My great-grandfather William became one of Norway's most successful publishers ever. However, he didn't get there on his own. The money to get started came from his wife Constance who took an active role in many major business decisions, and the key to William and Constance's success lay in their ability to attract talented people.
William and Constance were honest to the bone and ran a tight ship. There was no tolerance for any horsing around with the authors by their staff. Ideas were judged on their merits of consistency and cohesion rather than content. There was no limit to what could be discussed. Furthermore, female authors were never belittled or harassed. Authors like Sigrid Undset and Olav Duun flocked to the publishers, very much taken in by the high moral standing of the couple.
After Constance died, William partnered with his son Mads. The idea was to keep the company open minded and tolerant, also into the future. However, an unexpected hurdle was tossed into their plans when Norway became occupied by the Nazis in April 1940. Suddenly, a whole range of ideas were subject to censorship. William and Mads were forced by law to employ censors who's job it was to read through ready to publish manuscripts and weed out anything deemed illegal or inappropriate.
Much to William and Mads' surprise, people lined up for this kind of jobs. Many were attracted to the Nazi ideology, and the belief that historic wrongs must be rectified in the present by force. Ordinary people had been stabbed in their backs by the evil axis of Americans, Englishmen and Jews. This was recognized by a large portion of Europe's population, and the fight against liberty and capitalism was finally at hand. However, an astonishing portion of the swell in pro-Nazi sentiment was merely due to a widespread belief in the imminent victory of the Nazis over the English. People were willing to sell their soul for the prospect of a cushy job in the new normal that was to be a Nazi dominated Europe.
Such eagerness to submit to intolerance and small mindedness was astonishing to behold. The two publishers who had thought of their country as a land of liberty and rugged individualism were befuddled. Spineless people were everywhere. There was no lack of people willing to scrutinize every book for illegal thoughts, and a man named Svein was as pure a specimen of this lot as any. Handpicked by the Gestapo to be chief censor at the publishing house, he entered his office as if he owned the place. However, his life quickly turned sour.
William and Mads cut down on the number of books published. So much so that Svein was the only censor in the house, and since no-one liked him, he was shunned during lunch hours. Wherever he sat down, people would get up and leave. However, he had the tide of victory on his side. The news was full of stories about the great victories by the Nazis. He could take comfort in the fact that William and Mads would soon have to publish something more substantial than light literature. Svein was lonely in the present, but he would practically own the place a few years down the road. His prospects for the future were bright, or so he liked to think.
Unfortunately for Svein, censors were employed at the radio station and newspapers as well as publishing houses. The news he was getting was but the filtered and sugar coated stories of other censors. Isolated from those who got their news through illegal channels, he had no idea how bad things were. In his world of filtered news, Stalingrad was but a conspiracy theory, and D-day was but a failed attempt by the allies to land soldiers on the beaches of Normandy.
By the time it was obvious even to Svein that liberty and free speech was returning to Norway, it was too late to jump ship. Svein was stuck. To have been handpicked by the Gestapo was no longer a badge of honour, and he couldn't hide from this fact because he had bragged about it so often in the past. How was he to survive a resurgence of liberty and free speech?
Svein descended into a deep depression. During the last weeks of the war, Svein was glued to his radio, desperately trying to believe the news stories he was told by his fellow censors. Svein lived in a bizarre world in which an ever-shrinking circle of censors told lies to each other in order to escape the reality of the world, and this persisted until the war was finally over. Defeated and broken, Svein took his hat and left. Sullied by the foul stench of censorship, the man found no employment in what was again a free and tolerant society.
A few years later, Svein was found dead in his mother's basement. Details of his death were never revealed to the public, but one thing was clear. He had taken his own life. What Svein had once imagined to be a glorious and noble pursuit turned out to be a road to a place so dark and miserable that life was not worth living. As such, Svein's life stands as a warning to us all. Censorship is a dangerous pursuit, far more damaging to the censor's integrity and sanity than most can imagine. In the end, nothing beats integrity, firmness of character and an honest stand against tyranny.
Don't be like Svein. Be more like Constance, William and Mads.
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| Constance and William |
Av Gustav Borgen – Norsk Folkemuseum: image no. NFB.49970, via digitaltmuseum.no., Offentlig eiendom, Lenke
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