10. The Most Famous Tyskerbarnas/ Lebensborn Child
The singer, songwriter, and environmentalist Anni-Frid Lyngstad, best known as one of the lead singers of Swedish pop group ABBA, was one of the Tyskerbarnas children. Anni-Frid was the product of a union between a German occupation soldier and a Norwegian woman: her mother had carried on an affair with a German sergeant during the Nazi occupation.
After Anni-Frid’s birth in November of 1945, both her mother and grandmother were branded as collaborationist traitors – “horizontal collaboration” – and ostracized. As a result of the ostracism and dim prospects in Norway, Anni-Frid’s mother and grandmother were forced to emigrate to Sweden, where the future pop star’s mother died of kidney failure when Anni-Frid was an infant. She was raised in Sweden by her grandmother.
Anni-Frid exhibited a precocious musical talent from an early age, especially a captivating and beautiful voice. A series of smalltime singing gigs eventually led her to international fame and stardom with the pop group ABBA. However, her grandmother had died shortly before the group was formed, and thus never experienced her granddaughter’s success.
The ABBA star had grown up assuming that her father had died, but she eventually discovered that he was still alive, and the two had an emotional reunion in her Swedish villa in 1977. She eventually took up the cause of the thousands of Norwegian Tyskerbarnas, and the efforts to secure justice and redress for the discrimination they suffered after the war.
