Autumn cycling - Mindelunden

Outside there is a slight summer rain, and the meteorologists believe that it will stay so for the time to come, so my daily biketrip will probably be a bit wet. But last week it was a wonderful late summer weather, windy and not too warm, but with a bright sun and impressive cumulus clouds in the sky.

I hadn't decided where to go so I simply took a fast decision every time I reached a crossroad. This took me north east through a large green area below the beautiful Bispebjerg Hospital.

Bispebjerg Hospital was built in 1913 in historicist style, and the main entrance looks a bit like an old castle.

There is a long green stretch with nice biking tracks and some large newly built bicycle bridges that can take you over the motorway and all the way to Hellerup, one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Denmark, North of Copenhagen. So I just followed the road (or rather bicycle track) till I came out of the forest and onto Tuborg Road (named after the beer). And here I decided to stop and go for a little walk because right there is a place called Mindelunden (which means, Memorial Grove).

The monumental entrance to the Memorial Grove, in the frighteningly monumental style of the post-war. Made in concrete of course.

I had a hazy idea about what it was - a memorial park made after WW2 (which it is), but didn't know exactly what to expect. So I went in and was immediately thrown back to another time - the time of my childhood. The thing is that I'm old enough to have known the people who lived through the Second World War - it was my grandparents' generation. Back in the seventies and eighties the war still meant a lot to us , and the Memorial Grove emanated all the horror, doubting nationalism and abysmal sorrow that I, in my own childish way, could discern from the grown up's discussions and stories back then.

At the left when you enter there is a long memorial wall for 151 missing resistance members.

The stones gives names, age and sometime occupation of the dead - from students to admirals. Some of them have a small poem or biblical word, on some of them, you can see the resistance group they were part of. The first one in these stones, Ivan Adriansen, only became 21 years and was part of the Walther Group. Next to him is Aage August Agersted, a chief of police. Most of these people died in german KZ camps.

Some of the groups had rather interesting names. The one to the left was in the: Electrician's Group, the one on the right was part of the Southern Harbour Battalion, 4th company. The Southern Harbour is an old social democratic working class quarter in Copenhagen and the slightly bombastic self-image of the proud members of this proletarian battalion contrast nicely with the stoic electrician's group. Both men were in their twenties.

There was signs leading to the different parts of the park, and one of them said: The execution spot. The park was originally a Danish military barracks with an exercise field and shooting range. It was here the Germans in secrecy executed and buried members of the Danish resistance they had caught.

The execution spot.

The three wooden poles, shattered by shoots has been cast in bronze and placed where the original wooden ones were.

At this point I began to be strangely moved. The place was filled with all the mistakes, and glory, and suffering and shame of a generation that I have known myself. Even though they didn't participate or was to blame (fascism was to blame) I still remember the grave, often sombre and sorrowful, mood of the grown ups when they talked about the war. Being here in the Memorial Grove made me remember this.

The actual grave yard was being restored so I wasn't able to see that. But behind the fence you can just catch a glimpse of the statue by Axel Poulsen. The people in the grave yard were all buried here by the Germans in unmarked graves. Most of them had been executed here too.

Before returning to my bike I also went to see the place 31 graves of people killed in German KZ camps.

The German KZ camps were the most horrendous thing people could think about when I was a child (they still are I suppose, it's just that children do not really know about it any longer, and the internet is somehow more suited for holocaust denial than the grim facts), so with that in mind it felt slightly strange that this calm and beautiful little spot felt so soothing and relaxing.

This is the grave of Kaj Arne Trolle Jacobsen, who died at KZ Hannover-Stöcken.

After this I returned to my bike and took another half hour biking in the sun. Many of the graves had the same little poem written on the stone. It is the last verse from a poem by the Danish, romantic writer, Christian Winther. It was used a lot in and after the war in connection with the resistance against the Germans, and sums up pretty well the pathos that was so typical for my grandparents generation, and (thankfully) so untypical of my children's.

It translated like this (without trying to rhyme):

Fight for everything you love,
die if necessary!
Then your life is not so hard,
neither is your death.