Constans Pontin

Constans Pontin (drawing by Maria Röhl, 1842)

Magnus Erik Constans af Pontin (born April 23, 1819 in Stockholm , † September 30, 1852 in Kalmar ) was a Swedish writer , publicist and lawyer . While his literary writings were committed to romanticism , he showed a conservative and royalist attitude in polemics and journalistic works . His commitment to the Swedish Jews and the Swedish workforce is seen as commendable.

Life

Early years

Constans Pontin was born in Stockholm as the son of the chemist and physician Magnus Martin Pontin , who from 1809 was the personal physician of the Swedish King Karl XIII. was and was ennobled in 1817. After graduating from high school, Constans Pontin began studying law in Uppsala in 1836 . In the university town he liked the role of the always well-dressed dandy , who distinguished himself from the other students with an eccentric style and aristocratic class consciousness. The staged otherness, which earned him some enemies, also had political implications, because he expressly did not share the liberal criticism of the student body of the conservative social policy of King Charles XIV. Johann . He gained general recognition from 1839 to 1840 for the translation of the first three parts of Alexis de Tocqueville 's De la démocratie en Amérique (On Democracy in America), which was the favorite reading of the Swedish Crown Prince Oskar in those years . Charles XIV. Johann rewarded Pontin for his work with the title of Chamberlain , which, as a 20-year-old student, gave him a higher rank than all professors at his university.

After completing his studies, Pontin returned to his hometown Stockholm, where he initially held subordinate positions at courts, including at Svea hovrätt . Early disillusioned with the routine work, the ineffective bureaucracy and the poor chances of promotion, he wrote a 1846 published diatribe about the civil service.

Fiction production from 1846

In the same year he began his narrow fiction production with travel books . In Förr och nu i Vadstena (then and now in Vadstena) he laments the contemporary disregard for noble traditions and values in view of the severely damaged castle in the small town on Vättern . In addition, he deals in the little book with the lively letter from the nun Ingrid Persdotter , who allegedly lived in the late Middle Ages. Because of a socially unrecognized love affair with a knight, she was locked up in the Vadstena monastery . While Ingrid died in the monastery, the outcome of a related love story, which Pontin also tells in the book, was happy. The young Agda loved the destitute Olaf and thereby drew her father's resentment. Meanwhile, also living in the Vadstena monastery, she managed to escape with Olaf. The Bishop of Linköping outlawed the couple; however, the king himself legitimized the relationship and, according to tradition, even danced at the couple's wedding. This plot is also at the center of Pontin's play Agda , which premiered at the Royal Dramatic Theater in early 1850 , albeit without great success. The works clearly show Pontin's point of view: an orientation towards the - especially French-influenced - romanticism and a deeply loyal attitude to the royal family as an important guarantor of social stability.

This tendency already emerged in his novel Lydia (1847). A narrative full of gruesomely romantic details gives rise to all sorts of conservative considerations about the existing social conditions. Pontin's heroes often indulge in sentimental philanthropy , as is the case in this book, against which bourgeois capitalists are confronted as villains. They act as "ruthless exploiters of poor people, to whose protection aristocrats appear".

Social and political engagement

While his literary texts were quickly forgotten, Pontin did some pioneering work with his social and political commitment. This is especially true of several writings in which he called for full civil rights for Swedish Jews . His reform work only bore fruit long after his death, when the Swedish Diet on February 16, 1870 passed the equality of Jews.

At the same time, Pontin campaigned strongly for the emerging working class , for example in the so-called “educational circles” (bildningscirclar). What motivation may have guided him is controversial. Critical researchers suspect that Pontin acted directly on behalf of the court, with the aim of depoliticizing educational work and strengthening loyalty to the king among the workers. But even if the contemporary bourgeois press tried to ridicule him, his lecturing work in favor of the workers was quite remarkable. His speeches could be characterized by radical rhetoric . He described the industrialism and the forced labor of the so-called statare (of landowners dependent farm workers) as "white slavery" and recommended the workers to join together internationally. Thanks to his initiative, several Swedish workers were able to visit the London Industrial Exhibition in 1851 .

That Pontin under suspicion came to agitate for the yard was partly as a result of its significant involvement in the newspaper Synglaset (and their successor bodies Nya Synglaset and Morgonbladet ) from 1850. The Swedish crown prince was co-owner of these pages after the February Revolution in 1848 Treated social issues from a conservative-royalist perspective. The newspapers often addressed the workforce directly, but warned them strongly against attempted coups. As one of the first editors in Sweden at all, Pontin published so-called fashionable news , i.e. tabloid journalistic content such as coverage of court balls , etc., in order to attract a larger reading audience.

death

On the way back from a visit to Germany in the autumn of 1852, Constans Pontin had an accident on board the steamship Lennart Torstenson . During the night in a stormy sea, a balloon bottle with sulfuric acid (another source speaks of hydrochloric acid ) broke and the corrosive liquid penetrated through joints into Pontin's cabin. The next morning the passenger was admitted to the Kalmar hospital with symptoms of suffocation , where he died a day later at the age of 33. The sudden death of the militant writer and publicist aroused strong sympathy across party lines.

During his lifetime and long after his death, however, Pontin's reputation was controversial. While some admired his “chivalrous disposition” and freedom from prejudice, others emphasized his contradicting expressions of opinion. The liberal Lars Johan Hierta , founder of the daily Aftonbladet , described him as "one of our greatest fools".

Publications

• Förtjena judarne politiska rättigheter? , 1845 (brochure)
• Embetsverkens ställning till talangerna , 1846 ( diatribe )
• Här och der bland scandinaver och tyskar , 1846 (travel book)
• Förr och nu i Vadstena , 1846 (travel book)
• Äreminne öfver Erik Dahlberg , 1847 (academic memorial)
• Lydia , 1847 (novel)
• Judarnes emancipation ur svensk synpunkt betraktad , 2 booklets, 1847/48 (brochure)
• February revolutions i Paris och mars imitations i Stockholm , 1848 (polemic)
• Hög och låg , 1850 (story)
• Agda , 1852 (Dramatic attempt in five acts)

Web links

Commons : Constans Pontin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Andreas Tjerneld, ME Constans Pontin, af . In: Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (Swedish)
• Erik Magnus Constans Pontin . In: Nordisk familjebok , 1915, p. 1359 f. (Swedish)
• Literature by and about Constans Pontin in the WorldCat bibliographic database

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Andreas Tjerneld, ME Constans Pontin, af . In: Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (accessed on March 28, 2021).
2. ↑ See Magnus von Platen , Biktare och bedragare , Stockholm 1959, pp. 62–99.
3. ↑ Alf Kjellén, Sociala idéer och motiv hos svenska författare under 1830- och 1840-talen . Volume 2: Från patriarkalism till marxism . Stockholm 1950, p. 262.
4. ↑ Marcus Ehrenpreis / Alfred Jensen (ed.), Judarna . Stockholm 1920, p. 49.
5. ^ Bunny Ragnerstam, Arbetare i rörelse . Stockholm 1986.
6. ^ Gustaf Henriksson-Holmberg, Socialismen i Sverige. Bidrag till socialismens svenska historia i fyra fristăende avdelningar . Stockholm 1913, p. 162 ff.
7. ↑ John Björkman, "Må de herrskande klasserna darra". Radikal retorik och reaction i Stockholms press, 1848-1851 . Stockholm 2021, p. 190 f.
8. ↑ Little Chronicle. In:  Wiener Zeitung , October 21, 1852, p. 5 (online at ANNO ).
9. ↑ Todtenschau. In:  Illustrirte Zeitung , October 30, 1852, p. 2 (online at ANNO ).
10. ^ ^{A b} Carl Georg Starbäck / Per Olav Bäckström, Berättelser ur svenska historien . Volume 11. Stockholm 1886, p. 271 f.