Carl Ernfrid Carlberg

Carl Ehrenfried was the son of the building contractor Gustaf Carlberg. He served as an officer in the Göta Engineer Regiment and graduated in civil engineering in 1912. In the same year, he was a member of the Swedish team that won gold in the Swedish system team event at the Stockholm Olympics. He supported the Swedish Gymnastics Association financially in founding Lillsveds Idrottsfolkhögskola on Värmdö, an island in the Stockholm archipelago.

In 1928, Carlberg founded the Gymniska Förbundet (Gymnastics Association) and its magazine “Gymn” under the motto “health, character, beauty”. Influenced by racial ideology and anti-Semitism he saw gymnastics as a means for social renewal in contrast to unhealthiness, ethical laziness, and degeneration. In 1934, the association was replaced by Samfundet Manhem (Man’s Home Community) with Carlberg as its secretary. He also founded the publishing house Svea Ryke for racist propaganda literature and was the Swedish representative in the German far-right propaganda agency Fichtebund. During World War II, Carlberg continued to support Nazi Germany’s activities in Sweden in various ways including recruiting Swedish volunteers for the Wehrmacht and compiling lists of Swedish Jews.

After the war, he co-founded the “Aid Committee for the Children of Germany”, which financed German and European Nazis on the run. He used his money to publish neo-Nazi propaganda books and magazines and was active in the Swedish National Socialist Struggle League. In 1958, Carlberg was sentenced to a fine for distributing anti-Semitic writings. According to his testament, the Carlberg Foundation began to operate after his death in 1962, working in a Nazi and explicitly anti-Semitic spirit. Carlberg was married to Elsa Maria Dymling; they had a daughter and a son.