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The Scarlet Pimpernel: from the French Revolution to the 1970s in Chile

The chapter starts from the Scarlet Pimpernel as a stage play, a book, and a film. It draws attention to the effect of the film Pimpernel Smith, featuring Leslie Howard, on Raoul Wallenberg. The dual basis for the history-cultural investigation is provided by Emmuska Orczy’s play and book about the English hero who, in disguise, saves French people from the Terror of the French Revolution in conjunction with Leslie Howard’s representations of the Scarlet Pimpernel and his ‘updated’ counterpart in the 1940s, Horatio Smith, who helps persecuted scientists and intellectuals escape from Nazi Germany. The chapter also examines the Swedish film Pimpernel Svensson and deals with another diplomat, Harald Edelstam, who, like Wallenberg, has been referred to as a latter-day Scarlet Pimpernel.

As we have seen, it was not until the early 2010s that the first biographies of Raoul Wallenberg were published which also paid significant attention to his pre-Budapest years. It also took a long time before scholars seriously began to examine the formation of legends about him and the ways in which the figure of Raoul Wallenberg has been adapted to old and new heroic ideals. Unlike the biographies, which focus on the principles behind the historical past, these studies of legends examine the conditions under which history is mediated as a practical past. In the latter case, the focus is on how the figure of Wallenberg has been adapted to traditional perceptions and values, and how various types of narratives about him have helped to change the image of what characterizes a world-war legend and hero.1 There are good reasons to examine the history-cultural implications of the creation of a mostly uniform narrative of Raoul Wallenberg’s journey from a rather insignificant figure in an influential Swedish family to a renowned international hero. One aspect of this journey that is worth investigating is what ideals and idols Wallenberg himself praised. This topic will be discussed with special reference to the Scarlet Pimpernel as literature, theatre, film, and symbol.

Two of Wallenberg’s role models were particularly active during and after the First World War in helping refugees and people in need. He admired the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who, as a representative of the newly founded League of Nations, did much in the early 1920s to repatriate prisoners of war and refugees. As a token of his admiration for the Norwegian, Wallenberg named his reconstruction plan for post-war Budapest the Nansen Plan.2

Another of his role models was the Swedish nurse Elsa Brändström, who was born in St Petersburg. She made a name for herself during the First World War working in Siberia to improve the situation of German and Austrian prisoners of war interned there. Her efforts were much appreciated and earned her the appellation ‘the Angel of Siberia’. Maj von Dardel, whose sister married into the Brändström family, was a great admirer of Elsa, who continued her humanitarian work in the following decades. ‘An admiration for Elsa Brändström was inculcated in Raoul and [in] Maj’s other children from an early age’, writes Bengt Jangfeldt. He adds that many years later in Budapest, Wallenberg stressed neutral Sweden’s proud tradition of helping the vulnerable with the help of two concrete examples: Brändström’s efforts in Russia during the First World War and the Russian Revolution, and the work of her fellow nurse Asta Nilsson in the service of the Red Cross during the First World War and on behalf of orphans in Hungary during the Second World War.3

A third role model is fictional: the Scarlet Pimpernel. Nina Lagergren has said that in 1942 she and Raoul saw the film Pimpernel Smith, shown in US cinemas as Mister V (1941), at a private screening in Stockholm; the film was banned in Sweden at the time. After the film, Wallenberg told his sister that the hero’s efforts to help refugees escape the Nazis so inspired him that he would like to do this type of rescue work himself. This statement, which is widely referenced in the literature, invites a cause-and-effect reasoning in which fiction both precedes and inspires actual developments.4 This thought process reached its apex when the British Embassy in Stockholm hosted a screening of Pimpernel Smith in 2018. In a panel discussion after the screening, Ian Haydn Smith, editor of Curzon Magazine, described the film as ‘a time capsule’ through which a modern audience was given an illustrative example of a British propaganda film from before the United States entered the Second World War. He said it was particularly interesting because of the link between the film’s protagonist, played by Leslie Howard, and Raoul Wallenberg – a connection that the former ‘would have been proud to have been associated with’.5

In a 2009 interview with Nina Lagergren by Danish-American film scholar Richard Raskin, she confirmed that her brother had indeed been influenced by Howard’s film hero. However, he had not referred to Pimpernel Smith in any subsequent conversation with her, nor had he expressed any desire to perform any rescue mission until the opportunity presented itself in 1944. The direct link that so many have wished to make is thus not evident. Even so, Raskin stresses that the film can nonetheless be seen as ‘the catalyst that first set Wallenberg’s plans in motion’, since there are a number of obvious similarities between Howard’s portrayal of the role and Wallenberg’s mode of operation in Budapest. There are good reasons to believe that once committed to his mission at the Swedish Legation in Hungary, Wallenberg found in Pimpernel Smith a role-model he could adapt to the situation at hand when facing down Nazi and Arrow guards and snatching prisoners from their grasp.6

While agreeing with Raskin’s conclusion, I would add that from a history-cultural perspective, there are also other aspects to be extracted from Raoul Wallenberg’s delight in the Scarlet Pimpernel character and the ways in which Wallenberg was influenced by Leslie Howard’s film hero. Indeed, the story of this literary and cinematic hero reveals much about the interwar ideal of the hero and why he was clearly a role model for many more people apart from Wallenberg. Let us therefore consider the reasons behind the success of The Scarlet Pimpernel and Pimpernel Smith.

The Scarlet Pimpernel: literary role model and screen hero

In the early 2000s, a Swedish cultural debater categorized The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) as ‘counter-revolutionary’.7 In support of such a view, it can be argued that The Scarlet Pimpernel showcases good English governance in contrast with French revolutionary hysteria. Portrayed in sharp contrast to Britain’s upstanding nobility are the power-hungry leaders of the French Terror, the unshaven Revolutionary Guards, and the bloodthirsty women of working-class and peasant origin. The women sit knitting busily, only allowing interruptions when it is time for yet another group of the French upper class to lose their heads to Madame Guillotine. But English aristocrat Sir Percy Blakeney’s secret rescue missions to save French noblemen and women from the guillotine in the Paris of the French Revolution are not primarily about whether the overthrow of the Ancien Regime was right or wrong; they are a protest against indiscriminate terror. That is why the tale of the Scarlet Pimpernel has become an oft-cited role model for subsequent rescues of victims from bloodthirsty regimes, not least that of the Nazis.

The Scarlet Pimpernel was originally a stage play. When first performed in 1903, however, Baroness Emmuska Orczy’s play was not a success. Given that the French Revolution was a very popular subject in British history culture, a new attempt was made in 1905 with a rewritten final act. Looking back, a Swedish writer noted that although many critics had predicted ‘a rapid wilting of the scarlet flower’, the outcome had in fact been different.8 The new premiere was a success, not least because in the figure of the Pimpernel, the Hungarian baroness had managed to capture the perfect representation of the quintessential English gentleman. Soon after the London premiere, Orczy adapted the play into a novel, which also enjoyed great success in Britain and abroad. By the time the story was made into a film in the mid-1930s it had already been performed at least 4,000 times in theatres in Britain, and there were thousands of performances of it elsewhere in the West. She continued to write novels about the Scarlet Pimpernel, his family, and fellow rescuers until 1940, but none of them could rival her first-born creation in popularity. Its protagonist came to be a long-lived role model for the twentieth-century hero – especially during the interwar period, when a series of popular-culture heroes were conceived on the basis of the Scarlet Pimpernel’s dual identities. The better known of these include Scaramouche, Zorro, and Superman.9

Contributing to the Scarlet Pimpernel’s continued successes was the fact that interwar radio and film versions of the tale ‘created an emotional climate in support of war, while moving towards a democratisation of the myth’. Sally Dugan’s account of these successes emphasizes the contradiction between Orczy’s persona and her private life. During the interwar period she lived a comfortable life on the French Riviera, although this became complicated during the Second World War when she came under first Italian and then German occupation. Regardless of her external circumstances, she was a strong proponent of continued privileges for the upper strata of society in a world becoming increasingly characterized by middle-class values. In contrast, during that same time period her foremost hero, the Scarlet Pimpernel, underwent an adaptation that would also make him viable on the US side of the Atlantic.10

This goal was very much present in the 1934 film version. It was directed by Harald Young, assisted by Lajos Biro and the brothers Alexander and Vincent Korda, who, like Orczy, can best be described as Hungarian-born Anglophiles and admirers of the British Empire. For Alexander Korda in particular, the film adaptation was an old dream come true. He had begun a career in the film industry during what has been described as the first golden age of Hungarian cinema, which occurred during the last years of the First World War. Like other Hungarian Jews in the film industry, he was frightened by the white antisemitic terror that followed Béla Kun’s short-lived Communist Republic. Korda fled to France, where he continued his work as a critic and film producer before moving to Britain in 1932.11

The films he produced in his early years in London included both successes and failures. It was after one of the latter that he went in for doing the film adaptation of The Scarlet Pimpernel. Some people were sceptical about a film version of the popular novel, but he refused to listen to them. For a book that had sold five million copies, the odds were good for a big-screen success. Orczy’s novel was already packed with some of the primary characteristics of motion pictures: movement and intensity. In addition, it was full of adventure and drama and was hence perfect for the world of film. The Scarlet Pimpernel was a big hit, and it was widely appreciated by critics of the time. The reviewer in The New York Times went so far as to say that thanks to this film, the British could ‘recover some of their recent losses in cinema prestige’. Audiences also loved the film. It was high on the list of most popular titles, grossing over half a million pounds in its first few months of release in Britain alone.12 The Scarlet Pimpernel lived on for at least another decade as a romantic ideal for women attracted by the way in which the brave, ingenious hero hid behind the facade of an effete buffoon.13

That the Scarlet Pimpernel already held almost iconic status in Britain is clear from the debate over who would play him in the film. Alexander Korda’s first choice was Charles Laughton, who had won an Oscar the previous year for best male lead in The Private Life of Henry VIII, but the proposal met with stiff resistance. Leslie Howard was the next to be considered. Orczy objected, arguing that he was literally too small for the role and was therefore unable to carry the film, especially in the scenes in which he confronted the Scarlet Pimpernel’s arch-enemy Chauvelin, portrayed by the stately Raymond Massey.14

Her objections fell on deaf ears, however, and the lead role did go to Leslie Howard. He had been born in London in 1893 to a British-Jewish mother and a Hungarian-Jewish father. After working as a bank clerk, in the 1920s and early 1930s he had made a name for himself on both sides of the Atlantic. On stage and on the film screen, he was praised for his ironic and humorous roles. His Central European background was downplayed as part of the very deliberate image-creation process favoured by the film companies. In the official version, both in his private life and on stage, like the Pimpernel of the play and the novel, he appeared as the quintessential noble Englishman: intelligent, refined, gentlemanly, sophisticated, and sensitive, ‘the thinking man as hero’, which for many moviegoers – and not only those in the UK – amounted to the personification of ‘the Englishman’s Englishman’.15

Howard had had fearful experiences as a soldier in the British Army, and he had returned from the battlefields in 1916 severely traumatized.16 There are no traces of this legacy in The Scarlet Pimpernel, though. When Blakeney is in the company of his co-conspirators, he pooh-poohs the risks involved. Like the ideally portrayed heroic British soldiers who had fought on the battlefields of the First World War two decades earlier, the film’s Scarlet Pimpernel compares wars and perilous rescues to gentlemanly sporting events.17

At that time, Americans claimed that their nation’s role models often tended to be entertainers, whose heroic status was based on different and less edifying qualities than those found in their own and other countries’ historical heroes and martyrs.18 This belief is reflected in the Swedish assessment of Leslie Howard’s performance. According to one description he was the personification of ‘a modern hero’, being the knight, the dandy, and the tender lover all in one person. This was the polar opposite of other types of cinematic role models that prevailed in the interwar period, such as ‘the tough guy’, ‘honest Joe’, and the ‘Latin lover’.19 For example, Clark Gable, Howard’s counterpart in the epic blockbuster Gone with the Wind (1938), was a cowboy type: ‘brutal, nonchalant, hungry for women and gunshots, whiskey, and raw red meat’. In contrast to this vulgar American brutality born of a violent settler tradition was Howard’s English refinement, elegance, and modernized heroic ideals. ‘It was like wild strawberries and champagne after the raw beef and whiskey’, one Swedish fan enthused.20 Another Swede stressed that Howard’s ‘real weapon was not the revolver or the sword, but … the finesse, the imagination, the wit, the culture’.21

The British actor also embodied a redefined view of masculinity, a view in which style, glamour, and sensibility operated alongside the classic male cult of physical adventure and risk-taking. These were qualities that attracted both men and women, albeit for different reasons. Against this background and despite Orczy’s doubts, Howard was perfect in the lead role in The Scarlet Pimpernel. No one could match him in portraying Sir Percy’s dual character. On the one hand, he displayed a ‘feminine’ interest in fashion combined with a dismissive attitude to political issues. On the other hand, Howard’s lightning-fast shifts in facial expression and body language show that Blakeney’s supposed feebleness and snobbery have nothing in common with his action-orientated and courageous alter ego. Using modesty and a deliberate rejection of valued ‘manly’ qualities – to avoid detection, Blakeney and his team are prepared to suffer the indignity of being dismissed as unmanly, uninteresting, and egocentric upper-class boors – they elude the ruthless and determined French chief of police time and again. Blakeney likens the Scarlet Pimpernel to a simple roadside flower. As a symbol it is associated with signalling meetings, preferably clandestine ones like those in The Scarlet Pimpernel.22

Pimpernel Smith: an updated version of the Scarlet Pimpernel

After war broke out in 1939, it was not uncommon for people to use historical events to comment on current developments. For example, several British and American film productions referred to Queen Elizabeth I’s resistance to Spain’s lust for conquest in the sixteenth century, with the implication that the successor to Spain’s King Philip II was Adolf Hitler. Like many of his fellow actors on both sides of the Atlantic, Leslie Howard offered his services to his country. For him, this led to propaganda work – that is, film production under new conditions. For Howard, though, that did not involve producing propaganda under the guise of history. He was worried by conversations he had with refugees from Nazi Germany and German-occupied countries and by reports of prominent individuals in Germany who had disappeared or been murdered. These contacts with refugees from Germany also inspired a sequel to The Scarlet Pimpernel. Set in Howard’s own times, it was the first British-made war film of the Second World War: Pimpernel Smith. A possible source of inspiration was the British-German Jew Wilfrid Israel, who managed to bring 8,000 Jews from Germany to Britain after the pogrom in November 1938. When Israel and Howard met, the latter is said to have declared Israel a living Scarlet Pimpernel.23

Although it was set in a time 150 years before the era of Pimpernel Smith, The Scarlet Pimpernel was still highly relevant to twentieth-century troubles. In it, the heir to the British throne has to accept that if the French run amok within their country’s borders, the scope for direct British intervention is limited. This observation held true both for 1792 and for 1934, when developments in Germany were taking an ominous turn. The film’s central theme of refugees could be used to highlight the vast difference between the Germany of the First World War and the same country under Hitler’s rule. From 1914 to 1918, intellectuals and artists had remained in the country and supported the German cause in various ways. Now the situation was different. Many had fled Germany to support the Allied war effort.24

Leslie Howard, who was in Hollywood when the storm clouds were gathering over Europe, did not hesitate to return to his homeland. A press release, marked by the tense situation and with nationalistic tones, again stressed that the actor was ‘typically British’ and would not hesitate to offer his services to his country without reservation, as ‘every true Britisher’ would.25 Convinced that Franklin D. Roosevelt was on the side of the British, Howard strongly advocated more efforts by British writers, actors, and cultural figures who could help sway US opinion in a pro-British direction. He worked on a plan to shoot documentary and information films, and he spoke on radio broadcasts about German racial policies before putting other work aside to concentrate on a sequel to The Scarlet Pimpernel set in his own times.26

Sir Percy’s replacement in Pimpernel Smith by the seemingly equally confused and ineffectual archaeology professor Horatio Smith was shaped by Howard’s impressions from radio broadcasts from Poland before it surrendered to German and Soviet supremacy. The artist Alfons Walde, whom Howard had met on a skiing holiday in Kitzbühel, contributed harrowing tales of his friends being killed by the Nazi regime’s henchmen. Howard soon began to consider how these narratives could be turned into a film that could help boost British morale. His friend the Scottish writer Archibald Gordon Macdonell contributed the frame story of an archaeological expedition to Germany and the suggestion of creating ‘a modern Pimpernel’. Howard embraced the idea. He did not want to include ‘Pimpernel’ in the title, but on that point he had to give in.27

Trying to turn real-life tragic circumstances into a comedy that employed humour as a sharp weapon aimed at Hitler and his followers was no guarantee of success in the years around 1940. The Great Dictator (1940) was Charles Chaplin’s greatest commercial success, and Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942) has long been considered a classic, but both films were harshly criticized for their subject matter. After watching The Great Dictator, Roosevelt’s only comment to Chaplin was that the film had led to Argentinian protests. Confusion comedies with Hitler in the lead role also caused other critics in the US and Britain to object. They included representatives of the British upper classes and US isolationists who regarded Hitler as a legitimate ruler, albeit with extreme political views. Howard harboured no such illusions; he regarded the German Führer ‘as a vicious madman who had blighted a nation’.28

One main reason why Howard’s film escaped the kind of criticism that befell these other two wartime films was that the Pimpernel character was already well known and loved. Like his noble predecessor, Smith is a master at helping regime opponents escape the reign of terror. The change of setting from 1790s’ revolutionary France to contemporary Nazi Germany is emphasized in the film. A black-clad SS man’s assertion that in Nazi Germany, no one can hope to be saved, very clearly sets the tone. So does the contrast between the ‘Come to Romantic Germany’ promotional poster featuring a beautiful woman in a pastoral landscape and the soundtrack’s gunfire volleys as well as Hitler’s aggressive speeches. The protagonist’s basic humanist attitude also contrasts sharply with the prevailing German ideals. Smith makes it clear that he hates violence. He believes it is paradoxical and uncivilized to kill a man when it is possible to convince him by reasoning that there is another and better path to choose.

On a secret mission in Nazi Germany

In 1939 Smith and his students embark on an expedition to Nazi Germany under the guise of a scientific expedition. Their official reason is to discover traces of an Aryan civilization in Central Europe. The professor uses various disguises, but the best one is his own behaviour. The Nazis are searching for a man of action. On the surface, Smith is anything but. One of the individuals he rescues is unaware that the professor is his benefactor, remarking that, unlike his bold liberator, such people are no ‘men of action’. The archaeologist does nothing to correct this impression. His chief weapon is that he appears to be a person who blends in with his surroundings and behaves in a very low-key manner. Even his surname Smith signals ordinariness. However, his first name tells a different story. Horatio – the first name of one of Britain’s greatest heroes, Admiral Nelson – signals that other qualities are hidden behind the quiet facade. Smith’s feigned confusion makes him seem like a person of no account. By combining this deceit with courage, cunning, planning and – when necessary – also physical disguises, he manages to rescue political prisoners from jails and concentration camps. During the excavations in Germany, he plans to rescue Sidmir Koslowski (Peter Gawthorne), a Polish intellectual with knowledge valuable to the Allies, who is imprisoned, accused of espionage. In the long run Smith is unable to fool his students, especially the American one, who is not very studious but is all the more enthusiastic and enterprising. After discovering an injury sustained by Smith during one of his missions, the students confront their professor, who admits that he is Pimpernel Smith. They then close ranks behind him, and he somewhat reluctantly accepts their help.

In The Scarlet Pimpernel, Blakeney is a married man. However, the marriage has cooled because of his knowledge that his wife has betrayed a noble family. It is only after the reason for her betrayal – a wrong committed against her – has been revealed, and after she proves willing to sacrifice herself to save the Scarlet Pimpernel, that happiness smiles on the couple again. In Pimpernel Smith, romance is absent for a long time, but Professor Smith’s lack of interest in women, which almost takes on misogynistic overtones, eventually proves to be another of his deceptions. He implies that his ideal woman is the statue of Aphrodite, but a woman of flesh and blood soon wins his heart. SS General von Graum, who in Francis Sullivan’s masterful portrayal bears a resemblance to Hermann Göring, blackmails Kowalski’s beautiful daughter Ludmilla (Mary Morris). To save her father’s life, she must spy on and, if necessary, seduce Smith, who von Graum suspects is none other than Pimpernel Smith. The archaeology professor does not fall for the trap, but he realizes that Ludmilla, with whom he has fallen in love, is the victim of German blackmail.

As in The Scarlet Pimpernel, the qualities that were most associated with Howard’s character – gentlemanliness, wit, humour, and irony – are also abundantly present in Pimpernel Smith. In both films, these qualities are presented as specifically English, and they stand in sharp contrast to the Germans’ total lack of humour. The message is reinforced by von Graum’s concern about the English people’s secret weapon: their sense of humour. In both Pimpernel films, the dictatorships’ minions try to expose the hero while he is attending a ball. Balls also function as convenient gatherings for the filmmakers in their efforts to bring out the differences between the British on the one hand and the French and Germans on the other. Thus, when the British in Pimpernel Smith jokingly declare that the theme of this year’s Nazi Nuremberg Days is peace, the irony totally escapes the Germans. By contrast, von Graum, after a few seconds of reflection, does understand the meaning of Smith’s line ‘I was looking for Jekyll but I found Hyde’. He seems not to appreciate it, though, particularly when the archaeology professor stresses that it was not meant as a joke. Conversely, the German fails to understand Smith’s ironic observation that life in Nazi Germany reminds him of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland. von Graum does not comprehend the reference to Lewis Carroll’s tale of a surreal, upside-down world; for him, the Third Reich is literally a fairyland made real.

Such exchanges of opinion in the film repeatedly highlight the fact that the British characters are educated to a completely different level than the German ones. For example, Smith is willing and able to recite poems by the English poet Rupert Brooke. He does remain silent when the general asserts that German ersatz coffee is superior to the coffee, brewed from real beans, served at the British Embassy. However, Smith wins the final battle. When von Graum argues that German scholars have once and for all proved that William Shakespeare was German, Smith retorts with lightning speed: ‘You must admit that the English translation is most remarkable.’ This scene is typical of the film, in which the Nazis are consistently portrayed as culturally inferior. One reviewer thus noted that this very obvious propaganda should be seen as ‘good-natured mockery of Nazi pomp and hyper-seriousness’.29 After the war, one Swedish critic categorized Pimpernel Smith as a textbook example of the ‘anti-Nazi state of innocence’ that had prevailed in the early stages of the war.30 To be sure, there was a danger in such an image, but it was a case of wishful thinking – ‘nice to indulge in and anxiety-reducing to participate in’, to quote the film scholar Leif Furhammar and the author Folke Isaksson.31 The presence of humour should also be regarded as an expression of the need to laugh in dark times, as is demonstrated by the fact that the ukulele-playing film comedian George Formby was the highest-grossing actor in Britain from 1939 to 1943.32 At the same time, both The Scarlet Pimpernel and Pimpernel Smith had serious contemporary relevance. ‘Leslie Howard did not play The Scarlet Pimpernel as a historical adventure film. Today’s deadly serious struggle for human dignity permeated the role, and that struggle continued in … “Pimpernel Smith”’, observed the writer of a Swedish obituary of the actor.33

The inferior technical quality of Pimpernel Smith is obvious to viewers today. At the time of the film’s release, its tight budget – manifested in the backdrop-like backgrounds and the scarcity of true outdoor scenes – was not remarked on. The film did encounter objections from critics who called for a more ‘realistic’ portrayal, but realism was by no means the only valid criterion for good entertainment at that time. The reviewer in The New York Times noted that the film was a representation of ‘absurd derring-do’ which followed a ‘routine pattern’, but said that these criticisms should not detract from Howard’s ‘causal direction’ and from the ‘consummate ease and the quiet irony of his performance’. Referring to the recent devastating British defeat, he noted that ‘Singapore may fall, but the British can still make melodramas to chill the veins’.34 The reception of Pimpernel Smith was broadly in line with this view, and the critics were not alone in being pleased with it. Pimpernel Smith attracted large audiences and was one of the most successful films during the Second World War.35

One contributing factor was that the film was a propaganda product which drew on various types of mythological elements. On one level, both Pimpernel films are successful updates of the classic tale of the quick-witted hero who fools the mighty villain. The hero’s efforts are all the more admirable because the villain is blackmailing the beautiful woman who is also the hero’s love interest. In both cases she agrees, under protest and with great remorse, to set a trap for the hero. In their standard work Politik och film [‘Politics and film’], Leif Furhammar and Folke Isaksson point out that this is a common theme in folklore: people are forced to help the villain, but they are released when the pressure exerted by the villain is removed.

Furhammar and Isaksson also draw attention to the fact that although Pimpernel Smith is not a religious film, it does tie into Christian mythology, knowledge of which was omnipresent in the early 1940s. This circumstance is likely to have caused viewers to draw parallels between Howard’s character and Christ. Smith is literally a saviour figure to everyone he rescues. Like no one else, he is able to move between the evil Nazi sphere and his own idealistic one. As a professor, he teaches a circle of disciples who initially do not understand his greatness. It is only when they see his wounded hand that they realize his true identity. The wound is inflicted when Smith, disguised as a scarecrow, is targeted by a sharp-shooting German soldier who is guarding the concentration camp prisoners chosen to labour in the farm fields. After the shot is fired, the wounded Smith hangs as if crucified, his head leaning forward and down like in a Passion of Christ painting while blood drips from his hand. His resemblance to the Saviour recurs in the film’s final scene with the promise that Smith will return (i.e. be resurrected).36

Horatio Smith and Raoul Wallenberg

British propagandists planned for Leslie Howard to visit Sweden in June 1942 for a lecture tour. The plans had to be shelved, though, as Howard was busy directing a new feature film, The First of the Few (1942). This film biography of R. J. Mitchell, the successful designer of the Spitfire fighter plane, was an explicit propaganda product and highly regarded in Britain, where one writer called it ‘one of the most inspiring British films ever made’.37 That such a visit could have been very successful is evident from the many favourable comments about Leslie Howard and his films in the Swedish as well as the British press, both before and after his tragic death in 1943.38 But although the cancelled visit was a setback, the British Embassy in Stockholm had other ways of reaching out to politically and culturally influential Swedes. The British regularly organized film evenings to which they invited prominent residents of the Swedish capital as one way of marketing the British view of the ongoing global conflict. One example of this practice occurred following Germany’s widely published destruction in June 1942 of the Czech mining community of Lidice in revenge for the murder of SS General Reinhard Heydrich. The newsreels and feature films produced in the aftermath of this deed were the main attraction at these embassy gatherings.39 Pimpernel Smith, slightly abridged, fulfilled the same function in 1942, but it was only shown on a few occasions.

The German propaganda authorities exerted strong pressure for more German films and fewer Allied ones to be shown in Sweden. These demands were often met, particularly during the first years of the war when the German army appeared invincible. In the case of Pimpernel Smith, the German Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels not only wanted to prevent it from being shown in Swedish cinemas; he also demanded that embassy screenings of it should cease. The Swedish authorities complied.40 However, they could not prevent a new copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel from being re-released in 1942 in the big film theatres. Almost without exception, the reviews were enthusiastic. The Scarlet Pimpernel had stood the test of time well, and Leslie Howard’s elegant and humorous performance was a welcome return.41 The German propaganda machine hence appears to have won a Pyrrhic victory. Pimpernel Smith was banned but widely discussed – according to a report in the Swedish evening papers in May 1945, as many as half a million Swedes managed to watch the film illegally.42 Even though access to Pimpernel Smith was restricted during the war years, it would not have been difficult for cinema audiences of the original Pimpernel film to draw parallels between revolutionary France and Nazi Germany.

As pointed out above, Raoul Wallenberg watched Pimpernel Smith, together with his sister Nina Lagergren, at one of the screenings that did take place before the ban. It is hardly surprising that Wallenberg took Pimpernel Smith and the outwardly gauche, but beneath the surface elegantly humorous and courageous, Horatio Smith to his heart. There is much to suggest that Wallenberg was quick to embrace Smith’s bold efforts to save ‘scientists, men of letters, artists, doctors’ at any cost. Smith explains that for anyone who realizes that these are ‘a few exceptional spirits’ who contribute to the continued existence and progress of civilization, it is ‘rather hard to stand by and see them destroyed’. To quote another line from the film, Pimpernel Smith is all about celebrating ‘brains not brawn’, with the message that wit goes hand in hand with bravery and moral courage.43

Wallenberg’s letters contain several examples of his adherence to the ideals conveyed by Howard through Smith’s character. In a letter of mid-October 1944 to Iver Olsen, Wallenberg’s US ‘employer’, Wallenberg begins with an understatement worthy of a Pimpernel Smith: ‘When I look back at the three months I spent here I can only say that it has been a most interesting experience and, I believe, not entirely without results.’44 In December 1944 he summed up the situation in Budapest as ‘risky and tense’ with constant threats of violence, kidnapping, and sudden death. He described his own workload as ‘almost superhuman’. The note’s conclusion, however, exuded courage and confidence: ‘On the whole, we are in good spirits and are enjoying the fight.’45 According to another account, Wallenberg returned to the Swedish Legation very early in 1945 with shrapnel injuries, which did not seem to trouble him: ‘“It reminds me of a youthful adventure in the United States,” he jokes. “But the risks were not actually so great there”.’46 Presumably he was referring to the episode some ten years earlier when he was threatened with a revolver by four men his own age, men who then robbed him and threw him into a ditch. Whether he was really afraid we do not know. His story as told to his mother, however, suggests a deliberate distancing from the danger. The robbers ‘looked rather unpleasant’. After they had robbed him, he asked them to drive him and his luggage back to the main road. ‘By this time they had become alarmed, perhaps because of my calmness, for I really didn’t feel anxious at all; the whole time I thought it was rather interesting.’ He added that the adventure had left him quite capable of jumping on a suburban train and reporting the incident to the police. Nor was there any question of him giving up hitchhiking.47 Leslie Howard would certainly have had no difficulty in portraying such lofty composure.

Horatio Smith and Raoul Wallenberg are alike in that they are both portrayed as saviours and leaders. Outwardly, Smith is as unlikely a hero as is Wallenberg with his architectural training: anything but spectacular in appearance and demeanour, he has an ability not to be frightened off by powerful, terrifying, and ruthless enemies.48 The respective fates of the two men are equally significant. The finale of Pimpernel Smith is set in a railway station where von Graum plans to shoot Smith during an ‘attempt to escape’. Before that, Smith manages both to disprove the German claim of having Aryan origins, which they had hoped the archaeological excavation would have proved, and to deliver a fiery speech in which he declares that the Nazis are doomed, saying that they have taken the first steps on the path of darkness from which there is no turning back.

When the film was being shot, the existence of concentration camps in Germany was a reality discussed in the Western press. Their presence is raised in the film when Smith and his students, under the guise of belonging to a then well-known German-American friendship association, carry out a daring rescue of Koslowski from a concentration camp.49 While they were making the film, Howard and others were aware of the Nazis’ racist policies but not of their consequences in the form of mass executions behind the front lines in the Soviet Union and the construction of extermination camps on Polish soil.50 Charlie Chaplin’s comment in his autobiography is telling: if he had known what was happening in Nazi Germany, he would not have included scenes from a concentration camp in The Great Dictator.51 Joel Rosenberg has observed that we should be wary of believing that films can influence historical events when we look at them with the benefit of hindsight, but that some of them may still capture essential phenomena in their time. In a detailed and insightful analysis of To Be or Not to Be, he points out that its director, Ernst Lubitsch, succeeded in portraying the essence of Nazism, something many viewers in 1942 probably did not realize.52 This reasoning may be applied to Pimpernel Smith as well. When it was filmed, the Holocaust as we know it today was unknown to many in the audiences. To latter-day viewers, this imparts prophetic overtones to Smith’s words about the Nazis beginning their march to the abyss.

For Raoul Wallenberg, however, the Holocaust was a tragic reality whose terrible effects he tried to combat as best he could. The similarity is therefore to be found at the symbolic level. When Smith vanishes into the fog on the railway platform, posterity may view it as foreshadowing Wallenberg’s disappearance virtually without trace. In 1957, a Swedish editorial writer stated that while Wallenberg’s disappearance was a tragedy, his fate had unfortunately been all too common. In the Stalinist apparatus of terror, such disappearances were an everyday occurrence; and in such a case, it would by no means be certain that Wallenberg had been allowed to retain his identity. He might just as easily be listed in the Soviet records under the anonymous name of Smith, which would make it practically impossible to say anything about his time in the Soviet Union.53

The similarity between the fictional Pimpernel Smith and the real-life Raoul Wallenberg is reinforced by the fact that Leslie Howard’s death in 1943 is also to some extent shrouded in mystery. What is clear is that he was on a plane shot down by a German fighter off Gibraltar. One rumour claimed that the Germans believed Winston Churchill was on board, a belief the former Prime Minister mentioned in his post-war memoirs.54 While the Germans could scarcely have possessed any such information, it has long been speculated that Howard had been sent on a secret mission to keep Spain out of the Second World War. If this was so, then preventing the completion of such a mission, combined with their knowledge of Howard’s importance to the British propaganda effort, would have been the reason the Germans wanted him out of the way.55 In her well-documented biography of Howard, Estel Eforgan firmly rejects the idea that the actor was a spy.56 Whether the Germans were targeting Howard we will never know, but if they were it was probably because he was actively helping to shape public opinion. Through his explicitly anti-Nazi films, he certainly influenced many more people than Raoul Wallenberg.

Pimpernel Smith, Svensson, and Raoul Wallenberg

The popularity of the Scarlet Pimpernel character remained high both during and after the Second World War. The head of the Swedish industrial company Bolinders, Birger Dahlerus, who had tried to bring about peace before the great madness broke out in 1939, was one of many individuals to be nicknamed the Scarlet Pimpernel. Another was the producer of The Scarlet Pimpernel, Alexander Korda. A few decades later, Michael Korda wrote about his uncle’s stay in California after Britain had joined the Second World War, but before the US did so. Under the cover of an eccentric film mogul visiting the US film capital, Alexander Korda was to help ensure that British cinema would continue to be a successful export product despite the increasingly obvious patriotic elements, which were problematic in a neutral United States. Since it was not possible to reveal what his mission actually was, or that he had been sent out by Winston Churchill and the British government, there was a significant risk of his finding himself in hot water back home. The British public widely believed that it was unpatriotic to depart from British shores while the battle against the German forces was so fierce. It was also considered highly likely that American isolationists would attack Alexander Korda if he openly advocated that the United States should join the British in the fight against Nazi Germany. Another fear was that he would be seen as the agent of a foreign power and therefore fall into disfavour with US senators and be scrutinized by FBI agents. Worst of all would be if the Germans realized that his real purpose was to promote US participation in the war – in which case they would try to get rid of him. Michael Korda said that despite these obstacles and dangers, his uncle’s choice was easy, because

England had made him rich and famous and had offered him a place in its hierarchy of merit and fame. Now it had to be paid for. It was ironic that he had made The Scarlet Pimpernel, for he was about to play the role himself, in real life, and suffer the same torments.57

References to the Scarlet Pimpernel were the rule rather than the exception in wartime Scandinavia, above all in the Danish-Swedish border areas where both the war, in the form of the German occupation of Denmark, and the German persecution of Jews were more present than in many other parts of Raoul Wallenberg’s homeland. The presence of risk-taking resistance men and women in German-occupied Denmark, and the contacts that Swedes had with them, invited comparisons with this hero in disguise. ‘Motor-Larsson’ and a man who went by the name ‘Hot’ (meaning ‘Threat’) transported both refugees and ammunition across the Sound, the strait called Öresund between Sweden and Denmark. Danish student Rigmor Schou recorded the sounds of the Resistance’s sabotage actions on records, which were then smuggled to Britain and played on the BBC’s European radio broadcasts. Businessman, publisher, and newspaperman Einar Hansen had moved from Denmark to Sweden in the 1920s and continued to maintain contacts across Öresund, sometimes by illegal means. He was a key figure in the escape of Danish Jews across Öresund in October and November 1943. The escape was made possible in part by the efforts of Danish fishermen such as Gilbert Lassen, who smuggled Jews from Denmark to Sweden in his boat, or by the bookbinder, reserve lieutenant, and resistance fighter Erling Kjær. Kjær managed to smuggle across more than 1,400 refugees, many of them Jews, before – following more than 140 noctural crossings of Öresund – being arrested, beaten, and sent to concentration camps in Germany, from which he was freed by the Swedish White Buses rescue mission in April 1945. What all these people had in common was that they were described as modern equivalents of the Scarlet Pimpernel and his successor, Pimpernel Smith – that is, they were the real-life Scarlet Pimpernels of the Second World War.58

International interest in the Pimpernel continued, too; it was, for instance, expressed in Truman Capote’s spy tale ‘Mr. Jones’, a short story from 1945 containing obvious references to Orczy’s Pimpernel novels.59 However, the next time the Scarlet Pimpernel character appeared on the film screen it was not a success, despite the seemingly good prospects after Alexander Korda had teamed up with the successful US film producer Samuel L. Goldwyn. The fact that the financing for The Elusive Pimpernel (1950) had been secured was not very significant as Michael Powell, who directed the film together with Emeric Pressburger, felt justifiably thwarted when Margaret Leighton was cast as the leading lady against his wishes. Nor were his plans to turn The Elusive Pimpernel into a musical welcomed. Not even the new leading man David Niven, who had previously starred opposite Leslie Howard in The First of the Few (which Howard had directed), was enthusiastic, but he was compelled to accept the job for contractual reasons. The film’s fate was sealed when Korda and Goldwyn fell out, with the result that the latter refused to pay his share, leading to legal repercussions. The film was only released in the United States several years later in a black-and-white version entitled The Fighting Pimpernel. The bright Technicolor production and the light-hearted touch could not conceal the fact that the many controversies and compromises had resulted in a film that did not live up to its predecessor by a long chalk. The Elusive Pimpernel attracted few viewers and was a financial disaster.60

The Pimpernel’s continued appeal on the film screen became clear to Swedish cinemagoers that same year, 1950, when they again had the opportunity to see Edvard Persson. He was one of the most popular Swedish actors of the time, and in his film career he came to personify the down-to-earth, patriarchal farmer of southern Sweden. In Pimpernel Svensson, he plays Anders Svensson – a man who, like Leslie Howard’s Pimpernel of the 1940s, has a very common surname, as Svensson can be said to be the Swedish equivalent of Smith. Svensson’s quiet and secure life as a farmer is shattered when he learns that his sailor nephew Ville is being held prisoner in the Soviet-occupied northern German city of Stettin. After arriving in Germany, Svensson manages to communicate with the Soviet authorities by way of singing, whereupon he makes contact with Ville while wearing a Soviet general’s uniform he has ‘borrowed’. His escape plan succeeds, but by then Anders has become such a good friend of the Soviet soldiers that they have voluntarily arranged for Ville to receive his release papers. Waiting for Anders on his return are his nephew’s anxious and grateful wife and mother plus an equally impressed local population, who confer the grand nickname of Pimpernel Svensson on Anders.

From Pimpernel Svensson we can draw several conclusions. First, the film’s plot is in stark contrast to the then ongoing, and fruitless, negotiations with the Soviet authorities concerning Raoul Wallenberg. Other Swedes had also disappeared without a trace. They included a number of sailors who had been on board ships that had disappeared in the Baltic Sea in 1947 and 1948. It could not be ruled out that some of these men had been imprisoned in the Gulag; they were consequently included in a formal question submitted in the Swedish Parliament, the Riksdag, in 1964. In that question, representatives of the centre-right opposition called on the Social Democratic government to seek information about what had happened to Swedes who had disappeared in Soviet captivity.61

Second, it was by no means a given that all cinemagoers would watch a film featuring Edvard Persson with the tense Swedish-Soviet relationship in mind. Instead, they might identify with his character’s willingness to solve problems and reach consensus, even when he was unable to communicate in the traditional manner. A few years earlier, Persson had combined an acclaimed concert tour of the Swedish settlement regions in the United States with filming Jens Månsson in America (1947). Jens, played by Persson, inherits an estate in the United States from a brother on condition that he finds and obtains the approval of the third brother, who also lives there. One major problem is that Jens knows no English. However, with the aid of a helpful compatriot who cheerfully leaves his job as a waiter in New York to assist him, combined with the fact that most people they encounter are Swedish descendants who still speak Swedish, the mission is crowned with success.62 In Pimpernel Svensson there are certainly no Swedish speakers in Soviet uniform, but in the world of popular culture there were no obstacles to the hope that with the help of wine, women, and song it would be possible to communicate with the mighty neighbour to the east. This would make it possible to bring home Swedes who had been caught up in the Second World War or its wake.

Third, the film stories of the Scarlet Pimpernel and Pimpernel Smith were obviously very popular in Sweden. When Pimpernel Smith finally opened in cinemas in 1945, it was given as good reviews as The Scarlet Pimpernel had received three years earlier and has continued to receive.63 Prominent cultural figures such as Georg Svensson, editor of the prestigious cultural magazine Bonniers Litterära Magasin, and his famous fellow writer Artur Lundkvist were among those who praised Leslie Howard’s acting and the film’s intelligent and ironic scenes, which ‘hid a fine energy beneath the seemingly light approach to the topic’.64 Other typical reviews praised ‘a solidly made film’ and expressed ‘bubbling delight’ at the ‘most witty and insightful film made during the war years’.65 Pimpernel Smith became a long-running hit in Swedish cinemas and won the approval of the general public as a whole. It was therefore not surprising that a Swedish film was made on the assumption that the audience knew the story of the Scarlet Pimpernel and Howard’s portrayals of the theme.

It is clear, then, that Pimpernel Svensson evoked the popularity of the British films. However, this connection also brought with it great responsibility. Ahead of the premiere on 31 August 1950, the Swedish comedian and writer Erik Zetterström, better known by his pen name of Kar de Mumma, noted that many audience members would still have fond memories of Leslie Howard’s portrayals of the Scarlet Pimpernel and Pimpernel Smith. Many of them would surely welcome Edvard Persson’s efforts to carry on this legacy, but there was an undeniable risk that the film would seem like a remake of Camille, in which an unknown amateur actor had attempted Greta Garbo’s signature role.66

Kar de Mumma’s fears were well grounded. The filming of Pimpernel Svensson had been fraught with difficulties, including disagreements between the lead actor and the scriptwriter, Åke Ohlmarks, who was also a well-known translator and religious historian. As a result, almost all the scenes were filmed in two versions, one based on Persson’s wishes and the other adhering to the script.67 The fact that Persson usually had to give in was an indication that his heyday was over. This was also reflected in the film’s mixed reception among critics. Some reviewers did praise Persson’s vocal performances, with lyrics that were better than in many of his other films. The well-known film critic Bengt Idestam-Almquist, better known as Robin Hood, thought it was both an entertaining story and one of the best popular comedies for years.68 Another reviewer reacted against the ridiculous opening and sentimental ending, but appreciated that a Pimpernel from southern Sweden had picked up on ‘the fact that people like to see Russians being cheated’.69 Others drew attention to ‘the Pimpernel’s remarkable naivety and the sluggish action’ and the total lack of credibility. This was only partly compensated for by the fact that the film appeared to be a fantasy story, and that the music worked well as a form of communication when language misunderstandings otherwise dominated.70 Some critics went beyond mild censoriousness. Amateurish elements and the film’s political stance – or rather lack of one – led one reviewer to dismiss the film as not even managing to be offensive.71 His colleague in the Communist newspaper Ny Dag expressed a similar opinion, branding the film ‘unprecedentedly naive’.72 A reviewer in the leading conservative daily Svenska Dagbladet was of a similar mind, saying that in Pimpernel Svensson ‘idiocy reaches sublime heights’.73 The film received a similar judgement after a screening in New York. The fact that it had a running time of 90 minutes baffled The New York Times critic because its plot was so thin, although he did admit that, judging from their cheerful responses, the cinemagoers – many of whom had Swedish roots – had no objections.74

Pimpernel Svensson was thus not one of Edvard Persson’s most successful films, but it still reached a fairly large audience. It was based on a typical dimension that contributed greatly to Persson’s long-lasting popularity: a lively carnival spirit combined with a consensus message. A typical example is a line from the film praising the Soviet general Vlasov: if more commanders had been like him, war and misery would not have been necessary. ‘This’, writes the film scholar Kjell Jerselius, ‘is a recurring pathos in Edvard Persson’s films: everyone may be converted, and all problems may be solved if only the parties can meet over a drink and get to know one another and speak their minds in pleasant company.’75 That the humour in the Swedish version was less like British elegance and irony and more like popular burlesque comedy has to do with the great difference between Persson’s image and Howard’s. As a patriarchal father figure, the former came to embody the calm, confident, and food-loving southern Swede, who sometimes had an edgy relationship with Swedishness but was nonetheless securely grounded in it. For a long time, Persson embodied this culture as effectively as Howard personified the typical ideal of Englishness.

From black to ‘red’ Pimpernel: Harald Edelstam as an emulator of Raoul Wallenberg

The above review suggests that there were, and are, strong links between the Scarlet Pimpernel, Pimpernel Smith, Leslie Howard, and Raoul Wallenberg, particularly in symbolic terms and on several levels. In 1947, when the search for Wallenberg was repeatedly discussed in the Swedish public sphere, one writer claimed that ‘in certain English circles’ there was a desire for a new Scarlet Pimpernel who, with the help of ‘some bold collaborators’, would go behind the Iron Curtain and free the Swede who in many respects personified the Scarlet Pimpernel.76

Mia Leche Löfgren, a Swede who actively helped refugees, was an outspoken critic of the restrictive Swedish refugee policy in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Like Leslie Howard’s Pimpernel Smith, she emphasized the difficulties faced by German scientists who did not comply with Nazi decrees, and she was angry that so few Swedish academics were willing to help them.77 While she had little good to say about scientists, businessmen, and politicians who were united in their opposition to more generous policies on refugees in Sweden, her admiration for Raoul Wallenberg was all the greater. Learning about his achievements in Budapest was ‘like reading an adventure novel or reliving the Scarlet Pimpernel in the guise of Leslie Howard. Here is the same inexhaustible goodness of heart, paired with an almost gleeful ingenuity, and the daring Swede also harbours a fair measure of the roguish Swedish Viking spirit.’78 Writing a year later, she returned to the idea that this Swedish lad had ‘something of the old Viking blood in his veins’. This time she did not mention Howard, but in describing Wallenberg, the qualities she listed were very much associated with the Scarlet Pimpernel and Pimpernel Smith. The Swede, she wrote, had acted audaciously, with a boldness approaching the foolhardy, because in Budapest he ‘loved danger, which he actively pursues, and in addition he relished bluffing when something could be gained with a bluff’.79

The association between the Scarlet Pimpernel and Raoul Wallenberg was also raised in connection with the premiere of Eric Åkerlund’s play Raoul at Malmö City Theatre in 1983. One reviewer pointed out that there were not only similarities in terms of saving innocent people from tyrannical regimes. In Lars Humble’s portrayal of the Swedish diplomat, Leslie Howard’s character had been given a new lease of life. Wallenberg was not only portrayed as an intelligent, upper-class adventurer in general terms. He also had the ability to elegantly insult a guest by the way he poured wine or served dishes in an unconventional order. ‘Raoul Wallenberg almost certainly borrowed some traits from his old film hero’, was the conclusion.80

Nor is it surprising to discover that Wallenberg has repeatedly been likened to a modern-day Scarlet Pimpernel outside Sweden as well. The comparison is reinforced by the fact that ‘elusive’, a word closely associated with Baroness Orczy’s hero, has also been used to characterize the Swedish diplomat.81 It is hence no surprise that the Scarlet Pimpernel story has been applied to other individuals who went to great lengths to save Jews and others during the war years. For instance, Oskar Schindler has repeatedly been described as ‘the “Scarlet Pimpernel” of the Second World War’.82 In connection to the defeat of France in 1940, Charles Howard, the 20th Earl of Suffolk, succeeded in bringing industrial diamonds, heavy water, and a number of French scientists from Paris to England. Harold Macmillan, later Conservative Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, was Charles Howard’s contact during the Second World War. In retrospect, Macmillan noted that meeting ‘a mixture between Sir Francis Drake and the Scarlet Pimpernel was something altogether out of this world’.83 Varian Fry, an American who helped hundreds of writers and artists escape the Germans and their allies, is known as ‘the American Pimpernel’.84 Another example is the priest Hugh O’Flaherty, who was active in the Vatican from 1943 to 1945. During that time, he hid downed bomber crews and escaped prisoners of war while also helping the Italian Resistance, all while the SS was working to stop him. His fate was the subject of a 1983 television film. The title was a given: The Scarlet and the Black.85

The history-cultural chain of the Scarlet Pimpernel does not end there; it can easily be extended to include Harald Edelstam, ‘the ambassador turned Pimpernel’.86 A member of the Swedish aristocracy, he first trained to become an officer alongside his friend and colleague Per Anger. Unlike Wallenberg, Edelstam made working for the Swedish Foreign Office (Utrikesdepartementet, UD) his career. He had his first posting during the Second World War. During his time at the Swedish Legation in Berlin, he reacted to the fact that so little was being done by Swedes when Jews came asking for protection. He was soon transferred to Norway, where he acted to rescue Norwegian Jews and Resistance fighters. His often very bold rescue actions led to Edelstam being given the honorary name of ‘the Black Pimpernel’, an appellation which has since been applied to Nelson Mandela.

The action that made Edelstam famous occurred when he was ambassador to Chile. The Swedish government supported President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown in a military coup on 11 September 1973. Edelstam soon began working to provide protection for those persecuted by the junta’s military and police. His efforts saved hundreds of left-wing sympathizers from torture, imprisonment, or execution.87 His unorthodox methods aroused the displeasure of the new rulers, who made him persona non grata and deported him.

Edelstam was also far from universally appreciated at the UD. One of the highest-ranking officials there, Wilhelm Wachtmeister, was frustrated over Edelstam’s acting without paying any attention to instructions from the UD. Instead, it was his own humanitarian passions plus strong support from the student left – the invisible Black Pimpernel was said to have turned radically ‘red’ – that drove him: ‘He behaved like some kind of miniature Raoul Wallenberg’, was Wachtmeister’s grim assessment.88 Upon Edelstam’s return home, however, the tone was different. He was warmly welcomed, especially by the Chilean refugees who had come to Sweden. Within a generally radical social climate, his meeting in 1974 with Cuban leader Fidel Castro was described as an encounter between ‘two heroes of the people’.89 Another comparison was made between Wallenberg and Edelstam as examples of men of duty who did not hesitate to depart from the rules and overstep their authority in order to save lives.90 And when journalist Eric Sjöquist published Affären Raoul Wallenberg in 1974, his colleague Bang (Barbro Alving) wrote a very favourable review of the book in which she asked why Swedish diplomats in Moscow had been so feeble in their actions: in the late 1940s and 1950s, there was ‘not a shadow of a Harald Edelstam in the Swedish Embassy’.91

The favourable reviews of the early 1970s have been echoed on subsequent occasions when Edelstam has been praised, sometimes in his own right, sometimes in connection with other role models such as Raoul Wallenberg.92 The similarities between Wallenberg’s and Edelstam’s deeds were particularly emphasized at the premiere of the Swedish-Danish-Mexican production of The Black Pimpernel (2007), where it was stated that they had become role models ‘when risking their lives and/or careers to save thousands of unknown people from imprisonment, torture, and death’.93 It is worth adding that both men were allegedly targets of German assassination attempts during the Second World War.94 However, the attempt to present Edelstam as a 1970s version of the Scarlet Pimpernel did not do him any good at the time. For example, Wachtmeister repeated his criticism of Harald Edelstam almost verbatim in a debate with Edelstam’s son Erik, which was published in conjunction with the Swedish premiere of The Black Pimpernel.95

Erik Edelstam was critical not only of the UD’s treatment of his father but also to some extent of the film itself, although he was its leading defender.96 He stressed that while The Black Pimpernel was a work of fiction, it was also an attempt to portray a hero in the same way that Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler had been depicted in Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg and Schindler’s List.97 Edelstam senior’s kinship with both the Scarlet Pimpernel and Raoul Wallenberg was also stressed in a scene in which the Chile of the early 1970s is complemented by one of his memories of a rescue operation of Jews during the Second World War. The biography of Edelstam published two years later was structured in a similar way. Its author, Mats Fors, focused mainly on Norway from 1942 to 1944 and Chile in 1973, which had consequences for the overall narrative.98 In other words, ‘the Norway and Chile events sit on opposite ends of a thin seesaw that is in danger of cracking’, claimed one reviewer, who also pointed out that neither Edelstam nor Norwegian Resistance fighters have published a written account of the Swedish diplomat’s exploits in Norway. The result was that Fors had difficulty integrating the protagonist into the larger sequence of events there.99

Edelstam’s status as a hero was not greatly helped by The Black Pimpernel. It attracted few viewers to Swedish and Chilean cinemas, perhaps because the story of Edelstam never ‘gets under the surface of the material’, as one reviewer put it.100 Unsurprisingly, the Swedish press compared the film to Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg, to the disadvantage of The Black Pimpernel. Film critic Mats Johnson recalled the complexity that Stellan Skarsgård had brought to Wallenberg in the former film and said it was completely lacking in The Black Pimpernel.101 Recurring complaints were that the chopped-up chronology made it difficult to follow the plot and that the choice of Michael Nyquist in the lead role was less than successful. One reviewer summed up his cinema visit by saying that ‘The only image that lingers on the retina is that of a greying playboy on a history-less Tintin adventure in a foreign land’.102

Edelstam’s inability to match Wallenberg’s level is not only, or even mainly, related to the reception of a film about him. One important difference in how posterity views the two men is that rescuing Chilean leftist activists does not have the same exalted position in history culture as does rescuing Jews during the Second World War. In addition, Edelstam outlived his mission and did not die until 1989, which does not fit in with the heroic ideal, as few heroic role models live to the age of 76. A further explanation is that Edelstam was, and remained, a diplomat. Wallenberg, as we know, did not have this background, and he was not given a chance to choose to continue on this path. Throughout his career, Edelstam had the reputation of being a black sheep in the diplomatic fold and was a sharp contrast to the ‘mummies at the UD’, to quote The Black Pimpernel’s director, Ulf Hultberg.103 Edelstam undeniably shared this activist approach with Wallenberg. The problem in the creation of the former’s heroic image is that while he remained something of a rebel, he still remained within the diplomatic corps, which he was both distanced from and distanced himself from.

That this corps is not associated with heroic deeds has been made clear, if not before, then certainly in conjunction with the broadcast of the Swedish drama documentary series Diplomaterna [‘The diplomats’] on Swedish public service television in the spring of 2009. Scenes from exclusive parties, beach shots of a UD official surrounded by scantily clad women, and racist remarks made by him and his colleagues during a Nigerian state visit to Sweden resulted in outraged comments about ‘gin & tonic drifters’.104 Rebuttals of this television portrayal were offered in response. The UD’s defence lawyers stressed that hard-working civil servants make up the core of the Swedish diplomatic service, adding that working for poor pay and with little support from the Swedish Government Offices, they try to defend Swedish interests around the world.105 Other commentators drew a distinct line between worshipping idols and heroes on the one hand and diplomats on the other. To the extent that there were any exceptions, they were Edelstam acting the part of the Scarlet Pimpernel in Santiago de Chile in 1973 and Raoul Wallenberg – although the latter was, as one Swedish journalist asserted in sweeping terms, ‘more CIA agent than diplomat’.106

These comments can certainly be seen as a media storm in teacup, but they can and should be regarded in a wider context. In the light of revelations and debates about Sweden’s lack of strict neutrality during both the Second World War and the Cold War, there is a great need to remember those Swedish diplomats who did follow in the footsteps of the Scarlet Pimpernel. One of the most striking expressions of this position is the art-works displayed in the Southern Connecting Room in the Riksdag (Parliament) building in Stockholm. An accompanying written text says that they aim to remind us of ‘the need for humanity, yesterday and today’, with a starting point in three Swedes who personified these qualities: Raoul Wallenberg, Folke Bernadotte, and Harald Edelstam. Although the three men are given equal space in the text, there is no doubt that Wallenberg is the primary example of the theme which permeated the commemorative year dedicated to him in 2012, namely that ‘one man can make a difference’.107

*

There is much to suggest that the tale of the aristocrat who hid behind a guileless facade and risked his life to save others – a story which remained very popular for most of the twentieth century – is no longer so viable today. The Scarlet Pimpernel novels are no longer being published in such large print runs as they used to be, and no new films about him have been made for decades. Nevertheless, the comparison between the fictional Scarlet Pimpernel and the real Raoul Wallenberg is relevant, not only, or even mainly, because the latter was inspired by Leslie Howard’s Pimpernel Smith. The Swedish historian Kristian Gerner has captured the link between the two heroes with great perspicacity. His starting point is that Wallenberg may also have seen the film The Petrified Forest (1936), which starred Leslie Howard as a disillusioned, roaming British writer. After taking out a life insurance policy, with the waitress at a coffee shop in a godforsaken Arizona slum as its beneficiary, he allows himself to be shot by a gangster, whereupon the waitress is able to train and become the artist she has long dreamed of being. Howard’s and Wallenberg’s deeds are certainly of very different kinds, but

the film hero Leslie Howard played the role of ‘Wallenberg’ even before Raoul Wallenberg became Saint Wallenberg. Spiteful historians have insinuated that Wallenberg was trying to play the hero but was merely an insignificant cog in a larger machine. However, he was not a dandy pretending to be a film hero. He wanted to save – and succeeded in saving – many lives. The reality surpassed the fiction. Raoul Wallenberg became the Scarlet Pimpernel. The declaration of sainthood came when Raoul Wallenberg was designated by Yad Vashem as one of ‘The Righteous Among the Nations’.108

1 See e.g. Ulf Zander, ‘Wallenberg: Man and Myth’, The Hungarian Quarterly, Summer 2006, 166–168; Zander ‘Heroic Images’, pp. 126–135; Schult, A Hero’s Many Faces, passim; Schult, ‘Whose Raoul Wallenberg is it?’, pp. 770–796.
2 Lévai, Raoul Wallenberg, hjälten i Budapest, pp. 7, 255; Derogy, Fallet Raoul Wallenberg, pp. 180–183, 254; Sjöquist, Raoul Wallenberg, p. 20; Linnéa, Raoul Wallenberg, p. 27; Schult, A Hero’s Many Faces, pp. 54–55.
3 Jangfeldt, Raoul Wallenberg, pp. 36–37, 337, quotation p. 36.
4 The information comes from Nina Lagergren and is mentioned in e.g. Bierman, Righteous Gentile, p. 29; Aldgate and Richards, Britain Can Take It, p. 63; Monika Tunbäck-Hanson, ‘Kreativitet går inte att styra’, Göteborgs-Posten, 21 October 1997; Wästberg, Om Raoul Wallenberg, pp. 5–7; Schult, A Hero’s Many Faces, p. 55, Philip French, ‘Philip French’s screen legends. No. 68: Leslie Howard 1893–1943’, The Observer, 30 August 2009; Kershaw, The Envoy, p. 59; Eforgan, Leslie Howard, p. 160; Kaj Schueler, ‘De livsviktiga hjältarna’, Svenska Dagbladet, 9 January 2012; Hannes Lundberg Andersson, ‘Filmen som förändrade Raoul Wallenberg’, Expressen, 23 February 2018. Lagergren confirmed this in an interview with the author of this book on 29 April 2008.
5 ‘Ian Haydn Smith on the Pimpernel Smith’, www.britishcouncil.se (accessed 10 November 2021).
6 Raskin, ‘From Leslie Howard to Raoul Wallenberg’, pp. 11–12.
7 Åsa Linderborg, ‘Jag köper inte det här’ (opinion piece about Sofia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette, 2006), Aftonbladet, 21 November 2006.
8 ‘Bovarna på Parnassen’, Dagens Nyheter, 25 August 1935.
9 Melman, The Culture of History, pp. 29–91, 247–277.
10 Dugan, Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, pp. 181–191, quotation p. 181.
12 Tabori, Alexander Korda, pp. 152–154; Melman, The Culture of History, pp. 264–265, 270–272; Perry, The Great British Picture Show, pp. 68–69; Andre Sennwald, ‘Leslie Howard as the Scarlet Pimpernel in a fine british screen version of the famous novel’, The New York Times, 8 February 1935. See also the review in Variety, 12 February 1935 and Stig Almqvist, ‘Bränningar’, Vecko-Journalen, 1935:10, 10.
13 See e.g. Maj Lorents under the heading ‘Mitt hjärtas val’, Idun, 1945:50, 39.
14 Dugan, Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, p. 185.
15 Aldgate and Richards, Britain Can Take It, pp. 44–46, 53, 55.
16 Eforgan, Leslie Howard, pp. 17–29. See also French, ‘Philip French’s screen legends. No. 68: Leslie Howard 1893–1943’, The Observer, 30 August 2009.
17 See MacDonald, The Language of Empire, pp. 21–22.
18 Klapp, ‘The Folk Hero’, pp. 17–25.
19 Aldgate and Richards, Britain Can Take It, p. 53.
20 Ilja, ‘En modern hjälte’, Idun, 1943:30, 11. For a similar distinction between the English ‘cultured individual’ and ‘the hearty he-men of American films’, see Georg Svensson, ‘Leslie Howard’, Bonniers Litterära Magasin, 1943:6, 438. This distinction is problematized in a later analysis. From a masculine perspective, Rhett (Gable) is the hero of the drama, because, unlike Ashley (Howard), he undergoes a transformation in a humanist direction in Gone with the Wind. True, Ashley’s status changes, from plantation owner to manufacturer, from bachelor to widower, but he is basically the same at the end of the film as at the beginning, as noted by Trice and Holland in Heroes, Antiheroes and Dolts, pp. 20–27.
21 Arne F, ‘Dyre prins godnatt!’, Biografbladet, 1942:25. However, in the obituary in The Manchester Guardian, 4 June 1943, his English image is described as not always an advantage. While it benefited him in the Pimpernel films and Pygmalion, it was ‘exactly that same all-enveloping Englishness and phlegm which came between him and the big romantic and classical parts which were his ultimate ambition as an actor’.
22 Bergström, Den symboliska nejlikan i senmedeltidens och renässansens konst; pp. 12–86; Marion Dixon, ‘The dashing Lord Percy and his little scarlet flower’, The Christian Science Monitor, 7 November 1987.
23 Shepherd, Wilfrid Israel.
25 Howard, A Quite Remarkable Father, p. 263.
26 Howard, A Quite Remarkable Father, pp. 268–269, 281; Eforgan, Leslie Howard, pp. 140–141, 170–175.
27 Ronald Howard, In Search of My Father, pp. 63–64, 77–78; Eforgan, Leslie Howard, pp. 141–151, 160.
28 Annette Insdorf, Indelible Shadows, pp. 64–68; Avisar, Screening the Holocaust, p. 102; Rosenfeld, Raoul Wallenberg, pp. 209–244; Zander, ‘Modernitetskritik i svart-vitt’, pp. 222–224; Eforgan, Leslie Howard, p. 157.
29 Anonymous, ‘“Röda nejlikan” och Gestapo’, Dagens Nyheter, 18 August 1941.
30 Georg Svensson in Bonniers Litterära Magasin, 1945:6, 517. This state of innocence also appeared after the war, see e.g. ‘Humorn är det starkaste vapnet’, Filmjournalen, 1945:23, 10–11.
31 Furhammar and Isaksson, Politik och film, p. 308.
32 Aldgate and Richards, Britain Can Take It, p. 59.
33 Ilja, ‘En modern hjälte’, Idun, 1943:30.
34 T. S., ‘“Mr. V,” a British melodrama with Leslie Howard, opens at Rivoli’, The New York Times, 13 February 1942.
35 See e.g. Murphy, British Cinema and the Second World War, p. 89; Chapman, Past and Present, p. 111.
36 Furhammar and Isaksson, Politik och film, pp. 314–315. See also Aldgate and Richards, Britain Can Take It, p. 63.
37 ‘Leslie Howard is lost in air liner shot down by Nazis over Bay of Biscay’, The Daily Mirror, 1 June 1943. The First of the Few was also very favourably received in Sweden; see Arne F, ‘Farten ökar!’ and ‘Äreminne över två män och ett plan’, both in Filmjournalen, 1943:48, 7; Artur Lundkvist, ‘Spitfire’, Vi, 1943:48; Carl Björkman, ‘Filmkrönika’, Vecko-Journalen, 1943:48, 30 and Miss Bio, ‘Bäst i veckan’, Idun, 1943:48, 4.
38 Stig Almqvist, ‘Bränningar’, 10; Stig A., ‘Där brast ett ädelt hjärta’, Filmjournalen, 1943:27; ‘Sällsamma händelser kring Leslie Howard’, Filmjournalen, 1944:32; Ilja, ‘En modern hjälte’, Idun, 1943:30; Arne F, ‘Dyre prins godnatt!’, Biografbladet, 1942:25; Georg Svensson, ‘Leslie Howard’, Bonniers Litterära Magasin, 1943:6; –s, ‘Leslie Howards och Noel Cowards filmer’, Filmjournalen, 1944:1; Sam Forre, ‘Ingenting öppnar våra ögon så som filmen’, Filmjournalen, 1945:23, 8; Aldgate and Richards, Britain Can Take It, pp. 44–45.
39 Österberg, ‘“Eftervärldens dom har fallit hård”’, p. 140. For a contemporary discussion about showing the forbidden films, see C. I., ‘Förbjudna filmer’, Idun, 1944:33, 6–7, 26.
40 Howard, In Search of My Father, pp. 117–119.
41 Reviews in Aftonbladet, Arbetaren, Dagens Nyheter, Social-Demokraten, Stockholms Tidningen, Svenska Dagbladet, all published 30 June 1942.
42 ‘En halv miljon svenskar såg “Pimpernel Smith” illegalt’, Expressen, 23 May 1945.
43 Homer Dickens, ‘Leslie Howard became an international star by projecting the superiority of brain over brawn’, Films in Review, April 1959; Aldgate and Richards, Britain Can Take It, pp. 60–62; Arie Vilner, ‘“Pimpernel” Smith (1941)’, The Objective Standard, Fall 2019, 114–116; Neil McDonald, ‘Leslie Howard, Propagandist and patriot’, Quadrant, January–February 2015, 128–131.
44 Letter from Raoul Wallenberg to Iver Olssen [sic], Budapest 12 October 1944, RKA, Raoul Wallenberg, UD2018/05505, Vol. 1.
45 Raoul Wallenberg quoted in Levine, ‘The Unfinished Story of a Swedish Hero’, p. 54.
46 Derogy, Fallet Raoul Wallenberg, p. 169.
47 Letter from Raoul Wallenberg to Maj von Dardel, 27 June 1933, in Söderlund and Wallenberg (eds), Älskade farfar!, pp. 103–104. For a discussion about the same episode in reference to the interpretation of Philip Jackson’s monument to Wallenberg in London, see Schult, A Hero’s Many Faces, p. 122.
48 Schult, A Hero’s Many Faces, p. 55.
49 For the significance of this scene, see Eforgan, Leslie Howard, pp. 153–154. For Der Amerikanische Volksbund in contemporaneous film productions, see Zander, Clio på bio, pp. 120–123.
50 See Eforgan, Leslie Howard, pp. 159–161.
51 Chaplin, My Autobiography, p. 426. See Zander, ‘Modernitetskritik i svart-vitt’, pp. 224, 227.
52 Rosenberg, ‘Shylock’s Revenge’, pp. 237–238.
53 ‘Raoul Wallenberg’ (editorial), Göteborgs-Posten, 8 February 1957.
54 Churchill, The Second World War, p. 830.
55 Giles Tremlett, ‘British film star was secret agent, claims author’, The Guardian, 6 October 2008; Fiona Govan, ‘Actor Leslie Howard kept Spain out of WWII, claims author’, The Daily Telegraph, 6 October 2008. See also Howard, A Quite Remarkable Father, pp. 205–242. For Leslie Howard’s great importance to Allied and especially British propaganda, see e.g. C. A. Lejeune, ‘A symbol of England’, The New York Times, 27 June 1943. Yet another aspect of Howard’s last mission is found in Jimmy Burns’s unconventional biography Papa Spy: Love, Faith and Betrayal in Wartime Spain (2009), which focuses on the author’s father, Tom Burns, the press attaché at the British Embassy in Madrid, and intelligence operations in Spain during the Second World War. See also Jane Ridley’s favourable review of Papa Spy, ‘From Madrid with love’, The Spectator, 21 October 2009.
56 Eforgan, Leslie Howard, pp. 126–139.
57 Korda, Charmed Lives, pp. 138–139, quotation p. 139.
58 Crick Holm, ‘Öresunds Röda nejlika’, Se, 1945:21, 12–13; Crick Holm, ‘Röda nejlikan (Birger Dahlerius): “Ribbentrop var dramats bov”’, Se, 1945:27, 6–8, 32; Princeps, ‘“Röda nejlikan” i Malmö’, Vecko-Journalen, 1945:20, 20; M. G., ‘Radions röda nejlika’, Röster i Radio, 1945:24, 7, 38; ‘“Röda nejlikan” svensk vicekonsul’, Svenska Dagbladet, 15 March 199; Modéer, Patriot i gränsland, pp. 25–29, 191–205; Conny Palmkvist, Sundets röda nejlikor, pp. 286, 364. The theme also recurs even when stories of heroic rescue actions are told from other parts of the world, such as in an article about the American who saved writers Franz Werfel and Heinrich Mann from the Germans after the fall of France in 1940: Anonymous, ‘Amerikansk Pimpernel räddade Werfel’, Dagens Nyheter, 14 September 1945, or in a text about Louise Boitard, who saved many Allied airmen from German imprisonment: Anonymous, ‘Fransk “nejlika” förde flygare till gränserna’, Dagens Nyheter, 11 April 1946.
59 Dilworth, ‘Truman Capote’s “MR. JONES” and THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL’, pp. 71–72.
61 Ohlin, Bertil Ohlins memoarer 1940–1951, pp. 74–76.
62 Wallengren, Welcome Home, Mr Swanson, pp. 140–143.
63 See e.g. ‘Röda nejlikan’, Röster i Radio, 1963:16, 22; Karin Michal, ‘I kväll visar TV legendariska “Nejlikan” – Leslie Howard i klassisk roll’, Aftonbladet, 30 June 1963; Henning Sten, ‘“Röda nejlikan” – en äventyrsfilm i TV’, Expressen, 30 June 1963; ‘Röda nejlikan – än en gång’, Röster i Radio, 1971:7; Björn Norström, ‘Alla älskar “Röda nejlikan”’, Expressen, 5 February 1971; Björn Norström, ‘Leslie Howard gjorde Röda Nejlikan odödlig’, Expressen, 26 July 1984; Anne Hedén, ‘Han räddar aristokraterna från giljotinen’, Aftonbladet, 16 July 1989; Bernt Eklund, ‘Klassiskt äventyr med fräck ädling’, Expressen, 16 July 1989.
64 Georg Svensson in Bonniers Litterära Magasin, 1945:6, 517; Artur Lundkvist, ‘Filmkrönikan’, Ord & Bild, 1945, p. 334; the quotation comes from the latter source; Artur Lundkvist, ‘Pimpernel Smith’, Vi, 1945:22, 29. See also Yngve Kernell’s favourable report in Idun, 1945:23, 4.
65 T. H–n., ‘Premiär: Pimpernel Smith’, Expressen and ‘–hn’ in Arbetaren, both 23 May 1945. See also the reviews in Dagens Nyheter, Morgon-Tidningen, Stockholms Tidningen, Svenska Dagbladet, all 23 May 1945 and Sydsvenskan, 10 July 1945. The favourable views have persisted over the years; see also ‘Humor och elegans vapen mot nazismen’, Dagens Nyheter, 22 November 1964; Alf Montan, ‘Humorn hans vapen’, Expressen, 21 November 1964; ‘En nejlika bland nazister’, Röster i Radio, 1964:48; Torsten Jungstedt, ‘Vad är engelsk humor?’, Röster i Radio, 1971:12, 14; Lars Löfstrand, ‘Pimpernel Smith’, Expressen, 17 September 1977; Elisabeth Melander, ‘Filmen som gjorde nazisterna rasande’, Aftonbladet, 17 September 1977; Torsten Jungstedt, ‘På mångas begäran: Pimpernel Smith’, Röster i Radio & TV, 1977:38, 20–21.
66 Kar de Mumma, ‘Svensson i ryska zonen m. fl. nöjen’, Svenska Dagbladet, 30 August 1950.
67 Richter, Edvard Persson, pp. 242–244.
68 Robin Hood (Bengt Idestam-Almquist) in Stockholms Tidningen. See also the pseudonyms Filmson in Aftonbladet, Nils Beyer in Morgon-Tidningen and –hn in Arbetaren, all published 31 September 1950; and –eis– in Sydsvenskan and O. Bull in Skånska Dagbladet, both 5 September 1950.
69 Trannel, ‘Rio och Rex: Pimpernel Svensson’, Arbetet, 5 September 1950.
70 Jerome, ‘Saga: Pimpernel Svensson’, Dagens Nyheter, 31 August 1950.
71 Mikael Katz, ‘Pimpernel Svensson’, Expressen, 31 September 1950.
72 The pseudonym Fors in Ny Dag, 31 September 1950. See also Armand in Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, 3 October 1950 and Variety, 11 February 1953.
73 The pseudonym Lill in Svenska Dagbladet, 31 September 1950. The unfavourable views have dominated on later broadcast dates; see e.g. Lars Bergström, ‘Pimplande Persson’, Expressen, 22 July 1990.
74 Wallengren, Welcome Home, Mr Swanson, p. 144.
75 Jerselius, Hotade reservat, pp. 97–99, 175–179, quotation p. 98.
76 ‘“Röd nejlika” kan befria Wallenberg?’, Provinstidningen Dalsland and Söderhamns Tidning, 25 August 1947.
77 Löfgren, Hård tid, pp. 23–28.
78 Mia Leche Löfgren, ‘Vi kan ej slå oss till ro med Wallenbergs försvinnande’, Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, 17 July 1947.
79 Mia Leche Löfgren, ‘Dubbelbottnad avsikt’, Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, 8 June 1948.
80 Maria Schottenius, ‘Raoul Wallenberg som charmig äventyrare’, Aftonbladet, 14 February 1983.
81 Smith, Lost Hero, p. 92. See also Ellie Tesher, ‘Is “Scarlet Pimpernel” still alive?’, Toronto Star, 20 October 1979; Alan Patient, ‘The Swedish Pimpernel’, The Listener, 20 March 1980; ‘Hunting the Pimpernel’, The Daily Telegraph, 2 May 1980 and Bauer, Jews for Sale?, p. 234.
82 Crowe, Oskar Schindler, p. 541.
83 Harold Macmillan, The Blast of War 1939–1945, p. 102.
84 That the Scarlet Pimpernel story is still well known in Britain is clear, for example in the fact that the main British title of Andy Marino’s book about Varian Fry is American Pimpernel. In the United States, by contrast, it was instead called A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry, a reference to Graham Greene’s famous 1955 novel The Quiet American.
85 At the time when the TV drama was broadcast, criticism of the Vatican was intense. Investigations had shown that the Catholic Church was doing too little to stop what was happening. In some local cases Catholic priests had even encouraged the genocide, and after 1945 the Vatican had protected and helped perpetrators escape. Because the TV drama was set in the Vatican, it instead gave the impression that Catholic Church workers were generally involved in rescue operations, which probably contributed to the Vatican’s permission for CBS to film on location in the Vatican, according to Arthur Unger in ‘Mini series dramatizes quiet acts of heroism in Nazi-occupied Rome’, The Christian Science Monitor, 1 February 1983.
86 Kristen Bjørnkjær, ‘Ambassadøren der blev pimpernel’, Information, 25 September 2007.
87 Lindahl, ‘Harald Edelstam’, pp. 374–395; Edelstam, Janusansiktet, pp. 151–164, 426–445.
88 Wachtmeister, Som jag såg det, p. 179. See also the chapter ‘Mumrikarnas hämnd’ in Fors, Svarta nejlikan, pp. 326–328. Edelstam was also controversial in subsequent posts, including when he was mediator between the Philippines and Malaysia over a disputed area in Borneo and when he was Swedish ambassador to Afghanistan; see Edelstam, Janusansiktet, pp. 376–379; Karlsson, Ett utrikes liv, pp. 77, 79.
89 ‘Två folkhjältar i Havanna’, Vecko-Journalen, 1974:6, 35. See Lindahl, ‘Harald Edelstam’, p. 392.
90 Hemming Sten, ‘Raoul Wallenberg’ (interview with Gunnar Möllerstedt), Expressen, 22 February 1974.
91 Barbro Alving, ‘Sveket mot Raoul Wallenberg’, Expressen, 20 September 1974.
92 See e.g. Kjell Wigers, ‘Vi är olika värda ända in i döden’, Expressen, 9 September 2013; Ola Larsmo, ‘Därför borde det anses som “osvenskt” att vara nationalist’, Dagens Nyheter, 28 January 206; Jan Eliasson, José Goni Carrasco and Eva Zetterberg, ‘Låt den 6 oktober bli en dag till minnet av Zaida Catalán’, Dagens Nyheter, 8 March 2020; Per Kudo, ‘Den gråtande ambassadören blottlägger UD:s blinda fläck’, Svenska Dagbladet, 21 June 2020.
93 Cordelia Edvardson, ‘Världen behöver alla sina hjältar’, Svenska Dagbladet, 22 November 2007. Other tributes to Edelstam include one made by Isabel Allende in an interview with Ole Hoff-Lund in Svenska Dagbladet, 11 September 2007 and Wolfgang Hansson, ‘Räddade – av den svenske rebellen’ (interview with Carolina Hultgren), Aftonbladet, 14 September 2007; Åke Lundgren, ‘Svarta nejlikan räddade mitt liv’ (interview with Carolina Hultgren), Expressen, 15 September 2007; Ana Martinez, ‘Vi behöver fler Edelstam’, Expressen, 19 September 2007, and Ola Larsmo, ‘Är nationalism osvenskt?’, Dagens Nyheter, 5 June 2008. The link between Raoul Wallenberg and Harald Edelstam had been made earlier, including by Pierre Schori; see Jonas Sima, ‘Pierre Schori berättar i TV i kväll: “Jag grät när jag såg Wallenberg-filmen”’, Expressen, 7 October 1990.
94 Lindahl, ‘Harald Edelstam’, p. 381.
95 Wilhelm Wachtmeister, ‘Jag ifrågasätter Edelstams omdöme’, Expressen, 15 September 2007.
96 Erik Edelstam, ‘Pappa räddade liv – blev mobbad på UD’ and ‘Era skildringar av pappa är pinsamma’, Expressen, 11 and 16 September 2007.
97 Mats Fors, ‘Filmen är en fiktion’, Expressen, 12 September 2007.
98 Fors, Svarta nejlikan, passim.
99 Tommy Gustafsson, review of Fors, Svarta nejlikan: Harald Edelstam – en berättelse om mod, humanitet och passion, Historisk Tidskrift, 2011:2, 407–409.
100 Gunnar Rehlin, ‘The Black Pimpernel’, Variety, 29 October 2007.
101 Mats Johnson, ‘Svarta nejlikan’, Göteborgs-Posten, 13 September 2007.
102 Michael Tapper, ‘Svarta nejlikan (2)’, SydSvenska Dagbladet, Snällposten, 13 September 2007. For similar views see Jeanette Gentele, ‘Otydligt om Chilekuppen’, Svenska Dagbladet, 13 September 2007; Susanne Sigroth-Lambe, ‘Svårgreppbar nejlika’, Upsala Nya Tidning, 13 September 2007; Jan-Olov Andersson, ‘Chilekuppens svenske hjälte’, Aftonbladet, 14 September 2007; and Eva af Geijerstam, ‘Svarta nejlikan’, Dagens Nyheter, 14 September 2007. For an extensive discussion of the film’s format, contents, and reception, see Gustafsson, ‘The Black Pimpernel’, pp. 18–26.
103 Karoline Eriksson, ‘Hur var det att filma på plats i Santiago?’ (interview with Ulf Hultberg), Svenska Dagbladet, 11 September 2007. See also Fors’s statement on p. 27 in Svarta nejlikan that Edelstam’s life had ‘a shimmer of drama and adventure that was lacking in the more sedate but far more successful careers of many of his colleagues at the UD’.
104 Gunilla Kinn, ‘Gin & tonic-glidarna ger UD dåligt rykte’, Expressen, 9 February 2009; Mats Carlbom, ‘Tv-serie om diplomaterna upprör’, Dagens Nyheter, 4 March 2009; Barbro Hedvall, ‘UD: Var är omdömet?’, Dagens Nyheter, 5 March 2009.
105 Karin Arbsjö, ‘UD diskuterar åtgärder efter SVT:s serie’, Sydsvenskan, 3 March 2009; Jan Eliasson, Rolf Ekéus and Sven Hirdman, ‘Verklighetsförfalskning av Sveriges Television’, Dagens Nyheter, 5 March 2009; Mats Carlbom, ‘Jag förstår alla inom UD som känner sig kränkta’ (interview with State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Frank Belfrage), Dagens Nyheter, 8 March 2009. See also Ulf Zander, ‘Ett fredsälskande folk: Diplomaternas historielösa självbild sitter djupt rotad’, Sydsvenskan, 2 March 2009. The debate continued independently following a proposal to close the Swedish Consulate in New York; see e.g. Urban Ahlin and Jan Eliasson, ‘Sverige backar in i framtiden’, Svenska Dagbladet, 26 April 2009 and ‘New York?, New York?’ (editorial), Sydsvenskan, 27 April 2009.
106 Staffan Heimerson, ‘Hasse Ericson går igen och UD-männen är rasande’, Aftonbladet, 15 March 2009.
107 ‘One person can make a difference: An introduction to the works of art in the Southern Connecting Room’, www.riksdagen.se/globalassets/15.-bestall-och-ladda-ned/informationsmaterial/en-manniska-kan-gora-skillnad-eng.pdf (accessed 21 January 2022).
108 Kristian Gerner, ‘Helgon och agent’, Judisk Krönika, 2012:4, 24.
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Raoul Wallenberg

Life and legacy

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