Johan Bernhard Hjort

Johan Bernhard Hjort (25 February 1895 – 24 February 1969) was a Norwegian supreme court lawyer, and was the son of marine biologist, oceanographer and director of fisheries Johan Hjort. With Vidkun Quisling he founded the Norwegian political party Nasjonal Samling on 17 May 1933. In 1937 Hjort broke with Quisling and left Nasjonal Samling. He was arrested by Gestapo in 1941 by the direct intervention of Josef Terboven, after Hjort published a scholarly article in a journal of Norwegian law that openly criticised the German occupation. He spent prison time in Oslo and then Berlin. After being released from prison, Hjort along with his family carried out important resistance work in Germany, playing a crucial role in the first stages of the White Buses operation. It is estimated that this operation saved 15,345 prisoners from mortal peril in concentration and prisoner camps; of these 7,795 were Scandinavian and 7,550 were non-Scandinavian.

After the war he fought as a supreme court lawyer for the artistic freedom of controversial artists and for the natural legal rights of homosexuals. In 1957, in one of the most famous and widely debated court cases in Norwegian post-war history, Hjort was the defense lawyer for novelist Agnar Mykle, who was accused of immoral and obscene writing in his books. Hjort was a long-term chairman of Riksmålsforbundet, an association that fought for Riksmål being the only allowed form of Norwegian language. He was a prolific writer and lecturer and a frequent contributor to public debate. Among his books are Justismord (1952), Dømt med rette? (1958), and Demokrati og statsmakt (1963). He also translated Kipling's Just So Stories into Norwegian.

References

• Ivo de Figueiredo (2002): Fri mann, Aschehoug ISBN 82-03-22973-5 (Free Man, in Norwegian); a biography of Hjort that won the Brage Prize (comparable in Norway to a Pulitzer Prize)

• Wanda Hjort Heger (1984): Hver fredag foran porten, Gyldendal ISBN 82-05-14937-2 (Every Friday at the gate, in Norwegian), German edition (1989) Jeden Freitag vor dem Tor Schneekluth ISBN 3-7951-1132-3; Hjort's daughter's story about the war years, the tracking down of concentration camps, and the planning and execution of the White Buses operation that successfully saved thousands of prisoners from the camps

• Erling Kvamme (2007): The Bernadotte Operation, in the light of Johan Bernhard Hjort's forgotten role as its initiator (in Norwegian); Historie 1-07, pp. 34–39.

External links

• The Hjort law firm