Portrait
Died
29 October 2011aged 96
ActivistDenmark15th anniversary of death

Axel Axgil

With his partner Eigil he founded Denmark’s first gay organisation – and in 1989 the two became the first same-sex couple in the world to be legally recognised.

Axel Axgil was born Axel Lundahl-Madsen in Denmark. In 1948, inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he and his partner Eigil Eskildsen founded the “Forbundet af 1948” with friends, Denmark’s first organisation for gay men and lesbians. At the time even the word “homosexual” was taboo. The association grew quickly, opened branches in Sweden and Norway and published a magazine, “Vennen” (The Friend). Today it is called LGBT+ Danmark.

As a sign of their bond, the two men created a shared surname from their first names: Axgil. They lived together for more than four decades.

In 1989 Denmark became the first country in the world to allow same-sex couples to register their partnership. On 1 October 1989 Axel and Eigil Axgil were the first couple to do so, at Copenhagen City Hall, together with ten other couples. Axel was 74, Eigil 67. Photographs of the two men toasting with champagne in a horse-drawn carriage went round the world. Norway, Sweden, Iceland and many other countries followed with similar laws.

Eigil Axgil died in 1995. In 2012 it became known that he had volunteered for the Waffen-SS during the German occupation; the revelation caused controversy in Denmark. Axel Axgil died in 2011, aged 96 – a few months before Denmark opened full marriage to same-sex couples. Denmark’s main LGBT awards are named after the couple.

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