Seed of the Church

Four men knocked on the door of the parsonage at Vedersoe, in Denmark's western Jutland. Pastor Kaj Munk was telephoning a friend. He said: "The Germans have come for me." Then he hung up. It was the second time in five months that the invader had laid hands on Denmark's most outspoken anti-Nazi pamphleteer and preacher, who is also the country's foremost poet and playwright (TIME, Sept. 27). The first time the Germans held him two months, sent him home with instructions to confine his preaching to tiny Vedersoe, keep his political views to himself. Said Kaj Munk: "If for fear of men I should sit a passive onlooker...."

Elise Marie Munk and their five children stood together while the men shoved the pastor into a grey car and drove off. Then she phoned the police, learned that the men were not officials, that her husband had been kidnapped, not arrested.

In the morning a peasant found Munk's body in a ditch near Silkeborg, 40 miles away. Blood on the road and a bullet wound in the temple told where and how he died.

In Silkeborg, Nazi military and civil headquarters for Jutland, work stopped and schools closed while 4,000 Danes shuffled silently through the hospital chapel where Martyr Munk's body had been placed. Flags were at half-mast until the Germans ordered them raised to the top again.

In Copenhagen's Royal Theatre, where many of Pastor Munk's most moving plays had first been performed, Kjell Abell, a writer, walked on stage in the middle of the second act. Said he: "Denmark's great poet has died. The curtain cannot be dropped, but I ask you to rise in tribute to his memory." The audience rose.

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