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Chris Holmsted Larsen | 29.06.2015
In 2011, a grant from the Augustinus Foundation, combined with a domiciliation agreement with the Workers’ Museum & ABA, enabled a biographical research project on the Danish communist, lawyer and author Carl Madsen (1903-1978).
After the initial archival research, a picture emerged of an extremely extensive archive material. It was therefore decided to upgrade the project to include a PhD thesis on Carl Madsen as a biographical exponent of the history of the Danish communist movement in the 20th century. Consequently, an agreement was made with the Department of Culture and Identity at Roskilde University to house this part of the research project.
In the intervening period, the work with the ABA’s own archives on the history of communism has led to a large number of other national and international archives, including the Danish National Archives, the Royal Library’s Manuscript Collection, local archives and the German Stasi and party archives.
Another important method for uncovering Carl Madsen’s life and significance has been to collect accounts from living party comrades, family and others. This has resulted in more than 14 hours of transcribed interviews that have not only added nuances, but significant new historical knowledge about Carl Madsen and the inner political, cultural and social life of DKP.
An unexpected bonus has been that new and important archival material has emerged. This material, which has now reached ABA, includes parts of his own archive that were not handed over to KB after his death, as well as the archive of resistance fighter and later popular socialist Jørgen Diemer.
Last, but not least, the research project has developed in a constructive synergy with the Workers’ Museum & ABA’s own researchers – a collaboration that has emphasized the great potential of inter-institutional research projects. The project has thus been rooted in and grown out of ABM’s tradition of source-oriented communism research and has at the same time contributed to RUC’s tradition of theoretical, historical approaches to historical issues.
A concrete result of the collaboration is the article “Biographical and transnational trends in communism research – in a Danish and international perspective” by Jesper Jørgensen and myself, published in Pål Bruunström & Johan A. Lundin (ed.): Förenen Eder! International perspectives on labor history, Landskrona: Centrum för Arbetarhistoria, 2015.
After almost four years of intensive work, the research project and dissertation on Carl Madsen is now in its final phase. It is expected that the thesis will be submitted and defended in the fall of 2015, and that the biography of the red lawyer will be published in the spring of 2016.
PhD thesis on Carl Madsen
On May 4, 2016, Chris Holmsted Larsen defended his PhD thesis “The Stalinist dissident” at Roskilde University after 4 years as a resident researcher at the Workers’ Museum & ABA. The dissertation was the result of an extensive research effort of a biographical study of the communist Carl Madsen.
The dissertation is based on a very large amount of source material, of which only a small part comes from ABA’s collections. However, the most recent parts of it are now available in connection with the PhD defense. These are the papers of Carl Madsen, which upon his death were partly passed on to the Demos association and partly stayed with the family.
This collection, which is now registered as Carl Madsen’s archive at ABA, contains a number of interesting cases about German emigrants, Nazi intelligence activities and the seaman Richard Jensen. Topics that occupied Carl Madsen throughout his adult life. See the archive here.
The new archive also contains a unique collection of letters from his stay in the Horserød camp and Vestre Fængsel during the war, as well as his wife Leni Madsen’s photographs from Horserød in 1943 and of BOPA people after liberation.
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