1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lehmann, Peter Martin Orla

LEHMANN, PETER MARTIN ORLA (1810–1870), Danish statesman, was born at Copenhagen on the 15th of May 1810. Although of German extraction his sympathies were with the Danish national party and he contributed to the liberal journal the Kjöbenhavnsposten while he was a student of law at the university of Copenhagen, and from 1839 to 1842 edited, with Christian N. David, the Fädrelandet. In 1842 he was condemned to three months’ imprisonment for a radical speech. He took a considerable part in the demonstrations of 1848, and was regarded as the leader of the “Eiderdänen,” that is, of the party which regarded the Eider as the boundary of Denmark, and the duchy of Schleswig as an integral part of the kingdom. He entered the cabinet of Count A. W. Moltke in March 1848, and was employed on diplomatic missions to London and Berlin in connexion with the Schleswig-Holstein question. He was for some months in 1849 a prisoner of the Schleswig-Holsteiners at Gottorp. A member of the Folkething from 1851 to 1853, of the Landsthing from 1854 to 1870, and from 1856 to 1866 of the Reichsrat, he became minister of the interior in 1861 in the cabinet of K. C. Hall, retiring with him in 1863. He died at Copenhagen on the 13th of September 1870. His book On the Causes of the Misfortunes of Denmark (1864) went through many editions, and his posthumous works were published in 4 vols., 1872–1874.

See Reinhardt, Orla Lehmann og hans samtid (Copenhagen, 1871); J. Clausen, Af O. Lehmanns Papirer (Copenhagen, 1903).