When the Laurinska palatset is built, Stockholm stands on the brink of modernity. The house at the top of Mariaberget gets a new expression of the times: the heavily ornamented facades of the early 1880s are replaced with bare brick.
The architect Valfrid Karlson never becomes a star; he wins the competitions for both the opera house and the parliament building but is outmaneuvered at the last moment by competitors.
Talent is not enough, you have to have the right contacts.
The young man who gives the house its name has such: the 25-year-old art historian and publisher Carl G Laurin.
He moves in newly married and with a job at Norstedts, owned by a relative. The printed book is on the rise. Prominent friends gather at Laurin's, such as the artist Carl Larsson, the writer Hjalmar Söderberg and the architect Ragnar Östberg, who will soon design Stockholm's city hall on the other side of Riddarfjärden. The Laurin couple also spend time with neighbors Hanna Hirsch Pauli and Georg Pauli.
Sara Kristoffersson shows how Laurinska gets its reputation as a fortress of the cultural elite, for example the scene in Hanna Hirsch Pauli's famous painting "The Friends" takes place here, with a reading Ellen Key in the center. Others who lived or live in the house are the "pen shaft" Else Kleen, a scandal beauty in stass from NK, the opera singer Isobel Ghasal-Öhman, the artist Hilding Linnqvist and later the couple Eva Dahlgren and Efva Attling. As well as Sara Kristoffersson herself.
With a light hand, she leads me in and out of the house and the lives of the inhabitants. Fast forward through Stockholm's modern history, with emergency housing, the Stockholm exhibition and not least the Second World War, when a Nazi stronghold is discovered in Laurinska's basement(!).
Have you ever wondered what lies behind the silhouette of Mariaberget? Here you can satisfy your curiosity.
At the beginning, I react to the somewhat one-dimensional selection of people portrayed. If you are a housewife, porter, housekeeper or even one of today's moped-riding delivery men, you get little or no attention. However, Kristoffersson is clear that this is not a comprehensive book. The conditions of lower social classes are instead described in historical panoramas of the city.
In her position as a design historian and professor, Sara Kristoffersson has written books about the Swedish brands Ikea and Konsum. Even in "Palatset på Söder" there is a deserved focus on the role of design and branding for the image of Stockholm.
The fact that she interviewed her famous neighbors could capsize in a Brf yearbook for the cultural elite. But it turns out to be an excellent vantage point. From within Laurinska, she succeeds in capturing another piece of the city's history: the colorful Stockholm.
Laurinska was among the first apartment buildings in Stockholm to be remodeled in the 1970s, thanks to the tenants Inger and Olle Wästberg, both leading folk parties.
The price for the polished Stockholm of our time is that many are shut out, everything from cultural activities to young people and everyone else who does not have access to a fat bank account.
At Mariaberget, people obviously didn't stop throwing out kitchens after the pandemic. The only time Kristoffersson lets her irritation seep out between the lines is when she writes about the disturbances from protracted renovations in a neighboring apartment. That's good! The scene, when a handyman forgets to tighten a faucet and several floors are flooded, is, to say the least, telling of the crooked vanity of our day. Likewise, that all new residents suddenly want to rebuild and place the kitchen facing the view, whatever the cost. Out in the yard and Bastugatan, there are sometimes so many bags of rubbish that she wonders if there is anything left in the house.
Laurinska stands out as a container for the city's preoccupation with status, financial success, celebrity.
The house contrasts for a long time with its surroundings: a bourgeois palace, raised above poor southern shacks. Sara Kristoffersson talks casually about how the environment catches up.
