The Danish Historical Television Drama 1864

by Norman Berdichevsky (September 2015)

I looked forward with much anticipation to the largest ever and most expensive (170 million kroner, or $30 million) televised dramatic series entitled “1864” dealing with the Second Dano-German War. It premiered on Danish state television in October 2014 and has since been shown in English translation by the BBC. What a disappointment! Within the eight hours shown on three dvd disks, a foreigner with little knowledge of the background to the historical events portrayed, will emerge with a distorted view, if any at all, regarding what the war was about and how the half a dozen subplots make the events any clearer.

The characters in 1864 are all of the soap opera variety with loads of gratuitous violence (beyond the battle scenes), rape, masturbation, illicit sex that include bestiality (practiced by the arch Danish villain in the story – Didrich, who nevertheless rises to the rank of captain in spite of being a notorious coward and deserter), and one dimensional misrepresentations of real historical characters. These include Hans Christian Andersen and Bishop Ditlev Monrad of the National Liberty Party, the equivalent of Prime Minister in the Danish government that made the most important decisions about policy over Schleswig.

The many side show plots involve two brothers, Peter and Laust, who are children of a tenant farmer where Didrich’s father is the Baron. Both fall in love with Inge. The estate is visited by a band of travelling gypsies who have a beautiful daughter Sophia. Both Inge and Sophia are raped by Didrich and her family swears revenge. All these characters are woven in and out of the story along with their modern day descendant, Claudia, a teenage drop-out, who lives next to where the last decisive battle of the 1864 war took place and works for a descendant of the Baron. They are simply mouthpieces for producer Borndal’s political views.

Even more disturbing is the descent of the subplots from soap opera to fairy tale. A mature man, Johan Larsen appears early in the third episode as a veteran of the 1848-51 war who fought alongside Didrich in the successful Danish suppression of a revolt of the German minded population in Schleswig-Holstein. A few officers recognize him as a model soldier who possesses unusual “capabilities.” He knows Didrich’s intimate secrets and later casts his protective aura over the brothers, Inge and Sophia as well as many simple Danish soldiers and demonstrates amazing magical faculties – divining future events, hypnotizing enemy soldiers, performing surgery with his bare hands, restoring Sophia’s ability to speak and confronting everyone with the unpleasant truth of the hopeless war. Is Johan some kind of metaphor for the Danish spirit or producer Borndal’s alter-ego?

In 1864, there is a flowing tendentious narrative informing the audience of what it is viewing that portrays the Danes, like the Jews, as a self-appointed “chosen people” and absolves Prussia and Bismarck for the scheming and launching the war in an alliance with Austria. The very first words Inge speaks are that all the people she cared for were the victims of the (Danish) politicians “euphoric folly.” The repetitive narration continuing through all eight episodes are actually entries in Inge’s diary.

The move by Austria and Prussia invading the border region of Schleswig without even a declaration of war relied on an antiquated, obsolete treaty that was centuries behind the development of national feeling on both the German and Danish sides, none of which is handled in any way meaningful for the audience, yet producer Ole Bornedal places the onus for the war almost entirely on Danish nationalistic “euphoria.”

Moreover, one of the soap opera sub-plots set in modern times uses the disastrous war of 1864 as a cover for the producer’s political views attacking Danish military participation in Afghanistan. The most abominable imaginable character who manages to transgress all of the ten commandments before the series is half over is the Dane – Didrich, the very incarnation of evil, who survives by every dirty trick as if to emphasize the central message that war is the very essence of injustice.

The border conflict over the entire southern portion of the Jutland peninsula (called Sønderjylland in Danish, meaning “South Jutland”), comprising both North and South Schleswig is of particular interest in modern history because it demonstrates that national and ethnic identitiy are not necessarily the same thing and not all national conflicts are destined to endure as the result of unchangeable inherited ethnic traits. This contrasts with the popular view that the population of a border region unequivocally “belongs” to either one nationality or another if given the opportunity to express their opinion.

Nationality is often perceived as an inherited set of discrete characteristics including a distinctive language, religion, race or view of history that regards the disputed territory as one’s own sacred heritage. The history of Schleswig offers considerable insight into the process of how Danish ethnic origin was not sufficient to prevent the Germanization of a substantial part of the population over several centuries. Ethnically and historically conscious Danes in much of the region first adopted German as the principal language of education, administration, the chuch and polite society while still retaining many other identifiable Nordic-Danish aspects of behavior, culture and tradition. The linguistic shift was not entirely synonymous with national feeling and loyalty.

The two duchies of Schleswig and Holstein had been joined together “forever” in the person of Danish King Christian I in the Middle Ages. His heirs were simultaneously King of Demark and Duke of Schleswig-Holstein. This polite fiction was shattered in 1863 when the rising tide of German nationalism used the excuse that the legal succession to the duchies had come to an end with the termination of the House of Oldenburg in Denmark because there was no male to continue the line.

Prussian intervention was, however, the first major step on the road to forge a united German nation-state by fostering nationalist sentiment in Schleswig (ethnically and linguistically mixed) and Holstein (wholly German in character and not a cause of contention).

The dispute was portrayed by Bismarck as a legal matter rather than a German nationalist cause, a charade to mask his designs to unify a large German state under Prussian domination. The province of Schleswig in 1864 had a substantial Danish minded population who were unable to fully express their identity in the Duchy. Their language in the churches, schools, courts, and representative assembly was suppressed by a wealthier upper class of German speaking functionaries. It was only natural that many of the people in Northern Schleswig aspired to be accepted as Danes in the Kingdom of Denmark as equal citizens, not as foreigners, yet the television series never makes this point clear.

One embittered Danish soldier on the verge of a mental breakdown during the critical final battle exclaims that he wished he had never heard of Schleswig, and was far away from it, as if the place, were as foreign to him as Afghanistan. Who among the ordinary people of Schleswig with deep bonds of affection for Denmark would have objected to a partition? Would this have satisfied Bismarck? These are questions that are never posed. The terrible tragedy of the war was compounded by the subjugation of the Danish minded Schlesvigers who were under German rule from 1864 to 1920 and as part of their obligations as German citizens had to fight in the wars of 1866 against Austria, 1870 against France and in World War I on all fronts. In this last conflict, more than 5,000 were killed, at least twice the number of fatalities as Danes killed by the Prussian forces in 1864.

The 1848 revolutions elsewhere in Europe provoked serious calls for reform but Denmark had the great misfortune to have been ruled by an out-of-touch monarch, King Frederick VI. He had ruled Denmark for 55 years (first as prince regent, and then as king) until his death in 1839. Resentment towards the throne and association with Denmark prevailed in thoroughly German speaking Holstein, in the university city of Kiel, and among the Frisian population in South Schleswig along the west coast who had never experienced the type of feudalism that prevailed in most of Denmark and Germany.

The cause of the duchies evoked considerable sentiment in Prussia as the focus of a greater German fatherland while in North Schleswig, local Danish speakers began to fear that a drift towards involvement in a German confederation would be detrimental to their culture and life style and promote the already privileged position of the German-speaking aristocrats, merchants and bureaucrats.

It also played on latent feelings of Danish inferiority. Two wars (1848-50 and 1864), resulted in an initial Danish victory due to a favorable constellation of European power interests on the part of the foreign ministries of czarist Russia and Great Britain, only to be followed by a massive defeat at the hands of a joint Prussian-Austrian assault in alliance with the rebellious duchies.

The 1864 Second Dano-German War

Denmark had in the past relied on the Dannevirke, a line of earthwork ramparts that had initially been erected in the tenth century and reinforced periodically, enabling Denmark to prevent an invasion of the Jutland peninsula from the south since the days of Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire. Danish resistance was crushed in a final assault preceded by a massive artillery bombardment at Dybbøl mill near Sønderborg on the island of Als following retreat from Dannevirke. Thirty-seven thousand Prussian and Austrian troops opposed an outnumbered Danish force of eleven thousand equipped with inferior, front loading out-of-date muskets and atillery.

The 1864 war had immeasurable consequences for the balance of power in Europe. It led directly to the unification of a great German empire and a powerful naval rival of Great Britain in the Baltic, North Sea and North Atlantic. It was perfect timing for Bismarck. Such a development was inimical to the long-term interests of not only Great Britain but also of Russia, France and the United States, none of which were able or willing to lift a finger to stop German aggression.

 

Note to the reader: Dr. Berdichevsky is the author of two books about Denmark and the Dano-German Wars. They are

1. An Introduction to Danish Culture Paperback: 239 pages, Publisher: McFarland (September 21, 2011). Language: English ISBN-10: 0786464011, ISBN-13: 978-0786464012

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Norman Berdichevsky is the author of The Left is Seldom Right and Modern Hebrew: The Past and Future of a Revitalized Language.

 

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