The Branting Monument
Encyclopedia
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, with a statue of the Swedish Social Democratic
Swedish Social Democratic Party
The Swedish Social Democratic Workers' Party, , contesting elections as 'the Workers' Party – the Social Democrats' , or sometimes referred to just as 'the Social Democrats' and most commonly as Sossarna ; is the oldest and largest political party in Sweden. The party was founded in 1889...
leader Hjalmar Branting
Hjalmar Branting
was a Swedish politician. He was the leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party , and Prime Minister during three separate periods . When Branting came to power in 1920, he was the first Social Democratic Prime Minister of Sweden...
(1860 – 1925). The monument is 5 meters tall and 6 meters wide.
The bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
relief
Relief
Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane...
monument, by artist Carl Eldh
Carl Eldh
Carl Eldh was a Swedish artist and sculptor. Full name: Carl Johan Eldh . Older brother to Albert Eldh.Eldh was born in Östhammar Municipality, Uppland, the son of a blacksmith...
, is located in a small park at Norra Bantorget
Norra Bantorget
Norra Bantorget is an area in central Stockholm. It is the traditional Social Democratic grounds of the Swedish capital...
in Stockholm, which is the traditional Social Democratic grounds of the city. Eldh started working on the monument in 1926, one year after Branting had died, but it wasn’t erected until 1952. The monument shows a prominent looking Branting addressing a group of workers on a May Day
May Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....
demonstration. Several of the worker movement’s pioneers are found in the otherwise anonymous crowd of workers surrounding Branting, including Axel Danielsson
Axel Danielsson
Axel Danielsson was a Swedish socialist agitator, journalist and writer, born in Värmland. He was a prominent leader of the early Swedish Social Democratic Party...
and August Palm
August Palm
August Teodor Palm was a Swedish socialist activist and a key person in introducing the social democratic labour movement in Sweden, leading it in a reformist direction.-Early activism:...
.
On 17 May 1992, the monument was partly damaged when a small bomb
Bomb
A bomb is any of a range of explosive weapons that only rely on the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy...
exploded and blew up a hole in the belly of the Hjalmar Branting figure. This was the fourth in a series of five statue bombings in Stockholm that had begun on 25 February and ended on 8 June. A group of seven teenagers, six boys and one girl, were arrested a week later and confessed to the acts of vandalism
Vandalism
Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...
. (The other statues were not political monuments, and no political motives were mentioned in the news reports.)
The monument was restored two years later by the local company Herman Bergmans konstgjuteri AB, the foundry that had originally made it in the early 1950s. The restoration cost, 320,000 Swedish crowns
Swedish krona
The krona has been the currency of Sweden since 1873. Both the ISO code "SEK" and currency sign "kr" are in common use; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it, but especially in the past, it sometimes preceded the value...
, was shared by the City of Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
and the Stockholm section of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation
Swedish Trade Union Confederation
The Swedish Trade Union Confederation , commonly referred to as LO, is a national trade union centre, an umbrella organisation for fifteen Swedish trade unions that organise mainly "blue-collar" workers...
.