Daniel Brick


Daniel Brick was a Swedish journalist, editor, translator, public intellectual, and a leading voice in Jewish cultural life in 20th-century Sweden.

Biography

Daniel Brick was born to Elias David Brick, a merchant, and Maria Klara Brick, Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants who had arrived in Sweden via Finland. He was the twelfth of thirteen siblings. The family moved from Stockholm to Norrköping in 1905, returning to the capital around 1910. Brick studied at Norra Latin and earned a bachelor's degree in literature history from Stockholm University in 1929.
That same year, he married the photographer Anna Riwkin, sister of his close collaborator and fellow translator Josef Riwkin. Their home became a hub for modernist and radical intellectual circles in Stockholm.
Brick became a central figure in Sweden’s Jewish cultural scene. He co-founded the magazine Judisk Krönika in 1932 and served as its editor-in-chief until 1979. He was also general secretary of the Zionist Organization in Sweden from 1935 to 1948. In 1952, a forest was planted in his honor in Israel. In 1957, he established the Jewish Cultural Institute in Stockholm, a space for interfaith dialogue and intellectual exchange.
During the interwar years, Brick published several pamphlets confronting antisemitism, including Why Are the Jews Always Blamed? and Against Antisemitism: Swedish Authors Take a Stand. He contributed to the Nordisk familjebok and lectured frequently on Jewish and Zionist topics. Known for his fierce engagement in public debate, he was described posthumously as “a fighter, unafraid to make enemies.”
In 1980, ten years after the death of Anna Riwkin-Brick in 1970, he remarried Taube Mirsky. He died on 19 January 1987.

Work as Translator

During the 1920s and 1930s, Brick translated a number of works from Russian, Yiddish, and Czech into Swedish—often in collaboration with others. He played a major role in introducing Soviet and East European modernist literature to Swedish readers. His best-known translation is that of The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek, published in 1930–1931. While the translation was based largely on the German edition and contains some inaccuracies, it was an enormous popular success and was reprinted repeatedly through the late 20th century.

Selected works

Writings

Varför anklagar man judarna?, Internationella kvinnoförbundet för fred och frihet, 1939Antisemitismen – en folkfara, Kämpande demokrati, 1943

Translations (selected)

  • Isaac Leib Peretz: Två världar: noveller, from Yiddish, 1926
  • Nikolaj Ognev: Kostia Rjabtsevs dagbok, with Josef Riwkin, 192914 sovjetryska berättare, with Josef Riwkin, 1929
  • Jaroslav Hašek: Den tappre soldaten Švejks äventyr under världskriget, 1931
  • Jerzy Kossowski: Tegelhuset, with Eugénie Söderberg, 1932
  • Leon Pinsker: Självbefrielse, 1937