Gustaf Åkerhielm

Gustaf Åkerhielm

Baron Johan Gustaf Nils Samuel Åkerhielm af Margaretelund (born June 24, 1833 in Stockholm ; † April 2, 1900 there ) was a Swedish politician and Prime Minister from 1889 to 1891 .

family

His parents were the Swedish Minister Gustaf Fredrik Åkerhielm and his wife Elisabeth Sophia Anker, daughter of a Norwegian landowner. Gustaf Åkerhielm married Countess Ulrika Gyldenstolpe in 1860, with whom he had three children.

Military and diplomat

In 1851 he became a flag junior in the Dragoon Corps of the Royal Body Regiment, and in 1854 a subordinate. In 1852 he passed the first state examination and became head of the civil ministry. In 1856 he accompanied General Graf v. Dinner for the coronation of Tsar Alexander II in Moscow. In the same year he became an attaché at the Swedish embassy in Paris. In 1857 he became second secretary for foreign correspondence in the cabinet and took leave of his regiment. From 1858 to 1859 he was deputy legation secretary in St. Petersburg , then secretary at the special embassy in Vienna. From 1860 to 1863 he was legation secretary in Copenhagen.

Political career

As head of the knighthood and the nobility, he was on the Reichstag from 1859 to 1860 and from 1865 to 1866, where he voted for the previous representation of the estates to be replaced by a two-chamber system. From 1867 to 1870 he was a state auditor , joined the legal committee in 1870 and became chairman of the authority in 1871. In 1870 he was elected to the Second Chamber in the judicial district of Södra Roslag , where the ancestral seat of the Margaretelund family was located, to which he was a member until 1875. From 1873 to 1874 he was deputy chairman of the chamber, temporarily also chairman. In 1870 he was also a member of the Legal Committee and in 1871 the Constitutional Committee.

As a member of the Reichstag, he campaigned for the state to be thrifty, for a new army order and for the improvement of the new municipal laws. The adoption of the Coin Convention in 1873 went back to his initiative. On September 28, 1874 he became Minister of Finance . On May 11, 1875, he resigned in protest against the new conscription law.

In 1875 and 1884 he was elected by Stockholms läns Landsting as a member of the First Chamber, which also led to membership in the Legal Committee from 1876 to 1877, and from 1879 to 1889 in the Banking Committee, of which he was chairman for many years. For 14 years (1876 to 1889) he headed the Reich Administration of State Debt ( Riksgäldkontoret ). He focused more and more on banking and government finance. When the dispute over protective tariffs came to the fore in 1877, he joined the protectionists because he saw agriculture threatened and feared an increase in foreign debt. Under the protectionist ministry Gillis Bildt , he was appointed foreign minister on October 12, 1889.

Prime Minister 1889-1891

On October 12th of the same year he took over the post of Prime Minister. In this office he brought many improvements in the defense system on the way, but failed in a comprehensive army reform, which was linked to a tax reform, by the representatives of free trade in the Second Chamber. In the railway sector, he promoted the Norra stambanan , and Gällivarebanan became state property. The reform of the mortgage banks was carried out, a new law of the sea was passed and a compromise was found on the issue of road maintenance. A law on the transfer of land with the support of loans for settlers who were supposed to make the forest areas of the crown in Norrbottens arable, encouraged the settlement of these areas.

At a meeting of the First Chamber on May 3, 1891, to discuss the government proposal to extend military service to 90 days, he said that one should speak Swedish in the army "both in the east and in the west". The opposition press immediately interpreted this statement as an affront to Norway. 34 members of the First Chamber declared on May 11th that this was not the intention of his statement, Åkerhielm also denied this interpretation. Nevertheless, he was attacked in Sweden and Norway. a. in order to raise the mood against the Union for the upcoming Storting election. On July 10, 1891, Åkerhielm resigned. He was succeeded by the protectionist Erik Gustaf Boström .

When he was elected to the Second Chamber in the autumn of 1893, Åkerhielm was re-elected in his old constituency, the judicial district of Södra Roslag. He belonged to it until 1895. On April 18, 1895 he was elected a member of the First Chamber by the Stockholm Landsting. In 1896 he was again a member of the Constitutional Committee.

Remarks

1. ↑ Civildepartementet included trade, industry, marine, agriculture, communications, provinces and municipalities.
2. ↑ The Constitutional Committee ( Konstitutionutskottet ) was a permanent committee that was set up by the Reichstag in 1809 to discuss the reform of the constitutional monarchy. It consisted of ten members from both chambers. Gradually he was given far-reaching powers of control and was able to deal with subjects that were withdrawn from the Reichstag, e.g. B. Ministerial responsibility, Reich coat of arms, flag, general church assemblies and municipal laws.
3. ↑ Other authors believe that this statement was made on the part of some MPs. Cf. Inger Hammar: För freden och rösträtten. Kvinnorna och den svensk-norska unionens sista dagar , Nordic Academic Press, Lund 2004. ISBN 91-89116-72-0 . Page 212, footnote 25

literature

• E. Thyselius: Article “Johan Gustaf Nils Samuel Åkerhielm” in: Nordisk familiebok, vol. 33. Stockholm 1922, column 962 f.