Ole Stedden Dahl was a violin maker. This was his violin, an early Hopf from the late 18th or early 19th century. Ole was born in 1919 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and died in 2004. Ole learned the luthier’s art as an apprentice in the late 1930s at a venerable firm in Copenhagen, Emil Hjorth and Sons.
When Germany invaded Denmark on April 9th, 1940, Ole’s music-filled life changed in an instant. He had joined the Danish Navy and, along with all other Danish military personnel, were interned by the Germans. Like many young Danes, Ole made the brave decision to join the Danish Resistance, secretly fighting against the Nazis. He exchanged the peacetime tools of a gentle violin maker for the material tools of a war-time saboteur. The comforting smells of rosin and freshly carved wood were replaced by odors of gun oil and explosives.
Throughout the occupation, Ole must have taken solace in his first love, classical music. This violin served as a touchstone, a way for Ole to recapture the beauty of life in the harmonies of Vivaldi, the precision of Bach, and the melodies of Mozart. He could pick up his instrument and forget about the dangers of everyday existence, lost in music, only face reality when his resistance group planned their next missions.
His childhood home, a rambling old house north of Copenhagen in bucolic Esbonderup, was used to hide Danish Jews escaping the Nazis, and Ole’s younger brother felt that Ole secretly helped transport Jews across the water to freedom in Sweden. Ole’s new life in the Resistance was dangerous. Nazis caught and executed Resistance fighters. He and his group, Korps Agesin, participated in blowing up train tracks to impede German supply lines and carried out other acts to make the invaders’ lives difficult. The Resistance group he served in was a “"Stodtroppen,” a small, elite, and well-trained unit. Ole is listed in the database of Resistance personnel maintained by the Danish Resistance Museum in Copenhagen, but little is known about the specific sabotage actions his group carried out.
This violin survived World War II, and so did Ole. When Denmark was liberated, he joined the British Army, serving as a Trooper in a Royal Tank Regiment. In England, he met Diana Parry, who was serving in the ATS, a women’s branch of the British Army. They married when their service was completed in 1947, after a romance largely carried on by mail. They left war-torn Europe behind and emigrated to America. By 1950, Ole was working as a violin maker with Lyon & Healy in Chicago and then signed on with Kenneth Warren & Sons. He always kept his violin and played in string quartet for many years with friends. At the urging of cellist Janos Starker and violinist Josef Gingold, Ole opened his own shop in Bloomington, Indiana, in the 1960s and operated it successfully there until he retired, repairing the instruments of his many clients at the Indiana University School of Music. He never talked about his time in the Danish Resistance, preferring to keep his experiences to himself.
The violin was donated to Violin of Hope by Christian and Peter Dahl.
My brother and I have often wondered at the dichotomy our father’s life presented. On one hand, he was a Resistance fighter for his beloved Denmark, a violent time in his life he rarely spoke of. On the other hand, he was a kind, gentle, and generous violin maker, the man we knew and loved. That two divergent personalities could exist in one person always mystified us.
When Ole and our mother Diana left Denmark in 1947, they somehow cobbled together enough money to acquire a beautiful Landolfi violin. They put it in a battered case and brought it to the United States and sold it in order to make their start in a new country. I believe it still exists and is known as the Dahl Landolfi. Dad always regretted selling it, and when his violin shop became successful, he bought a Ruggieri that he would lend for free to aspiring students.
