#kaj munk

[rachelmygod]

Ordet (Gustav Molander, 1943)

[i12bent]

Niels Ebbesen was a member of the Danish lower gentry, and is remembered to this day for starting a rebellion against the German Count Gerhard who ruled half of Denmark in the mid 14th Century.

On April 1, 1340 Niels Ebbesen entered the home in Randers of “Den Kullede Greve” (The Bald Count) as Gerhard was popularly known and cut off his head - “above the bed post” - while the Count was saying his evening prayers.

This event sparked off a peasant revolt against the German rulers and their taxation scheme (there was no unified Danish king in those decades since all of the land was pawned to Germans), but it didn’t go so well for Niels Ebbesen.

His army was cornered near Skanderborg in November 1340 and he was slaughtered with all his men. His corpse was drawn and quartered and put on display, but his surviving supporters stole it and transported it to Vestervig Church where the family plot was situated.

I live 4 miles from that church and often visit the medieval cemetery there. Niels Ebbesen quickly became a national hero and a gathering point for all future Danish-German conflicts (of which there have been many). A folk ballad from the 16th Century, a song by N.F.S. Grundtvig, and a WWII play by Kaj Munk are but some of the texts that have celebrated brave Squire Niels of Thy.

Of course Ebbesen has also been celebrated in art. This canvas is by Agnes Slott-Møller, 1893-4 and is found at Randers Art Museum.

[books0977]

Johs. Sylvestersen bookplate. Artist: Jenö Kertes-Kollmann.

Portrait of Kaj Munk, Danish playwright, priest, and patriot who was a rare exponent of religious drama with a strong sense of the theatre. He revived the “heroic” Shakespearean and Schillerian drama with writing whose passionate quality is not often found among Danish writers.

[inter-ax]

Ordet (1955)  Carl Theodor Dreyer

[rachelmygod]

Ordet (Gustav Molander, 1943)

[smallvoids]

“Hvad var det dog der skete? / Mit vinterfrosne hjertes kvarts / må smelte ved at se det, / den første dag i marts. / Hvad gennembrød den sorte jord / og gav den med sit søblå flor / et stænk af himlens tone? / Den lille anemone, / jeg planted dér i fjor.” — Kaj Munk, “Den blå anemone” (1943)

[envoy-to-the-golden-sun]

[healthmaria]

Kaj Munk (1898-1944) was a Danish priest and author who sacrificed his life for the truth during WWII. This year it was 80 years ago the Germans occupied our country, they censured our ability to talk and write what we wanted.

As a toddler, he became an orphan, and an elderly couple adopted him and encouraged him to study and write poems. They understood that he was a highly gifted boy.

A bronze bust of Kaj Munk in the Vedersoe Churchyard

Kaj Munk wrote theatre plays like preachings and preached like theatre plays. For more on his life, my husband Henry wrote a blogpost on Kaj Munk last year.

The interior of Vedsersoe Church

The alter from 1700 in Vedsersoe Church

Detail of stone decorations at Vedersoe church

The pulpit from 1615 of Vedersoe church

During the war, Kaj Munk did not bow down but continued to speak to his congregation and theatre customers about the truth and his convictions in questions of life and death. He didn’t consider the possibility of going into hiding.

Vedersoe church (from 1100-1250) and churchyard

On his last preaching on New Years Day January 1 1944, he stood in the church with his coat on. He couldn’t go to the pulpit. He claimed that it saddened him that some of his parishioners voluntarily worked for the Germans on the Atlantic Wall and he asked them to stop their collaboration immediately. That day marked his twentieth anniversary as a vicar in that parish.

The sand dunes close to Vedersoe where Kaj Munk worked as a priest from 1924-1944

The sand dunes close to Vedersoe where Kaj Munk worked as a priest from 1924-1944

On the evening of January 4, 1944, a Nazi terrorist group came to his house in West Jutland got him in their car and drove away. The next morning somebody found his dead body in a ditch near Silkeborg. His wife and five children were now left without him.

The place where Kaj Munk´s body was found 75 years after the murder

The stone cross in remembrance of Kaj Munk at the place where his body was found

Kaj Munk had a humorous side. He had a man working at the vicarage who wanted a recommendation for his new job. Kaj Munk then wrote that this man was never late for the meals and the utensils or working clothes didn’t wear out. His helper had been very precise in leaving his job early every day and never missed a chance to chat or to rest.

He had chosen a place right at the wall of the old church so that he would be able to hear if the organist remembered all the verses in the hymns.

Kaj Munk’s gravestone in the Vedsersoe Churchyard adjacent to the church wall

Kaj Munk loved driving fast in his car and once he had an accident where he told the policeman that he had met a lamppost in the middle of the road. During the war, he might have been permitted to drive as a vicar.

He was loved by his congregation as he often visited them all. Most of them were impoverished fishermen living in a remote and windy Danish parish.

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The vicarage was saved in the last minute and restored in 2013 to become a permanent museum and learning centre about Kaj Munk’s life.

      Kaj Munk Kaj Munk (1898-1944) was a Danish priest and author who sacrificed his life for the truth during WWII.