A Danish cleric identified as a rightwing political and cultural figure in the Denmark of the 1930s became the center of moral and intellectual resistance to the Nazi occupation of Denmark. Kaj Munk was murdered by the Germans and Danish traitors in January 1944 as an attempt to silence the growing resistance on the part of ordinary Danish citizens who found in their church a source of moral strength resolutely opposed the evils of the Nazis racial doctrine of anti-Semitism. No other figure better explained why Christians MUST NEVER BE PACIFISTS in the face of evil. His words should be recalled today.
When Denmark was invaded by the German army on April 9 1940 the official line of the Danish Communist Party was that the war was a struggle of rival imperialisms (British and French against German) and that the proletariat was best served by maintaining a policy of neutrality and opposition to military preparedness. This was fully in line with the Stalin-Hitler Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939 that V.M Molotov Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars and Peoples Commissar of Foreign Affairs Oct. 31 1939 had declared that …..
Since the conclusion of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact on August 23 an end has been put to the abnormal relations that existed between the Soviet Union and Germany for a number of years. Instead of enmity which was fostered in every way by certain European powers we now have rapprochement and the establishment of friendly relations between the USSR and Germany."
It must be remembered that not only the Communist Left but the moderate" Social-Democratic Parties in the democratic and neutral states of Western Europe most notably in Scandinavia preached a policy of demilitarization and a willingness to sign non-Aggression pacts with Germany which Denmark did on May 31 1939 (violated eleven months later on April 9 1940 by a full scale German invasion against completely unprepared Danish military forces).
The Danish Left had consistently advocated a policy of avoiding any military preparedness that might provoke" Germany together with the full authority of the King Christian X urging the population not to engage in any sabotage activity or armed resistance. This was the line that was dutifully followed for the next three and a half years by the sitting Danish government under German domination.
It fell to the lot of historys many ironies that the most influential figure on the Danish political right was the personality who eventually rallied the will of the people to actively resist. This was Lutheran Pastor Kaj Harald Leininger Petersen from the island of Lolland Denmark raised by a family named Munk after the death of his parents. From 1924 onward the Reverent Munk was the vicar of Veders in Western Jutland. He achieved considerable notoriety in the 1930s as a playwright and was regarded by many critics as an outspoken criticism of the Marxism Darwinism that dominated much of Danish cultural life during this period. He was initially attracted by the heroic figure of dynamic personalities" such as Hitler and Mussolini because he saw them as the ideological counterpoint of the dominant Social-Democratic Left which only sought to pacify the material wants of the people without any spiritual content or historic sense of nationhood.
On one occasion in the early 1930s Munk expressed a limited and very brief admiration for Hitler for Uniting Germans" and wished for a similar unifying figure for Danes although this very quickly turned to total rejection of the Nazi program and disgust for the persecution without reason of the German Jewish community. He was similarly appalled by Mussolinis barbarous conduct of the war in Ethiopia that included the use of poison gas and his mobilization of Muslim auxiliaries from Libya and Somaliland to dispose the Christian emperor and turn the country into an Italian colony. In 1938 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published Munks open letter to Benito Mussolini criticizing the Italian leaders blind emulation of Hitlers anti-Semitism.
Munks plays Han Sidder ved Smeltediglen (He sits by the melting pot) and Niels Ebbesen" were direct attacks on Nazism. Despite the warnings of friends who urged Munk to go underground he continued to preach against Danes who collaborated with the Nazis. His 1925 play Ordet (The Word) uses the nave faith of a small girl and a mad" uncle who believes anything is possible through faith even a miracle returning the girls mother to life after death in the face of the accumulated wisdom" of all those who loved her. I saw this film as a teenager and was moved to tears by it.
In Denmark Christian X was a puppet king. He did not choose as did other monarchs such as Queen Wilhelmina of Holland and King Haakon of Norway to flee to England and help in the establishment of a government in exile. During the first three years of the occupation and in full agreement with the Danish government the king had warned his fellow countrymen not to participate in acts of sabotage against the German occupation forces. This was the government line that he adhered to and which also guaranteed Denmark a special relatively mild occupation status including no significant discriminatory measures against the Danish Jews until the planned deportation in October 1943.
The Gestapo arrested Kaj Munk on the night of 4 January 1944 a month after he had defied a Nazi ban and preached a sermon reiterating opposition to the Nazis at the national cathedral in Copenhagen. Danish Nazis were recruited to assassinate him. Half of the January 1944 issue of the resistance newspaper De Frie Danske was dedicated to him and the next page was an obituary with the text of his last sermon. Thousands of Danes attended his funeral and the newspaper published condemning reactions from influential Scandinavians.
The words of his last sermon echoed the message of Arne Sorensen and those who had criticized the weak social-Democrat governments……"This is what our old nation needs; a rejuvenating power Gods rejuvenating strength that a new people may come forth which is yet the old worthy sons of the fathers. The gospel will have to teach the Danish nation to think as a great people; to choose honor rather than profit freedom rather than a well paid guardianship; to believe in the victory of the spirit of sacrifice; to believe that life comes out of death and that the future comes out of giving oneself;in short faith in Christ. What would it profit a people if it gained all the advantages of the world but lost its soul?
The cross in our flagit is long since we realized that it stands for something and we have forgotten that now. And yet it is the cross that characterizes the flags of the North.We have come to church the few of us who go to church and we have heard about the cross about Christs example of suffering and Christs words about self-denial and struggle. We have thought that this was all to be taken in a spiritual sense and that it did not pertain to our time. We thought we were Christians when we sat in church and sang Amen. But No No! We are Christians only when we go out into the world and say No to the devil renounce all his works and all his ways and say Yes to the Holy Spirit.
Lead us thou cross in our flag lead us into that Nordic struggle where shackled Norway and bleeding Finland fight against an idea which is directly opposed to all our ideas. Lead old Denmark forth to its new spirit. Not by the grace of others or by their promises shall Danneborg (The Danish flag) again become a free banner. For freedom only God can give; and he gives it only to those who accept its responsibilities. Lead us cross in our flag forward toward unity with other flags of the cross. With honor and liberty regained the old Denmark in the young North."
The Danish government allowed his widow Lise to live at the parish house until she died in 1998. The Dansk Folkeparti restored the church and parish house as a memorial to the simple playwright priest and opened it to the public in 2010. His body was returned to the parish church Veders where it is buried outside the choir. A simple memorial stone cross was erected on a small hill overlooking the site where Munks body had been dumped.
Munk became known for heroic characters who fight wholeheartedly for their ideals. In his play En Idealist for example the hero is King Herod whose fight to maintain power is the motive behind all of his acts until he is at last defeated by a show of kindness to the Christ child in a weak moment.
By the Liberation of Denmark on May 5 1945 the Communists who had been passive and blindly followed the Moscow Party Line of neutrality" during the war until the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22 1941 were widely seen as the most effective underground resistance movement. This was due in part to their greater experience in military training that included several dozen veterans of the Spanish Civil War and the rise in prestige of the Party due to the success of spectacular sabotage actions especially the destruction of several factories in Copenhagen. The Danish Communist Party emerged from World War II with the prestige of having been active in the resistance and their earlier disgraceful stand of neutrality and passivity was largely forgotten.
A Danish cleric identified as a rightwing political and cultural figure in the Denmark of the 1930s became the center of moral and intellectual resistance to the Nazi occupation of Denmark. Kaj Munk was murdered by the Germans and Danish traitors in January 1944 as an attempt to silence the growing resistance on the part of ordinary Danish citizens who found in their church a source of moral strength resolutely opposed the evils of the Nazis racial doctrine of anti-Semitism. No other figure better explained why Christians MUST NEVER BE PACIFISTS in the face of evil. His words should be recalled today.
When Denmark was invaded by the German army on April 9 1940 the official line of the Danish Communist Party was that the war was a struggle of rival imperialisms (British and French against German) and that the proletariat was best served by maintaining a policy of neutrality and opposition to military preparedness. This was fully in line with the Stalin-Hitler Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939 that V.M Molotov Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars and Peoples Commissar of Foreign Affairs Oct. 31 1939 had declared that …..
Since the conclusion of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact on August 23 an end has been put to the abnormal relations that existed between the Soviet Union and Germany for a number of years. Instead of enmity which was fostered in every way by certain European powers we now have rapprochement and the establishment of friendly relations between the USSR and Germany."
It must be remembered that not only the Communist Left but the moderate" Social-Democratic Parties in the democratic and neutral states of Western Europe most notably in Scandinavia preached a policy of demilitarization and a willingness to sign non-Aggression pacts with Germany which Denmark did on May 31 1939 (violated eleven months later on April 9 1940 by a full scale German invasion against completely unprepared Danish military forces).
The Danish Left had consistently advocated a policy of avoiding any military preparedness that might provoke" Germany together with the full authority of the King Christian X urging the population not to engage in any sabotage activity or armed resistance. This was the line that was dutifully followed for the next three and a half years by the sitting Danish government under German domination.
It fell to the lot of historys many ironies that the most influential figure on the Danish political right was the personality who eventually rallied the will of the people to actively resist. This was Lutheran Pastor Kaj Harald Leininger Petersen from the island of Lolland Denmark raised by a family named Munk after the death of his parents. From 1924 onward the Reverent Munk was the vicar of Veders in Western Jutland. He achieved considerable notoriety in the 1930s as a playwright and was regarded by many critics as an outspoken criticism of the Marxism Darwinism that dominated much of Danish cultural life during this period. He was initially attracted by the heroic figure of dynamic personalities" such as Hitler and Mussolini because he saw them as the ideological counterpoint of the dominant Social-Democratic Left which only sought to pacify the material wants of the people without any spiritual content or historic sense of nationhood.
On one occasion in the early 1930s Munk expressed a limited and very brief admiration for Hitler for Uniting Germans" and wished for a similar unifying figure for Danes although this very quickly turned to total rejection of the Nazi program and disgust for the persecution without reason of the German Jewish community. He was similarly appalled by Mussolinis barbarous conduct of the war in Ethiopia that included the use of poison gas and his mobilization of Muslim auxiliaries from Libya and Somaliland to dispose the Christian emperor and turn the country into an Italian colony. In 1938 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published Munks open letter to Benito Mussolini criticizing the Italian leaders blind emulation of Hitlers anti-Semitism.
Munks plays Han Sidder ved Smeltediglen (He sits by the melting pot) and Niels Ebbesen" were direct attacks on Nazism. Despite the warnings of friends who urged Munk to go underground he continued to preach against Danes who collaborated with the Nazis. His 1925 play Ordet (The Word) uses the nave faith of a small girl and a mad" uncle who believes anything is possible through faith even a miracle returning the girls mother to life after death in the face of the accumulated wisdom" of all those who loved her. I saw this film as a teenager and was moved to tears by it.
In Denmark Christian X was a puppet king. He did not choose as did other monarchs such as Queen Wilhelmina of Holland and King Haakon of Norway to flee to England and help in the establishment of a government in exile. During the first three years of the occupation and in full agreement with the Danish government the king had warned his fellow countrymen not to participate in acts of sabotage against the German occupation forces. This was the government line that he adhered to and which also guaranteed Denmark a special relatively mild occupation status including no significant discriminatory measures against the Danish Jews until the planned deportation in October 1943.
The Gestapo arrested Kaj Munk on the night of 4 January 1944 a month after he had defied a Nazi ban and preached a sermon reiterating opposition to the Nazis at the national cathedral in Copenhagen. Danish Nazis were recruited to assassinate him. Half of the January 1944 issue of the resistance newspaper De Frie Danske was dedicated to him and the next page was an obituary with the text of his last sermon. Thousands of Danes attended his funeral and the newspaper published condemning reactions from influential Scandinavians.
The words of his last sermon echoed the message of Arne Sorensen and those who had criticized the weak social-Democrat governments……"This is what our old nation needs; a rejuvenating power Gods rejuvenating strength that a new people may come forth which is yet the old worthy sons of the fathers. The gospel will have to teach the Danish nation to think as a great people; to choose honor rather than profit freedom rather than a well paid guardianship; to believe in the victory of the spirit of sacrifice; to believe that life comes out of death and that the future comes out of giving oneself;in short faith in Christ. What would it profit a people if it gained all the advantages of the world but lost its soul?
The cross in our flagit is long since we realized that it stands for something and we have forgotten that now. And yet it is the cross that characterizes the flags of the North.We have come to church the few of us who go to church and we have heard about the cross about Christs example of suffering and Christs words about self-denial and struggle. We have thought that this was all to be taken in a spiritual sense and that it did not pertain to our time. We thought we were Christians when we sat in church and sang Amen. But No No! We are Christians only when we go out into the world and say No to the devil renounce all his works and all his ways and say Yes to the Holy Spirit.
Lead us thou cross in our flag lead us into that Nordic struggle where shackled Norway and bleeding Finland fight against an idea which is directly opposed to all our ideas. Lead old Denmark forth to its new spirit. Not by the grace of others or by their promises shall Danneborg (The Danish flag) again become a free banner. For freedom only God can give; and he gives it only to those who accept its responsibilities. Lead us cross in our flag forward toward unity with other flags of the cross. With honor and liberty regained the old Denmark in the young North."
The Danish government allowed his widow Lise to live at the parish house until she died in 1998. The Dansk Folkeparti restored the church and parish house as a memorial to the simple playwright priest and opened it to the public in 2010. His body was returned to the parish church Veders where it is buried outside the choir. A simple memorial stone cross was erected on a small hill overlooking the site where Munks body had been dumped.
Munk became known for heroic characters who fight wholeheartedly for their ideals. In his play En Idealist for example the hero is King Herod whose fight to maintain power is the motive behind all of his acts until he is at last defeated by a show of kindness to the Christ child in a weak moment.
By the Liberation of Denmark on May 5 1945 the Communists who had been passive and blindly followed the Moscow Party Line of neutrality" during the war until the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22 1941 were widely seen as the most effective underground resistance movement. This was due in part to their greater experience in military training that included several dozen veterans of the Spanish Civil War and the rise in prestige of the Party due to the success of spectacular sabotage actions especially the destruction of several factories in Copenhagen. The Danish Communist Party emerged from World War II with the prestige of having been active in the resistance and their earlier disgraceful stand of neutrality and passivity was largely forgotten.