Karin Lannby

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Karin Tekla Maria Lannby (born April 13, 1916 in Linköping , Sweden , † November 19, 2007 in Paris ) was a Swedish actress , writer , translator and journalist . She was also known under the names Maria Cyliakus and Maria Bouyer .

Life

Lannby grew up in the Ålsten district of Bromma , an affluent suburb of Stockholm . In 1919, after the death of her father, the journalist Gunnar Lannby, her mother, Lilly Lannby, had to look after the family. Lilly Lannby became head of the Swedish representation of the American film company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the early 1930s . In this capacity, Lilly Lannby accompanied the then 17-year-old Greta Gustafsson (later known as Greta Garbo ) on her first trip to Hollywood in the United States in the summer of 1925 .

Karin Lannby's political interest was aroused during her high school days at the beginning of the 1930s. At the age of fifteen she joined the socialist student association Clarté in Stockholm as a staunch anti-fascist , and over time she became its second chairwoman. At that time she was already a member of the Swedish Communist Party's youth association .

Her political commitment and her extensive language skills led to her voluntary participation in the Spanish Civil War as an interpreter and secretary in early 1937, when she was only 20 years old . She helped set up a military hospital run by the Swedish-Norwegian relief committees in Alcoy in “red Valencia”. A little later in the same year she was recruited by the film director Luis Buñuel , who was then working for the embassy of the Spanish Republic in Paris, to infiltrate the Franco circles in the French and Spanish Basque countries as a secret service agent . In the summer and autumn of 1937 she worked in this capacity in Biarritz . However, she was captured by Franco's militia during one of her missions south of the Pyrenees. She managed to escape unscathed to France and Paris, where she was admitted to the Saint Anne clinic in the 14th arrondissement after the strain she had suffered .

After returning to Sweden, she was admitted to Stockholm for treatment at Långbro Psychiatric Clinic in Älvsjö . She had since fallen out of favor with the communist movement; presumably because the Communist International and Josef Stalin's political course regarding the war in Spain disagreed, whereupon they terminated their party membership.

In autumn 1938 she resumed her social sciences studies at the Stockholm University and also took part in the student theater in Stockholm. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, she was recruited by the Swedish General Staff to work on counter-espionage . In this role she took part in the swanky life of the Swedish capital and wrote reports mainly on diplomats, foreigners and business travelers. Her code name was "Annette" and her detailed reports, which cover several thousand pages, are collected in the archives of the Swedish secret service. Her main task was to infiltrate the offices of the Axis powers in Stockholm, which she suited well in her capacity as an "outcast communist". At the same time, the American secret service OSS considered her an extremely dangerous Gestapo agent.

During the war, Karin Lannby had roles as an actress in several Swedish films, including 1942 in Rune Carlsten's film adaptation of Hjalmar Söderberg's Doctor Glas together with Georg Rydeberg. From 1940 to 1942 she lived with the director Ingmar Bergman , who was two years her junior ; together they worked at the Sagoteatern , a small experimental theater in Stockholm's Södermalm district. In 1940, Bergman directed a performance of Strindberg's two-act pelicans ( The Pelican ) in the student theater in Stockholm with Karin Lannby in the role of mother .

In Bergman's autobiography Laterna Magica (1987) he calls her "Maria". She is also said to have been the role model for Ruth Koehler in the film Woman Without a Face (1947). The relationship and coexistence with Ingmar Bergman were very stormy, but were later seen as crucial for Bergman's early artistic work. Karin Lannby had both the function of a “caustic acid” and a “blowtorch” for his artistic development (Marianne Höök: Ingmar Bergman , 1962).

After the Second World War, Karin Lannby reported to the Swedish Defense Staff about the escape of Nazi criminals to South America, among other things. She was briefly married to a stateless former Soviet national and was at the time Maria Cyliakus. Under this name it succeeded in autumn 1948 to Sicily with the legendary bandit leader and national hero Salvatore Giuliano - the "Robin Hood of Sicily" - to contact, the numerous troops of the Carabinieri was hunted in the mountains of Sicily. Her accounts of Giuliano's lawless work have been published in newspapers around the world.

After settling in Paris, she played the lead role of the dying mute mother in Jean-Pierre Melville's film Les Enfants Terribles , 1950 (written by Jean Cocteau). In France, in the early 1950s, Karin Lannby came into conflict with the French authorities who were trying to deport her. A letter published in the press, signed by Albert Camus and François Mauriac , among others , enabled her to stay in the country.

She then lived for 53 years with the former labor priest Luis "Loulou" Bouyer, who had come into conflict with the Vatican due to his radical left-wing attitudes.

Filmography (selection)

  • 1940: Hanna i societén
  • 1940: Romans
  • 1942: Ta hand om Ulla
  • 1942: Doctor Glas (Jane Eyre)
  • 1950: The Terrible Children (Les enfants terribles)

literature

  • Marianne Höök: Ingmar Bergman , 1962.
  • Anders Thunberg: Karin Lannby - Ingmar Bergmans Mata Hari , 2009. ISBN 978-91-27-11804-1 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Lannby, Karin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lannby, Karin Tekla Maria (full name); Cyliakus, Maria; Bouyer, Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish actress, writer, translator and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH April 13, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Linkoping , Sweden
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 2007
Place of death Paris , France