Hans Rudolf Kirk

Born Jan. 11, 1898, in Hadsund; died June 16, 1962, in Hørsholm. Danish writer. Member of the Communist Party of Denmark (1925).

Kirk was the son of a doctor. He was a lawyer by education. In 1930 he began contributing to the communist press. In 1941, during the fascist occupation of Denmark (1940–45), he was sent to a concentration camp, from which he escaped in 1943. Kirk participated in the resistance movement. In 1945 he began working on the organ of the Communist Party, Land og Folk. He defended the principles of Marxist aesthetics in his article “Literature and Tendency” (1927). His first novel, The Fishermen, was written in 1928. His novel The Day-laborers (1936; Russian translation, 1945) and its sequel, New Times (1939), show the awakening of class consciousness in the workers. His historical novel The Slave, published in 1948, was written while he was still in the concentration camp; it deals with a slave rebellion on the ship San Salvador in the 17th century. Kirk also wrote the publicistic antifascist novels The Devil’s Money (1952; Russian translation, 1953) and Klitgaard and His Sons (1952; Russian translation, 1953). His collections of stories The Play of Shadows (1953) and Civic Novellas (1958) satirize bourgeois morals.