Jan Andrew Nilsen

Jan Andrew Nilsen (born February 21, 1936 in Fredrikstad , Norway , † October 30, 2014 in Skjåk , Norway) was a Norwegian adult education center teacher, journalist and writer .

Life

After attending primary school in Fredrikstad, he first began an apprenticeship in a shipyard. In the afternoons and evenings he took classes for the secondary school exam and then wanted to prepare for an engineering degree in Switzerland. But then he was instructed on his further education by the local pastor Fyrwald. Through him, Nilsen expanded his knowledge of philosophy and ethics and began to be interested in pedagogical questions.

After completing his apprenticeship and secondary school, Nilsen began training as a primary school teacher. His role model was now the Norwegian writer Jens Bjørneboe , as Nilsen wanted to work as a teacher for a reorganization of the Danish elementary school system. Bjørneboe was working at the Rudolf Steiner School in Oslo and Nilsen was very impressed by his pedagogy . At the same time, however, he repeatedly positioned himself critically against anthroposophy as well as against some of the associated educational theories.

Nilsen found similar thoughts about pedagogical practice as with Steiner in the Danish free school . These school forms were based on the pedagogy of Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig and Kristen Kold and had a lot in common with Steiner's school pedagogy . Nilsen attended the famous Askov Højskole ( Askov Sogn ) adult education center in Denmark for a year. There he met his first wife, the Danish philologist and Romance writer Annette Mørkeberg Meyer, from whom he separated in 1976. Two years later, in 1978, he married the Swedish Germanist Ulla Elisabeth Nissen.

Together with Annette Mørkeberg Meyer and other young educators, Nilsen planned to found a new adult education center in Fredrikstad. So they went to Denmark to find out more about modern folk high school education. So they came to the Snoghøj Folkehøjskole in Fredericia (Denmark), where they both worked as guest teachers for five years.

activity

In 1968 Jan A. Nilsen and Annette Mørkeberg Meyer each received a scholarship for a study visit to Romania - specializing in Romanian language and modern Romanian theater. After his stay in Bucharest in 1968/1969 and after several documentary trips through the country - where Nilsen once also came to the northern Oasch district of Satu Mare and there, together with the Romanian-German writer Claus Stephani , interviewed the Hasidic hermit Moișe Certezer - returned she returned to Norway.

In Norway, Nilsen took an editor's position at the well-known central daily newspaper “Verdens Gang” (Oslo), where he was particularly concerned with culture and current political events in Eastern Europe . After several trips to the Soviet Union , Romania, the Baltic States and the GDR, he wrote numerous reports for this newspaper . In doing so, Nilsen developed a strong commitment to literature and art critical of the regime in Eastern Europe. So he repeatedly smuggled texts and especially poems by persecuted and banned authors out of the GDR and Romania in order to make these works known in Western Europe . Through his "Flora-Romania Action" he initiated several material aid shipments to Romania. He also founded a women's refuge in Sibiu , which is still in operation today, and opened an evening folk high school, also in Sibiu, which was then closed by the socialist authorities.

In addition to his literary and journalistic activities, Nilsen worked as a teacher and director at various elementary schools, at the Danish free school and at Danish and Norwegian adult education centers from 1968. He has worked as a freelancer for several Norwegian newspapers and has published numerous articles, including in “Fredrikstad Blad”, “Firda Folkeblad”, “Hadeland”, “Ny tid” and others. a.

In his perhaps most important book on the communist social system in Eastern Europe , "Statsfiender" ("enemies of the state"), Nilsen introduces prominent opposition figures, dissidents and other nonconformists from the socialist countries he visited, according to Romualdas Lankauskas ( Lithuania / USSR ) , Robert Roschdestwenski (USSR), Peter Huchel , Wolf Biermann ( GDR ), Ana Blandiana , Rolf Bossert , Cezar Ivănescu, Claus Stephani , Eugen Jebeleanu, Ioan Mateș, Petru Popescu, Diet Sayler , Haim Schwartzmann and Marin Sorescu ( Romania ). Nilsen also reported in detail on his encounter in Bucharest with the Romanian-German poet Rolf Bossert, who had been targeted by the Securitate from 1984 onwards. It was the first book in Scandinavia in which such a large number of Eastern European writers and artists could speak to the editor in order to report on their lives and creative work under real socialism . Nilsen recorded these interviews - as contemporary documents - before the fall of the 1990s and the subsequent end of the socialist social system.

Works (selection)

• En dictare in a sock bag. Nio lyriker från DDR (Nine forbidden East German poets, translated into Swedish by Sebastian Lybeck , edited by Jan Andrew Nilsen). FIB's Lyrikklubb: Stockholm , 1968.
• Cezar Ivănescu / Jan Andrew Nilsen: I Stalinistenes klør [In the clutches of Stalinism]. Rumensk lyricist i sultes strike (interview). In: Ny Tid ( Oslo ), no. 5, February 1990, p. 16.
• Det store vi - en trussel mot pedagogisk frihet. Essays and satirists about utdanning and makt. Eide Forlag: Bergen , 1993.
• "Hubertusweg 43-45". Peter Huchel , life and work. Insel Verlag : Frankfurt am Main , 1996.
• En værstegutt and other værstingær. [A story from childhood in Fredrikstad.] Dissident Forlag: Florø , 1997.
• Statsfiender. Et østeuropeisk memento til vesten. Møte med opposisjonelle og others i Sovjet / Russia, Lithuania, Romania og GDR (enemies of the state. An Eastern European warning to the West. Talks with oppositionists and others in Soviet Russia , Lithuania , Romania and the GDR.) Dissident Forlag: Florø, 1997.
• Under hjulet (Under the wheel. Encounter with the German-Romanian dissident and writer Rolf Bossert , 1984.) In: Statsfiender. Dissident Forlag: Florø, 1997.
• Værhanenes revolusjon (The revolution of the cream puffs.) Jan Andrew Nilsen in conversation with the German-Romanian writer Claus Stephani, editor of the magazine “ Neue Literatur ” in Bucharest . Reprint from the book “Statsfiender”, Dissident Forlag: Florø, 1998.
• En værstegutt and other værstingær. Dissident Forlag: Florø, 1997
• Pushed out. Diet Sayler . In: Diet Sayler's art catalog. Verlag für Moderne Kunst : Nürnberg , 1999, pp. 40–44.

Literature (selection)

• Jens Magnus: Uten Fallskjerm - Rett i Helvete: Fredrikstad-forfatter med ny kritisk bok. In: Fredriksstad Blad ( Fredrikstad ), May 29, 1996.
• Christian W. Beck: Uten Fallskjerm - Rett i Helvete. Frimodig and freeing om norsk skole. In: Vårt Land (Oslo). (Norwegian newspaper) January 24, 1995.
• Torleik Stegane: Det store vi. The pedagogiske fridomen i fare. In: Skolefokus Flensburg , May 20, 1994.
• Helle Karterud: - Gi skolen friheten tilbake. In: Akerhus Romerikes Blad Akershus / Oslo , November 30, 1993.
• Hans Morten Sundnes: Det store vi. Bannbulle mot planamfunnet. In: Firdaposten, November 3, 1993.
• Claus Stephani: Miröl írnak Norvégiában? Beszélgetés Jan Andrew Nilsennel (What do you write about in Norway? Interview with Jan Andrew Nilsen). In: A Hét (Bucharest, weekly newspaper in Hungarian), 4th year, No. 42, October 19, 1973, p. 7.