Mogens Klitgaard

Mogens Klitgaard (born August 23, 1906 in Copenhagen , † December 23, 1945 in Arhus ) was a Danish writer. Alongside Knud Sønderby, he is considered to be the main representative of the socially realistic-neo-objective storytelling of his country. After years of traveling and anti-fascist resistance work, he fell victim to tuberculosis at 39 .

life and work

Klitgaard grows up in an orphanage because both parents have died. He got a job as a gardener in Rødvig and attended evening courses on literature. But in 1922 he broke with the "bourgeois" life and for the next 10 years led a vagabond life that led him through half of Europe, from Stockholm to Marseille . Among other things, he keeps afloat as a peddler, dishwasher, waiter, farm worker, cigarette smuggler and private investigator. These experiences are particularly evident in his second novel, Gud mildner luften for de klippede får . Klitgaard was given a rude awakening in 1933 by the outbreak of tuberculosis. He goes to the Boserup Sanatorium, where he can also use the extensive library. Klitgaard's first publications appeared in January 1933, the two articles Angaaende skriftsproget and Kritisk ugerevy . His debut novel Der sidder en mand i en sporvogn from 1937 shows the struggle for existence of the “little man” in times of the global economic crisis, which was riddled with self-deception. The fictional plot is embedded in news from current affairs (from 1936) and in Copenhagen's local color. "Klitgaard's carefully observing psychological realism provides explanatory patterns for the adapted behavior of the underprivileged, in which there is no room for ambitions to change society." Despite this pessimistic mood, perhaps because of you, the book hits right away, so that Klitgaard can devote himself to writing full-time . In the 1940s he was a member of the board of the authors' association. When he was threatened with arrest for his anti-fascist activities in 1943 , he fled to Sweden. Hardly returned in 1945, he succumbed to a lung disease.

Works

• Der sidder en mand i en sporvogn (There is a man sitting in the tram), Roman, 1937
• Gud mildner luften for de klippede får (God softens the air for shorn sheep), Roman, 1938, in German Berlin 1950 and 1954
• Translation of Horváth's short story Jugend ohne Gott , 1939
• De røde fjer (The Red Feathers), Roman, 1940, in German Zurich 1941 and Berlin 1951
• Ballade paa Nytorv (Ballad on the Neumarkt. A Rococo painting), novel, 1940, in German Zurich 1941 and Berlin 1949
• Elly Petersen , novel, 1941
• Den guddomelige hverdag , novel, 1942
• Brunkul , Radionovelle, 1946
• De sindssyges klode , novel, from the estate of 1968
• En søndag for to Aar siden , essay
• Hverdagens musik , essay, from the estate of 1989

literature

• Ebbe Neergaard: Mogens Klitgaard , Copenhagen 1941
• Niels Kaas Johansen: Mogens Klitgaard , in: Athenaeum , Heft 1, 1946, pages 76-88
• E. Balling Jensen: Mogens Klitgaard , P. Luno, 1957
• H. Stangerup: Man hanger i moget , in: Tilbageblik pa 30'erne (Ed. H. Hertel), Copenhagen 1967, pages 128-133
• HJ Christensen and EB Olsen: Arbejdsmodeller for analyze af novellesamling, roman og digtsamling , Copenhagen 1973, pages 13-22
• O. Ravn: H. Herdal og den kritiske realisme , in: Critique , No. 33, 1975, pp. 118-142
• J. Lundbo Levy: Mogens Klitgaard , in: Danske digtere i det 20. arhundrede (Eds. T. Brostrom and M. Winge), Volume 2, Copenhagen 1980-82, pages 313-321
• G. Agger (Ed.): Dans Litteraturhistorie , Volume 7, Copenhagen 1984, page 430
• Leon Jaurnow: Den lyse vagabond - Mogens Klitgaards liv og forfatterskab , CA Reitzel, 2002, ISBN 87-7876-286-3

Individual evidence

1. ^ Kindlers Literatur Lexikon online , accessed on November 28, 2011.
2. ↑ Kindler's New Literature Lexicon , Munich 1988 edition
3. ↑ First Danish radio novel, Appreciation of the woman, filmed in 1944: see Wikipedia en , accessed on November 30, 2011

Web links

• Literature by and about Mogens Klitgaard in the catalog of the German National Library
• Honors and Awards (Danish)