I heard that one member of ABBA came from a Nazi family–is that true?
The father of Anni-Frid Lyngstad (a.k.a. “the brunette girl”) was a Nazi soldier–but she never knew him. In 1943, German sergeant Alfred Haase arrived in Ballangen, Norway. He was 23 years old, had a wife at home, and was part of a despised occupying army–but successfully wooed local girl Synni Lyngstad with a bag of potatoes. (She reciprocated with whale meat.) Their last night together left Lyngstad pregnant with Anni-Frid, born in 1945. Lyngstad’s mother knew that because the child was a “tyskerunge“–the illegitimate child of a German soldier–she would be ostracized. So she relocated with her granddaughter to Sweden, where twenty-eight years later, Abba formed. The Lyngstad family believed that Haase’s ship home had been sunk, but in 1977, he turned up in West Germany, convinced Abba’s management that he wasn’t a fraud, and met his superstar daughter.
(Excerpted from the 2006 book Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton’s Little John?: Music’s Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed, published by Three Rivers Press, written by Gavin Edwards.)