Personside - 69

En anden præst satte langt senere sit præg på byen. Det var Jeremias Wøldike, der var her fra 1860 til 1879. Han var en stor pomolog, og hans interesse for frugttræer førte til kirkebakken og præstegårdshaven hvert forår var et blomsterflor af æble og pæreblomster, og om efteråret bugnede træerne med frugt. Det har været et syn for folk her på egnen, der fra gammel tid mente at en kålhave var til kål. Ved sin afrejse efterlod Wøldike omkring 500 forskellige frugtsorter. Han blev skaber af det tidligere ret så kendte skovfogedæble, som han havde fundet som vildskud i et skovdige på Sydsjælland. Endnu i dag står der i præstens have en del træer, der bærer frugt, skønt de blev plantet for snart 150 år siden.

W. var en stor pomolog, og hans interesse for frugttræer førte til at kirkebakken og præstegårdshaven hvert forår var et blomsterflor af æble- og pæreblomster, og om efteråret bugnede træerne med frugt. Det har været et syn for folk her på egnen, der fra gammel tid mente at en kålhave var til kål. Ved sin afrejse efterlod Wøldike omkring 500 forskellige frugtsorter. Han blev skaber af det tidligere ret så kendte skovfogedæble, som han havde fundet som vildskud i et skovdige på Sydsjælland. Endnu i dag står der i præstens have en hel del træer, der bærer frugt, skønt de blev plantet for snart 150 år siden.

W.s Fader var (som almindeligt blandt Datidens Præster) stærkt interesseret i Havedyrkning, navnlig i Frugtavl. Skæbnen vilde, at da han 1827 havde indrettet sig i Hammer Præstegaard i Sydsjælland, fejede en Aprilstorm syv af Præstegårdshavens største og f Skovfogedæblet fra Lou - et kendt, meget udbredt og skattet Æble. W. skulde imidlertid ikke være Frugtavler af Erhverv, men Præst. Han blev Student 1838 fra Vordingborg, Kandidat 1843, derefter Huslærer paa Møen og Kapellan et Par Steder, Sognepræst i Skelby-Gedesby 1849, i Øster Hornum 1860 og Sognepræst (senere Provst) i Kværndrup 1879. Overalt, hvor han kom hen, helligede han sig Frugtavlen. Paa Møen saaede han Æblekærner, i Øster Hornum anlagde han en anselig Frugtplantage, der 1879 rummede ikke mindre end 278 Æble-, 243 Pære-, 38 Blomme- og 40 Kirsebærsorter m. m. Frugtavleren blev Frugtkender, og hans Ry som Pomolog gik viden om; langvejs fra skrev man efter Podekviste fra ham; han deltog i Udstillinger og var Medstifter af den første Gartnerforening; den sammensluttede Almindelig dansk Gartnerforening gjorde oven i Købet W. (skønt ikke Gartner) til sit første Æresmedlem. Som Forfatter virkede W. kun i det smaa ved trykte Bidrag i »Dansk Havetidende« og Bredsteds Pomologi (I--III, 1890-96) ; men i Manuskriptform overlod han Pomologen C. Matthiesen sit »pomologiske Levnedsløb«, og andet Manuskriptmateriale findes i Almindelig dansk Gartnerforenings Arkiv.

Pastor Wøldike skrev i ”Dansk Havetidende”, 1865, Nr. 45, Side 353—55, her citeret efter Det Biovidenskabelige Fakultets webside:

Historie. —Dette Æble er ofte bleven betragtet som et her i Landet fremkommet Frøæble, hvilket det ikke synes at være. Pastor Wøldike har ikke gjort det til et Frøæble; han skrev i 1865:

»Medfølgende Frugter, høstede af et 8-års Træ (podet 1859), skylder jeg Skovfogden i Lou, Hammer Sogn ved Præstø, som har fundet Modertræet på Gjærdet af Skoven. Som Dreng gjorde jeg Bekendtskab med Frugten som den smukkeste, tidligste og mest velsmagende af de Sommerfrugter, jeg endnu har prøvet, og har efter Anmodning af Dr. theol. Rørdam i Hammer siden 1839 formeret den. — Træet er fuldt hårdført her på Heden og modner sin Frugt med tidlig Byg; 8—14 Dage bør den ligge for at blive skjør og opnå sin fulde Velsmag. Frugten blev i Sydsjælland almindelig en Del længere end her, og fuldstændig rødfarvet. Smagen minder mig tilligemed Formen noget om Grand Richard, men Væxten og Bladene ikke, Skuddene ere slankere og besatte med finere Uld, og Bladene livligere grønne og mindre lådne, med større Savtakker og tilspidsede mod Stilkenden; Bladstilken er længere og altid forsynet med et Par lancetformede Biblade. Hverken Kræft, Brand- eller Bladsvamp har jeg sporet på Træet.

Øster Hornum Præstegård den 8de September 1865.
J. Wøldike.«

Around this time a young Danish engineer P. Rosenstand Wöldike returned after working with land reclamation for ten years in Siberia, only to find all doors and opportunities closed to him in private business and in the civil service. He addressed himself both as civil engineer and cultural technician and he appears to have been very well orientated in the international debate among progressive engineers. He might have been inspired in this by the populist progressivism of the engineering ideologies that were rampant in Germany and especially in America.27)

In 1892/3 Wöldike published a couple of books where he presented a rather original and sophisticated political programme demanding technocracy as a third way out of the class struggle between labour and capital that threatened to tear industrial capitalism apart. In his second book he even had a specific reference to the contemporary utopian writer Edward Bellamy and Austrian economist Theodor Hertzka, who actually tried to build a utopian state. Because Wöldike’s books mark the crucial turning point for the advent of technocratism in Denmark his ideology will be discussed in greater detail.28)

In his first book with the telling title What the Class of Technicians is - What it Claims to Be - And What it Ought to Be, he displayed a clear scientism and elitism in his propaganda for the central position the class of technicians should occupy in a modern society.29)

The second book The Future State on the Basis of Technique was an outspoken political treaty with a rather sensational programme of technocratism. Wöldike took an impartial third position in the ‘destructive’ class struggle between work and capital that was based in a positive science. The basic foundation for technocracy according to Wöldike was a general reform of the engineering education at the Polytechnical Institute, such a reform would: “... not be limited to the technical field alone, but to the organized class of technicians by creating the foundations for the total organization of the entire work which would also be extremely influential in society in general as a regulator of the ‘struggle for living’, in this manner it would become a very important ingredient in solving ‘the social question’ at the hard core of the problem, which is nothing else but the absolute absence of any kind of intellectual management of work in society.” 30)

This marks a central shift from the moral position of saintsimonianism reflected by Adolph Steen fourty years earlier to a new position, with a definitive focus on work and the scientific management of work as the impartial solution to class struggle and conflicts in society.

The technocratic message is evident in the last part of the quotation where all social conflicts in society are reduced to “administrative mistakes” and explained by the “consistent theoretical fallacy of the basic principles on which the present society is working”. From his explicit impartial third position Wöldike lifted himself and the class of engineers up above class struggle by declaring ‘the end of politics’. It was a central point in the book that all work should be managed with rational and scientific principles. It was exactly this type of ideology that would make the mechanical engineer F. W. Taylor world famous twenty years later when he published the book Principles of Scientific Management in 1911.

After this general introduction to technocratism Wöldike took up the discussion of the social question in greater detail. He launched an attack on the ‘levelling ideology’ in socialism, which was characterised as both unreasonable and physically impossible, because “the spiritual heritage, personal intelligence and scientific skills of mankind could not be shared on an equal basis, even if the uneven distribution of al material goods should be levelled at a given time”.31)

At the same time he found that the ideology of socialism seemed a bit ridiculous and mentally retarded. Wöldike pointed to liberalism as the direct and major threat to society because of its idiocy: “Similar damaging effects have the great ‘economic’ slogans: the ‘free’ competition, freedom for industry and free trade resulted in. The senseless labelling of the modern principle of freedom to every activity in society as a universal method has promoted a disastrous development of a total anarchy in the economy; this has resulted in a total degeneration of society with tumours of a great variety. These new and unexpected phenomena have contributed to the confusion even among the most intelligent representatives of modern national economy”.32)

The modern principle of freedom embedded in the principle of ‘the invisible hand’, had led society from the “planned economy” of mercantilism and absolutism directly into devastating economic anarchy. Likewise the idea of equality was stupid because it was based on the lowest common denominator. Wöldike sought out a philosophical third position from where he could explain “the curious deformities of society that are only simple disruptions produced by our own stupid interventions in the natural order. In this way the individual has been cut off from the natural conditions of living produced by work in a steadily growing abundance”. It is remarkable that he pointed to the class struggle as the major threat to productivism and in this way also to the whole future of modern society because the two classes were unable to co-operate: “...because the physcal workforce and the means of production (capital) in community would not be able to produce the now so abundant necessities in society because the third element is still lacking: Intelligence. It will first be under this leadership that the other factors will be able to produce the necessary return, and it is therefore obvious that after the acquisition of the means of production, the question of the unification of intelligence with the mentioned factors of production will apparently be the objective for the reformatory striving in the coming and last crisis”.33)

Wöldike then suggested a historical shortcut as a quick solution to the problem of getting rid of capital. As a productive force it was not on the level with the two other factors of production: work and nature. Capital should be replaced by intelligence as the true match in both ‘age and principal value’ of work and nature by implementing another kind of administration than traditional government, this would initiate a process of social healing: “That instead of showing only a negative, for all factors restrictive and disturbing activity, it would, at the proper moment be able to seize the work initiated by capital and thankfully continue it in its own right with the optimum positive result for the whole of society, whose interest it must be a vocation to manage. Ergo, the real producing forces are Nature, Work and Intelligence, but these three factors have been separated by the existing anarchy”.34)

It was modern science-based technology Wöldike had in mind, when he spoke of a common, collective and important foundation for society created by intelligence through “the intellectual control of the basic forces of nature”. This was his intellectual reflection over the on-going second industrial revolution and it made him talk of the socially organizing role of intelligence, which he imagined should be managed through a new Reform Society to develop a strong and sufficient intellectual initiative. This society would “develop a collective programme on the basis of a full mutual understanding to further the work for a fundamentally new order in society with the common goal to fulfil everybody’s needs and unite the many different interests”. The rationality of this programme was based on productivism with its promise to leave the zero-sum game in society, or as Wöldike elegantly put it: “The governing principle up till now has been: ‘To take from one and give to another”. Instead of this the new programme would be based on a new and exceeding principle: “to give everybody without taking from anyone. This has only become possible in our days, since we learned to ‘rule’ over the forces of nature and out of this create new values in unlimited measure instead of - as until recently - just fighting over the distribution of already existing value”.35)

The utopian perspective of the intellectual leadership and technical government was that it would transform society into a total state with a profound control of the economy exercised by the public management. Quite a totalitarian draft for the future society was sketched by Wöldike, who even imagined a total surveillance of the individual through the control over work: “...all work will be in the service of the state - in its workshops and under its guidance - this will mean a total control of the individual, each and every person will be monitored through the data files of the technical administration or through his book with personal files... Because the organization of the work means nothing else than the total control and domination”.36)

With the incorporation of ‘the productive element’ in the civil services of the state the social reformation would be total, and the result would be “the perfect ideal society that is in every aspect fulfilling the current existing needs”. Wöldike, at the same time, came close to revealing his own frustrated professional ambitions, when he demanded a regulation in the numbers of technicians to avoid “the now existing overproduction of authorized intelligence, so that the whole intellectual proletariat, whose precarious position in society is the least enviable of all, will be abolished for all future”.37)

Nothing more, apparently, were to come out of this furious ideological attack on the establishment. When the engineers had established a professional organisation, the Danish Engineering Association (DIF), only a couple of years earlier one of the purposes had been to tame the impatient young engineers. The Danish engineers as a professional group had no need for a revolt or even a manifestation of technocratism at that time. As a professional interest group and an informal political movement everything still seemed to be going right down the engineers’ way.


28) Bellamy, E.: Looking Backward 2000-1887. New York, 1887; Danish translation: Anno 2000-1887 i et Tilbageblik. 16. Opl. by Fr. Winkel-Horn. Kbh. 1887; New translation: Tilbageblik Aar 2000. by Jørgensen, Eiler. København. 1946; Hertzka, Theodor: Freiland: ein soziales Zukunftsbild Leipzig, 1890; Danish Translation: Friland: Autoriseret, kortfattet Bearbejdelse med en Oversigt over Frilandsbevægelsen/af Figgé, Victor. København, 1894.
29) Wøldike, P. Rosenstand: Hvad Teknikerstanden er - hvad den fordrer at være - og hvad den bør være. Kjøbenhavn, 1892.
30) Wøldike, P. Rosenstand: Fremtidsstaten paa Grundlag af Tekniken. Udkast trykt som Manuscript. Kjøbenhavn, 1893, p. 1-2.
31) Op. Cit. p. 12-13.
32) Ibid.
33) Op. Cit. p. 14-15
34) Op. Cit. p. 18-19, 22-23.
35) Op. Cit. p. 12-3.
36) Op. Cit. p. 45, 47.
37) Op. Cit. p. 110.

Fra Dansk Biografisk Lexikon:³

Heinrich Christian Piehl Wøldike fik efter 1842 at have taget den juridiske Embedsexamen i Kiel s. A. Bestalling som Underretsprokurator. 1847-50 arbejdede han i det slesv.- holst.-lauenb. Kancelli, dels som Volontær, dels som provisorisk Kancellist, udnævntes 1850 til Kammerjunker og fungerede 1850-51 som Bureauchef under den overordentlige Regeringskommissær for Hertugdømmet Slesvig; 1852 blev han Medlem af Appellationsretten i Flensborg, men afskedigedes 1864 fra denne Stilling. 1865-67 var han Suppleant og Justitssekretær ved den midlertidige Overjustitskommission for de i Kongeriget indlemmede slesvigske Distrikter og blev 1867, efter at have bestaaet den særlige Prøve for tidligere slesvigske Embedsmænd, udnævnt til Herredsfoged og Skriver i Hellum og Hindsted Herreder samt Birkedommer og Skriver i Lindenborg Birk, men paa Grund af Misligheder fradømtes Embedet ham ved Højesteretsdom 1887.

W. har udfoldet nogen litterær Virksomhed, nemlig som Udgiver dels af ”Kronologisk Samling af Love og Bekjendtgjørelser for Hertugdømmet Slesvig 1848-52”, dels af det paa Dansk og Tysk udkomne ”Juridisk Ugeskrift for Hertugdømmet Slesvig” i. 10. Bind (1854-64).