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This week we are featuring the Danish journal Plan. Subtitled Socialistisk maanedsskrift for økonomi, politik og kultur (Socialist Monthly Magazine for Economics, Politics, and Culture), Plan concerned itself with art, but not exclusively. The first eight issues of the journal were edited by Ester Boserup (1910–1999), then a university student, who would go on to become one of Denmark’s foremost economists. Striking graphics consistently characterized the journal’s covers, but the designer(s) remained uncredited. Covers sometimes included images by artists including George Grosz and John Heartfield that also appeared in like-minded publications such as the German Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung (Workers’ Illustrated Newspaper). Plan was published by the Monde-Gruppen, the Danish branch of the programmatically international, left-wing (but adamantly independent of the Communist party) “Monde” group, which had been founded by Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) in Paris in 1928. Between 1928 and 1931, the Danish Monde-Gruppen published a local edition of Barbusse’s journal Monde, before founding their own journal, Plan, in 1932. Between 1930 and 1931, the Monde-Gruppen’s Copenhagen-based publishing house—the Mondes Forlag—also published the journal Social Kunst (Social Art), with issues dedicated to artists and themes including George Grosz, Käthe Kollwitz, photomontage, and Russian art. Functioning in a role similar to Germany’s Malik-Verlag, the Mondes Forlag dedicated itself to offering “Elementary Books of Communism” by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and others, and writings by Russian authors such as Maxim Gorky, in translation for a Danish audience. Click here for more issues of Plan
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