Erik Seidenfaden (journalist)

Erik Seidenfaden (April 24, 1910 – April 13, 1990) was a Danish journalist and editor. He was a co-founder of Dagbladet Information.

Erik Seidenfaden was born in Hasle, Denmark where his father was a district attorney. In 1928, Seidenfaden took the classical languages exam at Sorø Akademi and went on to study comparative literature at Copenhagen University. In Paris, he attended a journalism school and, after considering a career in literature studies, he joined the conservative newspaper Dagens Nyheder.

Erik Seidenfaden began working as an assistant to Nicolaj Blædel (1882–1943), foreign correspondent at the daily Dagens Nyheder, about whom it was said that he had vaccinated the Danes against Nazism. Later, in 1945, Seidenfaden would edit and publish Blædel's work Forbrydelse og Dumhed (Crime and Stupidity). His first significant reporting job came when he was sent to cover Adolf Hitler's 1933 election campaign, where he was almost arrested writing against Nazi Germany. He began his series on Germany with a satirical article, published on June 18, 1933, which was about the "nazification" of Heidelberg University titled "200 Dueller om Ugen I Heidelberg" (200 Duels a Week in Heidelberg). He then published "Jødehaderen" (The Jew-hater), an interview with the Nazi and vehement anti-Semitic editor of Der Stürmer Julius Streicher (1885–1946) at a coffee house in Nürenberg on 9 July.

While travelling through Prague, Vienna, and Amsterdam, he recorded the life of around 50,000 Germans who had to flee their country, and published in "Paa Flugt fra Nazi-Tyskland" (On the Run from Nazi-Germany) on 6 August. On 1 January 1935, he became the permanent foreign correspondent for Dagens Nyheder, working within the newsroom of The Times. On 1 October he followed Nicolaj Blædel, decamping to the more conservative Berlingske Tidende and Jydske Tidende until 1937. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, he compiled reports from the front on the government's side, in 1937 publishing the book Borgerkrig i Spanien (Civil War in Spain). With regards democracies, he wrote, "it's an open question whether democracies in the long run serve the cause of peace if they accept being attacked, whether it is directly as in Abyssinia or indirectly as in Spain, and still pay the price dictators demand from them to keep the peace".

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