Dagmar Bryhl
Dagmar Jenny Ingeborg Bryhl, born on September 2, 1891 in Skara, in Västergötland, was one of the 34 Swedes who survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. During her upbringing, she lived with her family on Skolgatan in Skara.Her father Edvard Gustaf Gottfrid Lustig worked as city lawyer. Her mother was Ida Jenny Lustig. Dagmar was the younger sister of Kurt Arnold Gottfrid Bryhl, who was born in 1887.
Between 1903 and 1906, Dagmar and her siblings had been granted the surname Bryhl after their grandmother.
Aboard the Titanic[]
Dagmar Bryhl traveled with her brother Kurt and her fiance Ingvar Enander on the passenger ship Titanic, boarding in Southampton on April 10, 1912. The purpose of their trip was to go to their uncle Oscar Lustig who lived at 511 Pearl St. in Rockford, Illinois. Dagmar's fiance wanted to travel to America and study agriculture there, as he trained as an agronomist. Dagmar's brother Kurt came along as an interpreter and was the only one of the three who intended to stay. They were a little better off and traveled in Second Class.
Dagmar and the others met fellow Swedish passenger Johan Henrik Kvillner and became friends with him.
During the night of April 14-15, the party were in their cabins when the ship had struck an iceberg, and pretty soon they went out of their cabins, and had no difficulty getting on deck. Kvillner went along with them. They went to the port side where Dagmar Bryhl joined in a lifeboat, while neither the fiance nor the brother were allowed to get in the boat. The boat was not even half full when it went down, but later people were taken out of the water. Dagmar Bryhl was rescued by lifeboat 12, she has described in her own story how the lifeboat picked up people from a capsized boat, Collapsible B.
Upon her arrival in New York she was taken to a hospital to rest since she was feeling feeble. She lost everything, her clothes most of all and had no hopes that her fiance and brother had survived, even bringing her to the point of questioning if she wanted to continue living. She wrote about all this to her uncle Oscar Lustig. Whilst writing, Oscar was already in New York. He searched at the Scandavian Immigrants' Home but it took a few telegraphs back and forth from the hospital to the Rockford residence back to New York for him to find out about her whereabouts. After her uncle found her, she went with him to Rockford, where she stayed with him for a short while before starting the journey home to Sweden, on White Star Line’s Adriatic, leaving New York on 2nd May 1912.
Later life[]
Dagmar's life takes a new turn after the trauma. The wedding with Ingvar was only a few months away when the disaster occurred. Instead, Dagmar married a Swedish oil engineer. As early as 1913, the couple moved to Baku in Azerbaijan, where the man worked for the Nobel brothers and the oil-producing Nafta company. The couple lives in the Swedish colony Villa Petrolia, an image of a Swedish working class society.
As foreign experts, Dagmar and her husband belong to the upper class of Russian society. But the Swedes treat their servants humanely, which may have saved the lives of Dagmar and her husband. One day one of the servants comes running home and shouts: " Now it's time for you to disappear from here, it's revolution!"
During the October Revolution of 1917, the Russian Tsar's rule is overthrown by the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and Trotsky. The oil lords were stripped of their property and forced to leave the country, unless they are first imprisoned or executed. The Nobel brothers and Naftabolaget's staff have to flee for their lives. and had the oil lords stripped of their property and forced to leave the country, risking either imprisonment or execution. Bryhl and her husband therefore fled home to Sweden. At some point the couple divorced.
She eventually married Eric Holmberg in 1931; they lived together in Sweden, and lived in Kungsälv.
Dagmar lived there untill her death on August 9, 1969.