{"id":157114,"date":"2020-04-06T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T11:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=157114"},"modified":"2020-04-01T10:51:24","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T09:51:24","slug":"inspiration-from-a-father-johan-galtung-interviewed-by-henrik-urdal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/04\/inspiration-from-a-father-johan-galtung-interviewed-by-henrik-urdal\/","title":{"rendered":"Inspiration from a Father: Johan Galtung Interviewed by Henrik Urdal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Johan Galtung at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in 1968. <\/strong>Photo: Henrik Laurvik \/ NTB \/ Scanpix<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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15 May 2019 – <\/em>The Second World War had a lasting effect on me. Especially because my beloved father was imprisoned at Grini (west of Oslo). And we were informed that every time there was a British bombing, prisoners would be shot. So, every night the air raid siren went, my mother and I would run out to the air raid shelter and sit there with only one thing on our minds. And my mother never wanted to go and get the paper the day after in case the headline read: \u2018Dr Galtung shot this morning in retaliation for last night\u2019s bombing raid\u2019.<\/p>\n

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Peace Research Institute Oslo – Founder: Johan Galtung<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Henrik Urdal<\/a>:\u00a0You were born six years before the war came to Norway. Could you tell me a bit about your childhood? What sort of influence did your father and mother have on you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Johan Galtung<\/a>:\u00a0<\/strong>My father\u2019s educational background had a real influence on me. He\u2019d attended the Norwegian Military Academy and received top marks in tactics, something he was very proud of. So he knew quite a bit about war and that sort of thing. And, of course, he\u2019d completed a medical degree. And, on top of that, he\u2019d studied political economy. As a politician in the 1920s, a deputy mayor and acting mayor at one point, he\u2019d felt he needed a better understanding of economics. All of which is to say that he was, in effect, fully qualified in three distinct fields. And I suppose I\u2019ve copied him to some extent. Studying one subject shouldn\u2019t stand in the way of studying another. So, when I chose to take both a cand. real. degree in mathematics and a mag. art. degree in sociology, you could say I was following in my father\u2019s footsteps.<\/p>\n

It all comes back to my beloved father \u2013 he always supported me. He also had a daughter, of course, my sister Ingegerd, who was a strict conservative. She idealized people like Salazar and Franco, while I stood for the complete opposite. She wrote in Morgenbladet<\/em> and I wrote in Dagbladet<\/em>. My father would try to reconcile this conflict by praising our writing: \u2018You both write such elegant Norwegian!\u2019 You might say he was a bridge builder. But there was, of course, also something of the politician in this approach. At the same time, he supported me completely when I terminated my membership of the state church. He was a devout Christian and went to church every Sunday, but he understood that when I left the state church, it was the state and not the church I was rejecting. It was my view that the state and the church should have nothing to do with each other.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting to try to understand how the historical context in which you grew up was formative for you and for your perspective on peace research. Let me return to the impact of the Second World War. How would you say your childhood experiences and your experience of war contributed to your views on social change and on the significance of peace work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since my mother was afraid of finding news in the newspaper that my father had been shot, it became my job to collect the paper each morning. Pretty intense, but it is a memory of war. Another memory I have is of visiting my father in Grini. We were allowed to visit him twice a year. We were pale and exhausted, he was brown, sunburnt from working on the commandant\u2019s Kr\u00e4utergarten<\/em>, a medical herb garden. The war played an enormous role in my life and had a considerable effect on my views on peace research. My sense of the madness of war was very much focused on my father: no-one was allowed to take my beloved father away from me.<\/p>\n

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Galtung\u2019s father, August Andreas Logn Galtung in 1935. <\/strong>Photo: Unknown \/ CC BY-SA \/ Oslo Museum<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

But then I entered a period of my life in which another figure would play an increasingly important role, and that was Gandhi. When he was shot on 30th<\/sup> January 1948, I found myself crying \u2013 much to my puzzlement and dismay. I was 17 and 17-year-olds don\u2019t cry. And a boy to boot. And it wasn\u2019t a habit of mine to cry. Somehow or other, Gandhi\u2019s message had affected me so deeply that I reacted in this unexpected way. So I emerged from the war with a palpable disgust for war, primarily because the war had stolen my father from me, even if he ultimately came back. The war was over, and Gandhi\u2019s message was that there was an alternative.<\/p>\n

When did you discover Gandhi? \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In \u201948. I knew about him before then, of course: I kept myself informed, like any bright teenager. But I had no idea that he had affected me so deeply that I would cry when he was shot. And out of \u201948 came \u201951, when I became a conscientious objector. I\u2019ve told this story many times before, but if it hadn\u2019t been for obligatory military service in Norway, I wouldn\u2019t have become the campaigner for and specialist on peace that I am today.<\/p>\n

When [Gandhi] was shot on 30th January 1948, I found myself crying \u2013 much to my puzzlement and dismay. I was 17 and 17-year-olds don\u2019t cry. And a boy to boot. And it wasn\u2019t a habit of mine to cry. Somehow or other, Gandhi\u2019s message had affected me so deeply that I reacted in this unexpected way.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My father had always told me not to just go along with what you\u2019re supposed to do, but to be conscious of everything you do. And he was a first lieutenant in the Army Medical Service, which isn\u2019t an especially high rank, but even so. With his medical background and education from the Military Academy, he\u2019d become an officer. So, I took his advice seriously and decided to try to find out more about it. Coincidentally, I\u2019d receive a stipend that month to study in Finland. So this was how it all started: as a former big man on campus, with a succession of positions in student politics under my belt, I was awarded this stipend, at the same time as I was very unsure whether to carry out my military service or become a conscientious objector.<\/p>\n

It was quite popular to be a conscientious objector at the time, wasn\u2019t it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t that uncommon, that\u2019s true. But a lot of objectors were Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses. There was a community of them in Vennesla, north of Kristiansand, where a lot of the conscientious objectors came from. But objecting to military service on political grounds was still quite rare, although it was starting to become less so.<\/p>\n

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