Ladies and gentlemen,
In the second part of the nineteenth century, the Norwegian author Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson was the most prominent personality in Norwegian public life. His plays were performed in many countries, his novels were read, above all in Scandinavia and Germany, but also in Italy, France and the nations of central Europe. When Bjørnson received The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1903, he was celebrated as a modern pop star wherever he turned up in the Nordic countries.
Bjørnson intuitively understood the vast importance of the modern press which now increased its audience everywhere. Bjørnson was probably the most remarkable personality that ever lived in Norway. He wrote some ten thousand letters to friends, family, politicians and colleagues. When he died, he was brought to his grave like a beloved monarch, more than fifty thousand people filled the streets of Christiania.
He wrote novels, plays, poems, but in our present context, we think of him first and foremost as the great architect of Norwegian independence, the peace advocate and the most prominent advocate for the rights of the small nations.
Let us have a brief look at these events.In 1814, the union between Norway and Denmark was split by the Kiel Treaty , and the victorius powers of the Napolean war, France, Russia and England, handed the country over to general Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, at that time king of Sweden. He received Norway as a token of gratitude for his support in their efforts to topple Napoleon. The Danish prince Christian Fredrik, later king Fredrik the 8th, tried to claim the Norwegian throne on behalf of his right to inherit. But he ended up by calling together a constitutional assembly in the town of Eidsvoll, where peasant and bourgeois representatives from the entire country on May 17th 1814 signed the new Norwegian constitution.
The Eidsvoll constitution guaranteed the freedom of speech, the freedom of the written word, religious freedom, confirmed the rights of the peasant population, and the country’s right to be an independent nation. The freedom of speech and press was granted, among other important civil rights, but the right to vote was only guaranteed for those who had property, and of course not for women. The Prince hoped that they great powers would accept and respect the new-born nation of Norway. But after a short and rather halfhearted war, the prince returned to Denmark, and Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, named Karl Johan, became also King of Norway. He reigned and ruled as a strict, but merciful father in Norway as well as in Sweden. In The Karl Johan period, the Norwegian parliament, which was established 1814, only met each third year, and then only for a few weeks. The government was frequently led by Swedish officials. The flag of the Norwegian ships was the Danish flag, and later the Swedish. Most of the people of Norway had no idea they belonged to an independent nation. Their democratic rights were formal, not real. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson was born in this Karl Johan period, December 8th 1832, at a remote parsonage in Kvikne, Østerdalen, more than 400 kilometers from the capital of Oslo. When he was five, his mother and father moved to a parsonage in the western fjords, and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson grew up among peasants. He learned to speak their dialect even when he, as a son of an official, spoke the Danish language at home and soon was sent off to the gymnasium in the nearest town of Molde, where he was deepley impressed by the impulses from the July Revolution of France in 1848. Bjørnson went to Christiania as a student, and became a participant in the political discussions in the Students’ Society and in the papers of the city. He was a sympathizer when the first Norwegian working class movement was established by Marcus Thrane and later crushed by the police. In 1856, he went to the western city of Bergen, where he became the manager of the newly established National Scene, the first professional theatre of Norway where the actors were encouraged to speak Norwegian, not Danish at stage.
Bjørnson was probably the first person who really understood two important matters: 1) That real democracy could not be obtained without dissolution of the union, and 2) that a dissolution of the union, against the will of the leading nations of Europe, would only be possible if the entire nation, all political parties and social classes in Norway, were able to unite their forces, to establish an alliance, so vast and strong that the opponents and enemies would regard it as inevitable and irresistible. Bjørnson’s great contribution was his ability to create such an alliance and to give the Norwegian people a self-understanding which made it possible to abolish the union with Sweden.
Bjørnson may be compared with a brilliant card player, who by playing the right card at the right moment, ends up winning the whole game. He now played the peasant card: He started his literary career in 1857 with the novel Synnøve Solbakken, which was the first of a series of peasant stories. It became a literary sensation and was an important step towards giving the peasant population of Norway the self-esteem and self-confidence they needed to become a real political force and to make their political rights more than a formal phenomenon.
As a director of the theatre in Bergen in the late 1850s, Bjørnson took part in the election campaigns for the Parliament there, and he succeeded in removing the old members of the local parliament group, and opening the parliament for younger and more radical men who established real political debates. He played the card of real political discussions, as he understood that parliamentarianism as a political tool could not be effective without political parties, which could replace the old coteries and cliques of parliament members. Subsequently, Bjørnson went to Denmark and later to Italy, where he wrote several plays for the theatre, introducing heroes and events from the old Norwegian history and making them allies of the new and fragile independent movement, or as one might call it; the democratic movement, as the aim, to abolish the union was not yet declared. He played the historical card.
He played the fourth card in the 1870s, when he was involved in the struggle around the Norwegian flag and put the struggle for the clean flag on the political agenda. He played the flag card. He was an important participant of the press discussions, which also included the demand for a democratic jurisdiction, based on the principle of a panel of judges chosen among the common people, and in the end, and after all this, civil rights for women who at least formally made them equal to men.
In the early 1880s, there were several serious confrontations between the Norwegian Parliament and the Bernadotte dynasty, as the King refused to countersign the laws adopted by the Parliament, Bjørnstjerne Bjørson spoke at a series of popular meetings, as that of the holy national site of Stiklestad in 1882, the place were the Norwegian King Saint Olaf was killed in 1030. Bjørnson would repeat the same slogan again and again: The pride of independence, (Selvstendighedens Æresfølelse), and he accused the Swedish king of treating his subjects of Norway as tenants, or servants. When a man in the crowd asked if the Norwegians would be willing to destroy the union if this humiliation would not cease, Bjørnson let the crowd answer, and thousands of men and women shouted in support: Yes! Yes! Yes!
Bjørnson played two political main cards at the same time, the card of Saint Olaf and the card of the shouting crowd. In the spring of 1884, the King was forced to accept a government which had the support of the Parliament majority, led by Johan Sverdrup. This was the real breakthrough for parliamentarism in Norway.
In the meantime the development of the industrial forces of Norway was explosive, a national industry was established, especially in Kristiania, which from the beginning of the 19th century reached a population of more than 100000 inhabitants. The working class grew, along with the urban bourgoiesie, who now became more more more critical to the Swedish overrule, especially in foreign policy matters. This became a crucial point because the Norwegian trade fleet had become a leading force on sea. In 1892, the Norwegian parliament decided to establish an independent Norwegian consulate service.King Oscar the 2nd refused to accept the decision, and the Norwegian government resigned. A demonstration in support of the resigned prime minister was organized in Christiania, and Bjørnson spoke to the greatest crowd that had ever gathered in the capital.
The struggle was delayed for many years. King Oscar II considered military action, and this was only avoided as the Parliament agreed to yield. Bjørnson said farewell to Norwegian politics and left the country. But to everybody’s astonishment, he soon changed his mind, realizing that the Leftist party now divided the Norwegian people into two fractions by proceeding too fast. He now became a spokesman for a more pragmatic attitude and told the people to learn from defeat and meet difficulties with dignity.
He now played the last card, in his mastersession of politics. The great explorers of Norway did that travels into the arctic areas, and Bjørnson was the speaker when Nansen got back from his three year travel through the North West passage. Fifty thousand people listened to him at Kristiania harbour. This discovery travels were important to create the self esteem and self respect or the Norwegian people that he always had worked for. He played the card of the great discoverers.
For many years Bjørnson had spoken of the danger of the military rearmament that could threaten the European peace. Bjørnson’s most important engagement, which led him to understand the challenge and situation of the small countries of Europe, was his presence in the organization Gesellschaft der Frieden.
There is a method (to prevent war): and I believe the time has come to use it. The only way is that all the small states of Europe, with a sincere wish for peace, to unite.
Bjørnson wanted international treaties and decisions by arbitration to solve conflicts between nations. His intention was to promote arbitration as a method in bilateral conflicts. Bjørnson was increasingly disappointed, realizing that the European peace movement more and more was becoming an arena for congress peace makers, and peace tourism, that is, people who went from one peace congress to another, talking and discussing without achieving results, and at the same time kept on suppressing people and minorities in their own countries.In the meantime in Norway, he was proposing a coalition government and negotiations with Sweden to solve the deep disagreements between the two peoples. Many years had passed without any progress, and he hoped that the Consulate question could be solved at last.
Then, in 1903, Bjørnson was awarded the Nobel Prize, went to Stockholm, visited the Swedish King Oscar II and was celebrated by the high society of Stockholm. The Norwegians made many harsh remarks about this man, who now seemed to have forgotten what he always had fought for. The comments and mentions got more and more ill-natured. Bjørnson was deeply hurt.
Never before Norwegian hearts had been as cold as they now were towards Bjørnson. The press concluded that Bjørnson no longer had a prominent position in the Norwegian struggle for full independence, but rather was a man of the rear party.
In 1905, a Norwegian ship owner from Bergen, Christian Michelsen, became prime minister. He was not an impressive personality, he had no noble principles, but he knew how to act and to take calculated risks, and most of all: He had the ability to surprise and outwit his opponents. In June 1905, he made the famous statement in the Norwegian Parliament, which, in a subjugated sentence, ended the Norwegian-Swedish union.
In the decisive moments of 1905, when the Norwegian-Swedish union was dissolved at last, Bjørnson was standing on the sideline and had no share in the dissolution itself.
Bjørnson’s name was now well known all over Europe, and for the last time he now entered the political stage. The initiative was taken by three southern bohemians, among them the lawyer Eduard Lederer. He told Bjørnson how the Hungarian state of freedom was ruled by lies, and that ten million non-Magyars, among them the Slovaks, would be victims of the Magyar imperialism. The Magyars had reached a special position in the Austrian-Hungarian double monarchy; they were permitted to rule over all the non-Magyaran minorities in their part of the kingdom, and the king of Hungary, Emperor Franz Joseph, approved the so-called Lex Apponyi, which should Magyarize the primary schools in the Hungarian part of the kingdom.
Bjørnson already knew Count Apponyi, as a pacifist and a speaker for the peace movement, and at the international conference on peace issues in Kristiania 1899, Bjørnson had listened to his brilliant speeches and afterwards shook his hand.
But now Bjørnson had become tired of the “congress tourism” of the peace movement.A Hungarian cannot be a friend of peace, if he not first of all confesses his anger against the unjustice which daily overcomes the non-magyars of Hugary through the unjust election rules.
In September 1907 Bjørnson was invited at the peace conference in Munich. He answered that he regarded it an honour to be invited to such an assembly of celebrities. But he will not hide that I soon will attack, as strongly as I can, those members of the international peace associations, who stand up for peace, but mistreat and suppress people at home, or, without making objections, oberve those mistreatments. If for example Count Apponyi, the minister of education in Hungary, should take place as a representative of his people in an international peace assembly, arriving directly from these disgusting mistreatments, I would do all I could, so he should be forced to leave the assembly!
Bjørnson was upset by the nonchalant reaction from count Apponyi. He answered that Lex Apponyi was an encroachment. To detach children from their mother tongue, is identical to tearing them away from their mother’s breast.
In October 1907, the conflict escalated. The site was the Slovakian village Cernova near Ruzomberok, and the cause of the conflict was the inauguration of a catholic church. Andrej Hlinka was the leader for the Slovakian movement and priest of Cernova. He could not be indifferent to the cultural and political suppression of the Slovaks. The bishop of Parvy suspended Hlinka from his ministerial duties, and was also active when Hlinka was arrested in 1906. Hlinka’s conflict with the Hungarian authorities culminated in 1907, when the citizens of Cernova pledged that Hlinka should be present at the inauguration of the new church, which was built after on money from church collection, in which Hlinka played a major role. The Hungarians understood that this was a protest against the suppression of the Slovak identity, and a provocation against the stabily of the state.
Judge Zoltan Pereszlenyi, known as the terror of the Slovaks, went with gendarmes to the church of Cernova. 20 people were killed.
Before these events, the Hungarian press tried to treat Bjørnson as a distinguished old author who was misled by bad information and did not know the truth of the situation. This time, their anger was unmistakeable, and was voiced in numerous articles commenting on Bjørnson’s activities.
I suppose you all know a lot about these events.
Bjørnson wrote about Cernova under the title The greatest industry of Hungary. Magyrian priests, magyrian police and magyrian bullets inaugurates the Slovakian church led by their patron saint count Apponyi. The Hungarian teachers enforce the Magyrian language by book and whip, by law and guns, because the magyrians are a minority. They have to produce Magyars. This is the greatest industry of Hungary.
Bjørnson’s article was published in four Slovakian papers, among them Narodnie Noviny and Slovensky Tyzdenik. Then the counterattacks came: Anonymously in Neue Freie Presse. But this attcks did not stop Bjørnson, so his opponents were forced to gag him. They managed to stop his articles in Neue Presse, and brought charge against Narodnie Noviny, Narodny Hlasnik and Zvolenske Noviny, for having translated and published Bjørnson’s article The largest industry of Hungary. The editor Vladimir Hurban was declared guilty and sentenced to two months in prison.
Bjørnson understood that no improvement of the Hungarian politics towards the national minorities could be expected before the Austrian politics was changed. His article therefore concentrated on the Austrian politics, and the Austrian concept of the State:That the State is a uniforming institution, which will suppress everything and everyone under one principle, either germanizing or magyarizing. It is this outdated concept, which violates the human rights, that constitutes the enemy. It is as if Europe never went through the Enlightenment era, never experienced the French Revolution, as if the free states of Northern America never existed, as if the confederation of the Swiss people, never took place.
Against this uniforming concept of the State, Bjørnson puts the modern concept, that the state is an association of equal nations, and that this association rests upon self-accepted laws for the protection of the indenpendence and the same working conditions for all subjects.
So what is the solution Bjørnson will recommend, what kind of state is he asking for, is it the confederation or a new state, a Slavonian state? Bjørnson now went back to the attack, commenting in The Wiener Tageblatt the threats to close the Neue Presse: For a long time, it has been the custom, when it comes to the current events in Hungary, that no other opinion than the Magyar should be heard in Europe. This tyranny is now broken, so now the urgent matter is that no other voice may be heard in Hungary.
The Neue Presse did not dare to publish Bjørnson any more. Bjørnson sent his article to another large newspaper in Vienna, die Zeit. At the same time, the article was published in Le Courrier Europeen, in März, Munich, Lo Spettatore, Italy, Politiken, Denmark. So far, Bjørnson had only defended the Slovaks, but now his defense also may include all the other nationalities, among them the Rumenians: The leaders of the great-Magyar clique ruling in Hungary, have in public announcements put forth their aim, to crack the spiritual leadership of these people, so they may give in. Therefore gymnasiums and museums are closed, therefore the higher education may only be given in Magyar language, therefore all history must be devoted to the glorification of the Magyars. Everyone who speaks with talent and courage and defends the language and the rights of his people, is prosecuted. As deputees, as writers, as priests and teachers and editors, they are molested by all means that the rulers have to their disposition, and those means are numerous in Hungary!
And he continues:
I was born into a free and independent people, and neither in Norway nor any other Nordic country do we know about election fraud. To falsify the election of a people in our eyes is similar to poisoning the drinking water. The Magyars want to do the same thing to the Slovaks as the Swedes did to us. I formed the word great-Magyars after the expression the Great-Swedes. But as the Swedes did not triumph, the Great-Magyars will not triumph either. I know that struggle, it had its part in the process by which a free Norway came into being.
In this way the old advocate Bjørnson ties together the Norwegian independence struggle, in which he took part for almost fifty years, and the struggle for the Slovakian national rights and the struggle for independence.
When the nations have achieved their rights, Bjørnson will be looking forward to the day when the great confederation of nations may come into being, the association of nation which may end all wars.
Let us leave him here. Bjørnson would live one or two more years, and he kept on making statements about small and great affairs, he met with journalists, Czechs as well as Magyars, and the conciliation between the Slovaks and the Germans was one of his favourite subjects.
We look back and ask: What was his major contribution to the questions he was involved in? I would say: In Norway, he contributed to transforming the formal national rights obtained by the 1814 constitution to real democratic rights, and that he thereby discovered the complicated and dynamic relation between the national struggle for independence and the unicersal struggle for human rights.
He engaged in the peace movement, and he was the most devoted supporter of an international tribunal and treaties that could secure the European peace by arbitration. But he soon discovered that a hiherto unknown peace tourism developed. Bjørnson’s opinion was that the idea of the multinational state is a monster when it forces the minorities to join the majority language and culture.
The nations must have their freedom, and then they will voluntarily seek together in confederations to secure the welfare and the peace.
One might ask: What would be Bjørnson’s opinion about the efforts to create a Federal Europe or a Europe with a common constitution or at least a common constitutional treaty?
My guess is that he would have said yes to a European Confederation, a Europe of nations, but so far I think he would have voted no to the European constitutional act of 2004 and a federal Europe.
Bjørnson’s main vision was not nationalism, but human rights, democracy and peace. The independence of the nations and justice for the minorities was a first step in the constitution of a confederation of all nations of Europe.
Edvard Hoem