Signe and her friend Topsy had studied together at Konstfach. They had just turned 19 when they travelled with Signes father to start their art studies at two separate schools in Berlin. The girls stayed together at a Gasthaus run by a real madam: Die Frau Direktorin! It was considered a ’safe’ place for girls as the Direktorin ran a tight ship and expected to be obeyed. This beautiful home was probably her own family home but she didn’t marry and created a home for girls instead. Regular events were arranged where people were invited to perform or talk about interesting subjects.
The year was 1934 and Hitler was still building up support in Germany and had yet to show his real face. The Hitler Youth had just been formed and a girl from the Hitler Youth came to one event at the Gasthaus to tell about their youth program. How they helped farmers to clear their fields after the bombings of World War 1 to make it possible to start farming again. They had wonderful songs that they sang as they worked and the girls were impressed.
Another event was a dance to which they were supposed to wear long dresses. Signe and Topsy didn’t have long dresses but they managed to get some cheap cotton fabric in the sales and sewed themselves beautiful dresses by hand! The event was held in the ballroom which had very tall narrow windows rounded at the top and glass doors that led out into the garden where the fountain in the middle of the rose garden was decorated with coloured lanterns. The German girls who stayed there invited boys to come to partner all the girls and they danced to a live orchestra.
On another occasion someone was invited to play a spinet. Signe wasn’t really interested initially, but she went. All the girls sat on gilded chairs and there was a spinet on which there was a single candle, nothing more. A little man came in and introduced himself. He had made the spinet himself. He was old and wrinkled, wore an indoor coat that covered his knees, had long hair and wore a scull cap. He told the girls how he had travelled around Germany collecting the traditional folk songs by asking local women to sing their songs for him. In this way he recorded many songs that had never been recorded on paper before. He introduced each song and told where it came from. He was a very gifted man.
Signe had been doubtful about how this recital would turn out. “His speaking voice was old and cracked and it was unlikely that he would have a singing voice. But when he played the music just flowed. The songs, his warm heart and the way in which he lived into the music totally captured me.” This was a peak experience for her. This is when she understood for the first time that art is not only about skill but also about the heart. She saw how skill without heart doesn’t become art. And how heart without skill can become sentimental but doesn’t become art either.
When Signe later tried to define what formed her as an artist she saw that this experience was probably the first conscious moment that art became an entity with a life of its own. It was as essential to creation as man, trees, rocks or water. It was not man made. It was simply meant to ’be’. She still needed to acquire the skills, but sensed that ”true art conveys something intangible of the spirit in order to find a response or kindle a similar expression somewhere else. Art is an urge as natural and special as the sex urge; as hunger and the urge to eat; or thirst and the urge to drink. It has a purpose and is somehow created, but not by man.”
Another peak experience for Signe followed soon after. The girls were not allowed to have gramophones, but she had brought the family gramophone from home. This was wound up by hand and produced music when a needle, attached to an arm with a round head, was placed into grooves on a black disc known as a record. It had a built-in loud speaker and although it was very muffled and scratchy the sound it produced felt like a miracle to Topsy and Signe. They somehow got hold of the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven and played it over and over with the music going deep into their hearts. This opened a door into classical music for the first time. When Signe had been in her early teens and lay in the hallway in the Lund’s family flat in Stockholm she tried to understand what was so special about classical music. But she just didn’t get it until this moment in Berlin when it felt like a ’stopper’ had been pulled out of a bottle and the music simply flowed.
Frau Direktorin soon discovered Signe and Topsy with their gramophone and they were forbidden to listen to their records. This was inconceivable to them and so they decided to move. Two other students at the school had found a cheaper Gasthaus closer to the school which was run by a Jewish lawyer who was out of work. He had lost his clients and had to eak out his existence by letting out rooms to students. There was nothing cultural about the room that Signe and Topsy shared but at least they could listen to music!
Reimanschule, where Signe studied, was an excellent and renowned art college. They had wonderful teachers. It wouldn’t have mattered to the students if they had known that many of their teachers were Jewish. They were excellent and this famous college turned out high class commercial artists. There were several Scandinavian students there during Signe’s first year and they had a great time together.
While she was in Berlin Signe was invited to visit her father’s friends and families. One family had two small daughters, Ruth and Eva. The girls and their parents each played different string instruments and they created a lovely little quartet.
Signe hadn’t been following the news and didn’t understand about Palestine or the Jewish situation but despite being naïve she could sense great concern amongst these families. Several of them were Jewish and what she learnt from them was precious. They had deep discussions about what would happen to Jewish people who became ’dislocated’ and wondered if Israel should be established? They had no official homeland yet and had till then been assimilated into the countries where they had ended up.
About this time Signe also met up with Hans who she first got to know in Värmland. He was now an SS officer in Hitler’s elite corps. Hans and Signe met one evening and he told her about his training. They were told to jump off a tower without a safety net believing till the last minute that they had to do it till the officer stopped them. If they showed any kind of hesitation they were severely punished. The object was to create trust in their officer and that he would only give commands that were beneficial to the purpose of becoming an officer. The other object was to create absolute obedience. The point was not to train a lot of professional soldiers but to create an effective army that could act as one big instrument. What Signe heard from Hans that evening sent shivers down her spine.
Meanwhile Hans saw Signe as a perfect Arian Nazi ideal. He saw her grey eyes to be blue and her mousy brown hair to be blonde. He saw her as a tall blonde Arian woman and that was all he wanted in a wife! This scared Signe and she turned him down. He walked her home and they didn’t see any more of each other.
The next time that Signe was invited to the musical Jewish family, they had invited other friends and they discussed the pros and cons of their future, Israel and Zionism. She loved being with these warmhearted creative people. The discussions and the threat they were facing went over her head at first, but gradually opened her eyes to the path that Hitler was taking. She began to see beyond the Germany she loved and was fascinated by. The friendliness, folk songs, art, poetry, philosophy, literature and music.
During her second year in Berlin Signe was the only Scandinavian at Reimanschule as none of her friends could afford the second year. But things were different that year. The Jewish teachers had left. The porter who they all loved had left. And when Signe was invited to the musical family one Sunday, the parents told her how other children had thrown stones at their girls shouting, “You are Jews! You’re not welcome here!” Signe was horrified. Signe’s newspapers and letters from home were now censored and as a foreigner she had to report to the police to show her ID every week. Every time Hitler made a speech the students had to go down to the canteen and listen. Everybody and everything had changed and Signe decided to leave Germany.
During the years at Konstfach in Sweden and Reimanschule in Berlin, Signe got a glimpse of a world she had previously not known existed. She found a world of thoughts and ideas that could influence the world. But it was only hearsay and it was as yet not her own experience. She hadn’t read philosophy or learnt about the artists ideals, ideas or reasons for painting. She simply heard what others shared. The only true personal experience of art that she had were of the man who sang the German songs and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. She knew how something had clicked inside and she continued desperately to seek for similar deeper experiences. She didn’t know exactly what she was looking for but continued her desperate search after returning to Sweden in 1937.
When Signe returned to Stockholm her family had moved to Gothenburg and she joined Nussa and Lillan for the summer at a guesthouse in Lyckorna near Ljungkile. Inger was studying for confirmation nearby and their parents Aagot and Kjell were in Koppom where Aagot was recuperating from the hives that she suffered from.
Signe had a kayak with two holes in it known as a K2. Two people sat in it and each had a paddle that had a blade at either end so you had to paddle in sync with each other. Signe took her sisters out with her one at a time. When the steamers came by they made huge waves and the girls loved to cross the waves and see how the water parted for their sharp little kayak. Signe loved that summer with her sisters and her kayak. She found healing from the shock and depression that that last period in Germany had caused. But she still had a sense of complete confusion about what was happening in Germany.
In the autumn she got back in touch with Topsy who lived close to Bonniers office where she worked on Sveavägen. Topsy urged Signe to apply for a job there too and she got a very good 3-year contract as a commercial artist with the promise of a raise every year. For a fresh student she knew she was lucky. Plus the fact that they would train her in their particular techniques of lettering and layout design for each of the 28 weekly and monthly magazines that they printed, not only for Sweden but internationally.
There were 2 studios at Bonniers. Topsy worked in one studio and Signe worked in the other. Signe’s studio told her later that they had the impression that she was a happy-go-lucky, singing girl holding a sandwich! But the dark side of her life just grew and grew. She went around, thinking of ways and means of ending her life. She felt totally miserable and got physically worse. She felt ill after every meal. She stayed at a bed and breakfast and could barely mobilize her energy after she had eaten breakfast. At Bonniers you could eat your main meal in the canteen but every time she ate there she felt totally wiped out afterwards. After the first year she broke the contract for health reasons. It took 50 years before she learnt that she was gluten and milk intolerant which was likely the cause of her health issues.
Signe found a new place to stay on Djurgården, one of the islands that make up Stockholm. She rented a little room in the cavalier wing of the royal hunting lodge at Rosendals Slott. This had formerly been the royal hunting lodge and this was where the hunting corps lived. The king and the rest of the royal family stayed in another house on the other side of the lodge.
Signe loved it there and started free-lancing but she found it hard to offer one’s own services, showcase one’s own work and also do the necessary work on the jobs so it didn’t work out well. She had some things published but nothing she was proud of and she started painting in an attempt to sort herself out.
One day a friend called and said “I’m going to England, will you take care of my dog?” He was a five-month old Great Dane and Signe said yes without knowing what she was in for! The dog came but life with a large dog in her tiny room was difficult. He made such a noise at night that she had to put him out on the landing to the annoyance of the landlady. Spot, as he was called, loved to go for walks with Signe but if anyone came close he could jump up and knock them down! If Signe stood up tall she could scratch his back without bending down! The Royal horses exercised daily on Djurgården and Spot sometimes tore himself loose to run after the horses. He tried to bite their tails and wouldn’t obey Signe when she called him. He was completely untrained and she didn’t know how to train a dog.
One day Signe invited some friends for tea and made open sandwiches which Spot swept off the table with one sweep of his tail! Another time he very gently licked out the yolks from the sliced eggs on the open sandwiches! Spot thought he was a lap-dog and it was an impossible situation.
After 2 months Signe put out an ad and found a family in the country who took him. She visited the family a month later and Spot was thrilled! He jumped up and put his paws on her shoulders practically pushing her over as he was even bigger! Signe was relieved to see that Spot was happy and had a perfect home where he was free to be a watchdog and play with other dogs.
During Signes time on Djurgården she had another peak experience.
”I was experimenting with painting and wanted to paint some of the trees that I could see outside my loft window. They were majestic trees. As I stood looking out, thinking of what I would paint and the best way to start, I suddenly felt that I was the tree and the tree was me and somehow I merged into a feeling that I left my body. I felt like I lost consciousness though I didn’t fall down, I just stood there by the window while the inner part of me somehow went somewhere else. I was soaring upwards and I found myself in an absolute ocean of beautiful luminous colour. I was looking out over the world and beyond the world into something that I didn’t know existed. It was just light. I felt as if I knew everything, understood everything, was part of everything and was everything. I felt that I had come into the meaning of life – something that I couldn’t define and didn’t need to try! I was just there and felt blissfully happy.
“I had never felt anything like this before. Fulfilled and absolutely one with the immenseness out there I found myself gradually returning to consciousness again as I stood there by the window. I don’t know how long I had been there, maybe just a few seconds, maybe longer. I was mystified at the time but afterwards, I knew for certain that there was something real behind the universe, the mystery of life and the purpose of life. This was the only thing that was important. This was the only thing that was real and dependable and I loved it. I have never experienced this again in that way but from then on I have been certain that something moves though I can’t always see it. I can’t understand why the world looks like it does right now but I don’t think it is a part of that power. I think we have to learn how to live together in peace and consideration of each other in order to change that.
”My earlier intuitions or insights were very different from this experience. Previously I just thought there must be something, but after this experience at the window I knew there was something and that I somehow or other was part of it. I didn’t know how, but it was an absolutely fundamental turnaround in my life.”
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