$Unique_ID{bob00168} $Pretitle{} $Title{Denmark Assistance to Developing Countries} $Subtitle{} $Author{Henning Dehn Nielsen} $Affiliation{Ministry of Foreign Affairs} $Subject{danish denmark world years international copenhagen large ballet first research} $Date{1990} $Log{} Title: Denmark Book: Facts about Denmark Author: Henning Dehn Nielsen Affiliation: Ministry of Foreign Affairs Date: 1990 Assistance to Developing Countries It is a widespread opinion in Denmark that the world's richer nations must assist the poorer and less developed countries and that Denmark should make its sizeable contribution to cooperation with developing countries. Danish development assistance has its origins in modest official grants to the assistance programmes begun by private organizations after the Second World War and contributions to the United Nations programme for technical assistance to the Third World. The Danish Parliament in 1962 passed its first act on international cooperation for economic development, but it was not until 1971 that a new act included objectives for official development cooperation. A separate department of the Foreign Ministry, Danida, (Danish International Development Agency), administers the aid. Denmark is one of four Western nations fulfilling the United Nations target to contribute 0.7 per cent of the country's gross national product (GNP) in the form of official aid to developing countries - the three others being Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands. Denmark's contribution in 1986 was 0.83 per cent of GNP, and Parliament has agreed that Danish aid will steadily increase by 0.03% of GNP in the coming years, reaching the equivalent of 1 per cent of GNP in 1992. Danish development assistance is bilateral as well as multilateral, and in 1986 the total assistance amounted to DKK 5.35 billion. Bilateral aid, which is carried out through direct cooperation between the government of the recipient country and that of Denmark, is allocated primarily to those countries which the UN has ranked as the least developed. The four largest recipients for several years are Tanzania, Kenya, India and Bangladesh. Zimbabwe and Mozambique also rank high on the list. Danish multilateral assistance is carried out principally through UN organizations, the EC development programme and the World Bank Group. Approx. 450 trained Danish experts and 350 volunteers, recruited by the Danish Association for International Cooperation (Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke), work in those countries receiving aid, and several hundred persons from these countries are invited to Denmark for training and studies each year. Nobody Must be Left in the Lurch If you come to Denmark, you will hear many complain about the high taxes, but at the same time you will encounter a broad consensus among Danes that this is the price one has to pay to live in a society where social welfare has the highest priority of perhaps any other country - Sweden and Denmark are a little at odds over which of the two takes first place. To fall sick or become old or to lose one's job always exacts a human toll, but in an economic sense such a misfortune in Denmark is not all that great as a rule. No less than one-third of the State's total expenditure - in 1988, the figure comprised DKK 64 billion out of DKK 185 billion - goes to social services, and over and above this the local health services are financed with an additional DKK 25 billion from the county authorities. In other words, around 18,000 DKK - roughly equivalent to UK 1,600 pounds or US$2,400 - each year is invested in the social and medical wellbeing of every Dane. On falling ill, anyone can go to a doctor for no fee. In fact, the public health system entitles everyone of the five million Danes to his own doctor among the 3,000 or so general practitioners in town and country. The doctor can, if he deems it necessary, refer the patient to a qualified specialist for treatment, or he can, if the case is serious and perhaps requires surgery, have the patient admitted to a hospital. Here there is expert medical and surgical aid available as well as qualified nursing staff to assist in the best possible way - at no expense to the patient. A hospital bed may well cost between DKK 3,000 and 4,000 per day, but the costs are borne by the public authorities. Older citizens - all those past 67 years of age - receive a pension from the State, enough to pay for life's basic necessities, while a similar scheme applies to those persons under 67, who on grounds of physical handicap, disability or bad health, are not able to seek full employment. It is a common fact that not only making ends meet, but also keeping in good health, can prove more and more difficult as the years go by, and for some it can prove a considerable hardship to manage the daily chores. In these cases, the general policy of the public authorities is to try to help the aged to remain in their homes for as long as possible by lending them practical assistance in many diverse ways. If this no longer is possible, a place in an old people's home is advised. Here each person is entitled to his own room and can furnish and decorate it as he sees fit. As in most other countries, Denmark has its own regrettably large share of those out of work and wishing to find a job - at the end of 1988 around nine per cent of the total workforce. Thanks to a national insurance scheme, to which both employees and - to a large degree - the state contribute, the unemployed receive paid-out benefits, which are somewhat below what they would otherwise earn. By offering training and retraining schemes, the State attempts to assist the unemployed and particularly the young among them to find a job. While on the topic of the labour market, it also can be mentioned that the working week recently was reduced to 38 hours and that everyone is entitled to five weeks' paid holidays each year. A female employee can in connection with giving birth receive up to 24 weeks' maternity leave with partial compensation. She can if desired allocate part of this leave to the father. The main thread running through social legislation is that no-one needing assistance should be left in the lurch, and in the Ministry of Social Affairs fresh initiatives are constantly being made to help achieve this aim. A People Constantly Learning If you come to Denmark from an English-speaking country, you will have few difficulties in making yourself understood, particularly among the younger people. This is because English is included in the school curriculum from the fifth grade (i.e. from the age of 11), and of course everybody wants to demonstrate his gift for languages towards strangers. Compulsory schooling in the Danish primary school system, known as the Folkeskole, has a nine-year duration, and many opt for an additional 10th year. The word "Folkeskole" in English can be translated into "People's School", and this description is not entirely misleading, because as many as over 91 per cent of all Danish children belong to this form of primary school. The fixed aim of Folkeskole teaching is to assure the child a harmonious development and make it a responsible member of a democratic society. This is formulated in the Education Act of 1975 as follows: The aim of the Folkeskole, in cooperation with parents, is to give pupils the opportunity to acquire knowledge, skills, methods of working and forms of expression which will contribute to the all-round development of the individual child. In all aspects of its work the Folkeskole shall seek to create such opportunities for experience and accomplishment as will enable the pupil to increase his desire to learn, expand his imagination and practise his ability to make an independent evaluation and form an opinion. The Folkeskole shall prepare pupils for sharing in the activities and decisions of a democratic society and for sharing responsibilities for solving the problems that face society. Education offered by and the everyday running of the Folkeskole shall therefore be based on freedom of thought and democracy. Folkeskole pupils come from all walks of life and from homes with widely diverging ideological and religious attitudes, but some parents can for various reasons choose to have their children taught at private schools, and in these cases the State covers 85 per cent of the running expenses. At the Folkeskole, no examinations take place when transferring from one class to the next, but at the end of the ninth or 10th class pupils can choose voluntarily to take an exam and receive a final grade on paper. After the basic schooling, some two-thirds of pupils apply for practical training in, for example, the trades or commerce, where specialist schools of many types are at their disposal, and the remaining one-third go on from basic schooling to secondary schools, where they can choose to follow a linguistic or a mathematical course. Secondary school teaching finishes after three years with student examinations, which opens the way for entry to university or other places of higher education. There are in Denmark five universities, of which the oldest - Copenhagen University - dates from 1479 and the newest from 1974, as well as a long row of institutions of higher education for engineering, pharmacy, dentistry, architecture, veterinary science, and others. All this further education is free, but admittance is often subject to a certain limitation. Even if primary and secondary schooling function quite effectively, many feel obliged to supplement their knowledge after leaving school, and these have the possibility of taking part in extracurricular courses, which are organised throughout the country and which generally take place in the evening hours. Several hundred thousand adults quite voluntarily sit on school benches in the same places otherwise occupied during the day by children and the young. If one adds to this the fact that many in their spare time take part in specialised courses of diverse kinds, then it is perhaps not off the mark to call the Danes - as someone has done - a people constantly learning. A distinctly Danish phenomenon is to be found in the "People's High School", or "Folkehojskole", where pupils live at the school, and where the aim of the stay is not first and foremost the acquisition of precise knowledge, but to a higher degree the development of personality through dialogue between pupils and teachers and through an immersion in literature and history, all without exams of any kind. From this perspective, "school for life" is a generally used description for the Folkehojskole. It was the theologian, historian and poet, N.F.S. Grundtvig, who during the middle of the past century laid the foundations for this form of school. There are today more than 100 of this type of school in Denmark, as well as a few in the other Nordic countries. Danish Contribution to Science Our use today of telephone, radio, TV and sundry telecommunications in all their diversity owes its origins to a discovery made by a Danish scientist in 1820. Although presumably someone sooner or later was bound to stumble onto electro-magnetism, in fact it proved to be a professor at the University of Copenhagen, Hans Christian Orsted, who was first to establish the connection between electric current and magnetism, when one day in his laboratory he came to place a compass near an electric cable and suddenly saw the compass needle vibrate. Other Danish scientists making breakthroughs in bygone days and worthy of mention are: Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), who made unprecedented astronomical observations from his observatory on the island of Hven in the Sound, winning particular fame for his discovery of a new star in the constellation Cassiopeia; Niels Steensen, or latinised Nicolaus Steno (1638-86), who was among the founders of the sciences of anatomy and geology; Ole Romer (1644-1710), professor at the University of Copenhagen, who was the first to measure the speed of light; Niels R. Finsen (1860-1904), who introduced the world to the use of phototherapy for treatment of skin diseases and who received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1903; Valdemar Poulsen (1869-1942), who prepared the groundwork for the tape recorder by discovering in 1898 the telegraphone, and demonstrated in 1907 the first workable form of broadcasting. The most renowned name in modern Danish science is that of professor Niels Bohr (1885-1962), who was one of the founders of modern nuclear physics and who formed theories on the construction and transformation of atomic nuclei, which have been of profound significance for the use of nuclear energy. The University Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, commonly known as the Niels Bohr Institute, was for decades a forum for scientists from throughout the world, and in commemorative celebrations marking the centenary of Niels Bohr's birth, participants included leading nuclear physicists from both the United States and the Soviet Union. The Institute's activities have been carried on by Niels Bohr's son, professor Aage Bohr. Both father and son are Nobel physics laureates, the son sharing the prize with one of the Institute's leading members, American-born professor B.R. Mottelson. Danish scientists of today also try to live up to this rich heritage. A great emphasis is placed on technological research, with the state and private industry proceeding to establish cooperation in this field in order to ensure that Denmark can rank high among other countries. Medical research has occupied a high place for many years. Intensive cancer research is undertaken at the Fibiger Laboratory, named after the Danish doctor and pathologist, Johannes Fibiger, who was the first to induce cancer experimentally. At the Rigshospital, the Danish state's teaching and research hospital, its multifaceted medical research extends to work on ways to inhibit the effects of AIDS on persons smitten with the disease. Research into enzymes and gene-splicing is carried out by the two big medical firms, Novo and Nordisk Gentofte, both internationally renowned. To further research in both the technological and medical fields (as well as in other forms), requests have been made to established an academic research centre for the teaching and training of researchers. At Arhus in Jutland, an innovation centre linked to the local university has been set up, along the lines of equivalent centres at U.S. and British universities, with the purpose of conducting advanced technological and biochemical research in laboratories equipped with all the best facilities. On an international level, Denmark participates in numerous scientific research activities, including those under the auspices of the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN), the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Astronomics Research organisation (ESO), and the EUREKA scheme for European cooperation in high-technology. Danish Architecture and Design Endowing objects with a beautiful and functional form, whether it be a large construction project or simple articles for everyday use, is an art form in which Danish architects and designers have created a fine tradition. First among Danish architects today stands Jorn Utzon whose imaginative Sydney Opera House has attracted attention the world over, and who together with his son Jan Utzon was also responsible for the creation of a Parliament building in Kuwait. Another Danish architect, Henning Larsen, has won fame in the same part of the world by building for the Saudi Arabian government a large and elegant foreign ministry in the capital Riyadh. The latest captivating project from a Danish architect is Johan Otto von Spreckelsen's design for the new and contemporary triumphal arch on the east-west axis of Paris. Large assignments as these have not gone the way of Danish architects in their homeland of late - there has been neither the space nor the money. But in the recent past, buildings of diverse architectural concept and interest were carried out, a sizeable number of which owe their existence to the architect, Professor Arne Jacobsen (1902-71). These include among others the large SAS hotel in the centre of Copenhagen, a new headquarters for the Danish central bank and town halls in several towns. Among Arne Jacobsen's works was also the new St. Catherine's College in Oxford, England. One of the largest Danish architectural works of this century is the Grundtvig Church in Copenhagen, which was commenced in 1921 and completed in 1940. A cathedral in concept and structure, it nevertheless drew its inspiration from the old Danish country churches. The architect was P.V. Jensen-Klint, and after his death halfway through the church's construction, the work was finished by his son, the architect Kaare Klint. If one otherwise should ask Copenhageners today, who they regard as being the capital's most prominent architect and builder, the answer in many cases will be the enterprising King Christian IV (1588-1648). That is not altogether surprising, because the city in such a high degree is characterised by the often very original buildings he had commissioned, including the famous Round Tower with an astronomic observatory, the Stock Exchange with its spire of dragons' tails, and the graceful Rosenborg Palace. If one looks out beyond the capital and into the Danish countryside, one will find dating from the period between 1500 and 1700 magnificent castles such as Kronborg and Frederiksborg and a very large number of manor houses, commissioned by rich noblemen and often surrounded by moats and sumptuous parks. Many of them are jewels of Danish architecture, though most of the architects are dead and forgotten. Many of the big names in contemporary Danish architecture are not only known for their buildings, but also have worked as designers in fields, such as furniture, for example. This applies to the earlier mentioned Kaare Klint and Arne Jacobsen, succeeded as furniture designers by names such as Borge Mogensen, Hans J. Wegener, Finn Juhl, Verner Panton and others, all of whom have made their contribution to ensuring that the export of Danish furniture excels, both in terms of diversity and of quality. A designer in a class of his own is poet and multi-talented artist Piet Hein, whose super ellipse - a cross between a rectangle and an ellipse - has won international interest and which has been used both in furniture design and in the creation of town squares and sports arenas, such as the Olympic Stadium in Mexico, for example. But when Danish design has won fame in the world, this is reflected first and foremost in the distinction of its products in porcelain and silver. It began with porcelain more than 200 years ago. The Royal Porcelain Manufactory was founded in 1775, and barely a dozen years later work began on the finest dinner service the world has ever seen, the Flora Danica service, consisting of 1,800 pieces illustrated with the world of Danish plant and flower life. Intended as a gift from the Danish crown prince, later King Frederick VI, to the Russian empress, Catherine II, she died before the service was completed after 15 years of work, and instead it was presented to the Danish royal house. The factory today can still deliver the famous dinner service to those customers, whose cheque-books are in order. Both the Royal Porcelain Manufactory and the equally renowned Bing & Grondahl Porcelain Factory, founded in 1853, produce a rich assortment of both serving porcelain and decorative objects, and each has its own staff of artists working on its behalf. Danish silversmiths had practised their handicraft for several hundreds of years, but it was first with Georg Jensen's Silversmiths that Danish silver design really became known to the world. It began with a small workshop in Copenhagen, but Georg Jensen fused in his personality the deft touch of the talented artist and the sure craftsman, and because he moreover understood how to gather around him a circle of artists with a sense of silver's embellishment, the business grew rapidly and won international recognition with its own sales departments in London, Paris, New York, and other cities. In order to strengthen their world market position, the Royal Porcelain Manufactory and Georg Jensen's Silversmiths were merged in 1986 under the common name of Royal Copenhagen, and Holmegaard Glass, which has developed a distinguished line in glasswear design, and Bing & Grondahl also have entered into this cooperation. Andersen and Blixen on Top of Literature It is generally difficult for the poets of a small country to make a name for themselves in the world at large, but there are shining examples that it can happen, one of these being Denmark's great fairytale writer Hans Christian Andersen. His fairytales and stories have been translated into more than 100 languages, so wherever you may find yourself in the world, there is a good chance that either your parents or you yourself have read about the ugly duckling, the princess lying on the pea, the little mermaid, or any of the other figures to spring from Andersen's fantasy. Hans Christian Andersen was born into a poor family in Odense in 1805. At the age of only 14 he travelled to Copenhagen, filled with dreams of becoming an actor or ballet-dancer. But the stage only filled him with disappointment, and some years later he began to write. Just 30 years old, he published an unassuming manuscript entitled "Fairytales for Children" and thereby unknown to himself laid the basis for his fame. In all 24 booklets with fairytales followed, the last just three years before Andersen's death in 1875. Regardless of the titles of these works, the tales lend themselves equally to adults and children, and it is in itself a fairytale that they evidently are understood by people throughout the world. At the same time as Andersen was writing, a great authorship of a completely different kind was unfolding. It was theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55) who produced voluminous works about religious and other spiritual problems and thereby left such a strong impression on international philosophical thought that even today his production is the object of research the world over. The close of the 19th century and the first part of this century were in Denmark marked by a row of great novelists. The list of prominent authors of this time includes J.P. Jacobsen, Herman Bang, Henrik Pontoppidan and Johannes V. Jensen, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1944. Another great novelist of this period was Martin Andersen Nexo (1869-1954), whose major proletarian novels "Pelle the Conqueror" and "Ditte, Child of Man" won international fame and were printed in huge numbers particularly in the Soviet Union. Among outstanding authors in our day are William Heinesen (b. 1900) from the Faroe Islands, whose prose works deal mainly with Nordic themes, and the poet Piet Hein (b. 1905) whose brief, pointed "grooks" have attained world fame. Probably the most famous of Danish authors in this century is Karen Blixen. Born 1885 into an aristocratic family of Rungsted north of Copenhagen, she spent 20 years of her life in Africa, where she owned a farm in Kenya until she returned to Denmark in 1932 after a ruined marriage and the dramatic death of her lover in a plane crash. She had already begun to write in Kenya, and a couple of years after returning to Denmark, her "Seven Gothic Tales" was published by an American publishing house under the pseudonym of Isak Dinesen. The work, with a thrilling sequence of events and complex intrigues in each of the stories, captured extraordinary attention and was translated into many languages. In 1937, the next of Karen Blixen's works to appear was "Out of Africa", which is based on her experiences of the farm in Kenya, and which now - around 50 years later - has given her new fame by forming the basis of the internationally successful film of the same name starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in the main roles. About 1,200 works of fiction, are published annually in Denmark, approx. 1,000 children's books and 7.000 text and reference books. These figures do not include reprints. The largest book publisher is Gyldendal, founded in 1770. Books are sold in around 500 bookshops, but many Danes satisfy their appetite for reading by borrowing books from the public libraries, which number 250 with an annual total lending of some 90 million volumes: Danish Ballet Dances the World Over The art of dance knowns no borders, and this applies equally to the Royal Danish Ballet Company, which has a rich tradition for successful tours throughout the world. Most often the ballet troupe has graced the United States, appearing in a long row of towns right through the States, but it has also danced in China and Japan and in summer 1989 in front of the Acropolis i Athens. It was the immigrant French ballet master August Bournonville, who some 150 years ago laid the foundations for Danish ballet. He created a large repertoire of fine Romantic ballets, and a dozen of these are still staged in their original form, which is unique in the history of ballet and only possible because these ballets have been included in the running repertoire throughout the time since the days of Bournonville. The Royal Ballet numbers some 90 dancers, all of whom from the age of six or seven are enrolled in the corps' own school to receive both general schooling and dance tuition and, owing to their continued training, can perform with equal assurance both classical and modern ballet, the latter of which comprises a large part of today's repertoire. A completely new initiative under the auspices of the Royal Ballet has come to be created in the form of a ballet's "Oscar" prize, named the Hans Christian Andersen Ballet Award, which will go each year to the world's best ballet performances. The handing over of the prize will be in connection with a big international ballet festival in Copenhagen, the first of which took place in May 1988. Andersen's name is associated with the prize because he held a lifelong admiration for ballet. Danish ballet is at home in Copenhagen's Royal Theatre, which also forms the national stage for opera and drama. The Theatre was founded in 1722 and performed in its first years a large number of comedies by Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754), often called the Moli@ere of the North. The repertoire nowadays includes plays by Danish and international dramatists, in particular many of British, French or American origin. Besides the Royal Theatre, there are in Copenhagen some eight to 10 private theatres, and the biggest provincial towns Arhus, Odense and Aalborg have their own permanent theatres, while smaller places are visited by travelling troupes. Theatre often finds itself in a financial squeeze, and the state and local authorities used to provide grants to theatres, but in recent years a scheme has been adopted whereby public subsidies are channelled partially into theatregoers' organisations, which buy up theatrical performances and sell the tickets at around half of the normal price. In this way it has become cheaper to go to the theatre in Denmark than in most other countries, and the public's attendance is large. When the talk is about theatre, and when these lines address themselves overwhelmingly to foreign readers, then it is apt to mention that Denmark almost every summer has an entirely unique stage bearing its own international stamp. It is the castle of Kronborg itself, where Shakespeare set the scene of his tragedy Hamlet, and where now successive international ensembles perform the play of the moody prince of Denmark with the castle as an evocative backdrop. The Danish film industry gained new recognition when two films were awarded Oscars by America's Academy of Motion Pictures two years running. The first, in 1988, was for the film version of Karen Blixen's short story "Babette's Feast," directed by Gabriel Axel, while the second, in 1989, went to "Pelle the Conqueror." This was based on the novel of the same name by proletarian writer Martin Andersen Nexo and directed by Bille August. Both awards were for "best foreign film." Bille August's Pelle also won the Golden Palms at the Cannes Film Festival. In the realm of Danish music, the biggest and internationally most well-known name is Carl Nielsen (1865-1931), a composer with an all-embracing work of symphonies, operas and orchestral works. His symphonies have been performed in many parts of the world and have had a leading place in Leonard Bernstein's repertoire. The largest and foremost Danish orchestra is the Royal Danish Orchestra, which works in conjunction with the Royal Theatre, and the Radio Symphony Orchestra, both of international fame. Artists in Sculpture and Painting There are not many places in the world, where a single artist has had an entire museum placed at the disposal of his works. But this was the case with Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844), when he returned to Copenhagen in 1838 after having spent nearly 40 years in Rome and having attained fame as one of the greatest contemporary artists in sculpture. In Rome, he had made a sepulchral monument for Pope Pius VII in St. Peter's Cathedral and numerous statues in the style of antiquity, while at the same time working on his masterpiece of Christ and the 12 Apostles. After his death, this was erected in the Copenhagen Cathedral, while his other works found a place in the museum, where Thorvaldsen rests to this day surrounded by his works. Around Thorvaldsen's time there lived a group of Danish painters, who under the description of the Golden Age Painters have left a strong mark on the history of Danish art. Setting the tone among them was C.W. Eckersberg (1783-1853), and others in the group were Christen K/obke (1810-48) and Julius Exner (1825-1910). One of K/obke's paintings was at the beginning of 1987 hung in London's National Gallery among the great names of painting, after the gallery had acquired it at the auctioneers Sotheby's for 260,000 Pounds. Another and somewhat later group of Danish painters had their residence at Skagen on the northernmost tip of Jutland, where the light is uniquely becoming. The most successful member of this artists' colony was P.S. Kroyer (1851-1909), who in his paintings, often with scenes from shore and sea, was one of the most eminent in the art of capturing the effect of light. Paintings by Kroyer and the other Skagen painters can be seen in large numbers at a museum in Skagen, though many now pass hands for high prices at international art auctions. The biggest name in Danish painting of this century is probably Asger Jorn (1914-73), who won international acclaim for his abstract paintings of fabled creatures in vivid colours. Before his death, he donated many works to an art museum in his childhood town of Silkeborg in Jutland. A large retrospective Asger Jorn exhibition took place in Munich in the spring of 1987. A living artist in sculpture, unique in his style, is Robert Jacobsen (b. 1912), who does not work with hammer and chisel, but with metal cutters and welding flame, when he creates his large iron sculptures, which with their untraditional appearance never fail to capture great attention. Many art museums display Danish and foreign paintings and sculptures. The largest collections are to be found at the State Museum for Art in Copenhagen, but there are also renowned art museums outside the capital, with the largest in Aalborg, Odense, Arhus, Esbjerg and Holstebro. The museum in Aalborg is itself a work of art, designed by the world-famous Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. The Louisiana Museum in North Zealand occupies a special position for several reasons. It was created by a private art collector and maecenas, Knud W. Jensen; it is situated in a beautiful setting overlooking the Sound, a few kilometres south of Elsinore and Kronborg; and, apart from displaying its own collections of modern Danish and international art, Louisiana hosts with great success temporary exhibitions of the art-world's greatest names.