ABOUT QUEEN MARGRETHE OF DENMARK


APRIL 16:

This week has at least two royal birthdays. Yesterday the Belgian king Philippe turned 60.  He has been king now for seven years.  He is the third king in this country since we arrived here in 1988.  King Baudouin died in 1993. His brother, king Albert II took over, and in 2013 his son, king Philippe followed him.


And today, Denmark’s queen, Margrethe II, celebrates her 80th birthday.  She has been queen for 48 years now - since January 1972.


Warm congratulations to both royalties also here from Rixensart 😊


Queen Margarethe and I have in a way a common past. We have both studied political science.  And even at the best, “the only”, Institute of Political Science – in Aarhus in Denmark. We were not there exactly at the same time. The princess – as she was at the time – was there in the years 1961-62.  She managed to escape, before I arrived in 1963. But we have had the same teachers and were to a large extent part of the same group of students.  


The Institute was created in 1959. It was the first of its kind in Denmark. One of our outspoken professors said to us:  You are welcome to consider yourselves as pioneers or guinea pigs! I don’t care!  We were in the beginning very few students, and the institute was placed in a small room in the corner of the library of the Institute of Mathematics.


Another of our professors later reported, how the parents of the princess, the then king and queen of Denmark, visited the Institute before her arrival.  It was nice and almost like a consultation with parents in the high school, he said.   Margrethe got a room in one of the university’s student residences – room 402.  It was a residence only for girls – 16 of them on each floor.  Like in all student residencies the floor kitchen was the most important room. That kitchen is still celebrating its “royal history” by having a picture of princess Margrethe on the wall.


Parties were, of course, also an important part of life at the Institute at the time. During one of them a fellow student all of a sudden jumped on a chair next to Margrethe.  He belonged politically to the very left side of the spectrum. So, what did he do?  Of course, he was singing INTERNATIONALE, the  most known communist song.  He probably expected that his royal co-student would become very embarassed.  No way.  She said to him:  What a nice song.  Please, sing it one more time for me?!  Our political singer got quite confused and surprised.  No more political songs that night.  Very elegantly handled.


Another event many years later:  one of our colleagues from the Institute had received the Queen’s special medal as thank you for 40 years’ work at the Institute.  She had to see the queen to say thank you.  And Margrethe started right away to talk about her time as a student there.  When her visitor reacted by saying that she had seen many pictures from that period, Margrethe was a little bit embarrassed and said: Oh yes, so many things happened at that time!  


They also spoke about her son, crown-prince Frederik, who – of course ! – made his studies at very same institute in the years 1989-95.  He also finished his studies with a degree – and wrote a special thesis about foreign policy and the Baltic countries.  At a certain time it was planned that he should be a trainee in the EU Commission for a period, even in my directorate.  For different reasons it never happened.


This was a small personal angle linked to today’s story.  Hopefully, the Queen has nice memories about her time at our Institute.  The Institute and its staff and students certainly have so.

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