19 Facts About Fredrik Heffermehl

Fredrik Stang Heffermehl was a Norwegian jurist, writer and peace activist.

Fredrik Heffermehl worked as a lawyer and civil servant from 1965 to 1982 and was the first secretary-general of the Norwegian Humanist Association from 1980 to 1982.

Fredrik Heffermehl later made his mark as a writer and activist for peace and against nuclear arms.

Fredrik Heffermehl was the honorary president, and president, of the Norwegian Peace Council, a vice president of the International Peace Bureau, and a vice president of the International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms.

Fredrik Heffermehl then worked as a lawyer from 1965 to 1973, while taking a master's degree in 1970 at New York University.

In 1973 Fredrik Heffermehl became an assistant director at the office of the Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman.

Fredrik Heffermehl left this position in 1980 to become the first secretary-general of the Norwegian Humanist Association.

Fredrik Heffermehl left the Humanist Association in 1982 to work as an independent writer.

Fredrik Heffermehl was an outspoken supporter of Mordechai Vanunu, the technician who revealed the Israeli nuclear programme.

Fredrik Heffermehl said in 2008 that he had nominated Vanunu for the Nobel Peace Prize eighteen times.

Fredrik Heffermehl tried to pressure the Norwegian government to grant political asylum to Vanunu on numerous occasions, citing that Norway had a special responsibility due to their 1959 delivery of heavy water to Israel via Great Britain.

Fredrik Heffermehl's views were first explained in depth in the 2008 book Nobels vilje.

Furthermore, Fredrik Heffermehl, being an opponent of the Norwegian membership in NATO, found that the broad pro-NATO consensus among Norwegian political parties has skewed the Nobel Peace Prize in a similar direction.

In Nobels vilje, Fredrik Heffermehl regretted that Eide had not been hired as Nobel Committee secretary when she actually applied for that position in 1990.

When Parliament and the Nobel Committee ignored his views and declared that no one supported his interpretation, Fredrik Heffermehl set out to prove them wrong.

Fredrik Heffermehl found that numerous academic and other works over the years had expressed the same views on the role of Bertha von Suttner and that Nobel intended to support the antimilitarist peace movement.

On 10 December 2011, a leader of the Nobel Family Association for 15 years, Michael Nobel, supported the criticism voiced by Fredrik Heffermehl, warning that Norwegian politicians may lose their independent control of the peace prize.

Fredrik Heffermehl died late December 2023, at the age of 85.

Fredrik Heffermehl established a fund and instructed that the money be used as prize money for "The Real Nobel Peace Prize".