Lise Lindbæk
Encyclopedia
Lise Lindbæk was a Norwegian freelance journalist and foreign correspondent
Foreign correspondent
Foreign Correspondent may refer to:*Foreign correspondent *Foreign Correspondent , an Alfred Hitchcock film*Foreign Correspondent , an Australian current affairs programme...

, and writer of several books. She is commonly regarded as Norway's first female war correspondent
War correspondent
A war correspondent is a journalist who covers stories firsthand from a war zone. In the 19th century they were also called Special Correspondents.-Methods:...

.

Personal life

Lise Lindbæk was born in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

, Denmark, as the daughter of priest and journalist Johannes Peder Lindbæk and teacher and writer Sofie Aubert. She grew up in Copenhagen and later in Roskilde
Roskilde
Roskilde is the main city in Roskilde Municipality, Denmark on the island of Zealand. It is an ancient city, dating from the Viking Age and is a member of the Most Ancient European Towns Network....

. After the death of her father, she moved with her mother to Kristiania
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

, Norway in 1920. She married newspaper editor Sanfrid Neander-Nilsson in 1927, and their daughter Janka was born in 1929. Due to political disagreements (her husband sympathized with the Nazis), the marriage was dissolved in 1933, and Lise settled in Genoa as a single mother. From 1934 to 1939 she lived with physician Max Julius Carl Alexander Hodann, a former city physician in Berlin-Reinickendorf
Reinickendorf (locality)
Reinickendorf is a locality of Berlin in the borough of Reinickendorf. It had a population of 72,859 in 2008.-Geography:...

 who had emigrated due to harassment from the Nazi regime
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

. She was aunt to banker and businessman Jannik Lindbæk
Jannik Lindbæk
Jannik Lindbæk is a Norwegian banker and businessperson.-Personal life:He was born in Oslo as a son of banker Jannik Lindbæk, Sr. and chief physician Ellen Margrethe Lund...

.

Career

From 1924 Lindbæk worked as a foreign correspondent in Italy for Oslo newspapers, while she studied archaeology. She is generally considered the first female Norwegian war correspondent, covering the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

 for the newspaper Dagbladet
Dagbladet
Dagbladet is Norway's second largest tabloid newspaper, and the third largest newspaper overall with a circulation of 105,255 copies in 2009, 18,128 papers less than in 2008. The editor in chief is Lars Helle....

, even though Gerda Grepp
Gerda Grepp
Gerda J. Helland Grepp was a Norwegian translator and journalist. She was the daughter of former chairman of the Norwegian Labour Party Kyrre Grepp and journalist Rachel Grepp.-Spanish Civil War:...

 arrived in Spain a few months before Lindbæk, covering the conflict for Arbeiderbladet. Author Sigrun Slapgard supports Lindbæk's status as Norway's first female war correspondent on the grounds that she covered Mussolini's road to power and the 1933 Reichstag fire
Reichstag fire
The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 27 February 1933. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany....

. During Lindbæk's time in Spain, she wrote the story of the German/Scandinavian speaking Thälmann Battalion
Thälmann Battalion
The Thälmann Battalion was a battalion of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. It was named after the imprisoned German communist leader Ernst Thälmann and included approximately 1,500 people, mainly Germans, Austrians, Swiss and Scandinavians. The battalion fought in the defence...

 of the International Brigades
International Brigades
The International Brigades were military units made up of volunteers from different countries, who traveled to Spain to defend the Second Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939....

, Bataljon Thälmann being published in 1938. Amongst the people she cooperated with during the war were the writers Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

 and Nordahl Grieg. After the nationalist victory in Spain, Lindbæk worked to improve the conditions of the Spanish refugee children in France. In the Second World War, she was in Paris during the German invasion summer 1940, unable to return to Norway. She experienced a dramatic escape to Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

 and Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

, where she spent half a year and learned to know the situation of interned Scandinavian sailors in the French colonies
French Colonies
"French Colonies" is the name used by philatelists to refer to the postage stamps issued by France for use in the parts of the French colonial empire that did not have stamps of their own...

 in North Africa. She eventually reached the United States. In the U.S., she worked for the magazine Nordisk Tidende, lectured at universities, and edited the anthology
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...

 Tusen norske skip (Thousand Norwegian Ships) about the fate of the Norwegian sailors and their contributions to the war effort (issued in the US in 1943, and later also in Norway).

At the end of the war, Lindbæk returned to Norway, suffering from alcohol problems she had developed during her wartime work. She involved herself in the reconstruction work in Norway's northernmost county Finnmark
Finnmark
or Finnmárku is a county in the extreme northeast of Norway. By land it borders Troms county to the west, Finland to the south and Russia to the east, and by water, the Norwegian Sea to the northwest, and the Barents Sea to the north and northeast.The county was formerly known as Finmarkens...

, which had suffered almost complete destruction in the closing months of the war. She worked as a journalist for the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

 from 1945 to 1949. Her UN experiences also resulted in the book FN; inntrykk og opplevelser fra Lake Success og Paris, which was published in 1949. In the 1950s, Lindbæk worked as a reporter in Germany, both in East and West Germany. She died in Kiel
Kiel
Kiel is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 238,049 .Kiel is approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore of the...

, Germany in 1961, committing suicide by drowning herself in the ocean. Lise Lindbæk was buried in Roskilde
Roskilde
Roskilde is the main city in Roskilde Municipality, Denmark on the island of Zealand. It is an ancient city, dating from the Viking Age and is a member of the Most Ancient European Towns Network....

, Denmark.

Selected works

  • Jødene vender hjem (1935, with Max Hodann)
  • Bataljon Thälmann (1938)
  • Tusen norske skip (first edition New York City 1943; anthology, editor)
  • Spania og vi (1946)
  • Brennende jord (1958)
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