MARCUS THRANE IN CHRISTIANIA: UNPUBLISHED LETTERS FROM 1850-51

Abstract

MARCUS THRANE IN CHRISTIANIA: UNPUBLISHED LETTERS FROM 1850-51 TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY WALDEMAR WESTERGAARD Marcus Thrane (1817-90) was the leading figure in the labor movement in Norway that started under the impetus of the European revolution of 1848. Besides having been an avid reader from youth, he had acquired some first-hand knowledge of Continental Europe from a tramping trip through Germany, Switzerland, and France, to which his natural curiosity had led him when he was twenty years old. Three years after his return, he took his student's examination in Christiania; in the year following, he was married ; and then he gave up his theological studies to try schoolteaching for some five years at Lillehammer. To what extent Thrane was directly influenced by Wilhelm W. Weitling's Guarantien der Harmonien und Freiheit (Guarantees for Harmony and Freedom - Vevey, Switzerland , 1842), of which a Norwegian translation had appeared in 1847, is not certain; but clearly some of his followers in the "Thranite movement" were. He was editor for a few months of the little known Drammens adresse , but lost his position when the owners found that he had speedily turned it into the country's most radical newspaper. His next step, in December of 1848, was to initiate Norway's first labor organization , with the announced purpose of "working little by little for the improvement of the laborers' living standards and making them less dependent on the rich." The movement thus begun by Thrane grew by leaps and bounds. Thrane wrote better than he spoke, but he traveled ceaselessly from town to town and about the countryside, secured assistance from others - some of whom proved later to be irresponsible agitators - and eventually saw organized, by June of 1850, 273 labor societies with a total membership of 20,850. 143 144 WALDEMAR WESTERGAARD As labor's recognized leader, Thrane proceeded to set up a central board in Christiania to handle the combined organizations . He had already started a labor paper in May, 1849, Arbeider-foreningens blad , which championed the laborer's right to work and emphasized the need for more commonschool education. As a result of his lively interest in better schooling, free instruction was provided in a Christiania Sunday school in which teachers like Henrik Ibsen and A. O. Vinje took part. Thrane looked on the Union King Oscar I as a social-minded ruler who stood above all political parties. So it was with the hope of arousing the royal interest in labor's cause that he prepared a petition to the king, which was accompanied by nearly 13,000 signatures. This was delivered to the stadholder (king's representative in Christiania ) on May 19, 1850. It requested "administrative support in doing away with the obstacles that lie athwart the path of material and intellectual progress of the working class," and "asked only for justice by lawful means." The main objectives listed in the petition were abolition of the protective tariff and introduction of free trade, a new law regarding the cotters' place in society, restriction of the liquor trade, better folk schools, the universal right to vote, people's law courts, and universal military service. To give publicity to this - by modern standards - far from revolutionary program, Thrane and his group held a workers' convention early in August of 1850, with 103 members participating, of whom but few were actual laborers. Despite the peaceful nature of the meeting, its emphasis on the improvement of the cotters' social status aroused deep distrust in administrative circles. Thrane was soon charged with encouraging a bloody revolt, but when evidence failed to support any such accusation, he, and others with him, were charged with blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. It is true that, in a few areas, some irresponsible labor agitators had provoked riots against the authorities, despite Thrane's efforts to bring them under control and within the law. When mat- THRANE IN CHRISTIANIA 145 ters got out of hand, Thrane decided to resign his newspaper editorship as a gesture toward peace. From the beginning of 1851 his student assistant, Theodor F. S. Abildgaard, took charge of the paper. The blasphemy charges nevertheless continued, not only against Thrane, but...