Kaj Munk
Kaj Harald Leininger Munk was a Danish priest and playwright who played a major role in the interwar performing arts. As a political writer, he became an important symbol of national resistance to both the German occupation and the policy of cooperation during World War II.
Growing up
The poet-priest, who was murdered during the German occupation in 1944, was born in Maribo in 1898. His father, the tanner Carl E. Petersen, died when he was just one and a half years old, and his mother, Mathilde, died in 1903 when he was five. On the family's grave in Maribo Cemetery, the parents' names appear on a discarded oak stump, and under their names a space was made for their son's name, but this was not needed.
Kaj Munk grew up with his mother's cousin Marie, who was married to Peter Munk. It was on the roadsides near his childhood home in the village of Opagerskov west of Maribo that he saw the blue anemones in spring, about which he later wrote: "You little anemone, how great is your creator!"