Serving an svg within JSON using NodeJS and ExpressJS - node.js

Question

I have a small reactJS app that rendered objects with svg in them:
import { ReactComponent as F01 } from "./F01.svg";
export const toRender = {
title:"Render this",
text:"Test",
SVGFile: F01
}
I would import this into a component and render it as a component <SVGFile />. All was working 100%.
Now the app got bigger and it became inefficient to store the objects in the frontend. I am trying to send the object from an ExpressJS server. I get an error importing the SVG file.
Here is the route I am using, which works well without SVG files:
import {testObject} from "./testObject";
export const getTestObject= {
path: "/api/render",
method: "get",
handler: (req: Request, res: Response) => {
return res.json(testObject);
},
};
And here is the testObject I am sending:
import { F01 } from "./F01.svg";
export const testObject = {
title:"Render this",
text:"Test",
SVGFile: F01
}
But I get an error right after starting tsnode:
SyntaxError: Unexpected token '<'
at Object.compileFunction (node:vm:360:18)
at wrapSafe (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1084:15)
at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1119:27)
at Module._extensions..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1209:10)
at Object.require.extensions.<computed> [as .js] (D:\desktop\codebases\360ExamPrep\backend\node_modules\ts-node\src\index.ts:1608:43)
at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1033:32)
at Function.Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:868:12)
at Module.require (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1057:19)
at require (node:internal/modules/cjs/helpers:103:18)
at Object.<anonymous> ....
I am not using webpack on the backend.
I tried using const F01 = require('./F01.svg) but that did not help.
Any help is highly appreciated