Tage Revsgård Andersen’s private collection has almost had a mythical character. Rarely has there been so much talk and so much anticipation about what Revsgård had hidden in the basement of his two-room apartment on Bogholder Allé in Vanløse.

By: Jesper Jørgensen

Even the readers of Weekendavisen were introduced to Tages Revsgård Andersen’s basement in 2001, when Peter Øvig Knudsen wrote a reportage article from there in connection with his book about the snitch liquidations during the occupation. Very atmospheric indeed:

“From the small kitchen we move down the back stairs, and he unlocks the three padlocks – “dirkefri, for 250 kroner each”. The transistor radio turns on along with the lights. Inside, papers are stacked on shelves and above and below tables in plastic boxes with lids from Metro. Only a narrow passage leads through the two basement rooms. “Gradually, I made a sport of collecting and getting hold of what I needed. I used all the contacts I had in the party and from my time as a resistance fighter. If I heard that someone had something of interest, I went out and visited them.”

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the liberation of Denmark in 1970, DKP donated a collection of documents relating to a number of liquidations during the occupation to the Freedom Museum. The picture shows Ib Nørlund, Ingmar Wagner, Tage Revsgård Andersen, Alfred Jensen and director Aage Roussell at the presentation. In 1966, Revsgård published the documents in the source collection DKP and the Freedom Struggle, vol. 30, including the cover letter to the museum

And further:

“Tage Revsgård Andersen pats the boxes in the basement and recalls the contents. Some of it has not been examined yet …” (WA 8.6.2001)

You had to understand that this was good stuff for connoisseurs, and that there were still many secrets that had not yet become public knowledge.

The party archivist

As Revsgård has never hidden, the story behind “Tages kælder” is a long one. He began collecting and systematizing information and documentation already during the occupation. According to his own memoirs submitted to the Royal Library in 1972, he participated with Robert Mikkelsen and Carl Madsen, among others, in DKP’s work to register informers and other collaborators that the party’s people should be warned against or who should be punished at any given opportunity. The result was the so-called Kommunistisk Kartotek, which in connection with the legal settlement after the war was handed over to the work on the so-called Centralkartotek over landssvigere (see also introduction to dkp_og_frihedskampen-bind30, 1996).

After the war, Revsgård worked as a handyman at the party house in Dr. Tværgade and at the Soviet press agency APN, where he managed to celebrate his 25th anniversary before the fall of the Wall. At the same time, Revsgård acted as a party archivist by collecting materials about the resistance struggle, and later he expanded the scope of his work and secured special party archives in his own home, partly in agreement with the party.

A study

In 1981, Revsgård published his account from 1972 and a number of documents from the occupation period in A Study in Red, White and Blue, including a transcript of a much-discussed protocol of the Gestapo’s interrogation of Aksel Larsen in 1942-1943, which in Revsgård’s view documented Aksel Larsen’s treacherous nature.

The preface to the “study” also laid the foundation for the myth of “Tages kælder”:

“It is well known that an iceberg has only one tenth of its surface above water, while the other nine tenths are hidden under water. I have taken out a single icicle and laid it out […] It is my hope that my icicle will have its effect – giving chills to some – but informing readers that the struggle for freedom was not quite as simple as it has been presented so far.” (A study in red, white and blue, Forlaget Zac 1981).

Revsgård had only revealed one iceberg of an entire iceberg of lies and concealment about the five evil years. Much more followed in the years that followed. Few have published as many copies of documents on their own publishing house as Revsgård.

DKP and the Freedom Struggle and other revelations

One publication in particular should be highlighted, DKP and the Freedom Struggle (1996-1999), which is a source collection of over 7,000 pages. The sources range widely; from internal party circulars to Reichstag speeches and newspaper clippings to illegal communist party magazines, as well as Børge Houmann’s unprinted manuscript on the history of the occupation and snitch liquidation and sabotage reports. All in all, an interesting resource that should form the basis for further studies. Some of the same sources are also included in Hans Kirchhoff & Aage Trommer’s source publication “Vor Kamp vil vokse og styrkes” (2001).

The source collection DKP and the Freedom Struggle has been digitized and placed on the ABA website. The quality of the original photocopies of the documents varies, so it has only been possible to make some of the texts searchable. The plan is that “Our Struggle will grow and strengthen” will also be published online.

Search and read in DKP and Frihedskmapen

Revsgård has also contributed to other people’s historical revelations. Thus, in his “memoir”, En kommunists erindringer (Eget forlag 2006), he proudly displays dedications to him in Christian Jensen, Tomas Kristensen and Karl Erik Nielsen’s “Krigens Købmænd” (2000), Peter Øvig Knudsen’s Efter drabet (2001), Sven Ove Gade’s Frode Jakobsen biography (2004) and Steen Andersen’s De gjorde Danmark større… (2005).

ABA’s turn

8 years after Peter Øvig Knudsen’s visit to Bogholder Allé, Tage Revsgård Andersen died, and it was ABA’s turn to go down the back stairs and be locked in the basement rooms to all the boxes and piles of old papers.

And what was there? Well, it’s actually a bit too early to say, because so far the 65 or so boxes of documents, private photos, audio recordings, books and magazines that the ABA collected in 2009 have only been roughly sorted. However, it is clear that not all hopes for the collection can be fulfilled and that large parts of the collection have been published in Revsgård’s private editions.

Specifically, archive material has so far been separated out for the Danish Communist Party archive, which is listed below, and an unregistered personal archive has been created that contains the majority of the collection. In terms of subject matter, the material is primarily within the topics of DKP, resistance struggle, the Cold War and intelligence activities. When it will be fully registered and available to ABA’s users has not yet been determined.

Separated and registered material from Tage Revsgård Andersen’s collection:

Also separated is printed material that has now been added to the library’s collections of primarily illegal books, magazines and pamphlets from DKP and German workers’ novels from the 1930s.

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