On February 18, Danish socialist and professor emeritus Curt Sørensen passed away after a long struggle with illness. Curt was little known outside of Denmark. However, he was the most prominent Danish Marxist thinker ever to have lived, influencing generations of students as well as the country’s intellectual and political life. He combined a lifelong commitment to socialism and the workers’ movement with his vast academic output as a professor in political science.

He was born in 1938 into a working-class home in the city of Sønderborg, Southern Jutland. His father, a metal worker, was a lifelong trade unionist and member of the Social Democratic Party, though by the end of his life he voted for parties further to the left. His mother was an immigrant from Ukraine, part of the German minority driven to move across Europe in the aftermath of World War I.

Curt’s parents provided an intellectually stimulating home for him and his two younger brothers, full of lively political discussions. As he used to remember, everyone they knew were social democrats except for the communists, who lived in a district of Sønderborg called “little Moscow.” But they were all part of “the movement.” As a young man, he borrowed Karl Marx’s writings from the local library along with books on world history, and the entire family was active in different aspects of the socialist workers’ movement’s many social and cultural organizations. Born and raised in this movement, Curt Sørensen remained, throughout his life, committed to socialism and the democratic cause of the workers’ movement.