Hans Scherfig

Born Apr. 8,1905, in Copenhagen. Danish satirical writer and artist. Member of the Communist Party of Denmark.

In the novel The Dead Man (1937; Russian translation, 1972), Scherfig examines the problems of art in a capitalist society. The satiric novels The Missing Official (1938; Russian translation, 1956) and A Wasted Spring (1940; Russian translation, 1960) and the antifascist novel The Idealists (1945) deal with the fate of the bourgeois intelligentsia. Disguising his works as detective novels, Scherfig denounces social injustice, bourgeois hypocrisy, and unfairness in the education system and the state bureaucracy.

On June 22, 1941, Scherfig was arrested by the Hitlerite occupiers; he escaped in 1943 and went underground until the end of the war. His novel The Scorpion (1953; Russian translation, 1956) is directed against the corruption of the upper circles in postwar Denmark. He depicted World War II in the novel Frydenholm (1962; Russian translation, 1965). In the novella The Missing Monkey (1964; Russian translation, 1965), Scherfig sharply criticized contemporary modernistic art. Scherfig is the author of many works on literature and art, including On the Way to the Constellation Aquarius (1951) and Three Poets (1963), which deals with N. Grieg, B. Brecht, and H. R. Kirk. He has contributed to the Communist press. He is the author of A Journey Through the Soviet Union (1951) and travel essays on the socialist countries.