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with its significant expansion of universal and equal suffrage, the 1915 Constitution was a victory for the democratic development of our society.
By Hans Uwe Petersen
The policy of civil peace that followed the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 helped pave the way for all parties to support the constitutional amendments. There was broad consensus that women and also servants should have the right to vote, while differences of opinion were more concerned with the conservative role of the Landsting.
But the Constitution of 1915 did not give foreigners the right to vote. § Section 30 read as follows: “Every man and woman who is a citizen, has reached the age of 25 and has a permanent residence in the country has the right to vote in the Folketing…” (unless he or she: a) has been found guilty of a dishonorable act in the public opinion without having received reparation, b) enjoys or has enjoyed the support of the Poor Law, which has not been either remitted or repaid, c) is unable to dispose of his or her estate due to bankruptcy or incapacitation)
But the Constitution of 1915 did not give foreigners the right to vote. § Section 30 had the following wording: “Every man and woman who is a citizen, has reached the age of 25 and has a permanent residence in the country has the right to vote in the Folketing…” (unless he or she: a) has been found guilty by judgment of an act that is dishonorable in the public opinion without having received redress, b) receives or has received support from the Poor Law, which has not been either remitted or repaid, c) is unable to dispose of his or her estate due to bankruptcy or incapacitation)
In the political negotiations from the presentation of the constitutional proposal in 1912 until the adoption of the law on June 5, 1915, the issue of foreigners is simply not present. And in the period’s recurring treatment of the Citizenship Act, i.e. the granting of citizenship through naturalization, there are no references to the ongoing negotiations on the wording of the right to vote in the Constitution.
In connection with the discussion of the Citizenship Act in 1913, a case of a worker who had come from Sweden to Denmark was brought up. He had married a Danish woman, they had children and he had a job and permanent residence. Nevertheless, his application for Danish citizenship – even though his application was recommended by the authorities in the City of Copenhagen – had been rejected several times. The reason for this was that a number of years earlier, the man had once received a small amount in public benefits. Therefore, the authorities felt that it would take a few more years before the man was worthy of being granted Danish citizenship. at the time, the issue of foreigners and the right to vote and participate in ordinary political life was apparently not relevant.
But who were the foreigners back then? There is no information for 1915, but there is for 1911.
In 1911, foreigners made up 84,879 people or 3.1% of the total population. The vast majority of foreigners came from Sweden (39%) and Schleswig, Holstein and the rest of Germany (41%), i.e. a total of 80% of all foreigners. With regard to the granting of citizenship, the situation in 1911 was similar. Foreigners of Swedish and German ancestry accounted for 91% of the naturalization rights granted, with a significant preponderance of Swedes (64% – 27%). The total number of granted naturalization rights amounted to a modest 614 people or 0.7% of all foreigners in 1911. In the years 1911-1915, 3,050 foreigners were granted citizenship and in the period 1916-1920 it was 2,024.
Alien legislation
The legislation and the authorities’ practice in the treatment of foreigners has over time been based on two principles:
- The first principle concerns: the state’s right to protect its territory against undesirable persons who may either become a social burden to the country or threaten its security and order. (Undesirable persons have always been: 1) persons who could become a burden to the country in terms of maintenance. 2) persons who had a different religion in relation to the National Church as the country’s statutory religion. 3) persons who could threaten the country’s peace and security)
- The second principle concerns the right of foreigners to freely settle in the realm, marry, acquire property, conduct business and gain the right to support themselves through permanent residence (however, the permanent residence of foreigners was by no means an automatic access to citizenship, even though permanent residence is one of the pillars on which the right to vote rests)
The right of foreigners to freely settle in the country did not, however, apply unconditionally to foreigners seeking work. The Act on the Supervision of Foreigners and Travelers of 15 May 1875 created a framework for especially work-seeking foreigners’ access and stay in the country, while the law only had limited significance for foreign business people.
As mentioned, the Alien Act of 1875 was based on the idea that foreigners came to this country to find better economic and work opportunities, just like the Danes who emigrated to America. As a result, the authorities took very little interest in the possible reasons why a foreigner had left their own country and whether the foreigner was a refugee due to political, religious or other persecution.
Refugees
In their attitude towards refugees, it was crucial that the authorities, right up until after World War II, based their approach on the concept of the right of asylum under international law. During the discussion about the so-called German emigrants of the 1930s, Minister of Justice Steincke emphasized on several occasions that the right of asylum was a state’s right to give a persecuted person protection. Conversely, the individual refugee had no individual right to asylum. Due to the adaptation policy towards the increasingly aggressive Hitler Germany, Denmark ceased to be a country of asylum after the occupation and political refugees lost their protection through the Danish state and were handed over to their Nazi persecutors.
It wasn’t until the UN Declaration of Human Rights that the right to asylum was defined as a human right.
This view was later – briefly – adopted in the Danish Aliens Act of June 8, 1983, which established that “de-facto refugees” had the right to asylum (§ 7 (2)). As you know, this law has been amended several times since the mid-1980s in an increasingly restrictive direction.
With reference to the state’s right to protect its territory, emigrants in the 1930s were also deprived of the opportunity to participate in political life. They were explicitly ordered to refrain from any form of political activity.
A fundamentally different attitude towards the participation of foreigners in the political life of society did not emerge until the 1970s. In 1977, Nordic citizens were granted the right to vote in municipal elections. In 1981, this right to participate in municipal elections was extended to people without Danish citizenship if they had been permanently resident in the country for three years prior to the election (the three-year requirement lapsed in 1985 as a result of an EU directive for Nordic and EU citizens).
However, this right has since been under attack, and in 2003 the Danish People’s Party proposed a bill that would restrict the right to vote in municipal elections for a number of groups of people without Danish citizenship.
This brief outline shows that Denmark has had a hard time with foreigners, be they labor migrants or refugees.
Influenced by the refugee policy of the 1930s, Bertolt Brecht wrote in the refugee conversations (1940/41):
“A passport without a person is still a passport.
But a human without a passport is not a human.”
And Erich Maria Remarque, author of the novel No News from the Western Front, put it even more harshly in his novel Love thy neighbor. “A person without a passport is a corpse on leave.” (Ein Mensch ohne Pass ist eine Leiche auf Urlaub. Hat sich eigentlich nur umzubringen, sonst nichts”, Erich Maria Remarque: Liebe deinen Nächsten, 1941, 17)
The passport issue probably doesn’t have the same significance for foreigners today. But one could ask the following question:
What is a person without the right to vote? Just a shadow of a citizen or even just a shadow of a human being?
