1864 Prompts Call For Broadcaster To Employ Historians

Jyllands Posten reports that the Danish People’s Party has called for Danish broadcaster DR to employ historians for feedback and advice when producing historical dramas. They claim that this will avoid politicising interpretations of the past, which 1864 has been widely accused of.

“Decent artists empathise with the period and its terms. You do not read anything into a project to attack others, as history and art should be without prejudice… Therefore, I believe that in the future history consultants should be assigned during the scripting process,” says Ahrendtsen of the Danish People’s Party.

However, the proposal will be difficult to implement in practice, says Claus Bundgaard Christensen, History Professor at Roskilde University. He points out that historians often reach different conclusions based on the same empirical source material. Therefore, it will be difficult to offer robust and consistent advice to DR’s scriptwriters.