Knud Thiele (The Kalmar Union)

Knud Thiele
Timeline: The Kalmar Union

Born	1st September, 1834 Copenhagen, Denmark
Died	8th March, 1913 Charlottenlund, Denmark
Profession	Scientist

Knud Thiele is chiefly remembered for his work identifying and categorising extinct animals, and indeed coining the term 'Deinosauria' to describe one such group of ancient reptiles. However he was also critical in establishing the Naturhistoriske Museum in Copenhagen, an institute he served as Director for forty-three years.

Thiele was born in in Copenhagen in 1834, the eldest child of Frederike Thiele and Angharad Jones. His father was a prosperous head of a merchant house, his mother had emigrated to Denmark from Welsh Wessex as a teenager after a crackdown on her family's Dissenter faith. Thiele quickly proved an excellent scholar rising to the top of every class he entered and gaining the highest honours possible at the University of Copenhagen, a feat which fed into his growing superiority complex.

Inaccurate sketch of an Iguanodon and Megalosaurus fighting, based on Tiele's original reconstructions

Whilst working on his doctorate he began correspondence with the now-elderly Björn Vikander, who had championed the systematic classification of plants and animals. Thiele began working to revise and refine some of Vikander's errors, eventually concentrating his efforts on extinct and/or fossilised animals. This work would take him abroad, to visit private collections in Bavaria, Wessex, UKN, and even to Álengiamark, to catalogue their contents. His work, alongside local scientists, reclassified many odd finds discovered by amateur collectors from 'curious stones' or 'parts of biblical giants' into ancient unknown creatures. Thiele collated three of these animals, all found in Wessex, into a new clade: 'Deinosaurs'.

His concern that so many interesting and vital specimens were being 'hidden away in neglected curiousity cabinets by ignorant churchmen and apathetic gentry' led to his public campaign to establish a public museum 'for the education and enlightenment' of the masses. He had personally brought many specimens home from his travels and the existing National Museum was not large enough to fully display even a fraction of its large catalogue of fossils and taxidermy. Despite his abrasive attitude he found influential backers and the establishment of a dedicated Naturhistoriske Museum was soon a Riksdag, and Royal, priority. He strongly resisted a site on Amager island next to the Sophienborg Palace and insisted on a site closer to the city so the museum could be more easily reached by the populace. A site opposite Rosenberg castle was earmarked and funds allocated by an act of the Riksdag in 1870, as part of a programme of removing the old city walls restricting Copenhagen's growth and a general remodelling of the city. The building would take seven years to finish and would be opened to the public by Queen Alexandra in August 1881. In the meantime a collaboration with the University of Copenhagen had resulted in a Zoological & Paleontological Studies department. Thiele would occasionally teach classes, often drawing large crowds beyond the students actually enrolled in the course.

"Thiele has never met a person he has not offended in some way" - Kamma Brun. His initial foreign trips in cataloguing collections were full of tactless blunders, most notably in Catholic Wessex and Álengiamark where many collections were in the hands of churchmen whom he would often have blistering theological rows with. When other paleontologists added to his original three deinosaurs with their own finds Thiele often found ways to disparage their work or co-opt it as his own.

Diagram of the Álengsk Náttirusugusaf's Iguanodon which, though more correct, Thiele rejected and disparaged

Later on he thoroughly damaged relations with deinosaur prospectors in Leifia with diktats and low payments for their finds, and when they instead sold to museums in Vinland, Álengiamark, France and Luxembourg, he would attempt to discredit those museums. Especially sneering was his mockery of the Álengsk Natural History Museum for their mounting of various deinosaurs in positions he considered unnatural (though which have turned out to be much more correct than his own attempts).

His tenure as director of the Naturhistoriske Museum was not without controversy either. Despite growing acceptance of the Theory of Evolution, as outlined by Maurits Nahon in 1884, he strongly rejected the fundamentals of it, refusing to let it be taught in any form in his university 'fiefdom'. The torrid correspondence between Thiele, Nahon, and others, became public and was gleefully reprinted by newspapers and periodicals and a source of satire by some contemporary writers.

Thiele would die in 1913. His mausoleum in Assistens Cemetery is topped with (in perfect keeping with his wishes) an anatomically incorrect marble Iguanodon.

Thiele married Karen Kjer in 1849. They would have three children. Their second son, Mads Thiele, would rise to become Finance Minister in Hans Lilleholt's Liberal cabinet of 1905-08.