Carl Fredrik Hägg

in Swedish

Carl Fredrik Hägg

1843-1928

Carl Fredrik Hägg was born in 1843 in Gårdstånga, a village near Eslöv in Skåne. His father Nils Hägg was a soldier and cooper, and his mother was Johanna Pehrsdotter. They had seven children.

Carl Fredrik only attended school for a few weeks. However, he was very versatile and read and studied his whole life..

During his life he created original paintings, watercolors, wooden figures and wrote political poems. He was an educated person. Yet he is an almost completely unknown person. Did he want to remain unknown, a commentator on the side or was there no good career path - as we would say today - for him.

The picture shows a painting of the church near the home. Carl Fredrik began painting, drawing and creating figures at an early age. It is said that he drew trains and sold the drawings for 10 öre..

Wife and children

Carl Fredrik Hägg married Christina Hellström from Småland, who was both hardworking, beautiful and intelligent. They had two children who both emigrated to America. Christina made a trip to the USA on her own in 1905, to visit her children and a sister. She died the same year of stomach cancer.

Hägg's professional life

After a few years in other places in Skåne and Småland, Carl Fredrik came to Landskrona in 1880. He then or soon afterwards became a foreman cooper at the sugar mill in the city.

in this image, he is in a group of workers and foremen at the mill. He was at the sugar mill for 28 years before poor health forced him to quit. He is said to have received full pay until his death from the sugar king Tranchell (IDstory).

Hägg had a alottment, long since demolished, by the Citadel's moat in Landskrona. Where, to the great delight of children and others, he had a 'display' - although there was a 10 öre entrance fee - of wooden animals, wooden men who could move and other exciting things.Read more about how Hägg could be experienced by a child ↓

The artist and the social commentator

In the early 1970s, a major battle raged in Landskrona over the future of the alottment-gardens. The museum director, Sven B Ek, was one of those who committed themselves to their preservation. When the alottment-gardens area was inventoried, they heard about a strange man named Hägg. Through a 'wanted note' in the press, in 1974 they came into contact with a foster daughter of Hägg, who offered to sell a work that Hägg called Polletik. More about this fascinating work ↓

The versatile Hägg

Sven B Ek starts his book on Polletik with a desire to understand more about the person Hägg. Who was Carl Fredrik? However, he is not really accessible through academic tools. Ek says

It is therefore possible - despite everything - to see Hägg not as a specific person but as a materialization of the cultural forces within the nascent labor movement. Perhaps one should understand him as a concretization of an abstraction.; this was var Carl Fredrik Hägg, this could a way of thinking and be within a conscious working class. Perhaps one should see him more as a potential cultural force than as a person. This leads to the slightly rhetorical question - was Carl Fredrik Hägg real?

It is analyses like these that make a person deserve at least two biographers. One who has read academic household gods like Lacan, Derrida or Badiou, and one who wants to take the reader on a journey about a person and his or hers life.

On that journey you could read about Carl Fredrik who loved to carve figures in the basement where he lived or in the colonial cottage, about how he entertained the city's children with his wooden men and animals. About a man whose wife we would like to know more about. There would be many more pictures of his paintings, drawings and figures. One chapter would certainly be about Hägg as a politically conscious person, but one who also found his own way in this field. Write it.

The farmer passes through the wide and enchanted gate, the return of which leads to ruinous wanderings. Entering through this enchanted gate, the farmer is transformed into Patron and the farmer's mother into wife, but the return, which must happen sooner or later, will be either as a fraudster or, in the happiest case, as a beggar, for unless he succeeds in making himself the fraudster of the entire Swedish working class as a Protectionist, which will probably help him on his feet in the same way as the one who forges bills, for a little while, until the claims are again too much.

Polletik or the winding coves of the outdated society

The work Polletik by Carl F Hägg, 1887 withe subtitle 'Det föråldrade samhällets Slingerbukter' (the winding coves of the outdated society), is a work of 44 watercolored pencil drawings in the format 33 x 20, as well as 43 poems.

The upper class, the clergy and other authorities are scourged. But also class travelers - see above - and opponents of free trade got their side-shots from Hägg's sharp pencil. Many of the drawings were probably made in 1887, but this is uncertain. Carl Fredrik Hägg had certainly listened to the socialist and tailor August Palm from Malmö, who spoke several times in Landskrona. One of the first times Palm advertised in the local newspaper and it cost 25 öre to listen. The audience consisted more of bourgeois persons than of workers.

Sven B Ek, former museum director in Landskrona, in his book about 'Polletike raises the question, whether Hägg was a socialist or a radical liberal. The answer is not given. Hägg was obviously not a particularly outgoing person. His work Polletik remained in his library and was not reproduced.

Hägg's strange world of figures, drawings and thoughts disappeared after his death and reappeared by chance fifty years later. It was displayed for a period at Landskrona Museum, which has also lent the works to city administration's offices, and disappeared again into oblivion. But now, coincidences have once again made Hägg's life a little more visible and accessible..

May this be an inspiration for a new initiative from Landskrona, to highlight one of its more original and creative personalities. Now more about Hägg's lost memoir.

Interior of Nils Larsson Hägg's residence, the drawing depicts the soldier Nils Hägg with his wife and four children. The drawing, made on January 2, 1884, depicts the appearance of the eldest son when he was a minor.

Anna Hägg entices her little brother Carl Fredrik to get drunk, as she pours him one sip after another from her father's bottle of brandy, until he finally falls unconscious on the cabin floor. Pictures from Landskrona museum.

The missing memoir

Sven B. Ek writes in the book Polletik that there is certainly a memoir by Hägg. Only a few of these watercolors are known, two of which you see above, but perhaps this Story can bring out a few more. Please contact Landskrona Museum or IDstories.se.

In February 2017, I received an email from a relative of C F Hägg, Eric Moberg, who told me that the Memoir has been found. More about this will follow later this year.

Möte med Hägg

In the Landskrona Museum yearbook for 1978 there are three articles about Carl Fredrik Hägg. One is written by Alfred Persson and is a recollection of his meetings with Hägg.

If I had been asked at the age of five who the world's greatest magician was, I would have answered without a doubt: Hägg - or to complete the name - Carl Fredrik Hägg..

The incident that gave me such a thought occurred in 1906. I knew Hägg before. We were neighbors in the same staircase. Hägg on the first floor and we on the second. But as children are wont to do, I paid this old man no great attention.

But then one day I heard some strange noises from the basement. Curious and wondering, I went down - and there stood Hägg with a carving knife in his hand, working on a block of wood so that the shavings flew around. He looked up, smiled in his beard and said - Ah, - are there any guests coming here?! Come in, little man!

While Hägg was chatting amiably, I stared in amazement at a figure carved in wood - beautifully painted - standing on a stand. It was obvious that it was supposed to represent a blacksmith. I had seen the blacksmith in "Skitta strädet", so how such a one looked I knew. Moreover, the figure held a sledgehammer in his hand and in front of it stood an anvil. Suddenly - without warning, the blacksmith struck a thunderous blow on the anvil. In pure horror, I took a leap backwards and hurriedly climbed out of the basement, all the while Hägg had a good laugh. At that time, I had never been to any of the city's three cinemas - City, Scala and Storan. And so moving images were a great mystery to me...

The gravesite is at Landskrona nya kyrkogård im block 37.

In all contexts, the first name Carl is spelled with a C, but for unknown reasons his name is spelled with a K on the gravestone.

Carl Fredrik Hägg, som roade så många med sina figurer i sin koloniträdgård, hade säkert uppskattat något som växte, något som rörde sig i vinden - i sin kulturgrav. Något som gladde andra som en hälsning till vår tid.

Partial enlargement of the text on the tombstone. The image has been slightly retouched to clarify the text. The text is partly difficult to read on the tombstone.

References

• About BiBB, a media company and an encyclopedia 4.0
• Cemetary map
• Sven B. Ek Polletik
• Landskrona museums årsbok 1978 | Landskrona museum
• Text/nya foton/webb: Johan Schlasberg

Published: 2007.03 Updated: 2025.06.21

Kategorier 20 Historical persons 45 Landskrona 14

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