Aug 8

Aug 8 A Norwegian Nazi Composer Enters the Picture

Sometimes during the process of writing various articles, blog posts, emails and this memoir, I have had to dig back into my archive of previous scans, documents and photographs. Yesterday while looking for a scan of a journal entry from my grandfather, I found something I had missed.

In writing about Thor my grandfather wrote, “In August 1932 he became engaged to Gudrun Nordraak Feyling (born 28 July 1896). The engagement was called off early in the year 1934. “

Detail of journal entry by my grandfather in a family history notebook

I do not recall ever seeing (or noticing) this part of his journal entry. Looking up Gudrun Nordraak-Feyling, I discovered something intriguing. She has a Wikipedia page https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudrun_Nordraak-Feyling. It turns out she was a composer, singer, and music teacher - she died in 1984. What the article does NOT state is that she was a member of the Norwegian Nazi party - the Nasjonal Samling which was active from 1933-1945. In 1945 at the end of the war, her membership in the Norwegian Composers Society was revoked due to her involvement with the Nazi party. She was one of 10 former members who had their memberships in the society taken away for life.

According to the article I found, dated March 9, 1946, written by Ole P. Forgren,

“It is primarily up to the performing musicians to choose their repertoire, and they will probably know how to set up compositions that were not made by Nazi musicians. We can probably entrust them completely with that. But what most people want to play at home, and what they want to sing or otherwise perform in complete silence both from Norwegian and foreign music, must become a private matter. It is only a matter of making sure that one does not let German hatred run away with reason so that one avoids performing and listening to music literature's most immortal works.” (published in the Lofotposten found via Nasonalbibliotek).

Does this new information change anything about Thor and his life? He did move to Trondheim after the engagement ended. Did they end the engagement due to her being in the Nazi Party? Who knows? But perhaps.

This fact becomes a new piece of the puzzle.