Felix Teodor Hamrin (14 January 1875 – 27 November 1937) was a Swedish businessman and liberal politician who briefly served as Prime Minister of Sweden from August to September 1932. From 1932 to 1935, he led the Free-Minded People’s Party. His short tenure of 49 days in office is shortest in Swedish history.
Early life and career
Hamrin was born in Mönsterås, Kalmar County, to Carl Gustaf Petersson, a tanner and leather dealer, and Maria Petersson (née Cedergren). Hamrin had a older brother, Josef Hamrin, who was chief executive officer of Jönköpings-Posten.
Hamrin studied in Eksjö. Despite good academic results, he was forced to interrupt his studies in 1889 due to his family's financial problems. Hamrim served as a ship's boy in Karlskrona for six months. Instead, he worked as a gofer and salesclerk in Västergötland and Stockholm. After studying at a business school in Gothenburg, he moved to Jönköping in 1890. Harmin worked at several grocers in Jönköping and Gothenburg. In 1903, he founded the wholesale company AB Felix Hamrin & Co. in Jönköping, which he ran until he became Minister of Finance in 1930.
Political career
left|thumb|Prime Minister Hamrin in 1932.
Hamrin entered into politics in 1906 as his business began to show stable financial results. He got elected as city councillor in 1906 as a member of the Free-minded National Association. During the Courtyard Crisis and fall of prime minister Karl Staaff, he formed a friendship with Carl Gustaf Ekman. Despite retaining his seat in the September 1914 elections, Hamrin would resign from his position to focus on his business. Hamrin would reenter the Riksdag in the 1917 election. Tension was rising between the social democrats and liberals in Nils Edén's coalition government after the implementation of women's suffrage. Hamrin, along with Ekman and Gustav Rosén, belonged to those in the Liberal Coalition Party who most clearly opposed cooperation with the Social Democrats. The coalition government collapsed in 1920 over the issue of local taxation.