The Workers’ Museum in Copenhagen

Abstract

THE WORKERS’ MUSEUM IN COPENHAGEN DAVID E. NYE Copenhagen’s Arbejdermuseet, or Workers’ Museum, was estab­ lished in 1982 and first opened to the public in 1984. Full development is anticipated by the middle of the 1990s. The site—Denmark’s oldest union hall—could not be more appropriate. In the 1870s, when Dan­ ish industrialization first concentrated a sizable number of workers in Copenhagen, they had nowhere to hold meetings and organize in the face of police harassment. To solve this problem they constructed the Workers’ Hall, inaugurated in 1879 and since then in continuous use as a site for trade union meetings. Most notably, the International Socialist Congress held deliberations there in 1910, with Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Jean Jaurès, and many other famous labor leaders of the period in attendance. Today, Danish labor unions continue to meet in the handsome hall, now repainted, gilded, and polished to its appearance circa 1915. Unfortunately, because it is still occasionally in use, the visitor cannot be sure of seeing the meeting room, with its beautiful wood carvings, wrought-iron ornamental balcony supports, and chandeliers. The building remains a political symbol for labor in a nation where the Socialists have long been the largest party. Though the museum’s location and sponsorship suggest possible contextual and political difficulties, the staff seems to have avoided them. The museum is entirely concerned with industrial work after the formation of the Danish labor unions, though it does not concentrate on the history of the unions per se. The three major exhibits focus less on the traditional labor history themes of strikes, leaders, union­ ization, and political events than on the social history of the working class. In the foreground is the everyday life of Danish workers during the 1870s, the 1930s, and the 1950s, which visitors see in reverse chronological order. These three periods correspond to the begin­ nings of Danish industrialization, the hardships of depression, and Dr. Nye is associate professor of American studies at Copenhagen University’s En­ glish Institute. His most recent book is Image Worlds: Corporate Identities at General Electric. Currently he is writing a social history of the electrification of the United States.© 1988 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/88/2904-0007$01.00 909 910 David E. Nye the long postwar recovery. The decision to give the greatest emphasis to the 1950s appearsjustified by the fact that only then did industrial production become dominant in the Danish economy. All the exhibits emphasize both women and men as workers and as parts of families. They take the form of typical homes and work­ places, re-created as fully as possible, including ensembles of objects, views out of the windows, and sound effects. Some information is included in these re-creations, but most of the text appears in ad­ joining rooms that use both video and traditional display cases and posters to describe the economic and social conditions of each period. The topics emphasized include changes in work, unemployment, fam­ ily size, birth control, housing forms, furnishings, outhouses and toi­ lets, kitchen technologies, and entertainment. Overall, the exhibits evidence a sophisticated use of the existing space and an excellent integration of display techniques. One problem for the foreign visitor, however, may be that these three periods of hardship and class strug­ gle create a consistent impression of poverty that does not square with the prosperity of Denmark, which the United Nations consistently rates above the United States as one of the two or three nations with the highest quality of life in the world. The lack of much reference to periods of prosperity such as the 1920s and 1960s reflects the museum’s primary orientation to the Danish audience, which is well aware of the country’s free educational system, extensive social ser­ vices, and high standard of living but may need to be reminded of quite different material circumstances less than a lifetime ago. Immediately on entering, the visitor steps into a Copenhagen street from the early 1950s. Although the tramcar workers are on strike, this is indicated only by a few small posters, and the emphasis falls on a careful...