Gomme
Holgersen 1746 – 1828
In 1795
Gomme Holgersen participated in a revolt in Ærøskøbing on the island Ærø
where he lived. In those days the schoolteachers had their income from the
parents directly, either in cash or kind. In 1782 J. H. Lorentzen started as new
teacher after severe problems with the old teacher. The people were happy, but
not for long time, already in 1789 there came a lot of complaints to the
authorities on his behavior. He was beating the pupils, he refused children from
poor homes and he was a heavy drinker and started fighting at the pub when he
was drunk.
Some of the people kept the children home and other refused to pay anything to
the teacher. The teacher became desperate; he was married and had a lot of
children, and passing the second quarter of 1795 he complained to the authorities. An
official was sent out to collect money or security from the parents, but when he
took a shrine or little box from Gomme Holgersen, he started a fight. Gomme took
the shrine back, grab the official at the chest, shook him, and gave him a hard
shock in the abdomen and threw him out of the house. That also was a serious
crime those days, and Gomme was ordered to meet in the court the same afternoon,
but before that he collected 20 friends and sympathizers who he wanted to bring
into the courthouse. That was denied and it started a riot at the town square
outside the court, it accelerated to the whole town leaded by Andreas van der Lühe
Petersen and Rasmus Peiter Johansen. As the authorities did not know how to stop
the riot they requested support from the nearest military base outside the
island. 56 soldiers arrived and after a couple of days the people calmed down,
mostly because they realized that they had to pay for the soldiers themselves.
It came to a trial, and Andreas van der Lühe got 3 years hard work at the
fortress in Rendsburg, Rasmus Peiter Johansen 1 year the same place and Gomme
Holgersen got 2 years.
It is not known if Gomme ever suffered his 2 years of hard work. He left the
island with his family shortly after the trial and moved to Kerteminde at the
island Fyn, and in the census 1801 he lived there with his family. In 1802 a
search warrant was sent to the counties to get him arrested, and it was
mentioned that he had been reported seen in Kerteminde but not found. See the search
warrant and a translation.
Until 1864 the northern Germany, Sleswig-Holstein, was a part of the Danish
kingdom and the island Ærø, where this revolt took place, was a part of
Holstein, and that could be the reason why the “German” authorities was
unable to locate Gomme Holgersen. He died in Kerteminde in 1828.
Today Sleswig-Holstein is a part of Germany but Ærø is a Danish island.
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