Martin Andersen life and biography

Martin Andersen Nexø was a Danish writer. He was the first significant Danish author to depict the working class in his writings, and the first great Danish socialist, later communist, writer.

Martin Andersen-Nexø was born in the slums of Copenhagen into extreme poverty. He was the fourth of eleven children. His father, a stonemason, was an alcoholic. Mathilda Mainz, Martin's mother, was a daughter of a German blacksmith. When he was eight, the family moved to the town of Nexø on the island of Bornholm; from there he adopted the name as his own in 1894. With the help of a patron, Nexø was able to go to school. In his youth he worked as a farmhand, shepherd, shoemaker's apprentice, and mason's assistant. Nexø would later recall the time when he was as a shepherd probably the happiest in his life. Following pleurisy, he traveled between the years 1894 and 1896 in Spain and Italy, where he was an apprentice to a cobbler for a period. In Denmark he earned his living as a hod-carrier and general laborer. During this time he became a socialist.

After studying two years at the Askov Folk High School, Nexø graduated in 1897 as a teacher and found work at a Gruntvigian folk school in Odense. His first collection of stories, SKYGGER (1898), dealt with the world of the destitute. Along with the modest success of FAMILIEN FRANK (1901) he gave up teaching and devoted himself entirely to writing.

DRYSS (1902) echoed fin de siècle pessimism but SOLDAGE (1903), a travel book about Spain, expressed the author's faith in the working class. His breakthrough work, PELLE EROBEREN (4 vols.), which appeared between in 1906-1910, has been regarded as a Danish classic. The novel told the story of Pelle, a poor boy, whose life in part one shares much similarities with Nexø's. In his childhood Pelle and his poor Swedish father, Lasse, work as servants on an estate on Bornholm. As a young man he becomes a shoemaker's apprentice. But an individual artisan cannot competite with factory industries. Pelle experiences the misery of the exploited workers in Copenhagen. In part two Pelle travels to Italy and in part three he becomes a leader of a shoemaker union. Nexø contrasts the social-democratic worker's movement and passive proletariat, and Pelle leads a labor fight to victory. However, his home is wrecked and he is sent to prison as an "agitator", but novel ends optimistically. Pelle rejects anarchism, finds his individuality, and with his wife Ellen he establishes a new country home. Critics have compared Nexø's work to Maxim Gorky's novels. The film version of the novel by Bille August, Pelle the Conqueror (1987), won both the Palmes d'or at Cannes and Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

DITTE MENNESKEBARN (1917-1921), which exhibited the naturalism of Zola, was more pessimistic than Pelle Eroberen. Once more Nexø recorded the life of a child of the rural proletariat, who moves to Copenhagen. But while Pelle conquered all obstacles, Ditte works herself to death at the age of twenty-five in spite of her hunger for life. Ditte has a good heart, but she fights alone against poverty. She has a child with the son of a farm owner, which results in her being thrown out of her job. In Copenhagen she is exploited by everybody. Nexø, who admired the Soviet revolution, depicted the darkest sides of capitalism in this novel. Ditte's suffering is not meaningless. Her willingness to help others is a sacrifice for the sake of future generations.

In 1922 Nexø toured in Russia with the German Expressionist painter George Grosz, in order to prepare an illustrated documentary on the plight of the Soviet state. On the trip he also attended the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, where Lenin a held speech. Between the years 1923 and 1930 Nexø lived in Germany, but left the country due to the rise of Nazism. MIDT I EN JÆRNTID (1929) was a satire on the economic corruption during the trade boom of World War I. MORTEN HIN RØDE, 1945-47 ( 2 vols), which Nexø began to write in Sweden, returned to the world of Pelle who has become a bourgeois social-democratic minister. The poet Morten represents now the spirit of rebellion.

During World War II Nexø was held for a time by the Danish police as a Communist. He took refuge in Sweden in 1943 and then went to the Soviet Union. After the war in 1945, when Russian scientists started to collect information about atomic bomb, Nexø helped them to meet the Danish phycisist Niels Bohr. Bornholm, where Nexø lived, was the final holdout of German army in the closing days of the war. Russian soldiers stayed there until 1946. Nexø's later works include the unfinished MORTEN HIN RØDE (1945-1957), in which Morten, a childhood friend of Pelle, remains true to the revolutionary ideals of his class, while social democrats like Pelle have adopted bourgeois values. In 1949 Nexø settled in the German Democratic Republic. He was made an honorary citizen and a gymnasium was named after him. Nexø's memoirs, ERINDRINGER (Under the Open Sky), came out in 1932-39. It gives much information of the background of his novels. Nexø died in Dresden, East Germany, on June 1, 1954. He was married three times, first to Margrethe Thomsen in 1898, then to Margrethe Frydenlund Hansen, and finally to Johanna May, in 1925.

Selected works:

SKYGGER, 1898
DET BØDES DER FOR, 1899
EN MODER, 1900
MULDSKULD, 1900-26 (3 vols.)
FAMILIEN FRANK, 1901
DRYSS, 1902
SOLDAGE, 1903
- Days in the Sun (tr. Jacob Wittmer Hartmann, 1929) / Nexø in Andalucia: Selections from Days in the Sun (edited by H.G.A. Hughes, 1995)
PELLE EROBRER, 1906-10 (4 vols.)
- Pelle the Conqueror: Boyhood. Apprenticeship. The Great Struggle. Daybreak (tr. Jesse Muir and Bernard Miall, 1913-1917) / Pelle the Conqueror (tr. Steven T. Murray, 1989)
- Films: TV drama 1986, prod. Fernsehen der DDR, dir. Christian Steinke, starring Stefan Schrader (as Pelle), Martin Trettau and Klaus Manchen; film 1987, prod. Per Holst Filmproduktion, Svensk Filmindustri (SF), Odyssey Entertainment, dir. Bille August, starring Max von Sydow (as Lassefar), Pelle Hvenegaard (as Pelle), Erik Paaske, Kristina Törnqvist, Morten Jorgensen. Winner of the Palme d'or at Cannes in 1988, Oscar for Best foreign Film in 1898.
AF DYBETS LOVSANG, 1908
BARNDOMMENS KYST, 1911
LYKKEN, 1913
BORNHOLMER NOVELLER, 1913
YNDER HIMMELEN DEN BLAA, 1915
FOLKENE PAA DANGAARDEN, 1915
DITTE MENNSKEBARN, 1917-21 (5 vols.)
- Ditte: Girl Alive (tr. in 1920); Ditte: Daughter of Man (tr. A. G. Chater and Richard Thirsk, 1921); Ditte: Towards the Stars (tr. Asta and Rowland Kenney, 1922)
- Ditte ihmislapsi 1-2 (suom. Vilho Hokkanen, 1945)
- Film version in 1946, prod. Nordisk Film, screenplay Bjarne Henning-Jensen, dir. Bjarne Henning-Jensen, starring Tove Maës (as Ditte), Karen Poulsen, Rasmus Ottesen, Karen Lykkehus, Jette Ziegler Kehlet
DYBHAVSFISK, 1918
LOTTERISVENSKEN, 1919
- Film version in 1958: Der Lotterieschwede, prod. Deutsche Film (DEFA), dir. Joachim Kunert, starring Erwin Geschonneck, Sonja Sutter, Harry Hindemith, Jochen Thomas
DE TOMME PLADSERNES PASSAGERER, 1921
- Tyhjien paikkojen matkustajat (suom. 1922; 1935)
MOD DAGNINGEN, 1923
DIGTE, 1926 (rev. enl. ed. 1951)
MIDT I EN JÆRNTID, 1929 (2 vols.)
- In God's Land (tr. Thomas Seltzer, 1933)
ERINDRINGER, 4 vol., 1932-39
- Under the Open Sky 1-2 (tr. J. B. C. Watkins, 1938)
- Muistot 1-2 (suom. Elvi Sinervo ja Leila Adler, 1946)
TO VERDENER, 1934
MOD LYSET, 1938
MORTEN HIN RØDE, 1945-47 ( 2 vols.)
ETSKRIFTEMÅL, 1946
DEN FORTABTE GENERATION: EN ERINDRINGSROMAN, 1948
HÆNDERNE VÆK!, 1953
TALER OG ARTIKLER, 1954 (3 vols., ed. Børge Houmann)
JEANETTE, 1957 (unfinished)
BREVE FRA MARTIN ANDERSEN NEXØ, 1969-72 (3 vols., ed. Børge Houmann)

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