Bjerregaard, Carl Henrik Andreas (24 May 1845–28 January 1922), librarian and philosopher, was born in Fredericia, Denmark, the son of Janus Bagge Friis, an educator, and Louise Nielsen. Bjerregaard attended the local Latin school, Fredericia College, in which his father was principal, but he did not graduate. He went on to study at, and apparently graduated from, the University of Copenhagen in 1863. After leaving Copenhagen, he volunteered as a Danish spy in the Danish–Schleswig-Holstein war. From 1865 to 1866 he went to St. Petersburg and other parts of Europe as a teacher in the household of a Danish minister to Russia. In 1866 he entered the Danish military as a candidate for reserve service and completed training at the Military Academy of Denmark. He served in the reserve army for seven years, achieving the rank of second lieutenant. In 1868 he married Mathilde Georgina Thomsen. They had seven children. From 1869 to 1870 he was professor of botany and curator of the natural history museum at Fredericia College. In the summer of 1873 Bjerregaard left the military and Denmark without permission. His hasty departure occurred the night before a police investigation into an allegation that he had violated the criminal code. Bjerregaard later offered two distinct defenses of his unauthorized exit. First, he claimed that he feared an unwanted military appointment to garrison duty in the Danish West Indies. Second, he proposed that his criminal offense consisted of having been witnessed with socialists while in uniform....
