Jew Clause (Norway)

The clause, in its original form, banned Jews from entering Norway, and also forbade Jesuits and monastic orders.

Christian Magnus Falsen, Georg Sverdrup and Nicolai Wergeland were the central delegates behind the wording of the section's final paragraph.

Countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, Austria and the Netherlands had all liberalized many special restrictions and regulations against Jews between 1782 and 1814.

[2] Christian V's Norwegian Code of 1687 required Jews seeking entry to the kingdom to have a safe conduct from the King.

[4][3] Intellectual historian Håkon Harket [no] bases his thesis on, among other things, a previously unknown note by Christian Magnus Falsen on Moses and the Hebrews.

This was a political and not a religious justification according to Harket: it was a notion that the Jews represented a threat to equality, freedom and the unity of the state.

Prussian writer Friedrich Buchholz [de], who was central to the debate on the civil rights of Jews in Denmark and Germany, was likely an intellectual role model for Falsen.

[10] According to Harket, it was instead intolerance based on Enlightenment criticism of religion that led to the Jews being explicitly denied access to the kingdom of one of Europe's freest constitutions.

Lauritz Weidemann argued partly antisemitically, believing that the Jews' desire to emerge as a state made them untrustworthy citizens.

King Charles XIV John threatened to put Norway under the Swedish constitution if the installment was not paid.

Danish Joseph Hambro and Swedish Vilhelm Benedicks came to Norway twice that year to negotiate government debt.

The national debt and the loan crisis led to a pragmatic approach to the Jewish clause, according to historian Frode Ulvund [no].

[2] In the difficult years after 1814, Finance Minister Herman Wedel Jarlsberg had tried to borrow money from banks in London.

[19] In 1844, Emanuel Philipson and Leon Lopez were arrested in Christiania (today Oslo) after a raid on Lütken's billiard hall.

Lopez was released under an exemption for "Portuguese Jews"; Philipson was imprisoned for 30 days because he could not pay the fine of 800 specidaler (a considerable sum at the time).

Morgenbladet wrote in a commentary that the two had contributed to "reinforcing the rather widespread belief that the country will be overrun by swindlers and fraudsters [Skakrere og Bedragere] if the ban on Jews entering the kingdom is lifted".

Andreas Munch wrote a satirical play based on Morgenbladet's views and polemics with its more liberal competitor, Den Constitutionelle.

Wedel Jarlsberg spoke to a certain extent for the Jews' cause at Eidsvoll, while Arnoldus Koren demanded full religious freedom.

Hount said that the paragraph was abhorrently intolerant as the Jews were given "no place to dwell on God's green earth".

[24] Moses may have been of Jewish descent although there is no definitive information; the families may have come from the so-called Portuguese Jews (Borøchstein [no] cites Oskar Mendelsohn).

You close your ports When the Jew seeks refuge You drive away a people – Is that what it means to be the interpreter of freedom?

The proposal was sponsored by Søren Anton Wilhelm Sørensen, President of the Parliament, and presented on 28 June 1839.

In this conjunction, Henrik Wergeland had published the poetry collection Jøden (The Jew) and had it sent to every member of parliament before the first vote was taken to repeal the clause.

Here, therefore, the ruthless antipathies against the Jewish people have been preserved longest and in the sharpest manifestation, although the criticism that arises from this only affects the Norwegians' tolerance, not their sense of justice, for no people can be denied the right to regulate with free arbitrariness those provisions according to which foreigners are permitted or forbidden to come into the country and to share the advantages of the state.

From the moral point of view, however, the matter is different, and here the harshness and insensitivity with which, it is asserted, even shipwrecked Jews are treated on the Norwegian coast deserves special rebuke.In the press and in Parliament there was extensive argumentation against the proposal, often economically justified.

Politician Peder Jensen Fauchald, school principal Hans Holmboe, and others also fought for its repeal.

Legislation based on the Jew clause was then adapted, and finally, on September 24, 1851, the king enacted Lov om Ophævelse af det hidtil bestaaende Forbud mod at Jøder indfinde sig i Riget m.v.

During the Second World War, Vidkun Quisling's Nasjonal Samling regime reintroduced the clause on March 12, 1942.

[37] Monastic orders were allowed to enter the country in 1897, while the Jesuits had to wait until 1956, when Norway was going to ratify the European Convention on Human Rights.

The provision on freedom of religion was moved to § 16: Alle Indvaanere af Riget have fri Religionsøvelse.