Felix Hamrin

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.^[2]

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.^[3] 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.^[4]

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.^[4]

After being elected into the second chamber of the Riksdag at the young age of 37, he advocated for entrepreneurship, freedom of religion and the temperance movement.^[5] During the Courtyard Crisis and fall of prime minister Karl Staaff, he formed a friendship with Carl Gustaf Ekman.^[6] 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.^[5] After women's suffrage was passed, the issue of prohibition of liquor became the main political focus. The issue divided the liberals in the Riksdag. Hamrin would remain in the Free-minded People's Party when the anti-prohibition minority formed the Liberal Party of Sweden.^[5]

Under Carl Gustaf Ekman's first premiership he served as Minister of Commerce and Industry from 1926 to 1928 and as Minister of Finance from 1930 to 1932. When Ekman was forced to resign shortly before the elections in 1932 due to the Kreuger crash, Hamrin became prime minister. He resigned after the election because the Free-minded People's Party had suffered serious losses in the election.

He served briefly as party leader for the Free-minded People's Party after Ekman, and in the newly formed People's Party until a new party leader was chosen in January 1935. He also served as the governor of Jönköping County from 1930 to 1937. His most important political tasks were to fight the economic effects of the early years of the Depression in Sweden through severe economy measures, and to mitigate the effects of the Kreuger crash.

He married Elizabeth "Lizzie" Pennycock in 1900. They had seven children.

He died in Jönköping on 27 November 1937.