by Gerda Mävers
It is with great sadness and, at the same time, deep gratitude that we wish to share with our members and colleagues the news of Eva Røine’s passing. She was one of our founding and honorary members and served on the board for many years.
Eva Røine passed away in her 98th year. Toward the end of her long life, she had not been active in our circles for some time. Nevertheless, it pains us to realize that this generous, responsible, and committed woman is no longer with us.
Eva Røine’s life and work were rich and varied: she was an actress – in theater and film. She was a psychologist and criminologist, a journalist, and – in 1952 – “Miss Norway”.
She was the founder of the Norsk Psykodramaskole (later Norsk Psykodrama-Institutt, today Moreno Instituttet Norge) and co-founder of the Nordic-Baltic Board of Examiners, as well as a founding member of our association:
On August 27, 1989, Eva Røine gathered in Amsterdam with 27 other psychodramatists from 10 European countries to found the “Psychodrama-Institut Europe e.V.” This took place at a time when the Iron Curtain separated the Warsaw Pact states from the other European nations, and it seemed unimaginable that this inhumane border would fall just three months later.
The goal of the 28 founding members, who had gathered in Amsterdam at that time around Ildikó Mävers, was to establish a nonprofit institution dedicated to the introduction and dissemination of psychodrama, sociometry, and group psychotherapy in the countries of the former Warsaw Pact, in countries with socialist systems, where any form of individual or group psychotherapy was considered hostile to the system.
The founders were deeply convinced that psychodrama could instill in people a sense of self-efficacy and personal responsibility within society and pave the way for them toward democratic structures. All of them – including Eva Røine – were willing to devote their time and energy to establishing psychodrama training in Eastern European countries. The newly founded institute was to provide the organizational framework for this effort – as a charitable association, not as a profit orientated enterprise.
This was a new development in the psychodrama landscape of Western Europe in the late 1980s. And various established psychodrama training institutes sought to prevent this new institute from being founded in order to protect their competitive interests. This made the signal sent by Eva Røine – as chairperson of Norway’s first psychodrama institute (now Moreno Instituttet Norge) – all the more powerful when she and her colleague Monica Westberg became founding members of this young, unconventional association full of determined idealists from East and West. On the very day of its founding, Eva decided to put her reputation and experience to work for the young association in a particularly significant way that would have a strong public impact: She assumed the position of vice-chair of the institute and subsequently held it for 16 years, until 2005.
Under Eva’s chairmanship, the Norsk Psykodramaskole became the first institutional member of the nonprofit association, thereby supporting the association’s pioneering psychodrama work in Eastern European countries not only ideologically but also financially.
This was followed by Eva’s intensive involvement in psychodrama training in Poland. Soon after the association was founded, Sonja Beloch – co-founder of our association – succeeded in recruiting Eva for the psychodrama training program in her native Poland, which she had already started. Together with Elzbieta Schjetne, a Polish psychodramatist living in Norway, Eva went on to lead training groups and special seminars in Poland for many years. As a result, Eva’s name is inextricably linked to the history of psychodrama in Poland.
Eva Røine was thus a pioneer and a key figure not only in the establishment and
development of psychodrama training in Norway, the Scandinavian countries, and the Baltic states. Her involvement on the board of the Psychodrama Institute for Europe e.V. also played a key role in the spread and establishment of psychodrama in former Warsaw Pact countries, such as Poland, but also in Hungary and Romania. Eva’s creativity and dedication, her independent spirit, her wisdom and optimism, her never-ending willingness to support others, her idealism, and, not least, her charisma are and will remain unforgettable.
Thank you, dear Eva, for everything you’ve done for our association. Thank you for everything you’ve done for psychodrama in Europe. Thank you for everything you’ve done to help people overcome the consequences of totalitarian systems.
Rest in peace.
Your Psychodrama Association for Europe e.V.
The Board of Directors
