Queer Places:
Lillerød Church, Kirkehaven 3, 3450 Lillerød, Denmark
Jens Rudolph Norup Dahl (February 16, 1894 – July 6, 1977) was a Director and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Gustav Rasmussen appointed his close friend, Jens Rudolph Dahl, Permanent Under-Secretary. Dahl was a homosexual and two years later he had to resign after having made homosocial advances to a young diplomat. After the fall of the Social Democratic government in October 1950, Rasmussen was appointed ambassador in Rome. Dahl also settled in Rome and took up a career as a newspaper commentator. Although it was widely known that Gustav (aka ‘Gysse’) Rasmussen was a homosexual, the general public was not aware of it. However, in December 1950 Rasmussen was attacked in a provincial newspaper affiliated with the Venstre Party for having appointed Dahl. A well known former diplomat wrote that homosexuals had a natural tendency to form cliques and coteries closed to ‘normal’ people, declaring that the US House Committee on Un-American Activities was decidedly correct in its view of homosexuals as ‘particularly dangerous persons’. However, according to younger collegues, Dahl, after his resignation, retained to an amazing degree the respect and affection of his former collegues, whom he regularly visited at the Foreign Ministry.
Born in Ullits, Gislum, Aalborg, Denmark, the son of Frederik Laurentius Fabricius Dahl and Gyda Marie Dahl, Jens Rudolph Dahl became a student of the Metropolitan School in 1913. During his subsequent legal studies, Dahl has been active in the Academic Sagittarius and as editor (1915-19) of the student magazines "Studium" and "Akademisk Ugeblad". In 1922 he became a cand. jur. and secretary in the foreign ministry, where he was permanently employed in 1926. Then followed a long period of service abroad, first as attache to the embassy in Paris in 1928, then as vice consul in Hamburg in 1930 and New York in 1933, and finally again in Paris as legation secretary in 1936. In 1939 he was recalled to serve as a clerk in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in 1941 he was appointed Head of Office of the 1st Political-Legal Office; he was involved in negotiations with the occupying power on specific arrest and deportation cases. From August 29, 1943, until the liberation, Dahl served as secretary to the meetings of the Head of Department and prepared with official and confident wording the official minutes.
In the fall of 1945, Dahl was appointed Foreign Secretary and Head of the Political-Legal Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in 1948 advanced to the post of Director of the Ministry. He retained this post until his retirement in 1950, which was justified by illness.
His literary endeavor, the novel The priest, the doctor and the hex, in 1954 was not successful.
He died in København.
My published books:
