Olaf Kullmann

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Olaf Kullmann

Olaf Bryn Kullmann (2 July 1892 – 9 July 1942) was a Norwegian naval officer and peace activist.

Early life and career

He was born in

Captain. He had responsibility for the torpedo battery at Oscarsborg Fortress.[1]

Political turnaround

Kullmann eventually turned against the ideas of the existing military. He had been an adviser for the

Norwegian Labour Party when in 1932 it proposed to replace the entire armed forces with a semi-armed "civil guard",[2] and was a member of the party for some time. In the summer of 1932 he participated on an anti-war congress in Amsterdam. For his agitation, Kullmann was suspended and legally relieved of his naval engagements. The campaign was spearheaded by then-Minister of Defence Vidkun Quisling, and a support campaign for Kullmann was spearheaded by the Labour Party. Kullmann also formed a short-lived Peace Party.[1]

The latter half of the 1930s started with the

Second Italo-Abyssinian War, which Kullmann protested. For this he was expelled from Italy, where he had travelled in 1935. He issued the book Hjelp din bror, etioperen ("Help Your Brother, the Ethiopian") in Norway in 1938. In 1940, Norway was invaded by Germany, involving Norway in World War II. Kullmann subsequently bicycled around Norway to agitate for pacifism.[1]

Incarceration and death

The German occupiers demanded his signature on a declaration that he would forever cease his pacifist agitation; Kullmann refused and was arrested in June 1941.

Grini concentration camp before being sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp on Good Friday, 3 April 1942, and died there in July.[3] He was memorialized in a poem by fellow Sachsenhausen inmate Arnulf Øverland
in the 1956 poetry collection Sverdet bak døren.

Kullmann was a granduncle of later Norwegian Nobel Committee member Kaci Kullmann Five.[1]

Selected works

  • Fred eller krig for Norden? (1935)
  • Europe Awake (1936)
  • Hjelp din bror, etioperen (1938)
  • Folkereisning mot krig (1939)
  • Lovsangen (1940)

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Ørnhøi, Stein. "Olaf Kullmann". In Helle, Knut (ed.). Norsk biografisk leksikon (in Norwegian). Oslo: Kunnskapsforlaget. Retrieved 20 September 2010.
  2. ^ Ørvik, Nils (1960). Solidaritet eller nøytralitet?. Volume one of Sikkerhetspolitikken 1920–1939 (in Norwegian). Oslo: J. G. Tanum. p. 130.
  3. ISBN 82-15-00288-9
    .

Other sources
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