Archives Day and the Opening of Our Newly Renovated Premises

We are marking Archives Day and opening the city archives’ newly renovated premises.

Programme

The Germans Are Coming: Nazi German Infiltration in Skåne, 1933–1945
10:30–11:15

Knowledge is still limited today about the Nazi German regime’s attempts to influence ordinary citizens, opinion-makers and organisations in Swedish local communities. On Archives Day, author Johan Perwe visits Malmö to talk about his latest book, “Främmande flagg”, which deals with Nazi German infiltration and propaganda in Sweden during the 1930s and the Second World War. It maps the activities of ethnic Germans abroad in Swedish local communities, where enterprising German citizens lived in German colonies scattered across the country, followed the Nazi regime’s rules and regulations, and willingly spread Nazi ideology to like-minded compatriots and Swedes. The author has mapped the actions of German Nazis in Swedish local communities, but in his lecture he focuses especially on the strategically important port city of Malmö. Who were the leading Germans here? What activities did they pursue? What did local interactions look like?

About the speaker
Johan Perwe is an author, journalist and historian, born in 1964 and raised in Norrköping and Träslövsläge. He has lived in Vaxholm for the past 20 years. As an author, he is particularly interested in Swedish-German relations, the actions of Nazi groups, aid work and resistance during the 1930s and the Second World War, with a particular focus on the actions of individuals. Among other things, he has recounted his maternal grandfather’s aid and resistance work in Germany during the Second World War, and written about Nazism and resistance in Norrköping and Linköping, 1933–1945. Alongside his writing, he worked for many years as press officer and researcher at the Swedish government agency Forum för levande historia in Stockholm. He is now responsible for the library there.

Bicycle Tracks in the Archives
11:45–12:30

Today, bicycles and cyclists are an obvious part of everyday environments and patterns of movement. For many people, the bicycle is how they get to work and school, the shops and leisure activities. It is also often a means of exercise and recreation. Being able to cycle is taken for granted, even though that is not the case for everyone. But what role has the bicycle played, and what significance has it been given throughout history? The archives contain stories and memories spanning 150 years of cycling history. They include accounts of learning to cycle and giving it up, of a first bicycle and bicycle thefts, as well as of the bicycle as a means of transport and cycling holidays. These archival stories provide a starting point for discussing the place of the bicycle in people’s lives.

The talk is based on the research project The Bicycle and Freedom: Crossing Physical, Spatial and Cultural Boundaries, which focused on the bicycle as a tool for collective and individual emancipation and social transformation.

About the speaker
Charlotte Hagström is an associate professor of ethnology and senior lecturer in archival studies at Lund University. H