Karl Peder Pedersen:
"Ich bin ein höchst vollständiges und makelloses Exemplar der Rasse und wurde deshalb auch wie ein kostbarer Schatz empfangen."
Karl Peder Pedersen:
"I am a supremely complete and flawless exemplar of the race, and as a result, was also received as a precious treasure."
On the Danish Civil Servant Poul Andræ (1843–1928), Contrary Sexuality and the Physicians
English abstract
Throughout his life, the Danish jurist Poul Andræ (1843–1928) was a man of the written word. Beyond his extensive body of work as an author, he also kept diaries in which he documented the course of his emotional development as a homosexual man. It was not until 2012 that transcripts of these diaries could be analyzed by the archivist Karl Peder Pedersen, along with other materials concerning Poul Andræ within the holdings of the Danish National Archives and the Royal Library in Copenhagen. These documents allowed him to trace the man’s life journey, both internally and externally. In doing so, he shows that Andræ was a self-assured activist and an early campaigner for the interests of homosexuals. Through his efforts, Andræ kept in contact with physicians, pioneers of the homosexual movement and other like-minded people, both in Denmark and abroad. He was the first Dane to publicly speak for equal rights for homosexuals. In later years, Andræ became a member of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (aka the WhK). Poul Andræ’s great achievement was not only in campaigning among his contemporaries for understanding and tolerance towards homosexuals – with his records, he also ensured that we now have an important primary source from the early history of homosexual identity formation.