Baron
Louis Gerhard De Geer (
1818-
1896),
Swedish statesman and writer, was born on
July 18,
1818 at
Finspång castle. He adopted the legal profession, and in
1855 became president of the Göta Hovrätt, or lord justice for the appellate court of
Götaland. From
April 7,
1858 to
June 3,
1870 he was Prime Minister of Justice. As a member of the nobility he took part in the Swedish
Riksdag of the Estates from
1851 onwards. From
1867 to
1878 he was the member for
Stockholm in the first chamber in the
New Riksdag, and introduced and passed many useful reformatory statutes.
His greatest achievement, as a statesman, was the reform of the Swedish representative system, whereby he substituted a bi-cameral elective parliament, on modern lines, for the existing cumbersome representation by estates, a survival from the later middle ages. This great measure was accepted by the
Riksdag in December
1865, and received the royal sanction on the
June 22,
1866. For some time after this De Geer was the most popular man in Sweden. He retired from the ministry in
1870, but took office again, as minister in 1875.
In
1876 he became the first
Prime Minister of Sweden, which position he retained till April
1880, when the failure of his repeated efforts to settle the armaments question again induced him to resign. From
1881 to
1888 he was Chancellor for the Universities of
Uppsala and
Lund.
Besides several novels and aesthetic essays, De Geer has written a few political memoirs of supreme merit both as to style and matter, the most notable of which are: “Minnesteckning öfver A. J. v. Hopken” (Stockholm, 1881); Minnesteckning öfver Hans Järta (Stockholm, 1874); Minnesteckning öfver B. B. von Platen (Stockholm, 1886); and his own Minnen (Stockholm, 1892), an autobiography, invaluable as a historical document, in which the political experience and the matured judgments of a lifetime are recorded with singular clearness, sobriety and charm.
See also: List of Swedish politicians