© Sture Johannesson. #3

The tree grows from it’s root. The shadows of Shame falls heavily on the ground. Thousands of students in Uppsala, Lund and other Swedish universities voted in the year 1939 in protest against asylum for about 10-12 Jewish medicine doctors, who had fled from Hitler’s Germany. The students were afraid that they should ‘occupy their works’. The same attitude and position was expressed by the Swedish Artist’s union, ‘The Swedish State Art Control Stations’. The refugee artists were finally allowed to exhibit in ‘charity barracks’ supported by Prince Eugen, one of the few in the Swedish Royal family being anti-Nazi. But the roots are still alive. As late as in the year 2000 a cartoonist specialized in ‘Der Stürmer’-look-alike outrageous drawings was granted a lifetime State income warranty by the Swedish Visual Art Fund. As a tribute to the founder of the conglomerated ‘Swedish State Art Control Stations’, Arthur Engberg, who copied and implemented Joseph Goebbels’ totalitarian Reichskulturkammer from Nazi-Germany in Sweden 1937 — ?
Their successors are still in function.
 Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) «               » (1888-1944) Arthur Engberg

10 stories — Swedish Art 1910-1945
Cecilia Widenheim 2007 www.modernamuseet.se

“The debate around an exhibition in Stockholm of works by artists in exile in 1944 gives a vivid picture of the nation Peter Weiss fled to. The exhibition, Artists in Exile, was held in a temporary building on Nybroplan in Stockholm to benefit artists who were in Sweden as exiles. The participants listed in the catalogue include Lotte Laserstein, Endre Nemes, Peter Weiss and Egon Möller-Nielsen. A total of 50 artists were featured — Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Germans and Russians, but also Danes and Norwegians. In spring 1944, a heated debate broke out in the press, where the exhibition jury was accused of undemocratic policies. The press also spoke of an ‘art dictatorship’, and called the gallery a ‘charity shed’. The tone of the reviews also reveals anti-Semitic and nationalistic attitudes, and there were speculations that ‘Jewish artists were trying to profit at the expense of others’. In Folkets Dagblad suspicions were cast over the whole idea behind the project, while German cultural policy was upheld as a good example. ‘The real artists in foreign countries do not flee from their country, but stay there and practise their art.’ The article ends by encouraging Swedish citizens to buy Swedish art.
  Two years after the National Public Art Council was founded, Sweden introduced a ban on importing ‘inferior art’ The ban, which lasted until 1953, was aimed at preventing bad quality in the field of art and protecting Swedish artists against unfair foreign competition. As the economic historian Martin Gustavsson points out in his thesis Makt och konstsmak (Power and Aesthetic Taste), the economic forces were one of the primary reasons why artists were driven to ally themselves with the government in the 1930s. But politics also played a part in this. In Sweden, the inter-war period modernist-inspired popular art was indirectly appointed as the government norm. At the same time, an idealising, so called ‘healthy’ art style was appointed the national norm in Germany.”

“Displaced Artists”
Endre Nemes (1909-1985) biography www.belart.se

“Endre Nemes was born in Pécsvárad in Hungary. He started his studies in Budapest but went to Vienna for studies in philosophy. After this he went to Slovakia and wrote for some Slovakian newspapers. Under the period between the wars Prague was an important scene for art and Endre Nemes went there to study at the academy of fine arts. It was here Endre Nemes decided to become an artist. During the Second World War he fled to Sweden where he soon joined the new surrealistic group Minotaur to which Max Walter Svanberg, CO Hultén and Anders Österlin belonged. In 1947 Endre Nemes became professor at Valand’s school of fine arts in Gothenburg. Moved to Stockholm in the late 50’s.”
1943-1944: Helps to establish ‘Displaced Artists’. The Swedish State Forest Industries gave them the use of a wooden shed in Stockholm, just opposite the Royal Dramatic Theatre. Three controversial exhibits of refugee artists’ works held there. The first exhibition opens under patronage of Prince Eugen, Stenmans Dotter, Stockholm.
1980: Receives the Prince Eugen-medal, for prominent artistic work.

Black Chapter of Shame in Uppsala
Ola Larsmo 2007-08-21 Gefle Dagblad

“On February 17, 1939 was held there in the evening just over five hours long and stormy meeting. A meeting that was to TARNISH student body and all the solidarity and sympathy units. As late as 1999, Student Corps begged for  apology for their shameful behavior. 1 500 students are in place that February evening, one third of all students at the University, as the time was an elite university, and no mass education factory. It will vote whether the ten-twelve Jewish doctor should be given asylum in Sweden. (In Germany, violence against Jews escalated after Crystal Night.) Majority vote by obesity no to these few should be allowed to come to Sweden, after verbal jiggery-pokery with the resolution submitted to stormötet and as it should be voted on.”

Sweden and the Holocaust
Heléne Lööw 2005-09-11 www.svefor.se/article

“The largest of the National Socialists’ anti-Semitic campaign was ‘Stop Moses in the gate’-campaign launched in November 1938. The action was directed against the Austrian and German Jews, who after the Anschluss and Crystal Night fled to Sweden. The ‘Stop Moses in the gate’-campaign was conducted in the form of meetings, lecture series, flyer distributions, newspaper and money collections to fund continuing operations. In connection with the operation were also less anti-refugee writing, to ‘The Jewish invasion must be stopped!’”

Högberg and antisemitism
Per Hammarström 2007-11-05 allehanda.se

“Repulsive Jewish pedlar was a stereotype in the last turn of the century Sweden. Even in Olof Högberg are petty and the same time typical aversion, says Per Hammarström, recently dissertation on a thesis on Jews in northern Sweden 1870-1940.”

Nation stepchildren:
Jew social integration in some north-country cities 1870-1940.

The Stepchildren of the Nation:
Jewish Integration into the Society in some Citys of Northern Sweden 1870 to 1940.
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