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Martin Andersen Nexø (1869-1954) - pseudonym of Martin Andersen |
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Danish
writer, first rate social realist, whose novels
depicted the oppressed life of the poor and helped to raise social
consciousness. Following the rise of Nazism in Germany, Martin Andersen Nexø broke with social democratic politics, and joined the Communist Party (Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti, DKP). Nexø's writing was guided by his deep solidarity with the
proletariat and belief in the victory of communism. "It has always been considered a sign of good birth to be able to count one's ancestors for centuries back. In consequence of this, Ditte Child o' Man stood at the top of the tree. She belonged to one of the largest families in the country, the family of Man." (in Ditte: Girl Alive!, 1917, translated by A. G. Chater and Richard Thirsk) Martin Andersen Nexø was born in the slums of Copenhagen into extreme poverty. He was the fourth of eleven children of Mathilde and Hans Jørgen Andersen. His father, a stonemason from the island of Bornholm, was a hard worker but alcoholic. Mathilde was a daughter of a German blacksmith. When Martin Andersen was eight, the family moved to the city of Nexø on 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 in Rønne, 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 Franck (1901) he gave up teaching and devoted himself entirely to writing. Dryss (1902) echoed fin de siècle pessimism but Soldage (1903, Days in the Sun), a travel book about southern Europe, expressed the author's antipathy toward tourism and faith in the working class. Nexø thought that Italy's "importunate beggars are too smilingly amiable; the whole nation laughs and crowds around you – for tips. The countless tourists have transformed it into something resembling a bedraggled poodle performing idiotic tricks." Pelle erobreren (4 vols., 1906-1910), Nexø's breakthrough work, 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 and changes in his political thinking. 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. Some critics have compared Nexø's epic, among others, to Maxim
Gorky's novels. References have also been made to Victor Hugo. "The theme of this work, as the author clearly states in the last volume, is identical with that of Les Misérables," said the American author Willa Cather in her Vanity Fair
essay 'A New World Novelist In Europe' (1920), "but instead of a great
mass of rhetoric about the poor, a passionate and fervid oration on
poverty, we have here les misérables themselves." Bille August's film version of the first volume of the novel, Pelle the Conqueror (1987), won both the Palmes d'or at Cannes and Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Moreover, it was a commercial success, grossing over two million dollars in the United States alone. "But something happened when Nexø ideological novel was wedded to the apparatus of film," said Timothy R. Tangherlini in ' Pelle erobreren: Folklore, Ideology and Film' (The Nordic Storyteller: Essays in Honour of Niels Ingwersen, edited by Susan Brantly and Thomas A. DuBois, 2009). "Once on celluloid, the work transformed from being an exploration of rural life in turn of the century Denmark, focusing on the daily struggles of oppressed workers to survive and the need for significant socialist change, into the story of a boy and his father, their relationship and their personal struggles." 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. "Martin Andersen Nexø is the only Danish writer of his generation whose literary creativity rests on a Marxist world view. But there is an easily discernible difference between him and the socialists authors of the 1930s: Nexø still believes in human goodness, believes that it asserts itself in spite of everything - cutting across all social and economic relationships." (Sven H. Rossell in A History of Scandinavian Literature 1870-1980, 1982) 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. In 1937 he re-joined the Danish Communist Party. 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 (Morton the Red) represents now the spirit of rebellion. He is a childhood friend of Pelle, and remains true to the revolutionary ideals of his class, while social democrats like Pelle have adopted bourgeois values. Faith and Niels Ingwersen wrote in Quests for a Promised Land: The Works of Martin Andersen Nexø (1984) that Nexø "was certainly not at his best when he wrote that very personal but listless record of his later life Morton the Red." Even
the Moscow Trials of 1936 to 1938 did not cause Nexø to lose
his faith in the Soviet paradise. As a matter of fact, he backed
Stalin's charges against "Trotskyists" and expressed in his articles
his faith in the guilt of the accused. In October 1939, about six weeks
before the Soviet Union attacked Finland and the Winter War broke
out, Nexø criticized Finland's
"reactionary" government in Arbejderbladet. Differing from his countrymen generally, he sided with the Soviet Union in the war. During World War II, when Denmark was
occupied by Germany, Nexø was held for a time by the Danish
police due to his communist activities. He took refuge in Sweden in 1943 and then went
to the Soviet Union. After the war in 1945, 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. 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. For further reading: 'Soviet Cultural Diplomacy with Scandinavians after the Great Terror: VOKS and Visitors from Denmark and Norway in 1939' by Ville Soimetsä, in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 23 no. 1 (2022); Danish Friends of the Soviet Union: the History of Interwar Danish–Soviet Organizations by Kim Frederichsen & Ville Soimetsä, in Scandinavian Journal of History (2022); Alt er som bekendt erotik: Martin Andersen Nexøs liv og værk by Jørgen Haugan (2020); Martin Andersen Nexø: den nordiska arbetarlitteraturens pionjär by Per-Olof Mattsson (2017); 'Pelle erobreren: Folklore, Ideology and Film' by Timothy R. Tangherlini, in The Nordic Storyteller: Essays in Honour of Niels Ingwersen, edited by Susan Brantly and Thomas A. DuBois (2009); Der trotzige Däne: Martin Andersen Nexø by Aldo Keel (2004); 'Nexø, Martin Andersen,' in Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, Vol. 3, ed. Steven R. Serafin (1999); Venskab og revolution, Martin Andersen Nexøs og Marie Nielsens venskab og politiske virke 1918-24 by Børge Houmann et al. (1990); 'Nexø, Martin Andersen,' in World Authors 1900-1950, Vol. 3, ed. Martin Seymour-Smith, Andrew C. Kimmens (1996); A History of Danish Literature by S. Rossel (1992); Venskab og revolution. Martin Andersen Nexøs og Marie Nielsens venskab og politiske virke 1918-24 by Børge Houmann and Morten Thing (1990) Martin Andersen Nexø og hans samtid I-III by Børge Houmann (1981-1988); Quests for a Promised Land: The Works of Martin Andersen Nexø by Faith Ingwersen, Niels Ingwersen (1984); A History of Scandinavian Literature 1870-1980 by Sven H. Rossell (1982); Martin Andersen Nexø: Ècrivain du prolétariat by J. Le Bras-Barret (1969); Martin Andersen Nexø als Dichter und Mensch by W. Berendsohn (1966); Martin Andersen Nexøs Weg in die Weltliteratur by W. Berendsohn (1949); Three Ways of Modern Man by H. Slochower (1937) - See also: Moa Martinson Selected works:
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