Breaking through Walls: A Look at the Life of Leif Hovelsen

Abstract

As a student, Hovelsen was active in the resistance against the Nazi occupation of Norway. He was betrayed to the SS, got arrested and was taken to Grini Concentration Camp. There he was put into solitary confinement and was interrogated, tortured and threatened with a death sentence.

A profound transformation came about which led Hovelsen to devote his life to reconciliation between individuals and nations. This experience brought him to the industrial Ruhr area of Germany where he worked with others to build up a new, different kind of country. Informally, and in hindsight, effectively, he later contributed to a new relationship between the governments of Bonn and Oslo.

Still later he was engaged in creating coalitions of conscience on both sides of what was still the Iron Curtain; a personal contribution to what became visible by the fall of the Berlin Wall and also the Glasnost and Perestroika process.