page_title: History of the Jews in Denmark
section_title: Integration into Danish life
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Jews in Denmark / Integration into Danish life
caption_attribution_description: English: The antisemitic riots in Copenhagen in september 1819. Dansk: Jødefejden 1819. Tegning fra 1881 af Knud Gamborg, stukket af H.P. Hansen.
context_page_description: The history of the Jews in Denmark goes back to the 1600s. At present, the Jewish community of Denmark constitutes a small minority of about 6,000 persons within Danish society. The community's population peaked prior to the Holocaust at which time the Danish resistance movement took part in a collective effort to evacuate about 8,000 Jews and their families from Denmark by sea to nearby neutral Sweden, an act which ensured the safety of almost all the Danish Jews.
context_section_description: As the Jewish enlightenment reached Denmark in the late 18th century, the king instituted a number of reforms to facilitate integration of Jewish subjects into the larger Danish society. Jews were allowed to join guilds, study at the university, buy real estate, and establish schools.
  The Napoleonic Wars and the disastrous Gunboat War brought about a complete emancipation of Danish Jews (while, in contrast, events in Norway resulted in a constitutional ban on Jews entering Norway). Still, there were severe antisemitic riots in Denmark in 1819 that lasted several months, though without any known fatalities.
  On the other hand, the early 19th century saw a flourishing of Danish-Jewish cultural life. The Great Synagogue of Copenhagen is a landmark building, designed by the architect G. F. Hetsch. A number of Jewish cultural personalities (or persons of Jewish ancestry who did not necessarily regard themselves as Jews), among them the art benefactor and editor Mendel Levin Nathanson, the writer Meir Aron Goldschmidt, and founder of Politiken, Edvard Brandes, his brother literary critic Georg Brandes (who had a strong influence on Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen), Henri Nathansen, and others rose to prominence.
caption: The anti-Jewish riots in Copenhagen in September 1819
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "150", "Image YResolution": "150", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2008:09:04 13:01:52", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6499", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "608", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "921"}