Mette Frisk Jensen
Christian Birch - A corrupt civil servant in the Danish central administration

This article tells the story of one of Danish history's arguably biggest cases of corruption within the central administration in the beginning of the 19th century. Based on the case of fraud the article explores how the late Danish absolutist government chose to handle the case and furthermore how the notion of corruption was perceived by the government and the government official respectively. Christian Birch was one of the senior officials in the administration's department of finance. In 1820 he was exposed for defraud in the order of 659 times his own yearly salary. When the case was discovered the absolutist government acted swiftly and the case was investigated thoroughly and was subsequently tried before two judicial institutions. Birch was sentenced to imprisonment for life even though there was no clear legislation for a government officials corruption which is an interesting fact in the history of Danish public administration.