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🇦🇷 Argentina /Culture & Society

Frida’s untold origins: the ABBA star born from a Nazi eugenics experiment

From La Nación · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

In-depth Named sources Context piece
  • Anni-Frid Lyngstad, later known as ABBA singer Frida, was born in Norway in 1945 to Synni Lyngstad and German soldier Alfred Haase.
  • The article describes how the Nazi Lebensborn program and postwar stigma affected children and mothers associated with German soldiers in Norway.
  • Frida later built a successful music career, but learned only during her ABBA years that her father was alive.

Frida’s story began with a secret that carried the stigma of both wartime occupation and Nazi racial policy. She was born Anni-Frid Lyngstad on Nov. 15, 1945, six months after the war ended in Europe, to Synni Lyngstad, a young Norwegian farm worker, and Alfred Haase, a soldier in the German army.

Synni faced rejection in Ballangen for loving a German soldier and becoming pregnant by him. The article presents Frida as a child born under Lebensborn, the program created by SS leader Heinrich Himmler to promote the Nazi ideology through what it described as the reproduction of soldiers with women considered racially suitable. About 12,000 children were born under the program in Norway, according to the account.

After the Nazi regime fell, Norwegian society turned its anger toward the children and their mothers. Historical records cited from The Guardian say the Norwegian state classified some of the women as “psychopaths or people with mental retardation,” a designation used to justify placing many children in psychiatric institutions and violating their fundamental rights.

I had few friends. I thought everything about me was wrong, that there was nothing in me worthy of love.

· Anni-Frid LyngstadShe described the emotional impact of her childhood and the stigma surrounding her origins.

Synni endured two years of public hostility. Villagers called her a traitor and spread a rumor that she had exchanged sexual favors for food. Haase disappeared after the war, and Synni, her mother Arntine and Frida moved to Sweden amid poverty and pressure. Synni later died of kidney failure. Arntine raised Frida and worked as a seamstress to pay for her granddaughter’s piano lessons.

Frida began performing in Stockholm at 16 and later achieved global fame with ABBA. She recalled feeling that there was nothing about her worthy of love. She believed her father had died in a wartime shipwreck until a German admirer revealed, during her ABBA success, that Haase was alive. Benny Andersson helped arrange their meeting, which the article describes as cold and heavily covered by the media. Haase, by then a pastry chef with another family, told reporters, “A thirty-two-year-old daughter! Imagine that. I never knew that special girl existed.”

A thirty-two-year-old daughter! Imagine that. I never knew that special girl existed.

· Alfred HaaseHe spoke to the press after meeting Frida during her years of success with ABBA.
About this summary

Originally published by La Nación in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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