meget sjældent, og hvad jeg fortæller om brugen af spanskrør i Thyssens skole, vil jeg heller ikke have misforstået. Det var ikke ofte, og slet ikke, hvad man kan kalde mishandlinger. På ingen måde. Det rap, der faldt, har efter tidens sæd været vel fortjent.

På de fleste af drengene gjorde det nok heller ikke noget dybere indtryk. Når smerten var forbi, var tævene glemt.

Sådan havde jeg det bare ikke. De par afstraffelser, der over gik mig, indplantede et uudryddeligt had hos mig til Thyssen og hans skinhellige skole. Et had, jeg sporer endnu, medens jeg i min alderdom skriver disse linier. Ikke, at det nagede mig, at en lærer i hidsighed - som Alsbo - stak et par lussinger, men spanskrørs pryglenes koldt overlagte moralske krænkelse, den er aldrig glemt - og aldrig tilgivet.

Jeg tror ikke, jeg er særlig følsom, men overfor straffende magt udøvelse er jeg allergisk.

Jeg hadede og afskyede den hellige og elendige skole og dens uduelige lærere i en sådan grad, at jeg satte mig op mod mine forældre og nægtede at fortsætte til studentereksamen hos Thyssen.

Noget forsonende var det, at min rolle som den mønsterdreng, der skulle vide alt og kunne alt, hurtigt blev udspillet. Endnu i første mellem blev jeg i vanen fra Brede skole, men faldt derefter hen i den brede middelmådigheds bekvemmere tilværelse.

  1. Vilhelm la Cour (1883-1974), reactionary nationalist historian. In 1940 he joined the far-right “Dansk Samling” party and also became part of a group of industrialists scheming for a coup in which the king were to replace the elected government with a “technocratic” administration which would allegedly be better at collaborating with the German occupiers. The coup failed when the king refused to take part. In 1942 he received a sentence of 80 days in prison for writing anti-German texts, increased to 7 months the year after and was dismissed from his job as a high school teacher. After leaving prison he fled to neutral Sweden. La Cour’s safe, anti-communist resistance made him popular in reactionary circles. ↩︎

  2. April 9th 1940, the date of “Operation Weserübung”, the German military operation to occupy Norway and Denmark. ↩︎

  3. Carl Madsen was arrested and imprisoned in the Horserød concentration camp during the Danish collaborationist government’s purge of Danish communists on June 23rd 1941. ↩︎

  4. They were not. ↩︎