André Oscar Wallenberg (19 November 1816 – 12 January 1886) was a Swedish banker, industrialist, naval officer, newspaper tycoon, politician and patriarch of the Wallenberg family. In 1856, Wallenberg founded the Stockholms Enskilda Bank, the predecessor of today's Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken.
Contents
Early life
He was son of the bishop of Linköping, Marcus Wallenberg (1774–1833), and his wife Anna Laurentia Barfoth (1783–1862). During his stay in Lund, Marcus Wallenberg had become acquainted with and fell in love with Anna Laurentia Barfoth, the daughter of the medical professor Anders Eilert Barfoth and Ebba Bager, who belonged to a prominent Danish-Scanian family. He married her in 1804. In this marriage, three sons were born, whose baptismal names along with other attention and courtesy to the older generations of the family burst testimony to Marcus Wallenberg's classic interests and perhaps also hopes or predictions about the boys' most distinguished characteristics before or during the impending journey through life. The oldest of the brothers was called Marcus Hilarion (the happy one), the middle one Jacob Agathon (the good) and the youngest André (Andreios – the powerful, the tenacious) Oscar. Marcus Hilarion became a lieutenant in the 1st Life Grenadier Regiment, landowner and owner of Lövingsborg estate, Jakob Agathon, became deputy circuit judge, ombudsman of Östergötlands Enskilda Bank and member of the board of Stockholms Enskilda Bank. But most of all, the bishop's prediction seems to have been based on André Oscar, for he became the most prominent of the brothers.
Wallenberg attended Linköping's trivial school and Linköping gymnasium from 1825 to 1832, and traveled as a deck hand to the Caribbean in 1832 and became a sea cadet on his return. After being commissioned as a naval officer in Karlskrona in 1835, he sailed for a couple of years as a seaman on North American merchant navy ships and in 1837 became a lieutenant in the Swedish Navy. In 1841 he followed as a first mate Göran Adolph Oxehufvud's expedition, which had the La Plata states as destination, but left the expedition in Lisbon and stayed for a year in Spain and France, during which he studied law in Grenoble. From 1846 to 1847 Wallenberg was captain of the first Swedish propeller boat, Linköping. He subsequently devoted himself to the Swedish naval service and served in the Danish Navy in 1849 during the blockade of German coasts. In 1850 Wallenberg became head of a boatswain company in Sundsvall. He now began to engage in business, became a Burgess of Sundsvall, to be eligible for election to a member of parliament and was discharged from military service in 1851 with the rank of premierlöjtnant. In 1855 Wallenberg moved to Stockholm.