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Karl Albert Staaff (21 January 1860 – 4 October 1915) was a Swedish Liberalism 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.
From 1897 to 1915 Staaff was a member of the Riksdag's Andra kammaren, 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.Foundations of the Welfare State: 2nd Edition by Pat Thane, published 1996
Staaff ran into sharp conflict with the conservative Swedish establishment, and became a hated figure in the Conservatism, pro-Monarchy and anti-democracy establishment. An intense smear campaign was launched against him, picturing him as the destroyer of Swedish tradition and society: wealthy could even buy ashtrays shaped as his head. His staunch anti-military politics led to the greatest fundraiser up to that time in Swedish history – funds for the 12 million kronor coastal battleship were raised in 1912, entirely through public donations, in just a few months. Staaff had to bite the bullet, and the ship was ordered.
In 1914 Staaff stepped down from the government in protest after the conservatives had summoned a farmers' Courtyard Crisis at the Royal castle's court in Stockholm, where King Gustaf V – who according to law was supposed to stay out of politics – denounced Staaff's defence policies.
The contemporary Swedish Liberal party the Liberals count him as the first among the more prominent leaders of Swedish 20th-century liberalism, followed by such parliamentarians as Nils Edén, Carl Ekman, Nobel Prize laureate Bertil Ohlin, Gunnar Helén, Per Ahlmark and Bengt Westerberg.
Staaff died on 4 October 1915, after a cold he contracted had developed into pneumonia. He never married.
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