Amelie Posse

Amelie Posse-Brázdová (11 February 1884, in Stockholm – 3 March 1957) was a Swedish author. She is also known for her work against nazism during World War II.

Amelie Posse was the daughter of Count Fredrik Arvidsson Posse and Auda Gunhild Wennerberg. She was married from 1904 to 1912 to the criminal psychologist Andreas Bjerre, with whom she had a son, Sören Christer Bjerre (1905-1967), who was declared insane in 1921 but eventually in adulthood became a journalist. Following her 1912 divorce from Bjerre, she married in Rome the Czech artist Oskar (nicknamed Oki) Brázda (1887–1977) from 1915, and became the mother of Bohuslav (Slavo) (1916-1991; RAF pilot) and the artist Jan Brazda (1917-2012) with Brázda.

During her second marriage, some fourteen years she lived in Rome, and in Alghero, Sardinia, where she and her husband Oki were forced into exile for about one year due to the fact that during the First World War Oki, born in Pardubice being of Boemian origin, of Austro-Hungarian nationality, was considered an enemy of Italy and so was his wife Amelie. From this experience Amelie published her first book in 1931, Den oförlikneliga fångenskapen, which made her famous internationally in 1932 with the subsequent publication in English, Sardinian Sideshow, and after 66 years was also translated and published in Italian with the title Interludio di Sardegna in 1998. After this period lived in Italy they returned in 1925 to Czechoslovakia on the manor of Líčkov. She became known as a democrat and a pacifist in her work and was a friend of president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. In 1938, she returned to Sweden after an order for her arrest had been issued by the Gestapo. In 1940, she was one of the founders of the discussion-club Tisdagsklubben ("The Tuesday Club") in Stockholm. It was formally a discussion-club about culture, but its true purpose was to work against the expansion of nazism in Sweden. The club was in fact inaugurated the same day Nazi Germany occupied Norway, on 9 April 1940. Tisdagsklubben was to be used as the center of the Swedish resistance movement in case Sweden was ever occupied by Nazi Germany. Amelie Posse was, like other members of the club, listed in German records as "Untrustworthy Swedes".

A tiny museum with Amelie Posse memorabilia can be found at Örenäs slott, close to Posse's childhood home (torn down), near Landskrona in south Sweden.

Bibliography

• Den oförlikneliga fångenskapen, 1931.
• Den brokiga friheten, 1932.
• Sardinian Sideshow,1932.
• Roman Roundabout, 1933.
• Ned med vapnen! En kampsignal mot kriget, 1935.
• Vidare, 1936.
• Further, 1938.
• I begynnelsen var ljuset, 1940.
• Bygga upp, ej riva neder, 1942.
• In the beginning was the light, 1942.
• Mellan slagen, 1946.
• Kring kunskapens träd, 1946.
• Kunskapens träd i blom, 1946.
• Åtskilligt kan nu sägas, 1949.
• Minnenas park, 1954.
• När järnridån föll över Prag, a book posthmously published in 1968. Barbro Alving edited the book before its publication.
• Interludio di Sardegna, a translation of Sardinian Sideshow with several photos not published in the first edition, 1998.
• Allegro Caprese, 2000.

Her work has been translated into English, Danish Czech and Italian.

Sources

• Bokholm, Rune, Tisdagsklubben. Om glömda antinazistiska sanningssägare i svenskt 30-40-tal, Atlantis förlag, Stockholm, 2001.
• Levander, Hans, "Posse-Brázdová, Amelie", Svenska män och kvinnor 6, Albert Bonniers Förlag, Stockholm, 1949.
• Lövgren, Britta, "Posse, Amelie", Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon 143, red Göran Nilzén, Stockholm 1996.
• Strömberg Krantz, Eva, En ande som hör jorden till: en bok om Amelie Posse, Carlsson, Stockholm, 2010.

Further reading

• Amelie Posse at Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon
• On line copy of Sardinian Sideshow
• On line copy of Further
• On line copy of In the beginning was the light