Horney, Jane, 1918-1945

Ebba Charlotta, known later as Jane, Horney was born on 8 July 1918 in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1929 she took a job onboard the Svenska Amerika Linien vessel Drottningholm, working as a cabin maid. In 1938 the opportunity arose for Jane Horney to join an expedition to Greenland and subsequently completed four journeys, out and back, working on the boat. After the fourth trip she signed off on Greenland, where she then lived for six months. During this time she hunted polar bears and travelled across the ice by dog-powered sleigh to Canada. She documented her time in Greenland by taking a lot of photographs and writing a lot of letters. Once she had returned home she produced several reports on Greenland which she then sold to the Stockholms-Tidningen newspaper. Herje Granberg was the editor of the Sunday supplement in which Jane Horney’s reports were included. The two of them entered into a relationship and subsequently married on 27 December 1939.

In 1940 Jane Horney travelled to then occupied Denmark were she undertook interviews on behalf of her husband. She also helped him by providing images for various reports. In 1941 Herje Granberg was invited to become the Berlin correspondent for the Aftonbladet newspaper and Jane Horney went with him. Their social circle included both those who were critical of the leading regime as well as Nazis and several journalists from across the globe. They would meet at the German Foreign Ministry’s press club which lay on Fasanenstraße. Many Danish journalists attended this club and it has subsequently been revealed that the anti-Nazis among them viewed Jane Horney with suspicion.

In February 1943 Jane Horney and Herje Granberg separated. Jane Horney then travelled to Copenhagen on a tourist visa and, on deciding to stay there, she contacted a German major of the Abwehr named Horst Gilbert, an SS-Standartenführer who ran Skandinavisk Telegrambureau, the German-funded news agency in the city. The two of them became friends. Later on, in 1943, when Jane Horney registered her intention to become an agent for the Swedish secret police, she took a job at Skandinavisk Telegrambureau in order to report to the Swedes on German activities in Denmark. The codename that she used in her reports was “Eskimå” (Eskimo).

Jane Horney had several contacts within the resistance in Denmark. In November 1943 she met a man from De frie Danske group called Jörgen Winkel. When Jörgen Winkel was captured by the Gestapo in December that year she sought the help of Horst Gilbert in an attempt to get Winkel released. Jane Horney made several visits to Dagmarshus, the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, as part of her efforts to gain Winkel’s freedom. The Danish resistance took a very suspicious view of these visits which they then added to their list of her alleged crimes against the Danish people. More and more members of the resistance became convinced that she was a traitor who was working for the Germans.

The suspicions about Jane Horney’s real motivations only grew stronger during 1944 and the resistance printed leaflets to warn the public about her. Newspaper articles were also published which singled her out as a spy. Jane Horney, who was at the time in Germany seeking to obtain the release of Danish prisoners from the Theresienstadt concentration camp, was extremely upset by these developments and travelled home to Sweden to defend herself in the local press. The Swedish secret police had a list of the Danish accusations levelled against Jane Horney and they took her in for an interrogation in Stockholm on 28 September 1944. The questioning carried on until 14 October, by which point the Swedish secret police were convinced she was innocent. Nils Bjarke Schou, captain of the Danish intelligence agency in exile, obtained a copy of the 140-page report which absolved Jane Horney of all accusations. The matter was considered closed. The Danish resistance movement, however, took the opposite view and prepared to have Jane Horney assassinated.

In January 1945 two members of the Danish resistance, Sven Aage Geisler (codename Store Bjørn) and Ingolve Asbjørn Lynhe (codename Lille Bjørn) travelled to Stockholm along with Bodil Frederiksen in order to collect Jane Horney and bring her back to Copenhagen to appear before members of the Danish resistance and clear her name. Jane Horney did not suspect the motives of the three Danes with whom she embarked on the night-train to Malmö on 17 January. Bodil Fredriksen and Jane Horney stayed at the Grand Hotell on Norra Vallgatan when they got to Malmö, where they remained until 19 January. Then they travelled by car to Höganäs where they boarded a Swedish-registered fishing vessel named Tärnan. Onboard were the skipper Edvard Lyse as well as two students named Erik Pedersen and Hjalmar Ravnbo. Speculation as to the exact events of the night between 19 and 20 January 1945 continues to this day. In 2015 the Danish government released previously classified archival material which has helped to provide a probable course of that night’s developments. Hjalmar Ravnbo was most likely the person responsible for shooting Jane Horney, using two shots, once the vessel they were on entered international waters.