Axel Örnulf Tigerstedt (29 September 1900 – 6 November 1962) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish poet, novelist, translator, journalist and a supporter of Nazism before and during the Second World War. He lived and worked in Sweden from 1944 until his death.
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Biography
Tigerstedt was born in Helsinki, Finland, into the family of the scientist, geologist and dendrologist Axel Fredrik Tigerstedt and Mary Helene Florence von Schoultz. He had a sister Maria and brothers Göran, Karl Gustav Ludwig, Axel Olof and Erik, a brilliant inventor. He was married twice; first to Hilma Theresia Löfhjelm from 1927 until their divorce in 1931, and then to Giulia Annita Catani from 1934. In his work he used the pseudonyms Axel Fredriksson, as a reference to Scandinavian patronymic naming system, and Axel Falander, his ancestors' former family name until 1691 when they were ennobled with the name Tigerstedt.
In 1918 Tigerstedt began publishing, and in 1919 he graduated from the Swedish Normal Lyceum in Helsinki. Since the 1920s he worked with various mass media; from 1927 to 1930, he was employed at the Finnish Advertising Center (Suomen mainoskeskus). For a long time he worked in the propaganda industry; in particular, he took part in the work of the Finnish censorship and propaganda organ State Information Service. In the early 1930s, Tigerstedt joined the Nazi Patriotic People's Party. He was deputy chairman of the Dante Alighieri Society and headed the Finnish PEN-club, serving on its board of directors from 1934 to 1939 and as its vice-chairman from 1937 to 1938. In 1942, on the initiative of Goebbels, the European Association of Writers (German: Europäische Schriftsteller-Vereinigung, ESV) was founded. The group had about 40 prominent Finnish authors, including Mika Waltari, Tito Colliander, Jarl Hemmer and Maila Talvio. In the interwar and war years, Tigerstedt was the main ideologue of a group of young right-wing extremists called the Black Guard.