The exhibition ‘Vadstena residents of foreign origin’ is once again on display in the museum's basement vaults and at UpplevVadstena.
Since 1949, Vadstena Town Museum has been housed in a medieval building next to the Town Hall and is run on a non-profit basis. Its aim is to reflect the history of the town's inhabitants and their everyday lives in the shadow of the major institutions of the monastery, the castle and the hospital. The exhibition tells the story of life in Swedish, or Northern European, towns in the past.
‘Vadstena residents of foreign origin’ shows that there have always been people who have come to other countries for various reasons: work, persecution, love, war, poverty, etc. Vadstena is no exception. In the exhibition, you can read about more citizens with a foreign background.
The museum is open every day during the summer from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Exceptions may apply.
Text: Claes Westling, Maritime Museum Images: Vadstena Regional Archives, Maritime Museum, Old Vadstena Association (Föreningen Gamla Vadstena)
Henrik Harder
Citizen of Vadstena, died in 1653, first married to Brita Broddesdotter, daughter of Mayor Brodde Svensson (farm 175),
and then to Diwer Johansdotter, daughter of Councillor Johan Apotekare (property 179).
Herman Harder (property 32)
Merchant, member of parliament in 1617, mayor from 1631 to 1635
married to Anna Larsdotter, died in 1653 (?)
Children:
* Udde Harder, died around 1640
* Margareta Harder, died 1669, married to councillor Olof Kiälling (property 34)
* Anna Harder, died 1680, married to councillor Lorentz Nilsson (property 33)
* Elisabet Harder, married to Joachim Arentz
Hans Harder from Ditmarschen (north of Hamburg), a citizen of Lübeck, helped organise the Hansa's loan to Gustav Vasa in the 1520s.
The name is not a surname, but indicates his origins in the city of Münster in Germany. He worked as a stonemason from the 1580s at Vadstena Castle under Arendt de Roy, Peter De la Roche and later Hans Fleming, all three of whom were immigrants.
Bernt von Münster worked on, among other things, the two magnificent gables at the castle, a baptismal font donated by Queen Gunilla Bielke to Säby Church in Småland, and Duke Magnus's tomb in the monastery church. He also created a number of gravestones in the church. His own and his wife Anna Byrges-dotters' can be found in Trossboden, the building beside the monastery museum's entrance.
Opposite, in the same building, is the emotional gravestone of their three daughters, Engel, Judit and Margareta, carved by their father himself. It bore the now illegible inscription (modernised): May God grant them all a blessed resurrection. We are what you shall become. We were once what you are.
In the monastery church, you will find the gravestone of Arend Styke and his son Albrekt Styke. The stone is very worn but is located in the middle of the south wall, after (counting from the entrance) the stone with two coats of arms, the left one with a seven-pointed star and the right one with a wolf. Albrekt Styke owned a farm with sheds on the south side of Rådhustorget, and his father Arend was a German pirate and one of the chieftains of the Vitalian brothers who supported the deposed Albrekt of Mecklenburg around the turn of the 15th century.
The Vitalian brothers were a large and powerful organisation with Gotland as an important base and the motto ‘Friends of God and enemies of all!’. Other friends of Styke and well-known leaders of the Vitalians were the knight Sven Sture and, not least, Klaus Störtebeker, whose memory lives on strongly in northern Germany. Störtebeker, whose ship was called The Red Devil, was executed in 1401.
Legend has it that when Störtebeker was about to be beheaded in Hamburg, he bet the executioner that he could walk even after losing his head and that as many pirates as he could pass would be set free! Störtebeker stood up even after losing his head and walked past 11 pirates before the executioner decided that was enough. The executioner was paid for each head he cut off, so he tripped Störtebeker. But he won the bet, and 11 pirates were set free...
Störtebeker portrait after portrait etching Kunz von der Rosen by Daniel Hopfer.
During the 18th century, many manufactories were established in Sweden. Manufactories were a cross between craftsmanship and industry, reflecting the transition period between pure craftsmanship and industrialisation in Sweden.
At Vadstena Castle, a weaving mill was started for finer fabrics, chamber cloth, which was a thin, fine fabric that could be used for handkerchiefs and blouses, etc., and damask, a fabric that could be used for tablecloths and upholstery, etc. In order to start the business, knowledge was required, and a group of French weavers who had fled religious persecution became the core of the business in the mid-18th century. Joseph De la Porte led the work at the beginning. After half a century, the weaving mill moved from the castle to Udd Jönsson's house here at Rådhustorget. It remained there until 1843. At its peak, around 30 people worked here.
The first manager of the factory was Gustaf Vult von Steijern in 1756. During the 1760s, he bought out the other partners' shares and thus became the sole owner of the company. Like De la Porte and his French colleagues, Vult von Steijern was of foreign origin. However, he was not born abroad; one of his ancestors, Elias Vult, had moved to Sweden from Silesia in Central Europe.
He is said to have been born in Potsdam in 1825 and to have served as a Prussian officer, but was forced to flee because of his sympathies for Poland. In 1857, Jeziorsky was living in Uddevalla and married a maid in the town, Amalia Fredrika Blomstervall. He is referred to as a merchant. Two daughters were born in Uddevalla, and when his daughter Hedvig Wilhelmina Adelhaid was born in 1857, a Gustava Jeziorsky from Hamburg was listed as a godparent. The family then moved to Östergötland, where Albert worked as a German teacher at the school in Vadstena. Here, he was one of four men who founded the Fyrväplingarne Society in 1863.
Image from the Provincial Archives in Vadstena
After his time in Vadstena, he lived in Växjö, Karlskrona and Falun, among other places, where he was found to be newly divorced in 1880. He then lived in Lund, Karlshamn, Helsingborg and, in November 1886, he moved to his last address in the Matteus parish in Norrköping. The following summer, Albert von Mosczinsky died during a trip in the Kläckeberga parish just north of Kalmar and was buried in the Kalmar city parish. The cause of death was a brain haemorrhage.
Galathea Hanström lived in Hanströmska gården, now a guest house run by the Sisters of St. Bridget. It had been designed by architect Henning Möller for her and her husband, industrialist A. G. Hanström. They had moved to Vadstena in 1916 from Broby gård in Strå parish, just outside the town. Hanströmska gården was purchased by the Bridgettine Sisters when they returned to Vadstena in the mid-1930s. Galathea Hanström died in Linköping in 1943.
Photo: Föreningen Gamla Vadstena
Galathea was born in Stockholm in 1867, the daughter of textile manufacturer and later consul Simon Berendt, born in Copenhagen in 1835, the son of Aron Eibeschutz and Serle, née Levi. Her mother, Henrietta Berendt, was born in Kiel in 1829. Simon Berendt owned many properties in Stockholm, one of which was at Drottninggatan 50 (near Segels torg). This was also where he had part of his company, Simon Berendt J:r & Co. Simon Berendt established a fund in his daughter Bernhardina Berendt's name for ‘support for girls in need’. Another fund he established was ‘Berendt's Fund, For the Poor in Klara fs (Simon Berendt)’. A third fund was ‘Simon Berendt's Support Fund’ with a payment of ‘25 kronor in rent assistance to poor linen seamstresses during the spring and autumn removals’.
Halina was born on 4 March 1888 in Poznan, western Poland. Between 1908 and 1912, she studied music and singing in Berlin, Dresden and Milan. She performed in many opera houses and theatres across Europe, including Gdansk, Saarbrücken, Vienna, Trier and the municipal theatre in Torun in central Poland.
After marrying the mayor of Torun, Antoni Bolt (19 October 1927 in Warsaw), she left the stage and devoted herself to social activities and charity work. She was chairwoman of the Central Council of the Association of Ladies of Charity in St. Vincent de Paul in Pomerania, an association supporting the unemployed in Toruń. She represented Poland at the international congress of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Budapest. For this activity, she was awarded the papal distinction ‘Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice’ in 1934. She was also a member of the board of the National Organisation for Women in Toruń, participated in the work of the committee for combating communism, was chairwoman of the committee for summer camp issues in Toruń and a member of the committee for the Museum of the Earth Pomeranian. In 1937, she was awarded the Silver Cross of Merit, the highest civil award in Poland.
During the Nazi occupation of Poland, her husband was arrested by the Gestapo in Pyzdrach, where he was hiding, and murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in December 1941. Halina Bolt was imprisoned and taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in April 1940. After liberation in April 1945, she came to Sweden through the Swedish Red Cross, where she remained until her death.
From 1953, she worked at the National Archives in Vadstena, but continued to devote herself to charity work. She supported the Catholic Church in Poland and around the world, the Institute for the Blind in Laski, leprosy hospitals in Uganda, and more. Halina Bolt lived with the Birgitta Sisters in Vadstena and died childless on 8 February 1981. Her struggle in the Ravensbrück camp has been recognised in Israel, where a grove of 26 trees has been planted in her memory.
Halina Bolt at the archives in 1955.
