Martin Andersen Nexø

Martin Andersen Nexo, (born June 26, 1869, Copenhagen, Denmark-died June 1, 1954, Dresden, East Germany) writer who was the first Danish novelist to champion social revolution. His works helped raise social consciousness in Denmark and throughout Europe.Nexø 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 working class. 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 he became tubercular and went to Spain and Italy to convalesce. Thereafter he concentrated on writing.