Edvard Brandes

Who was Edvard Brandes?

Carl Edvard Cohen Brandes was a Danish politician, critic and author, and the younger brother of Georg Brandes and Ernst Brandes. He was a Ph.D. in eastern philology.

Brandes was a member of the Folketing for the party Venstre from 1880 to 1894. Along with Viggo Hørup and Christen Berg, Brandes was editor of the newspaper "Morgenbladet", which was associated with the party, from 1880 to 1883, when Berg fired Brandes and Hørup over a conflict on the points of view that the newspaper voiced. In 1884, he cofounded the newspaper Politiken with Hørup and Hermann Bing. Brandes used his position within the newspaper to promote literature that supported his own political point of view and to criticize literature which contained nationalliberal or Grundtvigian points of view, often in direct conflict with his opinion of their quality, but nevertheless he played a significant part in reforming literary criticism in Denmark.

He joined the party Det Radikale Venstre shortly after its founding in 1905, and he was a member of the Landsting for the party from the 1906 election until 1927.