During the first year at Konstfach, the Stockholm College of Art, Signe engaged fully and won most of the student competitions. But during the second year it became repetition upon repetition and she lost interest. The teachers wondered what had happened and why she no longer won the competitions, but she no longer found the work a challenge as she had already mastered what they taught. Her father felt that the time had come for Signe to continue her art education abroad and have access to further possibilities. He had made many friends through his business and some of his German friends provided him with valuable contacts. One such contact was a commercial artist who had successfully designed and carried out the interior design of a zeppelin, the big cigars that could be seen in the air at that time. He had a studio in Berlin where he took 10 to 15 students. Signe was invited to be one of his students and was set to design an alphabet to be used in the design of a huge perfume poster. The actual learning spectrum was narrow there but Signe learnt many new techniques.
Signes’ friend Topsy, with whom she had studied at Konstfach, travelled to Germany with Signe and her father. During their first year in Berlin they stayed together at a Gasthaus, though Topsy went to another art school. This Gasthaus was 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. She had never married but made the home into a lovely home for girls. It had two floors full of bedrooms with only one student per room. She regularly arranged events where people were invited to perform or to talk about different interesting subjects.
This was after the First World War in January of 1935 and the girls had recently turned 19. Hitler was still building up support in Germany and the Hitler Youth had just been formed, but Hitler had yet to show his real face. A girl from the Hitler Youth came to one event at the Gasthaus and told about how their youth programme worked. How they went out into the country to help the farmers to clear their fields after the bombings and make agriculture possible again. They had wonderful songs to march and work to which impressed the girls. Another event was a dance when they were supposed to wear long dresses but Signe and Topsy didn’t have long dresses. They managed to get some cheap cotton fabric in the sales and each of the girls sewed themselves a beautiful dress by hand! There was a fountain in the middle of the Gasthaus garden path with roses, coloured lanterns and that evening they had a live orchestra indoors. The German girls who stayed there had contacts in Berlin so they invited boys to come and partner all the girls and they had a wonderful evening of dancing and talking in the garden.
On another occasion someone was invited to play a spinet. Signe wasn’t really interested initially, but she went. 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. There was a single candle on the spinet, nothing more. All the girls sat on the gilded chairs when a little man came in, stood by the spinet which he had made himself and introduced 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 that Germany is known for by asking local women all over Germany to sing their songs. In this way he recorded many songs that had never been recorded on paper before. He introduced each song and told where the songs 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 sat down and made music out of these songs, his warm heart and the way in which he sang and 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 when art became an entity for her 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 music played 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 was 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 the door to classical music for them 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 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 discovered that many of their teachers were Jews. 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.
Several of Signe’s father’s business friends were Jews and Signe was invited home to visit their famillies. There were many discussions among them about what would happen to Jews who became ’dislocated’ and if Israel should be established as a home for Jews or not. There was no official home for them at that point. They had been assimilated into the countries where they had blended. This was of course soon before the Second World War and what Signe learnt from these Jewish families was precious. In one family they had two small daughters, Ruth and Eva. This family of four 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 Jews, or anything about the future. But despite being naïve she could sense great concern amongst the Jews.
Around this time Signe also met up with Hans who she first got to know at Elin and Johans summer cottage in Värmland. He had became an SS officer in Hitler’s elite corps. As a child of 14 Hans had explained how the Jews had infiltrated Germany and taken over its industry and commerce. His hatred of the Jews was very obvious in his whole attitude even then. Even then he told how they owned everything in Germany, that they were doctors or lawyers. He was fully indoctrinated in anti-Semitism and convinced about the road that Germany was taking. He told us how well Germany produced the things in life that other countries had naturally. This was only possible after the destruction and depression of the Ist World War were over and achieved despite all Germany’s challenges.
Hans and Signe met one evening and he told her about his training as an SS officer. They were told to jump off a tower without a safety net – believing till the last minute that they had to do it – untill the officer stopped them. If they showed any kind of hesitation at jumping 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 because the point was not to train a lot of professional soldiers, it was 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 thought Signe was a perfect Arian. 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 eachother in Berlin.
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 as Jews and the possibility of Israel and Zionism. She loved being with these warmhearted creative people but the discussions and the threat they were facing went over her head at first. But all this gradually opened her eyes to see the path that Germany was taking and she began to see beyond the friendliness, the folk songs, the art, the poetry, the philosophy, the literature and the music which she loved and was fascinated by.
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. One Sunday when Signe was invited to the musical family the parents told her that 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 papers every week. Every time Hitler made a speech they had to go down to the canteen and listen. Everybody and everything had changed and Signe decided to leave Germany.
She heard later that the musical family made their way to Holland after she left Berlin and they had had to go into hiding under the German occupation of Holland. They were allowed to hide in the barn of somebody’s house. After the war she learnt that one of the girls had committed suicide and she was devastated.
During the years in the Swedish art college Konstfach, and at Reimanschule in Berlin, Signe got a glimpse of a world she previously had not known existed. She found a world of thoughts and ideas that could influence the way we live in the world. But it was only hearsay and it was as yet not her own experience. She hadn’t read philosophy, or about the artists and their ideals, ideas or reasons for painting, she simply heard what others shared. The only true personal experiences 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 something that would happen and somehow enable more of this kind of deeper experience. She didn’t know exactly what she was looking for, but continued her desperate search after returning to Sweden.
When Signe arrived back in Stockholm in 1937 her family had moved to Gothenburg where she joined them for the summer. Signe, Nussa and Lillan spent the summer in Lyckorna near Ljungkile at a guest house they called “Panget” – their nickname for Pensionatet. Inger was studying for her confirmation nearby with a minister known as Uncle Knut. Their parents Aagot and Kjell were in Koppom where Aagot was recuperating from her Helvetes ild or Fire from hell which she called the hives that she suffered from.
Signe had a K2 kayak with two holes in it. It was long and narrow and they had to squeeze themselves into the two narrow holes. You sat on the floor of the kayak, each person had an oar and each oar had a paddle at either end. You could be two in the kayak but you had to paddle in sync with each other and to know exactly what you wanted to do. So the one in the back had to take command and Signe would take her sisters out with her one at a time. When the steamers came by they made huge waves and the girls would dive straight through the waves and see how the water parted for their sharp little kayak. Signe loved that summer with her sisters and 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.
Signe returned to Stockholm in the autumn to get a job. She got back in touch with Topsy who lived very 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, 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 later told her that they had the impression 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 mobilise 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. It took 50 years before she learnt she was gluten and milk intolerant! After a year she felt it was impossible to keep the job and she broke the contract for health reasons.
In the midst of all of this Signe found a new place to stay through one of her workmates who had rented a room on Djurgården, one of the islands that make up Stockholm. When he moved out, Signe moved in to this little rented room in a small house called the cavalier wing on one side of the royal hunting lodge Rosendals Slott. When the former king hunted on Djurgården this was where his 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. After she had had to break the contract she tried free-lancing but it was hard to offer one’s own services, showcase one’s own work and also do the necessary work on the jobs that she needed to complete. She was tired and it didn’t work out too well. She had some things published but it wasn’t anything to speak of and she started painting as she tried 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 too close he just rushed at them, especially men, and tried to knock them down! He was very powerful! If she stood up straight she could scratch him on his back without bending down. The Royal horses rode round Djurgården every day and Spot sometimes tore himself loose and ran 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 had made open sandwiches – but Spot swept everything off the table onto the floor 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 could take him. After about a month later she took the train to visit the family. When she arrived Spot was thrilled! He jumped up with his paws on her shoulders and practically pushed her over as he was even bigger! But 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. I didn’t paint a lot and I wanted to paint some of the lovely trees that I could see outside my little loft window. They were majestic trees. And as I stood looking out, thinking of what I would paint and just looking for the best way to start, I suddenly felt that I was the tree and the tree was me, and somehow or other that merged into a feeling that I left my body. I felt like I lost consciousness though I didn’t fall down or anything, I just stood there by the window while the inner part of me somehow went somewhere else. I was soaring and soaring upwards and I found myself in an absolute ocean of colour, beautiful luminous colour. And I was aware that 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, was everything, and 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 it ever before. Fulfilled and absolutely one with the immenseness up there I found myself gradually coming into 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 what I realised afterwards, and knew for the first time in my life for certain, was that there was something real behind the universe, the mystery of life and the purpose of life and that 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 intuition or insight, was very different from this experience. Previously I just thought there must be something, but after this experience in 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.”
Signe’s parents were concerned for her. They had by now read the book For Sinners Only which they bought at the Oxford Group meeting in Norway. They sent it to Signe who immediately read it from cover to cover! ”This book really commanded my attention. It felt as though this was what I had been looking for all my life and I wanted to meet that man Buchman from the Oxford Group!” She heard that he was soon to speak in Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland and she set out to get an invitation. Signe managed to get the invitation but was a little cautious of getting too involved in something she might regret, so she booked a single room and booked her ticket on the ferry to Visby, a ruined Hanseatic City situated in the Baltic Sea which can only be reached by boat or plane.
The visit to Visby was to become a turning point in Signe’s life in more ways than one.
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