One day when I was well into the process of writing this book a long, white envelope arrived on my desk. The letter was addressed to ‘Rolf Widerøe, 5415 Nussbaumen, Schweiz .’ Postmarked in Alicante, Spain , 1994. Sender: Viggo Widerøe . Inside the envelope were two sheets closely written by a shaky, elderly hand. The first page had been annotated on a top corner: ‘Very important letter from Viggo.’ Rolf’s eldest son, Arild , had found the letter among his late father’s papers and thought that I should see it.

The content of the letter was remarkable, but what was more remarkable was that it was new to Arild and that nobody else in the family knew about it either. The letter was about something they had hardly ever discussed but that they knew a little about nevertheless: the relationship between the brothers Rolf and Viggo during the war.

Arild had read in Waloschek’s book about his father that the Germans had used Viggo as a bargaining chip to persuade Rolf to go to Germany, saying that they would try to have Viggo’s prison conditions improved. There were just a few lines about this on pages 5 and 63 in Rolf’s autobiography, written for him by a German professor of physics. That was all the information the family had to go on. When Tor Brustad researched in the Norwegian National Archives some years later, he found further evidence that Rolf had hoped to help his brother. The book didn’t say to what extent he had succeeded, but he had tried. His brother survived. That was briefly what the family had known since Waloschek’s book was published in 1993, and they had not even known that in the fifty years prior to 1993.

Then the letter came to light in summer 2007, the letter from brother to brother, explaining so much but nevertheless saying so little:

Now I realise for the first time how hard you tried to help me during the war. Considering what happened, it is pretty certain that your efforts were successful.

And slightly further on:

I was moved to the garden, where I was the only gardener. With nobody supervising me.

No warm words, no grand gestures, no easy embrace. Just sober language. After so many years of silence, that is drama enough.

So it has last been revealed in black and white: Rolf really did help him during the war. Viggo has learned that now, in his ninetieth year, not because Rolf had told him directly but because it has been published in a book. In the letter, Viggo tells Rolf that he now knows. The brothers are now about 90. When all this happened, they were about 40. Since then they have been silent, thought their own thoughts, stayed silent.

Meantime they have visited each other on holiday, laughed together and enjoyed each other’s company along with their children and grandchildren … put the war behind them. It’s best that way. They have come to terms with life in the present, with each other and perhaps with themselves. So many strange things happened at that time. Let’s draw a line under it and go forward. There’s nothing to be gained by digging up old ashes. Anyway, nobody would understand. And then one February day in 1994 while Norway and the world was following the Winter Olympics at Lillehammer, evidence appears that even the brothers themselves had not been clear about everything.

‘Now I realise for the first time,’ Viggo writes, ‘that it was you, Rolf, who managed to arrange things so that I survived in the prison.’ An elderly man living in a hilly suburb of Oslo can now put the bits of his life’s jigsaw puzzle in place. An older brother sitting in his armchair in Switzerland can be confident that his brother now knows. Neither of them needs to wonder any longer.

Thank God that the tabloid press wasn’t there. A few simple sentences among apologies for not having sent thanks for the Christmas present before now, talk of almond trees in bloom and ‘You’ll surely be coming to visit us in Spain this year too.’ The question is solved.

It may seem strange, but that is how it was. Here is the letter—which was Viggo’s thank you letter for the recently published book that Rolf had sent to his brother and sister in Oslo for Christmas:

8/2–94

Dear Rolf,

Thank you very much for your long Christmas letter. Best wishes to you and all the family in this new year. You complain of poor memory, but there is no sign of that in your letter! I hope I have thanked you for the two books about your life. Else got one of them. I’ve only now had time to read the whole book. I haven’t been able to thank Pedro W., I don’t have his address, but you can convey my appreciation. Greetings from Egil Amundsen, who was very impressed by your work. He liked the book because it was so honest and so well written.

Now I realise for the first time how hard you tried to help me during the war. Considering what happened, it is pretty certain that your efforts were successful. First I was sent from the North-East right to the South of Darmstadt, Dreibergen. People serving a ten year sentence were obviously considered dangerous and not allowed to work outside.

On the day I arrived at the prison there I was called up to see the boss, a major of the old school.

We had a friendly chat about Norway and our culture. (He obviously hated Hitler.) After I had been working in the fields for a couple of months he came on an inspection of the camp. I was called in from work and again had an amiable conversation with him—He was called Mohr, by the way.

Soon after that I was moved from agricultural toil to the garden, where I was the only gardener. With nobody supervising me. Among other things, grew tobacco that close friends got a little of. The last winter there was work in the woods, but the guards realised the way things were heading and paid hardly any attention to the work or to us.

The Americans came in March and some of us took over the running of the camp (2,200 men) and evacuated it in a week. After that I became an interpreter and secretary in General Patton’s military government and had many unusual duties round about Hessen. Closed banks, dismissed the management and opened them again with new management and masses of money, apparently provided from the USA .

Have had sun and summer weather almost all the time since 14/11. Now the almond trees are in blossom. Are you coming to visit in ‘winter?’

Love to all the family,

Viggo

P.S. It was the 60 years jubilee of the airline in Bodø recently. There was a pamphlet made up about the history of the company, that I have asked them to send to you.

After four short pieces about his time in prison there was a sentence saying that he had been freed by the Americans. All equally undramatic. Was this really all news to Rolf? Didn’t he know which German camps his brother had been in? Didn’t he know that Viggo had served under one of the leading American generals of the Second World War, tank-general Patton himself? For he too had come home at the end of May 1945. Some of this information must have been new to him. Otherwise Viggo would not have included it in such a brief letter—even though it is clearly an attempt to sum things up for himself also.

We may wonder.

The Family Knew Nothing

The family knew nothing about these events until they came to light one day in the letter. Was that how things were? So had Rolf succeeded in having his brother’s condition in captivity improved?

All that they had been able to learn previously was from two short mentions in Waloschek’s book:

In the hope of freeing his brother Viggo – the Norwegian aviation pioneer who had taken part in the resistance against the Germans – from imprisonment in Germany, Rolf agreed in 1943 to come to Hamburg and build his youthful dream, a ‘radiation transformer’ or ‘betatron’ that could be used to generate powerful X-rays . 1

Slightly further on there is a description of how this came about:

When we came to the Grand Hotel , they asked me if I would go with them to Berlin. They thought it could be helpful to my brother. (…) The German officers implied that my brother could possibly be released if I helped them. That was decisive for me, and I said I would be willing to go to Berlin . 2

There was nothing in the book about what any input towards Viggo’s welfare had consisted of, or whether it had succeeded. But it did say that Rolf had visited him in prison. Viggo’s daughter Turi expands on that 3 :

I know that Uncle Rolf visited Dad in several prisons in Germany, and that he tried to help to have him released. Nothing concrete ever came out of this.

Several weeks after the publication of the book, Viggo wrote the letter saying that he had read the book and had been able to see with his own eyes that his brother really had helped him. This was the confirmation of what he basically thought. However, it was only when the letter was found among Rolf’s papers that the wider family learned about it. Reconciled at last. They hadn’t needed to know everything. What one or the other had said and done and thought and known wasn’t important. They just wanted to look to the future and live in peace with each other. Be friends. The letter confirmed that had been right. Then it was laid aside, annotated ‘Very important letter from Viggo’ and rediscovered in 2007.

Nowadays it is difficult to understand that close family members—even the two most directly involved—were unaware of the facts for a long time. However, considering the circumstances during the war and trying to imagine oneself in that unusual situation with all aspects of daily life affected by military rule, it may not appear so remarkable. When families were meeting for birthday celebrations after the war, it is perhaps understandable that they didn’t want to accompany their coffee and cream cake with conversation about gruesome events and prison camps. Then as time passes, one would not want to open up grim memories. Some people try to forget. There is a communal erasure of recollection. It has something to do with respect, possibly mixed with an element of pride in a respectable family. And maybe a little fear.

That is one explanation. The other is that you just didn’t talk about what you had done during the war. End of story. You just did things because they had to be done … and learned not to ask questions.

Another reason for not being surprised that the Widerøe family didn’t know, is so obvious that it is nearly always overlooked. People are different. Families are different. It is commonly thought that an extreme situation accentuates individual characteristics. If one doesn’t want to intrude on others’ feelings, if respecting each other’s integrity and boundaries is a family virtue, if tolerance and good manners are important, secrets will be buried without any deliberate intention to conceal them.

In All Directions

In time of war, the undercurrents in large extended families with many children often run in many directions. Such was the situation in the Widerøe family, even though they were relatively prosperous. The waters could be choppy, and family celebrations had to be arranged with a careful weather eye. Also, some family members were abroad or elsewhere, or busy with other and ‘more important’ activities. This did not stop the different currents but it made them less obvious. Arild recalls that during the war they obviously continued to visit Grandmother and Grandfather at their house in Vinderen on important occasions and at other times.

But so far as I can remember there wasn't much contact between the adults in the family during the war. After the war, things returned to normal quite quickly. My grandparents on my father’s side, Carla and Theodor , had this fine big country place on Skjæløy near Fredrikstad. We were always welcome to go there. Skjæløy was always open.

All ages went to the country retreat; it was a ‘sanctuary.’ Uncles and aunts and cousins came. Then the next generation and their partners. As the years passed, they discovered things that they had not known about before, either because they had been children at the time or because these things just weren’t spoken about. Practical common sense, respectful good manners, a long tradition of solidarity and a large measure of love all worked their healing powers, helped as always by the passage of time. The family is unanimous that they have now left the stormy waters far behind. Nobody denies that it was difficult; but it is over.

Thor Spandow , son of Rolf’s sister Else, says that relationships within the family have always been good, across all generations. ‘My uncle Viggo used to visit his parents at Vinderen after work several times a week.’

Then he goes on to tell me about the summers on Skjæløy with his cousins Kari and Turi (Viggo’s daughters) and Unn and her brothers who came from Switzerland , and all the others. He tells of grandmother’s matriarchal role and grandfather sun-bathing and sea-bathing , Aunt Grethe who built a house on the adjacent land and his mother Else who took over her parents’ country home.

They were strong people,’ he says, ‘but I never heard of any hostility. True, there was some tension between Rolf and Viggo after the war, but they chose to look beyond that. Time passed, and the family relationships were restored. I’ve heard the story of why Rolf went to Germany, told to me afterwards in the way the family wants to interpret it. But what my mother told me was that he went to Germany to help his brother who was in prison. I’ve formed my own ideas about it on the basis that he was scientifically talented but politically illiterate. There was no opportunity for him to develop his project in Norway. His in-laws had a certain admiration for Germany, in their own way. Sunday lunches were an institution in the Widerøe family,’ he continues ‘and that must have been difficult sometimes. For a while Aunt Solveig , Viggo’s wife, was not often there, and the same was true of Aunt Ragnhild . But that’s all history now. Everybody chose to look to the future. 4

Difficult?

With Viggo and his wife and several others having been so involved in the resistance, we would think that it must have been difficult for Rolf to find his way back to a normal situation in the wider family. Viggo, the resistance worker, would remember that Rolf was married into a family with Nazi sympathies. 5 Then when his brother suddenly started working for the enemy while Viggo himself sat in prison, we cannot avoid the question of how this would affect the subsequent relationships between the two of them and within the whole family. It was obviously an unusual and a dangerous situation. However, when we ask family members about it now they all reply that this did not pull the family apart as might have been feared. Family life gradually returned to normal. Rolf’s nephew Aasmund Berner describes it thus in a conversation with me:

Rolf and Viggo fumbled to re-establish their relationship. So we just didn’t talk about it. There was nothing to be said. But it was there in the background nevertheless.

But surely Rolf had been trying to get his brother’s prison conditions improved?

Yes, I have heard that, but some people think it could be seen differently. Other members of the family know more about this than I do and not everybody interpreted the situation in the same way, but afterwards there was reconciliation all round. 6

So what did Rolf’s brother-in-law Egil Reksten think abut the relationship between the two brothers?

I remember - I think it was on his ninetieth birthday – that Viggo wondered if he had been too angry with his big brother.

How was that?

He wondered, when he though about it later, whether he had not been as considerate as he should have been.

Was he thinking about anything in particular?

No, I don’t think so. He had certainly criticised Rolf, said something or other in conversation, I believe, that he was worried could have been understood as criticism. I don’t remember what it was.

Then I asked about the story of Rolf’s visit to Viggo in prison in Germany.

Really? I didn’t know about that. I don’t even know which prison Viggo was in.

I go on to point out that conditions improved towards the end of Viggo’s time in prison. I ask if he knows whether Rolf was responsible for that.

No, I know nothing about that. Nothing at all. 7

So none of this had been a topic of conversation. Nor was there much evidence of bad blood between the brothers, at any rate not so far as their brother-in-law knew.

Two Daughters’ Accounts of Their Father and Their Uncle

Viggo’s daughter Turi Widerøe also emphasises the reconciliation, saying quite plainly:

Nowadays the family has got over the wartime difficulties, put them behind, been reconciled. 8

She was three or four years old when her father was arrested and says she cannot remember her father and her uncle Rolf having a difficult relationship. If they had problems, they kept them to themselves.

Her sister, Wanda Widerøe , who was born seven years after the end of the war, describes her father as a man of peace.

Father was tolerant. He just let people get on with their own lives. Setbacks and difficulties didn’t seem to bother him. He always chose to look at the good side of other people. 9

Their opinion is supported by the senior member of the family, Rolf and Viggo’s sister Else. It is no longer ‘dangerous’ for people to ask questions; and they get answers. Rolf’s father-in-law was a Nazi. Rolf was not. Nor was Ragnhild. Rolf did work in Germany towards the end of the war. Yes, he was politically naïve. Yes, he had to take the consequences of that. Yes it was a difficult time, but we have held together and got over it.

Two Sons’ Accounts of Their Father and Their Uncle

I need to ask Rolf’s sons about this too. First, Arild the elder of the two:

How was the relationship between your father and Viggo?

All I know is that when my father died in 1996, Viggo wrote to my mother that “Rolf was a very good friend. He was my best friend” And he didn’t just write that to be polite. Viggo wasn’t like that.

Viggo wrote that “Rolf was my best friend”?

Yes.

I’ve heard that when they retired they often visited each other at Viggo’s place in Spain.

Yes, they holidayed down there regularly during the years when Viggo lived in Spain in winter.

But he didn’t come to Rolf’s funeral?

No, but they hadn’t expected him to come to Switzerland then. He was 92 at the time. And he wasn’t the type who goes to funerals. So I fully understand. He didn’t even want any funeral for himself. He didn’t think anything of the church and the priests; it was all just hypocrisy.

But your father had a slightly different view, hadn’t he?

Yes, my father was religious, not in the sense that he went to church regularly, absolutely not. But he would go to the Christmas service. At first we went to Germany. Here in Switzerland they are reformed and we were Lutherans, so we travelled right over the border to Waldshut and went to church there. He liked that best. At first we always went there. But later it was Zürich . For there was a Norwegian, yes we can call it a congregation, there. And my brother and I still go there on Christmas Eve, together with other Norwegians and half-Norwegians. We don’t meet at other times, but we greet each other and wish each other Merry Christmas. It’s the same every year. The whole service is in Norwegian. A real Christmas feeling. Some people come in national costume, and it’s a proper Norwegian celebration. We’re trying to hold on a little to our traditions.

Then I ask Arild’s younger brother, Rolf jnr., for his assessment of the relationship between his father and Viggo.

I can’t really tell you very much about that. I think it was alright. But I don’t know if there was something to do with Uncle Viggo having been a prisoner in Germany. I don’t know, I’m not sure about that connection. But what I do know is that even though Viggo said he would never set foot in Germany again, he would just fly over it, he was very, very welcoming to all the visitors we had on summer holidays, irrespective of whether they were German or they were Swiss. He spoke fluent German with them and was careful not to show that he didn’t want to have anything to do with anything German.

He adds that many people who had experienced the same conditions as most of the population during the occupation often complained and felt sorry for themselves, but that those who had been in prison and experienced greater hardships didn’t talk about it afterwards.

Wasn’t Uncle Egil also in a concentration camp?

Yes, he was in German captivity for almost four years. He disappeared as a Nacht und Nebel prisoner.

He has never said a word about that. Never. I think it’s something you just don’t talk about. Perhaps Father realised that this silence was connected with something unpleasant and so he didn’t want to talk about it either. I don’t know…

But your father visited Viggo in the prison in Germany. Once, anyway. I’ve heard that from several people. Did you ever talk about that with your father?

No, not at all. I’ve never spoken with him about that. The first time I heard about it was when Waloschek started writing the book.

Some people firmly maintain that your father was trying to have his brother’s prison conditions improved.

I’ve read about that. And do you know what I thought?

No.

I really wasn’t sure.

Advocate de Besche

Another person whose opinion should be heard is Rolf’s defence counsel, Oscar de Besche. As a defence counsel’s job is to defend, it is no surprise that de Besche made Rolf’s situation the main thrust of his presentation of the case to the authorities, describing it as a choice between agreeing to work in Germany or ending up in a concentration camp, and that in the middle of this dilemma it was revealed that ‘if he worked, his brother would be allowed concessions and possibly released.’ 10

The defence counsel based his case on what Rolf had written to him during the legal process, in a situation where he was under pressure and where he revealed more than he did later in interviews when everything was more remote. Here, he also told about colleagues in NEBB whom he had tried to have released:

‘The deciding factor for me in the question of whether to work for the Germans or to refuse was that they promised to release my brother. If my only brother, who had been sentenced to ten years corrective detention were to die down there (he had already been very ill in the prison), I would always feel myself partly responsible for his death. Nor do I think that my father, who was very frail, would have been able to survive such a loss. As I also knew that the requested work was not important for the German war effort, I can’t see that I really had any choice. Finally, I will just add that the Germans also promised to release 13 men from (…) and (…) who were in prison. I worked a lot on this case and finally succeeded in having two men set free, (…) and (…)’ 11

After quoting from Rolf’s note, de Besche adds ‘I think we can agree that there was no real choice here,’ and also ‘It should be noted that although Viggo Widerøe was not released, he did in fact subsequently receive several reductions in the severity of his conditions in corrective detention and he survived the war.’

Tor Brustad asked Viggo about the relationship with his brother when he was studying the legal case. He summarises his impression for me thus:

‘It was obvious throughout that they were close. But I got the impression that Viggo was disappointed that Rolf had married into a Nazi family. He thought that was going too far, but brotherly loyalty is what features most and I think he also really admired his older brother for all he had achieved. I really think that he thought inwardly that the relationship with Rolf during and just after the war had been problematic, especially because of Rolf’s work in Germany. It must have been tense between them at times, really tough, but they chose to look beyond that. They wanted to be at peace, they wanted a good relationship, and I think they achieved that. Viggo appeared very fond of his brother.’

After hearing in this conversation with Brustad that the brothers had had their difficulties, I thought: ‘If the two main characters decided to live in peace with each other, should I respectfully leave it at that and not dig any deeper into the matter?’ At that point I had not yet read the ‘important letter from Viggo.’ I just knew that the brothers regularly visited each other during their years of retirement, that their children remembered the summers together in the 1940s and 50s as an important part of their growing up—and that they have maintained these close relationships as adults. Curiosity about the reconciliation that must have taken place, and indeed about whether there was anything that needed to be reconciled, had led me to ask questions to all of them, for surely it couldn’t be hurtful to have the matter elucidated from several angles. If everything was as it should be, truth would not harm the relationships. Nevertheless, I hesitated to write about it; something about respect for other peoples’ private lives held me back.

But then I received the letter and changed course, out of respect. That needed to be included. The fact that the brothers had had difficulties during the war and for a while afterwards tallied with the letter and did not need to be hidden. They had been reconciled for a long time; before the biography, before the letter and before they knew all that was to be known. If they had not had difficulties relating to each other from their contrasting situations, I couldn’t have taken them seriously. And I realised—as if it was a surprise—that it hadn’t always been so easy for them either. No, obviously. How did they manage to do it?

My conclusion was: The two brothers had been through a lot during the war, both separately and together. Their relationship had been put to a hard test, the task of leaving the pain behind and going forward as friends. That was what the letter was really about. Their reconciliation was obviously not cheaply bought. They didn’t need to know about what was in the letter, but the content confirmed that their choice to be reconciled was the right choice, and posterity understands a little more about what unconditional reconciliation is and the good it can bring.

With Inhibitions Down

So many years with such good friendship but so little said. These were men who lived as they had learned, thinking well of each other.

The fact that Rolf didn’t come home from Switzerland for his father’s funeral in 1947 might be thought to fit in with this pattern of silence and stiff upper lip, but it did surprise me. Was he so inconsiderate, so lacking in compassion for his mother as not to come home for the funeral? Was he so lacking in respect for his father, who had been his skiing companion over countless miles? His father, with whom he had gone on walking expeditions and motoring tours. This too appears inconsistent, but the hard fact is that he did not travel home to his father’s funeral in January 1947, a few months after he had moved to Switzerland. A member of a good family whose members had a lot of contact with each other did not attend his father’s funeral.

We are tempted to wonder: Was he frozen out? Was he embarrassed? Was he worried he might arouse rumours? Concerned about what the family would say? Or was he so tired and disillusioned with Norway that he couldn’t face the thought of going there? Did he lack a sense of his proper duty as the eldest son? It was his father who had given him the means to study overseas. Or could Rolf not afford to travel back to Norway? That would not be surprising after two years without a salary. Did he just not go to funerals? His brother Viggo was said to be the type of person who doesn’t go to funerals. Was that how Rolf thought too? Did he not care, did he just go his own way without thinking of others?

That is how the simple fact might be interpreted, but like the Widerøe family we should not jump to negative conclusions too soon. There may be things we don’t know. Once again, help arrives on my desk in the shape of letters; two almost 70 year old letters from son to mother. The first was written by Rolf on 23rd January 1947, the very day his father died, when his inhibitions were down.

Dear Mum!

We just received the telegram telling us of Dad’s death. It’s strange to think that he is gone, almost impossible to believe. Yes, we shall miss him a lot, most of all yourself. It’s so sad to have father’s last letter with your note added; it was obviously like a last greeting from him, but I really didn’t think at that time that everything would happen so quickly. – It must have been a hard week for all you at home. Down here we have been able to keep going and wait and hope. Today we received Else’s letter explaining how everything had gone, and we did have a slight hope that it would pass over. But then when the doorbell rang at 9 o’clock this evening we both understood what it was.

It’s strange to think back now to the last time I was at home with Dad. He was sitting at his desk sorting his stamp collection while I sat working. Then he told me about little bits and pieces from his youth: about the first time he came to Kristiania; his work in Eide; walking tours in Nordmarken and from home. I had never really come so close to him before that time, he spoke so openly and friendly and I am really thankful for that last time when I was at home.

You’ll all have a lot to cope with now until everything is sorted out, but I hope that Viggo as he wrote in his letter to me can deal with Dad’s business affairs and you’ll also have help from Edel , Else and Grethe . You can write at once if you want me to come home for the funeral. If it is possible at all (flights are not easy to find), as it is not an easy matter. If so, one of you will need to buy a return flight for me and telegraph the confirmation. (I will sort out the payment when I come home.)

It’s very difficult for me to come away from here just now when we are busy with some very definitive trials.

Please give my love to all the others and thank Else and Viggo for the letter.

I daren‘t write much more, for there is so much I need to think about and think back on.

Much love, Rolf.

In the top margin there are two added notes:

There is no telephone connection with Norway, though there is a connection with Sweden . My no. is 335232 but I assume that Viggo is now with you.

The letter Dad was expecting was about the tax return. I expect that it has arrived and Viggo can deal with it.

I think his mother understood. He can no longer be labelled as cynical and unfeeling. If his old mother had ever been in doubt about her son’s disposition, and if the letter didn’t demonstrate clearly enough his compassion and feelings, she would have been emphatically convinced when the next letter arrived, written nine days later and after he had received an account of the funeral from his sister.

The Children Are in Bed

This letter is longer than the previous one. Rolf must have had a lot of emotions to cope with—her own little boy, her clever, grown-up son far away there in Switzerland :

Giesshübelstr. 114, Zürich 1/2-47

Dear Mum!

Now the hustle and bustle of the week is over, the children are in bed and I would like to have a chat with you. I’ve just taken the recent letters out to look over. (We keep them all.) Else’s letter which we got on Monday, your letter which you wrote on Monday and a long letter from Uncle Marius that we got today, where he tells us about the funeral. It’s a strange feeling to be so far away in quite different surroundings and experience the whole funeral and the whole mood at the funeral meal. I think I can see the whole table and all the guests talking, there’s just one thing I cannot imagine and that is that Dad is not there at the departure feast. He seemed so surely there in the picture that I almost think I can see him at the head of the table nodding and smiling and doing everything to ensure the guests are happy. Yes I can’t believe that he is gone and that I shan’t see him any more and get his letters. I did think when I last saw him and said goodbye to him that the future was uncertain but as you know we hesitate to think the worst and of course I didn’t say anything about that to him

Uncle Marius tells me that you have had good help with everything at this time but of course I realise that it has not been easy for you. After all, you were the person who knew Dad best and it must have been almost like losing a part of yourself. However I think it must be a comfort to you that he had such a gentle and beautiful death. It was almost as if he had completed what he had to do here on Earth and was now drawing back so as not to be a burden for you others, indeed it would hardly surprise me if that was how he had been thinking—he always thought of other people before himself.

Now I hope that you are taking it all calmly. There’s no benefit in losing heart and as I have said to you once before I think that the departed would rather see it that way. There is indeed a lot you will have to see to now and I can imagine that needs a calm head and a clear vision. I’m glad that Viggo is coming to town in March, I wrote to him and urged him to continue Dad’s businesses and not squander the good will that Dad had built up throughout his long working life.

Uncle Marius said in his letter that he would visit you more often and I think you will be very glad of that for I think he is easy and friendly—Yes, I think I like him best of all the brothers.

As you can well imagine, the work down here needs my full attention. When I got the first telegram about the heart attack I wondered right away whether I should try to get a flight home, but I decided that it was better to wait for further details. Viggo’s telegram reassured me somewhat and suddenly it was too late.

I’m glad you didn’t feel that I as the eldest son should necessarily be at the funeral. What would have meant more for me would have been to say goodbye to him while he was alive—to bid my farewell to his coffin is not the same. Also, as I wrote already I’m now working fully on my transformer, we hope to have it ready by 1st June but if the calibrations I am now working on are not properly done (and they are not at all easy) I run the risk of a year’s work being wasted and needing to be repeated. So I have been so exhausted in the evenings that I simply haven’t been able to gather my thoughts to write a sensible letter home to you and that is why I have not written sooner.

All is well with us here. We are all healthy and that’s really quite surprising because it has been frightfully cold here now for a week or more. The temperature has been as low as 17 °C below zero and we had only 12–13 °C in the living room at home. It generally started with 8–9° in the morning and then rose slowly throughout the day to about 11° at 3 o’clock and 12–13° when I came home about half past six. It has been a hard time for Ragnhild who is at home most of the day. It’s nice and warm in the office but it’s only 10–11° in the laboratory, where I go around in a winter coat most of the time. Happily, it now looks as if the worst of the cold has passed and today it was quite spring-like with sunshine and only a few degrees of frost. – We use the car only on Sundays, but we have been away skiing almost every Sunday since the snow came. Last Sunday there was not much snow where we went, and it was mainly Rolf and I who practised—he has become very good on the slopes this winter.

Otherwise, the children are working hard at school. They have long hours and not much free time, but apart from the fact that they are not much out in the open air I don’t think it’s doing them any harm. I’ve just started teaching Arild to read, but we’ve not yet come far enough for there to be anything to boast about. Unn , on the other hand, is struggling with unbelievably difficult assignments and she keeps at it from morning till evening with school, sewing and gymnastics (to get herself in shape and look fashionable). Best wishes to everyone and love both to you and to Else , from Rolf.

PS:

I would be very grateful if you could keep some little personal thing from Dad for me so that I can have a particular little memento of him.

This letter to a grieving widow is not from the brilliant high voltage engineer with a doctorate and a top position in European business life. Nor is it from a man with a history of a mysterious stay in Germany during the war who has paid a fine for treason. It is from her boy, her eldest child—now 44 years old and father of three children, in mid-life and chasing time, who is sitting in a draughty three-room flat in Zurich , writing thoughtfully and intimately. A son who writes freely about stress at work and stress at home, now able after the demands of the week to sit down, gather his thoughts and write a letter home. A man who is concerned about the people back home and about his own family with him in a foreign land. He keeps the letters from Norway and brings joy to a grandmother by telling her about her grandchildren; how far Arild has progressed in learning to read and little Rolf in learning to ski. He tries to be sensible and sensitive, finding points of light amid the grief to comfort both his mother and himself. He writes about big and little things, what has been and what is to come. This letter embraces a whole life and a whole clan. Written in a moment of disinhibition, in a language so different from the terse, clipped sentences of his biography which might give the impression that he was emotionally shallow.

And the old lady who has recently been widowed, sitting in the family house at Vinderen and reading the letter—as a mother she must have thought after all, her fledgling had not really flown so very far from the nest. It was a letter that her Theodor could have written. And then she thinks about all the times he had been out with the boys in the countryside, or all the occasions sitting by the stove in the cabin when visiting friends with children of the same age. As if it was yesterday. Life is so short.

High Expectations

Since settling in Switzerland in the autumn, Rolf had rapidly been caught up in the demands of his position. His first task at Brown Boveri, the betatron for the hospital in Zurich , was at its most definitive phase that spring, and a lot was at stake. He had much to protect and much to prove, for the directors at Brown Boveri who had confidence in him and had given him the opportunity to start a new life in Switzerland and for the family who must have had diverse thoughts about him, not least his brother Viggo . Also scientifically; now was when he was expected to demonstrate that he really could build the machine for which he had worked out the principles in theory.

There were also economic pressures. He was responsible for a wife and three children who had been pulled up by the roots and replanted in a new land. Their finances had been uncertain since they moved. He had had to sell thirty patent rights to meet the cost of his fine to the Norwegian state. Some people thought that his wife’s father might have provided financial support. Others thought not, as he had enough problems of his own. Or his own father might have contributed.

That was exactly what Rolf’s father had done before, Rolf later repaying the loan with interest. After several years buying a house and establishing a family, Rolf had repaid the debt to his father in three instalments during the last stages of the war: 1,500 kroner in June 1943, 2,500 kroner in April 1944 and the rest, 15,000 kroner in March 1945, when he received his final payment from Theodor Hollnack .

His father’s death came suddenly on top of all this. Just ten days before his death he had written to Rolf about a ‘real predicament’ he had come into, as ‘the calculation is so excessive, they want to tax me for ten years for the 19,000 kroner plus 2,900 kroner in interest that you have paid me for outlays I had in connection with your education.’ He ‘had based it correctly in relation to my other children who have not had such expensive education, that you paid back the expenses your education had cost.’ But he hadn’t wanted to declare the asset as income until it was received, and he had declared everything as paid in 1945, but ‘the interest has been accumulating ever since 1920 when the loans started.’

Rolf replied to his father on 17th January with details of loan payments and other payments, paid and unpaid, and with figures from tax returns over the years. Just as embarrassed as his father was at having to take up this topic, Rolf accounted in much more detail than he needed to; that he had paid off the mortgage on the house and still owed his mother 10,000 kroner and had paid his father 625 kroner in April 1945 as interest on the debt that had been paid off.

It is not certain whether the letter reached his father before he died. None of them realised how ill the old man was, and Rolf concluded his letter by saying that it was sad to hear that father had had to take to bed again and had not recovered from the bronchitis, and recommending him to ‘go to a specialist with that cough of yours.’ 12

They got legal help to sort this out, and at his father’s request Rolf added a declaration confirming their agreement:

‘I hereby declare that later when my income and financial circumstances permit I shall according to my means pay back to Theodor Widerøe the expenses that are due in relation to my studies in Germany’.

Yes, it had to be sorted out. But it wasn’t simple. Economically, the next two years were characterised by tax problems and paying off the fine to the retributions directorate. Sales of shares, inheritances and advances on inheritances eventually cleared everything up. Rolf used his former defence lawyer, Advocate de Besche in Oslo to deal with it, including giving him full authority to sell shares. Rolf would also have liked to make use of the 3,500 kroner he had lent to Widerøe Airlines and 1,500 kroner to his brother Viggo , he wrote to his lawyer, but ‘If that is not suitable I would rather not cause Viggo or the business unnecessary difficulties but would rather wait for this payment until it is needed.’ His father-in-law had offered earlier to lend him money, but Rolf didn’t know if he had the means to do that now and he didn’t think it would be necessary. 13

But finance was now only one of the things he had to cope with.

The most important thing he had to prove was about himself. The radiotherapy machine he was working on should justify his going to Germany in 1943. Perhaps his father, when it came to the crunch, had also wanted him to attend to his project instead of coming to the funeral? Perhaps what needed to be taken care of was the opportunity his father had given him by sending him to a good technical college? Perhaps that was how to show respect, fulfil his obligations, do his duty.

– And a Dream

In thoughtful moments, Rolf reflected on how to keep everything that was important in his life in balance—including his dream. ‘Balancing’ and ‘dreaming’ are not obviously compatible, but Rolf shared a family trait that was both a strength and a weakness—a slightly proud sense of confidence. This was a characteristics maintained over several generations of strong personalities and sometimes stubborn individualists. The strength and perseverance had worked out well for many of them, but could be a challenge for the people round about them, as he said himself. At the same time, he reminded himself that one mustn’t forget ones dream.

Many years later, addressing Ragnhild in his speech at their golden wedding celebration in 1984, he spoke of life as ‘an oscillation between extremes’ and admitted that he sometimes lost the balance. He referred to the American comic strip ‘Bringing Up Father,’ about an oddly matched couple called ‘Jiggs and Maggie,’ that he had happened to read once before they met, and he pointed to a picture from the play ‘The House Tyrant’ on the wall behind him. He commented that living together for fifty years entails many challenges and pointed out that ‘Mankind is the great unknown.’ He had already wondered about this as a 15 year old and committed his thoughts to his diary, and in his golden wedding speech he added that among the guests were two psychiatrists who surely understood this better than he did himself. He then launched into a dissertation on the phenomenon of ‘men:’

Men come in many different shapes and sizes. There are the prophets totally absorbed in a fixed idea; people who try to scrape together as much money as possible; those whose greatest interest is in football and sport; and then thousands of other variations – artists, gardeners and industrious ants who wear out office desks. (…) And women have to sort all these variants out and get them into shape! (…) Think for example of being married to a prophet, such as Mohammed. That must have been dreadful. One day he was flying to Jerusalem on a winged horse and the next he was sallying out with sword in hand to slaughter his neighbours. You can be glad, Ragnhild, that you didn’t marry such as that. But we men do have a touch of the prophet and the fixed idea as part of our nature; I will make no excuses on that score. There have been times when I have been rather monomaniac and my thoughts and vision were very restricted. But apart from tennis I have never been interested in sport, at least that is one redeeming feature.

Then he takes up the topic of women and the discourse becomes even more subtle, for he doesn’t claim to know very much about women, who ‘are much more unknown and unresearched than the relatively simple menfolk’ and who have ‘many difficult duties in a marriage.’ They need to control the ‘prehistoric’ creatures known as men ‘with the help of little words, hints and suggestions—a type of soft power.’

We can think of man as an old locomotive spitting steam and smoke and constantly needing to be controlled, working under high pressure, huffing and puffing, swaying and jerking, with thousands of wheels and controls needing to be greased regularly, requiring patient handling because it is unpredictable and can easily go off the rails – and the woman, she is the engine driver who tries to control the monster. In addition to this demanding job she has to cope with countless other difficulties. She needs to bring up the offspring – that is far beyond the man’s capabilities; she needs to go to the hairdresser every second week to have her hair washed; and sometimes, as for example here in our house, she needs to control the purse-strings and see to it that I get my monthly pocket-money.

He concludes in the same half-humorous, semi-serious style:

As you will understand, Ragnhild , from these rambling thoughts, I value your work in ‘bringing up father’ very highly. And when I grumble and complain because half of life is spent tidying up all the disorder or when I bristle like a hedgehog at the thought of buying new clothes or when I totally refuse to eat chicken, all this is just an indication that we value things a little differently. What seems to me highly unimportant and unnecessary is very important and significant for you. Of course you are usually right and I am profoundly grateful to you for keeping such a dumb, prehistoric creature under control. 14

Inside and Outside His Bubble

Nowadays we might call it tunnel vision. When Rolf goes into his own world, the world of the betatron, and shuts the door behind him he is in his bubble. Unlike many, he is aware of this. And he stays there. At a celebration with damask cloths and wine glasses on the table, his speech to his wife and to their guests reveals that he is not totally insensitive of how it must affect those around him when the urge to research takes control of him.

A person who has his ideas and will follow them to their conclusion; that was how Professor Tor Brustad characterised him. A bit of a boffin, as Brustad adds tactfully.

My impression is that Rolf had one great interest in life, namely technology and the development of accelerators . We could simply say that he was a bit of a boffin as his interest in this was so absorbing. That might be over-stating the point and it is not unkindly meant, but there is an element of truth in it. He was a person who formed his own opinions, and when he had made a decision it was very difficult to get him to change his mind.

A bit of a boffin? Yes, but not entirely, even though Brustad is not alone in describing him this way. Obsessed by his research, thinking of nothing else? His children don’t talk of him thus. Absorbed in it, dedicated—yes. A working life driven by creativity and curiosity, without ready-made answers, draws one in. I think he understood that. It is hardly by chance that when important occasions called for reflection and appropriate words, he spoke of balance, oscillation between outer points, seeing things differently, personal boundaries, mutual understanding, patience, tolerance and kindness.

Just science, no sentiment? Once again, no. If the idea that he was entirely absorbed in his work had ever crossed my mind, it became unthinkable after reading some of his private letters. Is it possible both to be super-engaged in ones work and to have warm feelings? Of course it is. Why not? Both require the same talent for understanding and involvement that calls for your full commitment and over-rules norms and circumstances. The diary he wrote in his youth; his conversations; talks I have had with his children and grand-children, sister, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nephews and nieces—These all declare that it is possible. ‘An uncle whom it was fun to visit,’ says a nephew. ‘We were always welcome,’ says a brother-in-law. ‘Father “celebrated” Sundays,’ says his youngest son, Rolf:

Early every Sunday morning he would sing and whistle and relax and fool around and be in a good mood. That affected the whole family. In those days people worked on Saturdays, but Father took Sunday off. We all went out on a trip. Every Sunday. We were the only people there who had a car, we drove for a bit and then we walked, or we skied, absolutely every Sunday. We children liked to have friends with us. Seven people in the car. He was good at holding the family together. We had friends with us when we went to Norway, too. Then when we grew a little older we no longer took part in the Sunday outings. But Mother and Father were often with friends then and went with them. But they always went on Sunday outings. As long as I can remember. Every Sunday at nine o’clock, they were off!

Then he tells me about his father’s interest in mushrooms and all the foreign trips he had made with friends in his student days:

He picked mushrooms, I remember, and knew many different types. If he wasn‘t sure, he tried them, took a chance with a tiny little bite. As a student he always had friends from Norway staying with him, Kaare Backer and his brother Viggo and others, and then they went to Paris and Spain and Venice and they were on mountain-tops here in Engadine at Pontresina and they must have had a great time.

Like his older brother, he denies that his father thought only about his job:

I don’t think it’s true that he thought only about his job. He certainly enjoyed his work a lot and was greatly interested in everything to do with it. He was interested in so many things. Right until the last two years of his life, when he must have had a stroke. But right up until then he was interested in everything possible. I remember his ninetieth birthday, which we celebrated in Oslo , in a hotel at Holmenkollen – and his friend Kaare Backer was also there and he was even a year older. And Backer didn’t say very much and he didn’t hear very well, but they had a splendid time together. They looked like two young boys. So I really do think that he enjoyed life.

Just science, no sentiment? No again. People aren’t as simple as that. Rolf wasn’t as simple as that. It would be unfair to portray him like that. He who confided in his diary that he felt tough and confident when he wasn’t near the girl he was in love with, but that when he was in her presence ‘a single glance from Elsie was enough to make me crazy.’ He who at the age of 44 gently asked his mother to ‘keep some little personal thing from Dad for me so that I can have a particular little memento of him.’ He who wanted to come back to Norway ‘when he grew old, really old’ as his grandson Per expressed it. ‘But he never seemed to realise that he was old.’ He continued following his dream.

Youthful Enthusiasm

‘Rolf was young all his life,’ said the physicist Jan Sigurd Vaagen . Nobody is so confident as a 22 year old of being able to solve a problem. There is a solution. No shadow of doubt. I’ve got the right idea. I’ll do it. I’ll build a machine of which nobody has seen the like. I’ll show the world. Faith moves mountains. Opposition is the trigger.

That was Rolf, all his long life. He kept his pioneering spirit, enthusiasm, curiosity and enterprising attitude alive for almost a century. If an exciting new development cropped up he grasped it, but he always had his fundamental idea in mind and he would take this up and look at it in a new light. Practical difficulties—minor problems such as a machine not working, a technology that failed or people not understanding—these were just obstacles which were there to be overcome. His faith didn’t falter. His view of the goal didn’t flicker. Young eyes see clearly.

At college in Karlsruhe, Rolf thought out the big idea for which he later became famous. The design idea was correct. He didn’t manage to prove that his theory was right, because he couldn’t get it to work in practice. But the theory and the principle were correct nevertheless. Others later got it to work. Lawrence in the USA took hold of the idea and built a similar machine. When he was awarded a Nobel Prize for that he was generous and gave Rolf credit where it was due. Rolf said ‘Hurray, I was right,’ drew back his shoulders and also developed a machine. A more powerful one, the first of its kind in Europe. Then there were more, many more. Slightly different, according to the need and the technology available at the time. They were installed in China , Australia , Russia, the USA and throughout Europe.

That was his career in a nutshell.

The whole world wanted his betatrons. He could have retired then, around 1970, at the height of his career; retired honourably, received prizes, delivered a few lectures, acted as a consultant. He had done a lifetime’s work. Museums wanted his machines. He was required reading in physics texts throughout the world. He had a broad experience and had been in industry in fields as diverse as power distribution and cancer treatment. He could have continued travelling as long as he was willing and able, enjoyed the fruits of his labour.

But not Rolf. He moved to pastures new. He spent the last twenty years of his working life researching how the radiation produced by the betatrons affected living tissue. What did it do to patients with cancer? Having already spent a working lifetime producing radiation, he now turned his attention to studying how it worked. He continued this until he was well into his eighties.

His vital, stubborn, persistent, open attitude to life included a slightly ‘alternative’ approach. He took his daily dose of dietary supplements, anointed his skin with various creams, thumped himself according to a fixed ritual and treated himself with acupuncture needles. With aristocratic tendencies and pleasure in company, he was a sort of pater familias for his extended family in Norway. They counted on him and he counted on them, even after fifty years in Switzerland . He attended all major family gatherings. The whole world was his arena.

His independent spirit was boundless. As a young technology student he sent an article on the analysis of monetary inflation to an economics journal, and he declined an offer to study for a doctorate at his old college because they wouldn’t listen to him and let him continue his chosen line of research. He travelled throughout Europe selling his own designed relays to the electrical power industry. He led the Widerøe Group in Hitler’s Germany, surrounded by Nazis, fantasists, allies, double agents and Nobel prize-winners . At the height of his career in radiation physics he changed over to a new subject area, biophysics . When he was already a pensioner, he adopted his orphaned grandson. On the evening of 21st July 1989, at the age of 87, after his obligatory trip to Norway he wrote in his travel diary, ‘drove 2810 km.’ and nobody was surprised. Six years after that, one of the head scientists at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg said that Rolf ‘is still full of ideas that he tests out on me.’ 15

Solar Energy and Acupuncture

Nor is it surprising that he threw himself into the public debates about solar energy and the disposal of nuclear waste . His brother-in-law Egil Reksten is keen to bring out this side of him too:

There are two things more that you must hear about, a couple of ideas he had. One was to do with nuclear waste. He said that there had been an attempt to store it under the Greenland inland glaciers, but that they hadn’t bored deep enough down. At a depth of 200 metres it would just slowly melt into a lake lying under the ice. It could lie there for so many thousand years without harming people or animals, but Greenland had protested strongly.

Then there was another thing, an appealing idea of sending energy without wires, and that is something that is still a little in the future. He thought one could place a solar energy station out in space, where the solar energy could then be converted into short-wave radiation or electromagnetic radiation that would be directed in towards a receiver in an array of antennae on Earth, and so one would put solar cells out in space, a big station that would have much better performance than what we have down here. It would be unaffected by weather and such things. I think he said that for safety’s sake we should have a receiver aerial of 30 square kilometres or something like that, which would take in this electromagnetic radiation, short-wave radiation, yes, and then it would be transformed into electricity.

When was it that he talked about that? It sounds a very youthful idea.

No, no, it was in his later years.

I asked his grandson, Per, who lived with him at that time, about other ‘trendy’ ideas Rolf had as a pensioner in the 1970s:

Is it true that he had slightly unconventional views about medicine and the like?

Oh yes, he came back from China with a whole set of acupuncture needles and he had a doll showing where they should be inserted, and then he treated himself. People said afterwards that he was mad to have done that, as you need to be trained to do such things. But he thought it had helped him.

What was he trying to cure?

It was something to do with his back, sciatica, I think. He read what to do in the instructions and then did it himself. I think he only tried once. He realised that it really wasn’t such a good idea. But he was basically always very fit. He swam every day.

Did he? Yes, you had your own swimming pool.

Yes, even in winter.

Cut a hole in the ice and …?

Yes, I remember helping him to remove the ice. And once he got a really bad back after that. But he wouldn’t accept that it was the swimming. He maintained it was because we had eaten chicken! And so he never ate chicken again as long as he lived. After that it was always called turkey, not chicken, and then it was alright.

But surely there’s no connection between a sore back and eating chicken?

No, obviously not, but he maintained it for twenty years. He didn’t smile when he said it, so it seemed as if he believed it. But otherwise, alternative medicine, he didn’t really believe in it. Homoeopathy and the like, no. He didn’t go in for that sort of thing.

Always 22 Years Old

In many ways he stayed 22 years old his whole life. Roamed free, loved challenges, welcomed novelties. And it was very exciting. We can see this by trying to apply a label to every decade of his life. As he was born in 1902 and died in 1996, his own decades more or less match those of the century:

00: Child:

Don’t stand on the cables, Viggo !

10: Youth:

Come on a ski tour.

20: Student:

I have a dream.

30: Power industry:

I’m going to build the world’s best relay.

40: The betatron:

I’m going to build the world’s best betatron.

50: Social:

Welcome, I hope we’ll all have a lovely evening.

60: Biomedicine:

But what does this radiation do to the patient?

70: Adopted son:

Come and sit down, my boy.

80: Travel:

See you at Skjæløy in the summer.

90: More honours:

Now the only thing I lack is the Nobel Prize.

When the appetite for life is so great and the work so absorbing and when one is still 22 and a young, hungry, curious pioneer, new avenues open up all the time. One line of activity merges towards another and runs parallel. Such as starting to lecture in a technical college while still working in a major industry. Later, when research on betatrons had passed its peak, out went radiation physics and in came biophysics .

The fixed points in Rolf’s life were his wife and children and the visits to Norway every summer with a stop in Hamburg to visit friends. In his later years they were the family gatherings on Saturdays when children and grandchildren came to lunch. There were also the visits to his brother in Spain each spring, plus lecture tours all over the world.

Despite all this, people say that his view was blinkered. I can see their point. They talk of a one-track mind. Why? Rolf, whose activities were so wide: major industry and research; skiing and tennis; dancing; social gatherings; teaching; lecturing. A large circle of friends and acquaintances, colleagues he kept in contact with all his life, visits abroad right until his final years. And a big extended family in Norway who still had a good relationship with his sons when they were both over 70. Rolf, who went his own way and opened up new trails.

The family members themselves cannot quite agree whether he was single-minded or not. I ask Egil and Louise Reksten to assess their brother-in-law. Perhaps we might be coming towards the core of this complicated and controversial person:

Egil::

He did have a rather one-track mind.

Louise::

… No, not really …

Egil::

But yes, he is, he was like that. Yes, possibly, rather one-track, there weren’t many side-tracks. Anyway that’s my impression. But he was enthusiastic. And at the same time … He was an optimist. I don’t think he worried much about the end of the world. If he got a pain in his shoulder, he just went into the laboratory and gave himself a dose of X-rays.

Did he really treat himself like that?

Egil::

He had developed a pain in his shoulder. Yes, he had this idea that …

Then Egil the chemical engineer picked up a paper and pencil and began to draw. ‘The x-axis equals intensity; the y-axis equals damage. Those who were more mainstream at that time had already suggested that the relationship is like this’ He continues to draw. ‘The more radiation, the more damage. So the greater the risk. Others had said no, that it wasn’t quite like that, and that a little radiation wasn‘t so dangerous.’ Then he points at the diagram and explains:

Rolf thought that the radiation risk was probably like this.

Really?

That you would probably get benefit rather than harm from a little extra radiation. And there were even doctors in Germany who treated patients by taking them down into old mines where there was a particular combination of temperature and radiation. These were qualified doctors, not untrained quacks. Rolf said that nuclear researchers are among the people who take in a lot of radiation, and they live several years longer than the average in the population as a whole. That’s misleading.

It’s not politically correct to say that. And it’s not scientifically correct either.

No, it’s not, but it could be that he was right. I thought it was interesting.

Was he a follower of what we would now call alternative medicine? I’ve heard that he had a ritual every morning.

Yes, I can well believe that.

Was he unconventional about energy technology too? I’m thinking of nuclear power.

Oh yes, very much so. He thought firmly that we must embrace nuclear power. I think he saw it as a sort of intermediate stage until we could set up another, for example space-based, energy source.

The brother-in-law, chemical engineer and former concentration camp prisoner then launches into an enthusiastic account of all the radiotherapy machines Rolf made; the patents ; and the CERN laboratory crammed full of strong electromagnets and particles colliding at high speed under the ground, that Rolf had taken part in establishing at Geneva . And after that he had been involved in a similar centre, DESY in Hamburg ; and then PSI , the Paul Scherrer Institut outside Zürich ; and after that GSI, the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt. All of that.

When the last of these institutes was ready, Rolf was 67 and well under way with his research career number two, about the biological effects of radiation—alongside his continuing management position at Brown Boveri and the lectures at the college in the evenings. That was the year when he was awarded the Röntgen Medal and the scientific community began to understand that Rolf could have got the betatron to work while he was still a doctorate student if suitable equipment had been available at that time.

With all this behind him and going on round about him, three years later Rolf adopted a seven year old into his house. Throughout the boy’s whole upbringing Rolf continued to receive medals and honours, and the child had grown up and left home by the time Rolf’s career was finally crowned with international recognition as the founder of the science of particle accelerators . It is 1992. Rolf is 90. Several people have tried to get him to step down. His sons say that even when Brown Boveri finally deprived him of his office, that didn’t help; he went on working at home.

So we have come to the beginning of 1994. Christmas is over, and Rolf receives the letter from his brother, thanking him for the book. Another part of the equation is in place. We are approaching the position of being able to draw a line under the answer. But there are still several unknowns. The calculation isn’t complete. For on closer reflection: How could the content of this letter make such an impact? The brothers had been reconciled long before the letter. That is what was important. They had wanted reconciliation despite the wounds they didn’t understand; not because of knowledge that gave grounds for it.

figure a

(Photo Pedro Waloschek)

In his old age, Rolf Widerøe enjoyed going for walks in the local neighbourhood, always with his dog.

Perhaps the equation is solved nevertheless, for Rolf. The solution may be that there should always be something left over, something to wonder about. Perhaps life’s calculations should not work out. Life should be lived continuously, in a dynamic process where one is always in movement and taking the set-backs and the victories as they come, with whatever strength and endurance one has at the time. Perhaps that is the key; that a proper life is a dynamic life where the possibilities are numerous and overwhelming and never end—until life itself ends. Maybe that was his understanding. Perhaps.

***

During the last two years when his health began to fail, especially his hearing, Rolf sat a lot in the rocking chair by the big window in the living room. Read, as he had always done. Sitting there in the comfortable chair, with a wide view over the valley and up towards the hillsides overlooking the little village, not unlike a Norwegian landscape, he once again found something to take an interest in; the bird-life outside. He became absorbed in it. He observed. He wondered. He needed to know, and to know more. On the window sill there was an illustrated bird book.

Notes

  1. 1.

    The biography, Waloschek’s foreword.

  2. 2.

    The biography.

  3. 3.

    In conversation during the preparation of the book.

  4. 4.

    In conversation during the preparation of the book, 10th June 2010.

  5. 5.

    Tor Brustad refers to this in connection with the book, from an interview with Viggo Widerøe in the 1990s.

  6. 6.

    The conversations took place before the letter was known.

  7. 7.

    In conversation on 21st December 2006.

  8. 8.

    In conversation during the preparation of the book.

  9. 9.

    In conversation during the preparation of the book.

  10. 10.

    Document 25 to Oslo and Aker Police Office, Treason Department, Viktoria Terrasse 5/7, from high court advocate Oscasr de Besche, dated 11th March 1946.

  11. 11.

    This is also dealt with in an interview with Widerøe on 4th July 1945, conduced by Junior Police Prosecutor Gustav B. Dreyer, where the report reads: ‘The interviewee wishes to add that during the negotiations in Berlin in October 1943 the Germans also promised to release some of the employees of NEBB who had been arrested.’

  12. 12.

    Letter from Theodor Widerøe to Rolf Widerøe 13th January 1947, ETH Library Zürich Hs 903: 239. Letter from Rolf Widerøe to Theodor Widerøe 17th January 1947, ETH Library Zürich Hs 903: 239.

  13. 13.

    Letter from Oscar de Besche to Widerøe 25th February 1948, ETH Library Zürich Hs 903: 209. Letter from Widerøe to Oscar de Besche 22nd March 1948, ETH Library Zürich Hs 903: 239.

  14. 14.

    They celebrated their golden wedding on 23rd September 1984, but the actual wedding day was 14th November.

  15. 15.

    Gustav-Adolf Voss, head of the Accelerator Division at the DESY Laboratory: ‘A Personal Perspective on High Energy Accelerators,’ 1996 IEEE.