Hjärne, Harald
Hjärne, Harald
Harald Hjärne (1848–1922), Swedish historian and political writer, came from a family of the nobility. He studied at Uppsala University, where he became assistant professor of history in 1872 and professor of history in 1889. His historical works fall into three groups. Those written between 1872 and 1876 deal mainly with old Germanic and medieval law and social conditions; those of the 1880s deal with the history of Russia and connections between Russia and Sweden; and those from 1890 on deal with the Reformation and the seventeenth century in Sweden. His numerous political essays and articles exerted an important influence on conservative and right-wing liberal thinking, especially during the 1890s. Hjärne was a member of the second chamber of the Riksdag from 1903 to 1908 and a member of the first chamber from 1912 to 1918.
When Hjärne first emerged as a political writer, around 1875, Swedish politics was characterized by economic controversies about defense and taxation on the one hand and by a blurring of ideological positions on the other. The old conservative view of a society based on the estates had disappeared since the abolition of the four-estates Riksdag in 1865. The conservatives then tended to merge with the successful right-wing liberals, who in turn were becoming more conservative, intent on maintaining their conquests. This synthesis of conservatism and right-wing liberalism characterized most political argument and also colored the philosophical doctrine prevalent at the universities—the political idealism of Christoph Jacob Böstrom.
Hjärne cast off Böstrom’s philosophy, with its idealization of the four-estate Riksdag and its liberal tendency to assert the rights of the individual and private interests. He also moved away from the national liberalism of his family, replacing this by a conservative philosophy of his own. According to this political philosophy, the functions of the state are purely juridical; on this point Hjärne agreed with classical liberalism and Böstrom’s ideas, but private interests have no place in his system. The only object of the rights granted by the king, as representative of the state, to his subjects is to enable them to fulfill their obligations toward the state. The greater the personal contribution of the individual, the greater the rights to which he is entitled. Representation should be based on these principles and thus be regarded as a means of public administration, not as a tool for private interests. Hjarne himself maintained that his philosophy stemmed entirely from ancient Swedish law and the Swedish constitution under the Vasa kings (1875; 1876). Actually, however, all the essentials came from the German historian and right-wing liberal politician Rudolf von Gneist, whose works on English constitutional history Hjärne encountered early in the 1870s (Gneist 1857-1860). Gneist saw local self-government as the main way of fulfilling personal obligations toward the state, but Hjärne considered military service to be the most important form of such obligations. The great stress on duty in his philosophy reflects his contempt for the kind of haggling about defense and taxation carried on by the economic group interests in the Riksdag.
In the 1880s there arose a partly new, more extreme form of conservatism. Strongly nationalistic, protectionist, and decidedly antidemocratic in outlook, its adherents opposed the growing demands by Norway for equality and greater independence within the Union. At first, Hjarne’s work reflected this outlook, but he rejected it after 1890, when its supporters threatened to become too powerful. It was then that he launched his own conservative reform program, “Defense and Reforms.” In accordance with his early ideas about the connection between duties and rights he demanded the franchise for all citizens who had completed a year’s military service, regardless of their income and property. He repudiated the Conservative party and its aggressive Union policy, calling himself a right-wing liberal. He retained his basic conservative antiparliamentary philosophy, however.
Hjärne’s historical works helped to foster the patriotic trend in the cultural life of the 1890s, and at times he himself succumbed to the nationalist ethos. At the same time he sharply criticized the principles of nationalism and race prejudice and supported the stand of England and the United States against Germany (1903; 1908; 1932-1940).
Troubled by the growing threat of war and pre sumably also by his own lack of success in the Riksdag, around 1908 Hjärne began to develop a strongly antidemocratic outlook, maintaining that defense and foreign policy should take precedence over domestic reforms. As in the 1880s, he again considered Germany to be Sweden’s potential ally against the hereditary enemy, Russia. In this belief he anticipated the reactionary trend that once more dominated conservative thought after the liberals came to power in 1911.
Unlike some other conservative thinkers, Hjärne avoided identifying himself with dogmatic policies and fatalistic conceptions about inevitable historical laws, and he was able to accept with equanimity the defeat of Germany and the victory of democracy. Primarily through his program “De fense and Reforms” he was a precursor of the moderate line, which was to inspire most conservative political activity during the following decades.
Nils Elvander
WORKS BY HJÄRNE
1875 Vàra standsriksdagar. Svensk tidskrift for Uteratur, politik och ekonomi [1875]: 151-180, 550-569, 701–730.
1876 Skandinavisk laghistoria. Svensk tidskrift for Ut eratur, politik och ekonomi [1876]: 178–288.
1903 Blandade sporsmal. Stockholm: Bonnier.
1908 Svenskt och friimmande. Stockholm: Geber.
1914 Fràn försvarsstriden 1914. Uppsala: Askerberg.
1932-1940 Samlade skrifter. Stockholm: Bonnier. → Vol ume 1: Karl XII, 1932. Volume 2: Gustaf II Adolf, 1932. Volume 3: Moskovitiska rikets uppvdxt, 1933. Volume 4: Samfundsliy och tänkevarld, 1940.
SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Elvander, Nils 1961 Harald Hjärne och konservatis-men: Konservativ idedebatt i Sverige, 1865—1922. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Gneist, Rudolf (1857–1860) 1871-1884 Das heutige englische Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsrecht. 3d ed., 2 vols. Berlin: Springer. → Volume 1: Das englische Verwaltungsrecht der Gegenwart in Vergleichung mitden deutschen Verwaltungssystemen, 1883–1884. Vol ume 2: Self government: Communalverfassung und Vcrwaltungsgerichte in England, 1871.