Could someone tell a bit more about her lifelong relationship? I didn't know she'd been so long and serious involved with someone.
I've never followed Elisabeth much and her partner died in 1997, so what relatively limited coverage there was of the two of them when they were active, was back from before I got genuinely interested in royalty.
But from fragments here and there:
Princess Elisabeth worked in the Foreign Ministry and she was way more discreet than her siblings in regards to the press, without directly avoiding the press that is. - She simply wasn't a "juicy story" so to speak.
In some way she met her partner Claus Hermansen and they moved in together.
He was a film man, mainly documentaries, which meant that he probably traveled a good deal filming or was away for periods on research, location findings and so on. That may have suited Elisabeth well, since she for a few years at a time were stationed at Danish embassies abroad. So I imagine they for periods didn't see each other that much.
Yet, they hit it off. None of them were interested in having children. Elisabeth was very clear about that while she liked being a doting aunt, she was
not interesting in having such critters around herself!
He lived an interesting life! During the Occupation he made illegal films for the Resistance and IIRC he actually filmed and narrated an act of sabotage, that to this day is still dramatic! Including how a passer-by shouted: "I can't hear! I can't hear!". His eardrums had been blasted by the explosion.
They lived in a pretty big house in a pretty posh neighborhood of Copenhagen, but it seem to me they hadn't saved much, because it has been hinted that Elisabeth was pretty much forced to sell the house and not at the most favorable prize. (Certainly not in the middle of the Financial Crisis!)
I think I'll leave it at other Danes to tell more about Claus Hermansen, because that's basically all I know.
Does that mean that, more recently, churches have become less austere and wall decorations are in use again ? Is there any particular reason for that change of attitude ?
Oh yes, a lot less austere.
The Protestant austerity, so to speak, peaked in 1600's here in DK.
That was: Few decorations to distract people from the essentials: which were God, Jesus - and not least listening to what the priest said.
Anyway, all that carvings and paintings and decorations was basically considered Catholic heresy.
So while cathedrals maintained some of their inbuilt decorations, stained windows and what not, new cathedrals built after the Reformation were very much Protestant: Big, imposing, heavy, strict, pious and first and foremost serious, just like the worshipers ought to be.
That policy was of course easier to implement in the local village churches, it only needed a coat of lime or a crowbar to pry out carved statues.
But austerity never lasts. And over time the whole business about service and going to church became a less serious matter - or a gloomy matter, if you prefer. So back came the stained windows with scenes, which were not always religious, back came carvings and figures and during the religious seasons other decorations returned. The church was after all supposed to be a nice place to visit - and increasingly it became so.
There were some local back-to-basics reversals here and there. Mainly in western and northern Jutland during the late 1800's and again in the 1920's.
Then in recent decades, mainly as a result of renovations uncovering the original look, there was a wish to return the churches back to how they looked around the time they were build. And that included wall paintings. Often in vivid colors. People in the medieval times were very fond of colors, and as garish as possible! But few churches have gone that far though. So today you will see many medieval paintings being exposed and restored and now incorporated into an otherwise "traditional Danish Protestant village church." ("Traditional", because people have long since forgotten how the churches originally looked. So the post-Reformation look is today the "traditional" look.)