Kaj Munk

Playwright

• Born: January 13, 1898
• Birthplace: Maribo, Denmark
• Died: January 4, 1944
• Place of death: Silkeborg, Denmark

Other Literary Forms

Kaj Munk was a prolific dramatist, and he was no less active as an essayist, poet, and preacher. Many of his sermons have been published, as well as much of his poetry and his essays, which dealt with a wide variety of topics, especially with the Danish theater and politics.

Achievements

A Danish writer once stated that if one were to ask throughout Denmark which two people had meant the most to the country under the German Occupation, the answer would no doubt be the king and Kaj Munk. If one were to ask which single person’s death had made the greatest impression, the answer would surely be Kaj Munk’s.

That Munk became such an important influence in Denmark during the twenty years that he served as village priest in Vedersø, and particularly during the nearly four years that he lived under the Occupation, was the result not only of his literary abilities but also, to an even greater extent, of his strength of character, his extraordinary ability to rally the people of his country to resist the oppressor and to stand up for what was right. That Munk was a small-town preacher provided him with a pulpit from which to expound his ideas to his people, but his audience quickly became much broader. Even before World War II, he was well known throughout Scandinavia for his ability as a writer of drama. Many of his plays were presented in Norway and Sweden as well as in Denmark. Later he became well known in Germany, England, and elsewhere. Munk is remembered today at least as much for his political stance—as a rallying point for those opposed to the Occupation—as for his literary achievements. Of the latter, his drama is of great importance.

Biography

Kaj Munk was born Kaj Harald Leininger Petersen on January 13, 1898, at Maribo on the South Danish island of Lolland. He was the only child of Carl and Anna Mathilde Petersen. His father died when he was only eighteen months old and his mother when he was five and a half years old. He was adopted and reared by his mother’s cousin, Marie Munk, and her husband, Peter. The Munks had no children of their own, and Marie had promised Anna Mathilde, as the latter lay on her deathbed, that she would rear the child and would love him and care for him as her own. The Munks were yeoman farmers, and Kaj was brought up in a wholesome, healthy environment, full of love and close to the land, and was instilled with a love for learning and a deep and lasting faith.

Munk, though rather frail, was an inquisitive and talented student who demonstrated unusual literary abilities at a very early age. When he was eight years old, he was visited during an illness by his schoolmaster, who wrote: “What a surprise when I turned the paper over and found it covered from top to bottom with poems. I nearly fell over backwards at the sight of what had been written there by a boy of eight years. The contents were naturally immature, but the rhyme, as well as the arrangement of the words, was witness to a very real sense of language.”

Munk was educated first at the country school at Vejleby, then at Maribo Realskole, and later at the neighboring Nykøbing Latin School. While he was enrolled at the Realskole, under the remarkable tutelage of an unusually capable headmaster and a young, talented staff, Munk first became truly excited about learning. Munk was especially impressed by the poetry of Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger. While in his last year at the Nykøbing Latin School, Munk wrote his first play, Pilatus, which is of particular interest not only because it is the first example of his dramatic talent but also because it contains the seeds of the later important work He Sits at the Melting Pot.

At the age of nineteen, Munk enrolled at the University of Copenhagen. During his years at the university, he experienced some of his most carefree, happiest times, although he never lost sight of his educational goals and was a very serious student. He lived at the prestigious student residence Regensen, where he became “Klokker,” or head student. He continued to be active as a writer and, though enrolled as a student of theology, underwent considerable inner turmoil regarding his own faith and whether his life should be spent as a priest or a writer. He ultimately became both.

At the University of Copenhagen, Munk began to write his first publicly produced play, Herod the King. He was preparing for his finals in theology when a professor happened to remark, in a lecture on Herod the Great, that it was too bad that William Shakespeare had never tried his hand at this material. The chance comment was taken as a challenge by the receptive student, and before finishing his finals, Munk had written four-fifths of the play, which he finished soon after assuming his duties as village priest at Vedersø.

Munk became pastor at Vedersø, a small village on the west coast of the Danish mainland, in 1924. His friends could not believe that, having been so happy in the city, he could tolerate for long the life of the small town. In fact, life was somewhat difficult for a time, but he became very fond of the area and beloved by its people. He was married to a young woman who was a native of the area, Lise Jørgensen, on January 13, 1929. During the years that followed, Munk’s fame—as a playwright, public speaker, and journalist—increased. Nevertheless, he was always a pastor first. He never neglected his duties toward his flock and, in spite of his increasing fame and wealth, remained humble and dutiful in visiting his parishioners and in carrying out his duties where they were concerned. He even took a certain satisfaction in the knowledge that his words and thoughts, which originated in such an unimportant place, could have a significant impact on the outside world.

During these early years at Vedersø, Munk began to achieve success as a playwright, beginning with the presentation by the Copenhagen Royal Theater of Herod the King in 1928. He went on to write more than thirty plays, and by the late 1930’s, Munk productions were being simultaneously presented in as many as nine principal cities in Denmark and Sweden. As Munk was both a preacher and a playwright, he often mixed the two. He considered drama to be, among other things, one way of preaching the word of God. Some of his plays are thus quite didactic, although he always sought first to entertain.

As the world, and particularly Europe, became ever more involved in conflict, Munk’s plays began to take on decidedly political overtones. He Sits at the Melting Pot, written in 1938, is very critical of the Germans, especially of their attitude toward Jews. After the Occupation, which took place on April 9, 1940, Munk continued to write critical political drama, such as Niels Ebbesen, written in 1940, and Before Cannae, of 1943. Much of his writing in the last few years of his life was suppressed by the Occupation forces. It nevertheless was widely dispersed and had a great impact, both at home and abroad. Munk felt himself especially akin to Niels Ebbesen, the Jutland patriot who had successfully defied the Germans six hundred years earlier.

When Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini first took power, Munk had actually admired them and had considered a strongman type of government desirable. He became increasingly disenchanted with the developments in Europe, however, and became both a dedicated and an effective critic of Nazism. Munk refused to still his criticism even when ordered to do so by the Danish Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs, which in March, 1943, in a circular addressed to members of the clergy, instructed them to abstain from all public comment on the struggle of the Norwegian Church. In an open letter to the minister, Munk wrote, “I hereby take the liberty to inform the honored Church Ministry that I intend not only to disobey its orders, but to act directly against them. . . . It is better that Denmark be endangered in her relations to Germany than in her relations to our Lord Jesus Christ.” In a similar vein, in a sermon entitled “Render Therefor unto Caesar the Things That Are Caesar’s and unto God the Things That Are God’s,” Munk said:

Much might be demanded of us: our money, our labor, the best years of our youth, our health, our very lives. But if Caesar demands that we call black white, tyranny freedom, violence justice, and falsehood truth, we shall answer him: “It is written, thou shall have no other gods but me. . . . By our death we shall conquer. We must obey God before man.

Little of what Munk wrote or preached during the Occupation was not directed in some way or another at the Germans. Although other notables fled to Sweden or elsewhere, he refused to do so, preferring instead to remain, to do what he could and to face the consequences. He concluded his final sermon, on New Year’s Day, 1944, with these words: “Therefore he who knows what is right and does not do it, for him it is a sin.” He then encouraged his parishioners to continue the struggle against the Nazis. On January 4, at about eight o’clock in the evening, a car arrived, filled with five agents of the Gestapo. Under orders from Berlin, Munk was taken from his wife and five children and was shot in the head and left in a roadside ditch. Munk had become too much of a thorn in the side of the Germans. Ironically, by murdering him, they made of him a martyr and an even more potent adversary.

Analysis

In Himmel og Jord (1938) and in the preface to I Brændingen, Kaj Munk sets forth his theories of drama. He states a desire to see the Danish theater return to the “grand drama” of earlier years. He proposes a bold approach to drama, in which the true world is depicted. He says that the public is better off watching motion pictures, in which dramatic things happen, than watching an insipid stage production.

Herod the King

Herod the King was Munk’s first play to be presented at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen but certainly not his greatest success. It was, in fact, met with a decided lack of enthusiasm on the part of the critics. It was later drastically revised, and the result was much more successful than the original had been. The play is fundamentally about the struggle between the king and God. It presents Herod as a person who will stop at nothing to remain in power. No sacrifice is too great if it will accomplish that end—even the murder of his own beloved wife.

This is only one of a number of Munk’s plays portraying larger-than-life characters, such as kings, emperors, and dictators. Act 1 begins with Herod’s sister, Salome, trying to influence him in the selection of a high priest. Salome is involved in plots and intrigues throughout the play, and she ultimately succeeds in turning the king against his lovely wife Miriamne, by wrongly accusing her of unfaithfulness, upon which Herod has Miriamne put to death.

In the first act, Herod clearly outlines his goal: “At last, at last—Edom’s foot on Jacob’s neck! Now my aim is to wield a ruthless scepter with a hated hand over this people, until I did. . . . No, I do not declare war on God. For what do I know of God? No, but—if He declares war on me, if He still sides with Jacob, well, then, I am a son of Edom and I shall not abandon my goal.” Later, he says: “I have but one goal: to wear my crown so that none can wrest it from me. For this I must sacrifice everything on earth.”

Herod’s love of power and his defiance of God can lead only to his ultimate failure and damnation. In act 8, Herod says: “My life has been one long fear—fear that He up there might at last rob me of my crown.” Then, hearing that the son of David has been born in Bethlehem, he orders that every male child less than two years of age be put to the sword. He finally realizes that he has failed, that the Messiah, the King of the Jews, has escaped his sword. He ends the play with these words: “I am alone with God. . . . Then wilt Thou hear me. . . . See, I kneel to Thee—forgive me my sins, my struggle, my defiance. But let the child die. . . . Give me back the crown for which I have sacrificed the blood of my beloved—my body and soul—all that I had. Take pity on me, my Emperor, my Master, Thou God of Jacob—take pity on They servant, Thy slave, Thy fool.” With those words, Herod dies, realizing finally the futility of his defiance of God and that his sacrifice has been for nought.

The Word

The Word was received with enthusiasm but was not without its critics. It presents the common, country folk and deals almost exclusively with religion. The theme is clearly laid out in the first act. The action takes place in the home of a seventy-five-year-old farmer, the father of three sons. The eldest son, Mikkel, is married and has two daughters. The second, Johannes, was studying for the priesthood but has apparently gone mad and imagines himself to be Jesus Christ. The youngest, Anders, hopes to marry a neighbor girl, Esther.

The subject of miracles continually arises. Interestingly, it is the local pastor who is most certain that miracles cannot happen in the modern world. On his first visit to the farmer’s home, the new pastor meets Johannes, who introduces himself as Jesus of Nazareth, and says: “You believe in miracles of two thousand years ago, but not in one now. Why do you believe in the dead Christ, but not in the living?” The priest later says, as they discuss a play by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson called Over ævne, annet stykk (1805; Beyond Our Power, 1913): “An incurable is supposed to be cured by a miracle—I remember. It simply couldn’t happen nowadays.” The old farmer also repeatedly says that he does not believe in miracles.

The second act takes place in the home of Rueben, Esther’s father, and represents a conflict between two groups within the state church. The group represented by Reuben is extremely conservative, believes in miracles, and is quite hostile toward those who do not share their beliefs. Because of these differences, Reuben will not let his daughter marry Anders, although they are all Lutheran.

The climax of the play occurs in the third and fourth acts, with the death of Inger, Mikkel’s wife, in childbirth. Johannes disappears for three days, reappearing just as the casket is about to be closed. He appears now to be in his right mind, although not very happy to return to a reality filled with fear. He insists that Inger is not dead and calls on her to awaken, which she does. The pastor still cannot believe what he has witnessed, saying that it is a physical impossibility. The doctor attributes Inger’s “revival” to the issuing of death certificates by amateurs—he is convinced that she was not really dead. The rest accept the miracle.

In The Word, Munk presents the religious beliefs of the people whom he knew so well and loved so deeply. In addition, he was able to accomplish in fiction what he had failed to do in real life, when as a youngster he had tried so hard to restore his grandmother to life.

Cant

Cantfocuses once again on a larger-than-life character, in this case King Henry VIII of England. Here Munk is particularly critical of the hypocrisy that passed for religion at the time. The play deals principally with the question of divorce, or rather annulment, as the Catholic Church did not allow divorce. The king wished to have his marriage to the queen annulled, ostensibly because she was unable to present him with a living son but in truth because he had been seduced by the beauty of the young Anne Boleyn. When the pope himself refuses to grant the annulment, the local churchmen prefer to follow the wishes of the king and bend the precepts of the Church to appease him. Anne herself is later beheaded when falsely accused of adultery, and the king is never presented with a male heir to the throne.

He Sits at the Melting Pot

In He Sits at the Melting Pot, his play about pre-World War II Germany, Munk first incurred the wrath of the Nazis, who had him murdered six years later. The title comes from the opening verse of a Danish hymn by B. S. Ingemann: “The great Artificer comes; all-loving is his purpose./ He sits at the melting-pot and diligently purifies the silver.” Munk wrote the play during a visit to Berlin, where he was able to see the Third Reich in action. He Sits at the Melting Pot is an almost purely political play and is extremely critical of the Germans, particularly of their anti-Semitism and their attempts to restructure the world and its history in order to make it fit their view of reality. In his introduction to the play, Munk says:

The earth is on fire. There have been times in the history of humankind when it was possible to forget this; but our own time is not one of these. . . . Are these flames that beset us the flames of destruction? We do not know. . . . The earth is in the meltingpot. . . . It is the god in hell who shovels in the coal under God’s melting-pot. That is why the heat is so terrific. And it has to be, in order that the dross may be cleansed away.

The play takes place in the study of Professor Mensch, a noted and somewhat elderly professor of archaeology. The universality of the name is no accident: Mensch is a good, learned man who has little time for the realities of the mundane world around him. His only interest is in his work. Little else concerns him. As the play begins, he and his assistant, Fräulein Schmidt, are studying some shards that he has brought back from a collecting expedition he has made to the Holy Land. They are excited beyond their wildest dreams when they realize that a sketch that they had been able to reassemble from the fragments is actually a likeness of Jesus Christ, done by a contemporary.

Professor Mensch and Fräulein Schmidt are interrupted by a visit from Professor Dorn, who is very concerned about three things: rising in the ranks of National Socialism (he hopes to become the Minister of Culture); a treatise he has written in an attempt to prove that Christ was really of Aryan, rather than Jewish, stock (the thesis has been contested in print by the local bishop); and one Dr. Helm, a university librarian, who, it has been discovered, is probably a Jew and has apparently falsified his Aryan certificate. Professor Mensch expresses his own distaste for the Jews, but he does not want to get involved. He simply wants to be left alone to do his research.

In the third act there is a confrontation between Professor Dorn and Bishop von Beugel. The latter says: “The core of our controversy as to whether Christ was Aryan or no is really this: shall Germany worship truth or—itself?” Later the bishop says to Dorn, “So you mean to go on? Profaning the name of Germany with your methods from the Inquisition—with every kind of devilry from the Middle Ages!” When Fräulein Fürst, Dr. Helm’s fiancé, finds out that he is a Jew, she is scandalized. She cannot believe that she could have allowed herself to be touched by him and feels that she should have somehow been able to tell.

Professor Mensch has decided to present the Führer with his picture of Christ and is to be awarded the National Prize. When Professor Dorn insists that he must not tell the Führer that the obviously Jewish face is that of Christ, Mensch smashes the picture. He does not care about the National Prize; he cares only about the truth. He learns also that his assistant, Fräulein Schmidt, is really Sarah Levi and is Dr. Helm’s sister. She and the professor decide to leave Germany together.

Although He Sits at the Melting Pot is about German society under the Third Reich and is particularly critical of the persecution of the Jews, it is also about all humankind, personified by Mensch. God sits at the melting pot and purifies His creation. Professor Mensch begins as a capable but weak individual and ends as a strong person who is able to overcome his weaknesses.

Niels Ebbesen and Before Cannae

Two plays written by Munk during the Occupation, Niels Ebbesen and Before Cannae, deal with the moral issues of the war by means of a historical analogue. In the former, Munk clearly identifies himself with the real person after whom the play is named. Niels Ebbesen had defied the Germans and was instrumental in the struggle against them in the fourteenth century. Before Cannae is a one-act play that principally consists of a dialogue between Hannibal and Fabius Cunctator. It does not require much imagination to see the parallels between the two generals of the play and their real-life counterparts, Hitler and Winston Churchill, and Rome is easily recognizable as London. In this play, one notes Munk’s final rejection of dictatorship and his embracing of democratic principles.

Bibliography

Harcourt, Melville. Portraits of Destiny. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1966. In one of the essays in this volume, Harcourt examines the life and works of Munk, the Danish writer and activist.