Karl Albert Staaff (21 January 1860 – 4 October 1915) was a Swedish liberal politician and lawyer who served as the Prime Minister of Sweden from 1905 to 1906 and again from 1911 to 1914. He was chairman of the Liberal Coalition Party from 1907 to 1915. He was Sweden's first liberal prime minister, as well as its last prime minister whose governance was ended by a lack of monarchical support.
Biography
Karl Albert Staaff was born on 21 January 1860 in the city of Stockholm. His parents were Albert Wilhelm Staaff and Fredrika Wilhelmina "Mina" Schöne.
From 1897 to 1915 Staaff was a member of the Riksdag's Andra kammar, Parliament's lower house. In 1905, he became a Minister without portfolio in Christian Lundeberg's cabinet. Lundeberg appointed him a delegate in Karlstad that year to negotiate the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden. The working relationship between the Swedish delegates was good, particularly between Staaff and ecclesiastical minister Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, who Staaff would appoint ambassador to Copenhagen that year, and who would succeed Staaff as prime minister in 1914.
Staaff was active in the Swedish movement for universal suffrage, and as the Liberal party's Prime Minister he presided in 1905 over an attempt to introduce universal and equal suffrage for men. His successor as party leader, Nils Edén, eventually managed to carry this further into universal suffrage in 1918–1919, including for women. Due to conservative intervention, Staaff's proposal for first-past-the-post voting was ultimately scrapped for a proportional system. In 1912, the period of leave that women were allowed following a child's birth was extended to six weeks, and in 1913 a tax-financed pension scheme was introduced.
Staaff ran into sharp conflict with the arch-conservatives, and became a hated figure in the conservative, pro-monarchic and anti-democratic establishment. An intense smear campaign was launched against him, picturing him as the destroyer of Swedish tradition and society. Wealthy Stockholmers could even buy ashtrays which were shaped after the likeness of his head. His staunch anti-military politics, which included a refusal to fund a new battleship for the Swedish Navy, led to the greatest fundraising effort up to that time in Swedish history. A total of 15 million kronor were raised in just a few months in 1912, entirely through public donations spurred on by King Gustav V, to help fund the construction of what would become the coastal defence ship HSwMS Sverige.