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About

Birgit Holmquist (née Holmquist, 6 March 1911 – 10 April 1973) was a Swedish model who served as Axel Ebbe’s model for Famntaget (“The Embrace”), a 1930s statue of a nude woman that overlooks the harbor of Smygehuk in Sweden. Her daughter is fashion model Nena von Schlebrügge, her granddaughter is actress Uma Thurman, and her great-granddaughter is actress and singer Maya Hawke.

Career

Birgit Holmquist was born in 1911 in Trelleborg, Sweden, the daughter of Albert Emil Fredrik Holmquist (1872–1947), a manager at the rubber factory in Trelleborg, and his wife, Julie Tora Kanger. She was raised in Trelleborg. In her late teens, Birgit worked as a model and posed for the renowned local sculptor Axel Ebbe, which resulted in the Famntaget statue.

In the 1930s in Berlin, she got married to Colonel Baron Friedrich Karl Johannes von Schlebrügge. He was imprisoned for his opposition to the Nazi regime and for helping Jewish friends escape. Birgit used her connections to get him released, later the couple would take off for Sweden, then Mexico, and China. She bore a daughter, Birgitte Caroline “Nena” von Schlebrügge, on 8 January 1941 in Mexico City. Through Nena, Birgit is the grandmother of actress Uma Thurman and the great-grandmother of actress and singer Maya Hawke.

Birgit Holmquist died on 10 April 1973 in Stockholm, Sweden, she was sixty-two.