ABBA singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad has spoken of the “incomprehensible grief” that has followed her since childhood, as a new biography reveals the extent of the pain she endured due to her father’s links to Nazi Germany.
Frida, who rose to fame in the 1970s as one quarter of the Swedish pop group ABBA, was born in Norway in 1945 to a 19-year-old mother and a Nazi sergeant from Germany.
Her father, Alfred Haase, was part of Hitler’s army stationed in Norway during the war. Her mother Synni fell in love with him, unaware that he had a wife and child back in Germany.
Before even giving birth, Frida’s mother became the subject of local abuse and shaming for her relationship with a German soldier. She was spat at in the street and labelled a “horizontal collaborator”. Her daughter, Frida, was called “Nazi spawn”.
In the years following the war, thousands of children born to German soldiers and Norwegian women were ostracised. The SS breeding programme, known as Lebensborn, had encouraged soldiers to father children with what the Nazis viewed as “racially pure” women. Norway was considered ideal territory.
In an extract of Jan Gradvall’s The Story of ABBA: Melancholy Undercover published on the Mail Online, he notes that Synni believed Alfred would come back for them. However, he left and he never came back.
With the situation becoming increasingly difficult, Frida’s grandmother Anni took her to Sweden to start a new life, while Synni stayed behind to work. Plans for the family to reunite were cut short when Synni died of kidney failure in 1947, before her daughter’s second birthday. She was just 21.
Frida was raised by her grandmother in Sweden, but affection did not come easily. “We were two lonely people together,” she later said. “There were no hugs or kisses.”
She grew up believing her father had died during the war. It wasn’t until 1977, when Frida was 32 and ABBA were at the height of their fame, that she discovered he was still alive.
The revelation came after a German girl – the daughter of Frida’s half-brother – read an interview and believed the singer might be related to her grandfather. A meeting was arranged in West Germany.
“I thought he was a nice man,” Frida said, “but it still mostly felt strange to me. I was 32 years old and had a family and children of my own. Obviously we didn’t develop the kind of connection we might have if we had known each other my entire life.”
The book also details further personal tragedies in the star’s life.
In 1998, Frida’s daughter Ann Lise-Lotte died in a car accident in the United States, shortly before her 31st birthday. Less than a year later, Frida’s third husband, Prince Heinrich Ruzzo Reuss von Plauen, died from cancer at the age of 49. They had married in 1992.
Then, in the autumn of 2023, Frida’s grandson Jonathan also passed away following a battle with cancer.
Reflecting on the weight of so much loss, Frida said: “It took a very long time. It took many years of incomprehensible grief.”
Despite the continued speculation around a third Mamma Mia film and the enduring success of ABBA’s Voyage virtual concert in London, Gradvall’s new book offers a look behind the polished performances and pop stardom to a life marked by secrecy, loss and survival.
The Story of ABBA: Melancholy Undercover by Jan Gradvall is published by St. Martin’s Press.