© 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.

Skammens svarta kapitel i Uppsala
Ola Larsmo 2007-08-21 Gefle Dagblad

“Den 17 februari 1939 hölls där om aftonen ett drygt fem timmar långt och stormigt möte. Ett möte som skulle komma att skamfila studentkåren och allt vad solidaritet och medkänsla heter. Så sent som 1999 bad kåren om ursäkt för sitt skamliga agerande. 1 500 studenter är på plats den där februarikvällen, en tredjedel av alla­ studenter vid universitetet, som den gången var ett elituniversitet och ingen massutbildningsfabrik. Det ska röstas huruvida tio-tolv ­judiska läkare bör ges asyl i Sverige. (I Tyskland har våldet mot judarna trappats upp efter Kristallnatten.) Majoriteten röstar med kraftig övervikt nej till att dessa få ska tillåtas komma till Sverige, efter verbalt fiffel med den resolution som föreläggs stormötet och som det ska röstas om.”

Sverige och Förintelsen
Heléne Lööw 2005-09-11 www.svefor.se/article

“Den största av nationalsocialisternas antisemitiska kampanjer var ‘Mota Moses i grind-kampanjen’ som inleddes i november 1938. Aktionen riktades mot de Österrikiska och tyska judar, som efter Anschluss och Kristallnatten flytt till Sverige. ‘Mota Moses i grind-kampanjen’ bedrevs i form av möten, föredragsserier, flygbladsutdelningar, tidningsartiklar och penning-insamlingar för att finansiera fortsatta aktioner. I samband med aktionen utgavs även en mindre anti-flykting skrift, om att ‘Judeinvasionen måste stoppas’.”

Högberg och antisemitismen
Per Hammarström 2007-11-05 allehanda.se

  “Frånstötande judiska gårdfarihandlare
var en stereotyp i förra sekelskiftets Sverige. Även hos Olof Högberg finns samma småsinta och tidstypiska aversion, hävdar Per Hammarström, som nyligen disputerat på en avhandling om judarna i Norrland 1870-1940.”

Nationens styvbarn:
Judisk samhällsintegration i några Norr-landsstäder 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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