Karin Lannby
Swedish actress, translator, journalist, poet and spy (1916-2007)
Karin Tekla Maria Lannby (13 April 1916 – 19 November 2007), credited in French films and publications as Maria Cyliakus, was a Swedish actress, translator, journalist, poet and spy. She served as a spy for the leftists during the Spanish Civil War, and for Sweden in Stockholm during World War II.
Biography
The daughter of journalist Gunnar Lannby and Lilly Lannby, the boss of the Swedish agency of the American film company Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Through her mother, Lilly, Karin belonged to the Stockholm high society. As a student in the 1930s, Karin, being a convinced anti-fascist, joined the Swedish Communists. During the Spanish civil-war, she served as an interpreter and secretary at a hospital in Valencia. She made contact with the Comintern in Barcelona, who gave her an assignment to infiltrate the troops of Francisco Franco in the south of France. After having failed her task, she was excluded from the communists and returned to Sweden. From 1939 to 1945, she was an agent in service of the Swedish state during the war; under the code name Annette, she reported of her observations from the cultural and diplomatic circles of Stockholm's party life.
She acted in several films during the war. In 1940–41, she had a relationship with Ingmar Bergman; she is said to have been the role model for the character Ruth Köhler in the film Kvinna utan ansikte (1947).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Karin Lannby” is swedish actress, translator, journalist, poet and spy (1916-2007). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Karin, Lannby and Swedish, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “swedish actress, translator, journalist, poet and spy (1916-2007)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q522050. VIAF identifies the subject as 61525333. The Library of Congress control number is n2011013668. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1916, 2007, 1939 and 1945.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Karin Lannby” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.