Open AccessHal Kochs "Jeg anklager Rigsdagen". En efterkrigstidsdebat i perspektiv
Author(s) -
Martin Christensen Ejsing
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
passage
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1904-7797
pISSN - 0901-8883
DOI - 10.7146/pas.v26i65.6391
Subject(s) - politics , parliament , german , danish , newspaper , period (music) , world war ii , economic justice , sociology , religious studies , first world war , law , political science , humanities , history , philosophy , aesthetics , linguistics , archaeology
Martin Ejsing Christensen: “Hal Koch’s Jeg anklager Rigsdagen: A Post Second World War Debate in Perspective”In his 1947 book Jeg anklager Rigsdagen [I accuse the parliament], the Danish theologian and public commentator Hal Koch vehemently condemned the treatment of the so-called collaborators in the aftermath of the German occupation of Denmark. Today Hal Koch’s moral condemnation and its presupposed historical analysis have been lauded by several historians as the moral and historical truth about the “Retsopgør”,the transitional justice of the postwar period. This article examines this received view by placing Hal Koch’s book in its contemporary setting through an analysis of newspaper reviews of the book. Combined with the existing knowledge about the political conditions in Denmark immediately after the Second World War, this leads to the conclusion that Hal Koch’s and today’s moral condemnation of the “Retsopgør” fails to take into account some of the political circumstances obtaining at the time. As a consequence, this moral condemnation may be seen as a symptom of a more general moralizing attitude today towards the Second World War in Danish history.