Annæus Schjødt (7 March 1888 – 12 October 1972) was a Norwegian

lawyer A lawyer is a person who is qualified to offer advice about the law, draft legal documents, or represent individuals in legal matters. The exact nature of a lawyer's work varies depending on the legal jurisdiction and the legal system, as w ...

. He is best known as the

prosecutor A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the adversarial system, which is adopted in common law, or inquisitorial system, which is adopted in Civil law (legal system), civil law. The prosecution is the ...

Vidkun Quisling Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling (; ; 18 July 1887 – 24 October 1945) was a Norwegian military officer, politician and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Nazi collaborator who Quisling regime, headed the government of N ...

Personal life

He was born in

Kristiania Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022, an ...

as a son of Attorney General Annæus Johannes Schjødt (1857–1923) and Laura Marie Rømcke (1860–1893). In October 1914 he married Hedevig Petersen (1892–1966). The two were the parents of Annæus Schjødt Jr. and Karen Hedevig Schjødt, who married chief physician Thorstein Guthe.

Career

He took the examen artium in 1907 and the cand.jur. degree in 1911. He worked in Hadeland and Land District Court from 1913 to 1914. He was a junior solicitor in the law firm Bredal, Christiansen & Fougner from 1914, and lawyer from 1917 to 1920. He started his own firm in 1936. By the mid-1930s the firm was called Fougner, Schjødt, Grette og Smith. During the

occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany The occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany during the Second World War began on 9 April 1940 after Operation Weserübung. Conventional armed resistance to the German invasion ended on 10 June 1940, and Nazi Germany controlled Norway until th ...

, Schjødt and his wife joined the resistance organization 2A. He had to flee to Sweden in the spring of 1942 and at the Norwegian legation in Stockholm he became leader of the refugee office. His wife was active in the sub-department, the sports office. During Schjødt's time the office moved to Kjesäter. In the autumn of 1943 the couple were ordered to move to

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

where the Norwegian government-in-exile was seated. Schjødt became leader of ''Norges Luftfartstyre''. He also used his background in law to lead the commissions ''London-utvalg I'' and ''London-utvalg II'', which prepared the principles for treason trials against Norwegians after the war. After the war, Schjødt was chosen as the

in the most high-profiled treason case in Norway, the Court of Appeal case against

. He called for the

death sentence Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in s ...

, which was unanimously agreed to in the Court of Appeal, and also in the Supreme Court. Other cases include the treason trials against Kjeld Stub Irgens and Axel Heiberg Stang and the review trial of Halldis Neegård Østbye. He was a board chairman of Forsikringsselskapet Viking and board member of Forsikringsselskapet Minerva and Avviklingsinstituttet. In 1965 he was decorated as a Commander of the

Order of St. Olav The Royal Norwegian Order of Saint Olav (; or ''Sanct Olafs Orden'', the old Norwegian name) is a Norwegian order of chivalry instituted by King Oscar I on 21 August 1847. It is named after King Olav II, known to posterity as St. Olav. Just be ...

. He died in October 1972 in Oslo.Steenstrup, 1973: p. 630

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schjoedt, Annaeus 1888 births 1972 deaths Lawyers from Oslo Norwegian resistance members Norwegian expatriates in Sweden Norwegian expatriates in the United Kingdom 20th-century Norwegian lawyers