NEXO, MARTIN ANDERSEN

born June 26, 1869, Copenhagen died June 1, 1954, Dresden, E. Ger. writer who was the first Danish proletarian novelist championing social revolution, thus doing much to raise social consciousness in Denmark and throughout Europe. Nex came from an extremely poor family in the slums of Copenhagen but spent most of his childhood on the island of Bornholm, where he worked as a shepherd and later as a shoemaker's apprentice. He thus came to know the extreme deprivation suffered by the proletariat. With the help of a patron, he was later able to go to school; after finishing he worked as a teacher in a Grundtvigian folk school until 1901, when he was able to support himself by his writing. Nex's two major novels became known throughout the world. The first, Pelle erobreren, 4 vol. (190610; Pelle the Conqueror, 4 vol., 191316), tells of Pelle's development as the son of a farm labourer to become a worker in Copenhagen and a militant labour leader. The second novel, Ditte mennskebarn, 5 vol. (191721; Ditte, Daughter of Man, 3 vol., 192022) depicts the life of a poor, courageous, and loving girl and woman for whom there is no escape from oppression. A third novel, Midt i en Jrntid (1929; In God's Land, 1933), is critical of wealthy farmers during the period of agricultural inflation brought about by World War I. Nex was a great admirer of the Soviet revolutionary experiment; he became a Communist after World War I and travelled to the Soviet Union a number of times. Mod dagningen (1923; Toward the Dawn) gives his impressions of the Soviet Union. His memoirs appeared as Erindringer, 2 vol. (193239; first part: Under the Open Sky, 1938). In 1945 Nex published a sequel to Pelle, Morten hin Rde, 2 vol. (1945; Morten the Red), in which Morten is the revolutionary and Pelle is shown as having turned bourgeois, like many of the labour leaders in the West. Nex left Denmark in 1949, after the signing of the North Atlantic Pact, and settled in the German Democratic Republic, where he remained for the rest of his life.