Aage Friis (16 August 1870 – 5 October 1949) was a Danish historian and professor at the University of Copenhagen.

Biography

Aage Friis was born in

Korsør Korsør is a town on Zealand, Denmark. It is located in Slagelse Municipality. Until 2007 Korsør was the seat of Korsør Municipality. The town is located west of Slagelse, north-west of Skælskør and connects to Nyborg through the Great B ...

Slagelse Slagelse () is a town on Zealand, Denmark. The town is the seat of Slagelse Municipality, and is the biggest town of the municipality. It is located 15 km east of Korsør, 16 km north-east of Skælskør, 33 km south-east of Kalundborg and 14 k ...

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establishe ...

. He was the son of Johan Frederik Friis (1833-1910) and Juliane Marie Landkilde (1832-1911). His father was a parish priest who also taught his children together with other children from the village. In 1884, he was enrolled in Viborg Katedralskole. At Copenhagen, Friis completed his studies in 1896 with a master's degree in history. He was a member of the university library at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...

from 1891 to 1900, during which he graduated with a doctorate in 1899 with a dissertation on

Andreas Peter Bernstorff Andreas Peter Bernstorff (28 August 173521 June 1797), also known as Andreas Peter Graf von Bernstorff, was a Denmark, Danish diplomat and minister (government), Foreign Minister. He was a guardian of civil and political liberty. Background and ...

and

Ove Høegh-Guldberg Ove Høegh-Guldberg (born ''Guldberg''; 1 September 1731 – 7 February 1808) was a Denmark, Danish statesman, historian, and ''de facto'' prime minister of Denmark during the reign of the mentally unstable Christian VII of Denmark, King Ch ...

. In 1913, he became the history professor at the

, where he remained until his retirement in 1935. He was rector of the university in 1932-1933. In 1919 he was one of the co-founders of the Norden Associations (''

Foreningen Norden Foreningen Norden (Norwegian and Danish), Föreningen Norden (Swedish), Norræna félagið (Icelandic), Norrøna Felagið (Faroese), Peqatigiiffik Nunat Avannarliit (Greenlandic) and Pohjola-Norden (Finnish), ''The Norden Associations'', sometimes ...

'') which works to promote common Nordic culture, society and economic ties. Friis was concerned with Danish history primarily in its relations with

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...

. The German-Danish noble family Bernstorff presented one of its main themes in the history of the early modern period; his two-volume work ''Die Bernstorffs und Dänemark'' were written in Danish and also translated into German. He appeared as a Danish biographer of the career of German chancellor

Otto von Bismarck Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (, ; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), born Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman and diplomat. From his origins in the upper class of ...

prior to his political rise. He also maintained a professional working relationship with German professor and historian

Friedrich Meinecke Friedrich Meinecke (October 20, 1862 – February 6, 1954) was a German historian, with national liberal and anti-Semitic views, who supported the Nazi invasion of Poland. After World War II, as a representative of an older tradition, he crit ...

(1862–1954). Before and after the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fig ...

, he became a member of the

Danish Social Liberal Party The Danish Social Liberal Party ( da, Radikale Venstre, , Radical Left) is a social-liberal political party in Denmark. The party was founded as a split from the Venstre Reform Party in 1905. Historically, the centrist party has played a cent ...

. He served partly as an employee of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the

Southern Jutland Southern Jutland ( da, Sønderjylland; German: Südjütland) is the name for the region south of the Kongeå in Jutland, Denmark and north of the Eider (river) in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. The region north of the Kongeå is called da, Nø ...

issue, which resulted in

Nordschleswig South Jutland County (Danish: ''Sønderjyllands Amt'') is a former county (Danish: ''amt'') on the south-central portion of the Jutland Peninsula in southern Denmark. The county was formed on 1 April 1970, comprising the former counties of Aab ...

becoming Danish again after the war as a result of the Schleswig plebiscites of 1920. Aage Friis was a member of the

Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters {{Infobox organization , name = The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters , full_name = , native_name = Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab , native_name_lang = , logo = Royal ...

from 1920. He died at

Hellerup Hellerup () is a very affluent district of Gentofte Municipality in the suburbs of Copenhagen, Denmark. The most urban part of the district is centred on Strandvejen and is bordered by Østerbro to the south and the Øresund to the east. It compr ...

and was buried at Solbjerg Park Cemetery in

Frederiksberg Frederiksberg () is a part of the Capital Region of Denmark. It is formally an independent municipality, Frederiksberg Municipality, separate from Copenhagen Municipality, but both are a part of the City of Copenhagen. It occupies an area of ...

Selected works

* ''Bismarck. Ungdomstiden 1815 - 1848. En Historisk Skildring '' (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1909) * ''Blixen Finecke og Bismarck: en brevveksling'' (Copenhagen: Graebes Bogtrykkeri, 1916. printed in ''Danske Magazin'' 1916, p. 365-387) * ''Die Bernstorffs und Dänemark: ein Beitrag zur politischen und kulturellen Entwicklungsgeschichte des dänischen Staates; 1750-1835'', 2 Volumes, (Leipzig: Weicher-Verlag, 1905)

References

External links

Aage Friis
Grænseforeningen {{DEFAULTSORT:Friis, Aage Danish Social Liberal Party politicians 1870 births 1949 deaths People from Korsør 20th-century Danish historians 20th-century Danish biographers University of Copenhagen alumni University of Copenhagen faculty Members of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters