Haijby affair

Kurt Haijby (left) and lawyer Henning Sjöström on the way to trial on charges of extortion against the Royal Court.
Gustaf V at the time of the First World War

The Haijby affair was a political affair in Sweden in the 1950s, involving the conviction and imprisonment of Kurt Haijby for blackmail of King Gustaf V.

Background

Kurt Haijby (b. 1897 Stockholm as Kurt Johansson - d. 1965 Stockholm). His father was a wine-merchant and a fishmonger by appointment to the Royal Court. In 1912 he and another boy scout were granted an audience with King Gustaf V selling "majblomma" charity pins.

Johansson worked as a waiter, clerk, actor and illusionist. He was convicted to hard labour six times for several cases of theft and fraud between 1915 and 1925. While trying to escape prison in 1923 he shot dead a police officer. After being released he changed his name to Haijby and spent nomadic life in France and in USA.

In 1931 he opened a restaurant with his second wife Anna, a 10 years older widow. As he was a convicted criminal he could not get a licence to sell wine. He then applied to the King and was granted an audience in 1933 to put forward his case. King Gustav V, a 74-year-old widower, then allegedly seduced Haijby.

Haijby's wife, Anna Haijby, when learning about this in 1936, filed for divorce, citing her husband's sexual relationship with the King as cause for divorce. Fearing that this would become known, officials of the Royal Court convinced the couple to settle for an amicable no-fault divorce and separation by paying Anna Haijby 15,000 Swedish crowns (more than 400,000 in modern Swedish crowns). In reality the couple continued to live together till the death of Anna Haijby. According to a report the King said to his Court Superintendent: "There must not be a scandal, but do it with as little money as possible".[1]

Haijby was encouraged by the Royal Court lawyer to emigrate to the United States and given 1,500 Swedish crowns, where he was to receive additional 3,000 Swedish crowns and start a new life. However, when he arrived in the USA, he claimed there was no money for him. He had to return to Sweden where he, unemployed and penniless, asked for support from the Royal Court.

During several years, money from the Court financed a number of failed enterprises that Haijby tried, for example a coffee store and a boarding-house at Tystorp Manor. There is no evidence of outright blackmail on Haijby's part, but the Court was obviously trying to buy his silence. In all, Haijby received 170,000 Swedish kronor (more than 4 million in modern Swedish crowns) from the Court and perhaps much more from the King's private funds.

Haijby later claimed that he was the King's lover in the years between 1936 and 1947.

In 1938 Haijby was arrested for child sexual abuse of an 11-year old and a 13-year-old boy and put in custody at the asylum of Beckomberga. This was the result of political pressure from the Governor General of Stockholm, Torsten Nothin. The psychiatrist in charge of the asylum did not believe that Haijby was in need of psychiatric care and eventually released him. The child abuse case was never brought to a criminal court.

A new deal was arranged where Haijby in 1939 was forced to emigrate to Nazi Germany. There, after a short while in Berlin, he was put in prison by the Gestapo, probably by request of the Swedish Court. Unlike most Gestapo prisoners, Haijby was not tortured and, for most of the time, kept in decent conditions. Charges were then brought against him for sexual relations with two young boys. He was sentenced to prison and banished to Sweden in 1940 after having served his sentence.

He was reunited with his ex-wife, who gave him a grant using a police officer as a middleman. Haijby was to believe that the money came from the Court. Haijby was again, because of political pressure, committed to an asylum in 1941.

In the meantime, another scandal, the Kejne affair, had broken in the press where Vilhelm Moberg was busy writing lengthy articles about homosexual conspiracies among the Swedish officials.

In 1947 Haijby published with his own money a roman à clef. Half of the first printing of 1000 copies, was bought by the Chief Constable with the money from the Royal Court. Haijby's ex-wife Anna paid the other half.

The affair

Trystorp, Kurt Haijby's boarding-house

Haijby reported his forced detention in the asylum at Beckomberga to the Attorney General of Sweden. These papers were immediately classified, but were smuggled out of the Attorney General's office by Vilhelm Moberg, and the whole affair thus came to public attention. The actions of officials to suppress the claims caused acrimonious debate in parliament and the media. As a consequence, the criminal court charged Haijby for acts of blackmail.

In 1952, after a dubiously held trial, Haijby was sentenced to eight years hard labor for blackmail under aggravated circumstances, which in 1953 was reduced to six years by Svea High Court.

After the death of the King Gustav V in 1950, the confiscated roman à clef was re-distributed in 1952 and was reprinted in 1979.

Haijby had reported the treatment he had received to the Swedish Chancellor of Justice. The results of the investigations, the bulk of which were classified until 2002, effectively acquitted the monarchy. There is nothing to support the claim that Haijby was seduced by the King as a 14-year-old boy, but most commentators believe that he had a sexual relationship with the King in the 1930s. Haijby committed suicide in 1965, one year after the death of Anna Haijby.

However, the fact that the Swedish Court was prepared to pay Haijby such large sums to suppress his accusations has by some been taken as evidence that they were true. Later several servants at the Royal Court witnessed, among them a male servant and chauffeurs, that they were given money to keep quiet, of the intimate contacts with the King.[2]

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ "Haijbyaffären". Retrieved 2015-08-09.
  2. ↑ "Haijbyaffären". Retrieved 2015-08-09.

External links

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