Sonja Hauberg

Sonja Hauberg (1918–1947) was a Danish writer who is remembered mainly as a novelist. After initially writing poems and short stories, she made her promising book debut in 1942 with Hvad vil du mig?. Her most successful work was Syv Aar for Lea (Seven years for Lea, 1944), a puberty novel which was republished several times by 1980 and most recently in 2019. A member of the Danish Communist Party, she died when only 29 after contracting typhus at a writers' convention she had organized in Finland.

Early life and family Born on 5 March 1918 in the Frederiksberg district of Copenhagen, Sonja Hauberg was the daughter of the architect (1883–1956) and his wife Anna née Giersing (1888–1977), sister of the painter Harald Giersing. After matriculating from Ordrup Gymnasium in 1937. she studied Danish literature at the University of Copenhagen. In July 1938, she married the diplomat Vagn Hoffmeyer Hoelgaard. The marriage was dissolved in 1941. In July 1945, she married the painter Richard Mortensen. Together they had a son Finn Hauberg Mortensen (1946) who became a Nordic literature researcher. The book has been republished several times, most recently in 2019.

Hauberg's works all feature a woman who is amorously attracted to two men, a friend and a lover. This is also true of her play Ebbe Skammelsøn which shortly after Denmark's liberation was performed at Frederiksberg Teater in June 1945. Depicting a lost friend killed in the resistance, her last work, the symbolic novel April, was published posthumously in 1961 and has been described as her mærkeligste bog (strangest book).

Death

An active member of the Danish Communist Party, in 1947 she helped to organize a writers' meeting in Finland together with participants from the Nordic countries and the Soviet Union. While away, she contracted typhus. After an extended stay in hospital, she died in Copenhagen on 2 August 1947.

In his Danske Digtere i det 20. århundrede (Danish Poets of the 20th Century, 1980), her son Finn Hauberg Mortensen includes a chapter on her life.