Youth , whose harsh discipline haunted Strindberg in his adult life Strindberg was born on 22 January 1849 in Stockholm, Sweden, the third surviving son of Carl Oscar Strindberg (
a shipping agent) and Eleonora Ulrika Norling (a serving-maid). In his autobiographical novel
The Son of a Servant, Strindberg describes a childhood affected by "emotional insecurity, poverty, religious fanaticism and neglect". When he was seven, the family moved to Norrtullsgatan on the northern, almost-rural, periphery of the city. A year later they moved near Sabbatsberg, where they stayed for three years before returning to Norrtullsgatan. He attended a harsh school in Klara for four years, an experience that haunted him in his adult life. He was moved to the school in Jakob in 1860, which he found far more pleasant, though he remained there for only a year. In the autumn of 1861, he was moved to the
Stockholm Lyceum, a progressive private school for middle-class boys, where he remained for six years. As a child he had a keen interest in natural science, photography, and religion (following his mother's
Pietism). His mother, Strindberg recalled later with bitterness, always resented her son's intelligence. Less than a year after her death, his father married the children's
governess, Emilia Charlotta Pettersson. According to his sisters, Strindberg came to regard them as his worst enemies. Strindberg spent the next few years in
Uppsala and Stockholm, alternately studying for examinations and trying his hand at non-academic pursuits. As a young student, Strindberg also worked as an assistant in a pharmacy in the university town of
Lund in southern Sweden. He supported himself in between studies as a substitute primary-school teacher and as a tutor for the children of two well-known physicians in Stockholm. He first left Uppsala in 1868 to work as a schoolteacher, but then studied chemistry for some time at the
Institute of Technology in Stockholm in preparation for medical studies, later working as a private tutor before becoming an extra at the
Royal Theatre in Stockholm. In May 1869, he failed his qualifying chemistry examination which in turn made him uninterested in schooling.
1870s Strindberg returned to
Uppsala University in January 1870 to study aesthetics and modern languages and to work on a number of plays. It was at this time that he first learnt about the ideas of
Charles Darwin. He co-founded the Rune Society, a small literary club whose members adopted pseudonyms taken from
runes of the ancient
Teutonic alphabet – Strindberg called himself
Frö (Seed), after the god of fertility. After abandoning a draft of a play about
Eric XIV of Sweden halfway through in the face of criticism from the Rune Society, on 30 March he completed a one-act comedy in verse called
In Rome about
Bertel Thorvaldsen, which he had begun the previous autumn. The play was accepted by the
Royal Theatre, where it premièred on 13 September 1870. As he watched it performed, he realised that it was not good and felt like drowning himself, though the reviews published the following day were generally favourable. That year he also first read works of
Søren Kierkegaard and
Georg Brandes, both of whom influenced him. Taking his cue from
William Shakespeare, he began to use colloquial and realistic speech in his historical dramas, which challenged the convention that they should be written in stately verse. During the Christmas holiday of 1870–71, he rewrote a historical tragedy,
Sven the Sacrificer, as a one-act play in prose called
The Outlaw. Depressed by Uppsala, he stayed in Stockholm, returning to the university in April to pass an exam in Latin and in June to defend his thesis on
Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger's
Romantic tragedy Earl Haakon (1802). Following further revision in the summer,
The Outlaw opened at the Royal Theatre on 16 October 1871. Despite hostile reviews, the play earned him an audience with
King Charles XV, who supported his studies with a payment of 200
riksdaler. Towards the end of the year Strindberg completed a first draft of his first major work, a play about
Olaus Petri called
Master Olof. In September 1872, the
Royal Theatre rejected it, leading to decades of rewrites, bitterness, and a contempt for official institutions. Returning to the university for what would be his final term in the spring, he left on 2 March 1872, without graduating. In
Town and Gown (1877), a collection of short stories describing student life, he ridiculed Uppsala and its professors. Strindberg embarked on his career as a journalist and critic for newspapers in Stockholm. He was particularly excited at this time by
Henry Thomas Buckle's
History of Civilization and the first volume of Georg Brandes'
Main Currents of Nineteenth-Century Literature. From December 1874, Strindberg worked for eight years as an assistant librarian at the
Royal Library. That same month, Strindberg offered
Master Olof to
Edvard Stjernström (the director of the newly built
New Theatre in Stockholm), but it was rejected. Early in the summer of 1875, he met
Siri von Essen, a 24-year-old aspiring actress who, by virtue of her husband, was a
baroness – he became infatuated with her. Strindberg described himself as a "failed author" at this time: "I feel like a deaf-mute," he wrote, "as I cannot speak and am not permitted to write; sometimes I stand in the middle of my room that seems like a prison cell, and then I want to scream so that walls and ceilings would fly apart, and I have so much to scream about, and therefore I remain silent." As a result of an argument in January 1876 concerning the inheritance of the family firm, Strindberg's relationship with his father was terminated (he did not attend his funeral in February 1883). From the beginning of 1876, Strindberg and Siri began to meet in secret, and that same year Siri and her husband divorced. Following a successful audition that December, Siri became an actress at the
Royal Theatre. They married a year later, on 30 December 1877; Siri was seven months pregnant at the time. Their first child was born prematurely on 21 January 1878 and died two days later. On 9 January 1879, Strindberg was declared bankrupt. In November 1879, his novel
The Red Room was published. A satire of Stockholm society, it has frequently been described as the first modern Swedish novel. As a result of
The Red Room, he had become famous throughout Scandinavia.
Edvard Brandes wrote that the novel "makes the reader want to join the fight against hypocrisy and reaction." In his response to Brandes, Strindberg explained that:
1880s , as Margit in ''Sir Bengt's Wife'' (1882) at the
New Theatre. Strindberg and Siri's daughter Karin was born on 26 February 1880. Buoyant from the reception of
The Red Room, Strindberg swiftly completed
The Secret of the Guild ("
Gillets hemlighet"), an historical drama set in
Uppsala at the beginning of the 15th century about the conflict between two masons over the completion of the city cathedral, which opened at the
Royal Theatre on 3 May 1880 (his first première in nine years);
Siri played the "staunchly loyal" Margaretha. That spring he formed a friendship with the painter
Carl Larsson. From 1881, at the invitation of
Edvard Brandes, Strindberg began to contribute articles to the
Morgenbladet, a Copenhagen daily newspaper. In April he began work on
The Swedish People, a four-part cultural history of Sweden written as a series of depictions of ordinary people's lives from the 9th century onwards, which he undertook mainly for financial reasons and which absorbed him for the next year; Larsson provided illustrations. At Strindberg's insistence, Siri resigned from the Royal Theatre in the spring, having become pregnant again. Their second daughter, Greta, was born on 9 June 1881, while they were staying on the island of
Kymmendö. That month, a collection of essays from the past 10 years,
Studies in Cultural History, was published.
Ludvig Josephson (the new artistic director of Stockholm's
New Theatre) agreed to stage
Master Olof, eventually opting for the prose version – the five-hour-long production opened on 30 December 1881 under the direction of August Lindberg to favourable reviews. While this production of
Master Olof was his breakthrough in the theatre, Strindberg's five-act
fairy-tale play ''Lucky Peter's Journey'', which opened on 22 December 1883, brought him his first significant success, although he dismissed it as a
potboiler. In March 1882 he wrote in a letter to Josephson: "My interest in the theatre, I must frankly state, has but one focus and one goal – my wife's career as an actress"; Josephson duly cast her in two roles the following season. Having returned to Kymmendö during the summer of 1882, Strindberg wrote a collection of
anti-establishment short stories,
The New Kingdom. While there, to provide a lead role for his wife and as a reply to
Henrik Ibsen's ''
A Doll's House (1879), he also wrote Sir Bengt's Wife
, which opened on 25 November 1882 at the New Theatre. He moved to Grez-sur-Loing, just south of Paris, France, where Larsson was staying. He then moved to Paris, which they found noisy and polluted. Income earned from Lucky Peter's Journey'' enabled him to move to
Switzerland in 1883. He resided in
Ouchy, where he stayed for some years. On 3 April 1884, Siri gave birth to their son, Hans. arising from a story in the first volume of his collection
Getting Married. In 1884 Strindberg wrote a collection of short stories,
Getting Married, that presented women in an
egalitarian light and for which he was tried for and acquitted of
blasphemy in Sweden. Two groups "led by influential members of the upper classes, supported by the right-wing press" probably instigated the prosecution; at the time, most people in Stockholm thought that
Queen Sophia was behind it. By the end of that year Strindberg was in a despondent mood: "My view now is," he wrote, "everything is shit. No way out. The skein is too tangled to be unravelled. It can only be sheared. The building is too solid to be pulled down. It can only be blown up." In May 1885 he wrote: "I am on my way to becoming an
atheist." In the wake of the publication of
Getting Married, he began to correspond with
Émile Zola. During the summer he completed a sequel volume of stories, though some were quite different in tone from those of the first. Another collection of stories,
Utopias in Reality, was published in September 1885, though it was not well received. In 1885, they moved back to Paris. In September 1887 he began to write a novel in French about his relationship with Siri von Essen called
The Defence of a Fool. In 1887, they moved to Issigatsbühl, near
Lindau by
Lake Constance. His next play,
Comrades (1886), was his first in a contemporary setting. After the trial he evaluated his religious beliefs, and concluded that he needed to leave
Lutheranism, though he had been Lutheran since childhood; and after briefly being a
deist, he became an
atheist. He needed a
credo and he used
Jean-Jacques Rousseau nature worshiping, which he had studied while a student, as one. His works
The People of Hemsö (1887) and
Among French Peasants (1889) were influenced by his study of Rousseau. He then moved to Germany, where he fell in love with
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's
Prussia status of the officer corps. After that, he grew very critical of Rousseau and turned to
Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophies, which emphasized the male intellect. Nietzsche's influence can be seen in
The Defence of a Fool (1893),
Pariah (1889),
Creditors (1889), and
By the Open Sea (1890). Another change in his life after the trial is that Strindberg decided he wanted a scientific life instead of a literary one, and began to write about non-literary subjects. When he was 37, he began
The Son of a Servant, a four-part autobiography. The first part ends in 1867, the year he left home for Uppsala. Part two describes his youth up to 1872. Part three, or
The Red Room, describes his years as a poet and journalist; it ends with his meeting
Siri von Essen. Part four, which dealt with the years from 1877 to 1886, was banned by his publishers and was not published until after his death. The three missing years, 1875–1877, were the time when Strindberg was wooing von Essen and their marriage; entitled
He and She, this portion of his autobiography was not printed until 1919, after his death. It contains the love letters between the two during that period. In the later half of the 1880s Strindberg discovered
Naturalism. After completing
The Father in a matter of weeks, he sent a copy to
Émile Zola for his approval, though Zola's reaction was lukewarm. The drama revolves around the conflict between the Captain, a father, husband, and scientist, and his wife, Laura, over the education of their only child, a fourteen-year-old daughter named Berta. Through unscrupulous means, Laura gets the Captain to doubt his fatherhood until he suffers a mental and physical collapse. While writing
The Father, Strindberg himself was experiencing marital problems and doubted the paternity of his children. He also suspected that Ibsen had based Hjalmar Ekdal in
The Wild Duck (1884) on Strindberg because he felt that Ibsen viewed him as a weak and pathetic husband; he reworked the situation of Ibsen's play into a warfare between the two sexes. From November 1887 to April 1889, Strindberg stayed in
Copenhagen. While there he had several opportunities to meet with both
Georg Brandes and his brother
Edvard Brandes. Georg helped him put on
The Father, which had its première on 14 November 1887 at the Casino Theatre in Copenhagen. It enjoyed a successful run for 11 days after which it toured the Danish provinces. play
Miss Julie, staged at The People's Theatre in November 1906. Sacha Sjöström (left) as Kristin, Manda Björling as Miss Julie, and August Falck as Jean. Before writing
Creditors, Strindberg completed one of his most famous pieces,
Miss Julie. He wrote the play with a Parisian stage in mind, in particular the
Théâtre Libre, founded in 1887 by
André Antoine. In the play he used
Charles Darwin's theory of
survival of the fittest and dramatized a doomed sexual encounter that crosses the division of social classes. It is believed that this play was inspired by the marriage of Strindberg, the son of a servant, to an aristocratic woman. In the essay
On Psychic Murder (1887), he referred to the psychological theories of the
Nancy School, which advocated the use of hypnosis. Strindberg developed a theory that sexual warfare was not motivated by carnal desire but by relentless human will. The winner was the one who had the strongest and most unscrupulous mind, someone who, like a hypnotist, could coerce a more impressionable psyche into submission. His view on psychological power struggles may be seen in works such as
Creditors (1889),
The Stronger (1889), and
Pariah (1889). In 1888, after a separation and reconciliation with Siri von Essen, he founded the Scandinavian Experimental Theatre in Copenhagen, where Siri became manager. He asked writers to send him scripts, which he received from
Herman Bang,
Gustav Wied and Nathalia Larsen. Less than a year later, with the theatre and reconciliation short lived, he moved back to Sweden while Siri moved back to her native
Finland with the children. While there, he rode out the final phase of the divorce and later used this agonizing ordeal for the basis of
The Bond and the Link (1893). Strindberg also became interested in short drama, called Quart d'heure. He was inspired by writers such as Gustave Guiche and Henri de Lavedan. His notable contribution was
The Stronger (1889). As a result of the failure of the Scandinavian Experimental Theatre, Strindberg did not work as a playwright for three years. In 1889, he published an essay entitled "On Modern Drama and the Modern Theatre", in which he disassociated himself from naturalism, arguing that it was petty and unimaginative realism. His sympathy for Nietzsche's philosophy and atheism in general was also on the wane. He entered the period of his "Inferno crisis", in which he had psychological and religious upheavals that influenced his later works. August Strindberg's
Inferno is his personal account of sinking deeper into some kind of madness, typified by visions and paranoia. In
Strindberg och alkoholen (1985), James Spens discusses Strindberg's drinking habits, including his liking for
absinthe and its possible implications for Strindberg's mental health during the inferno period.
1890s Portrait of August Strindberg, 1892,
Museum of Modern Art,
Stockholm, Sweden On midsummer's day, 1891, while staying with Siri and her close friend, the Danish woman Marie Caroline David, on the island
Runmarö, in the
Stockholm Archipelago, Strindberg suspected Siri was having a long-term affair with David, and he violently assaulted her, precipitating the end of the marriage. After his disenchantment with naturalism, Strindberg had a growing interest in transcendental matters.
Symbolism was just beginning at this time.
Verner von Heidenstam and Ola Hanson had dismissed naturalism as "shoemaker realism" that rendered human experience in simplistic terms. This is believed to have stalled Strindberg's creativity, and Strindberg insisted that he was in a rivalry and forced to defend naturalism, even though he had exhausted its literary potential. These works include:
Debit and Credit (1892),
Facing Death (1892),
Motherly Love (1892), and
The First Warning (1893). His play
The Keys of Heaven (1892) was inspired by the loss of his children in his divorce. He also completed one of his few comedies,
Playing with Fire (1893), and the first two parts of his post-inferno trilogy
To Damascus (1898–1904). In 1892, he experienced writer's block, which led to a drastic reduction in his income. Depression followed as he was unable to meet his financial obligations and to support his children and former wife. A fund was set up through an appeal in a German magazine. This money allowed him to leave Sweden and he joined artistic circles in Berlin.
Otto Brahm's Freie Bühne theatre premiered some of his famous works in Germany, including
The Father,
Miss Julie, and
Creditors. ,
Portrait of August Strindberg, 1896,
National Museum in Warsaw Similar to 20 years earlier when he frequented The Red Room, he now went to the German tavern The Black Porker. Here he met a diverse group of artists from Scandinavia, Poland, and Germany. His attention turned to
Frida Uhl, who was twenty-three years younger than Strindberg. They were married in 1893. Less than a year later, their daughter Kerstin was born and the couple separated, though their marriage was not officially dissolved until 1897. Frida's family, in particular her mother, who was a devout Catholic, had an important influence on Strindberg, and in an 1894 letter he declared "I feel the hand of our Lord resting over me." Some critics think that Strindberg suffered from severe paranoia in the mid-1890s, and perhaps that he temporarily experienced insanity. Others, including Evert Sprinchorn and
Olof Lagercrantz, believed that he intentionally turned himself into his own guinea pig by doing psychological and drug-induced self-experimentation. He wrote on subjects such as
botany,
chemistry, and
optics before returning to literature with the publication of
Inferno (1897), a (half fictionalized) account of his "wilderness years" in Austria and Paris, then a collection of short stories,
Legends, and a semi-dramatic novella,
Jacob Wrestling (both printed in the same book 1898). Both volumes aroused curiosity and controversy, not least due to the religious element; earlier, Strindberg had been known to be indifferent or hostile to religion and especially priests, but now he had undergone some sort of conversion to a personal faith. In a postscript, he noted the impact of
Emanuel Swedenborg on his current work. as Erik in the
Moscow Art Theatre 1921 production of Strindberg's play
Erik XIV (1899). "The Powers" were central to Strindberg's later work. He said that "the Powers" were an outside force that had caused him his physical and mental suffering because they were acting in retribution to humankind for their wrongdoings. As
William Blake,
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Honoré de Balzac, and
William Butler Yeats had been, he was drawn to
Swedenborg's mystical visions, with their depictions of spiritual landscape and Christian morality. Strindberg believed for the rest of his life that the relationship between the transcendental and the real world was described by a series of "correspondences" and that everyday events were really messages from above of which only the enlightened could make sense. He also felt that he was chosen by
Providence to atone for the moral decay of others and that his tribulations were payback for misdeeds earlier in his life. Strindberg had spent the tail end of 1896 and most of 1897 in the university town of
Lund in southern Sweden, a sojourn during which he made a number of new friendships, felt his mental stability and health improving and also firmly returned to literary writing;
Inferno, Legends and
Jacob Wrestling were written there. In 1899, he returned permanently to Stockholm, following a successful production there of
Master Olof in 1897 (which was re-staged in 1899 to mark Strindberg's fiftieth birthday). He had the desire to become recognized as a leadíng figure in Swedish literature, and to put earlier controversies behind him, and felt that historical dramas were the way to attain that status. Though Strindberg claimed that he was writing "realistically", he freely altered past events and biographical information, and telescoped chronology (as often done in most historical fiction): more importantly, he felt a flow of resurgent inspiration, writing almost twenty new plays (many in a historical setting) between 1898 and 1902. His new works included the so-called Vasa Trilogy:
The Saga of the Folkungs (1899),
Gustavus Vasa (1899), and
Erik XIV (1899) and
A Dream Play (written in 1901, first performed in 1907).
1900s Strindberg was pivotal in the creation of
chamber plays.
Max Reinhardt was a big supporter of his, staging some of his plays at the Kleines Theatre in 1902 (including
The Bond,
The Stronger, and
The Outlaw). Once
Otto Brahm relinquished his role as head as of the
Deutsches Theatre, Reinhardt took over and produced Strindberg's plays. In 1903, Strindberg planned to write a grand cycle of plays based on world history, but the idea soon faded. He had completed short plays about
Martin Luther,
Plato,
Moses,
Jesus Christ, and
Socrates. He wrote another historical drama in 1908 after the
Royal Theatre convinced him to put on a new play for its sixtieth birthday. He wrote
The Last of the Knights (1908),
Earl Birger of Bjälbo (1909), and
The Regents (1909). (1905). His other works, such as
Days of Loneliness (1903),
The Roofing Ceremony (1907), and
The Scapegoat (1907), and the novels
The Gothic Rooms (1904) and
Black Banners Genre Scenes from the Turn of the Century, (1907) have been viewed as precursors to
Marcel Proust and
Franz Kafka. August Falck, an actor, wanted to put on a production of
Miss Julie and wrote to Strindberg for permission. In September 1906 he staged the first Swedish production of
Miss Julie. August Falck, played Jean and Manda Bjorling played Julie. In 1909, Strindberg thought he might get the
Nobel Prize in Literature, but instead lost to
Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman and first Swede to win the award. The leader of the
Social Democrat Youth Alliance started a fund-raiser for a special "people's award".
Nathan Söderblom (friend of Strindberg since the mid-90s years in Paris, a prominent theologian and later to become archbishop of Sweden) was noted as a donor, and both he and Strindberg came under attack from circles close to the conservative party and the church. In total 45,000 Swedish crowns were collected, by more than 20,000 donors, most of whom were workers.
Albert Bonniers förlag, who had already published much of his work over the years, paid him 200,000 Swedish crowns for the publishing rights to his complete works; the first volumes of the edition would appear in print in 1912, a few months before his death. He invited his first three children (now, like their mother, living in Finland) to Stockholm and divided the money into five shares, one for each child, one for Siri (absent), and the last one for himself. In setting apart one share for Siri, Strindberg noted, in a shy voice, "This is for your mother - it's to settle an old debt". When the children returned to Helsinki, Siri was surprised to hear that she had been included, but accepted the money and told them in a voice that was, according to her daughter Karin, both proud and moved, "I shall accept it, receiving it as an old debt". The debt was less financial than mental and emotional; Strindberg knew he had sometimes treated her unfairly during the later years of their marriage and at their divorce trial. In 1912, she would pass away only a few weeks before him. In 1907, Strindberg co-founded
The Intimate Theatre in Stockholm, together with the young actor and stage director August Falck. His theatre was modeled after
Max Reinhardt's Kammerspiel Haus. Strindberg and Falck had the intention of the theatre being used for his plays and his plays only, Strindberg also wanted to try out a more chamber-oriented and sparse style of dramatic writing and production. In time for the theatre's opening, Strindberg wrote four chamber plays:
Thunder in the Air, The Burned Site, The Ghost Sonata, and
The Pelican; these were generally not a success with audiences or newspaper critics at the time but have been highly influential on modern drama (and soon would reach wider audiences at Reinhardt's theatre in Berlin and other German stages). Strindberg had very specific ideas about how the theatre would be opened and operated. He drafted a series of rules for his theatre in a letter to August Falck: 1. No liquor. 2. No Sunday performances. 3. Short performances without intermissions. 4. No calls. 5. Only 160 seats in the auditorium. 6. No prompter. No orchestra, only music on stage. 7. The text will be sold at the box office and in the lobby. 8. Summer performances. Falck helped to design the auditorium, which was decorated in a deep-green tone. The ceiling lighting was a yellow silk cover which created an effect of mild daylight. The floor was covered with a deep-green carpet, and the auditorium was decorated by six ultra modern columns with elaborate up-to-date capitals. Instead of the usual restaurant Strindberg offered a lounge for the ladies and a smoking-room for the gentlemen. The stage was unusually small, only 6 by 9 metres. The small stage and minimal number of seats was meant to give the audience a greater feeling of involvement in the work. Unlike most theatres at this time, the Intima Teater was not a place in which people could come to socialize. By setting up his rules and creating an intimate atmosphere, Strindberg was able to demand the audience's focus. When the theatre opened in 1907 with a performance of
The Pelican it was a rather large hit. Strindberg used a minimal technique, as was his way, by only having a back drop and some sea shells on the stage for scene design and props. Strindberg was much more concerned with the actors portraying the written word than the stage looking pretty. The theatre ran into a financial difficulty in February 1908 and Falck had to borrow money from
Prince Eugen, Duke of Närke, who attended the première of
The Pelican. The theatre eventually went bankrupt in 1910, but did not close until Strindberg's death in 1912. The newspapers wrote about the theatre until its death.
Death and funeral Strindberg died shortly after the first staging of one of his plays in the
United States —
The Father opened on 9 April 1912 at the Berkeley Theatre in New York, in a translation by painter and playwright Edith Gardener Shearn Oland and her husband actor
Warner Oland. They jointly published their translations of his plays in book form in 1912. During Christmas 1911, Strindberg became sick with
pneumonia and he never recovered completely. He also began to suffer more clearly from a
stomach cancer (early signs of which had been felt in 1908). The final weeks of his life were painful. He had long since become a national celebrity, even if highly controversial, and when it became clear that he was seriously ill the daily papers in Stockholm began reporting on his health in every edition. He received many letters and telegrams from admirers across the country. He died on 14 May 1912 at the age of 63. Strindberg was interred at
Norra begravningsplatsen in Stockholm. He had given strict instructions concerning his funeral and how his body should be treated after death: only members of his immediate family were allowed to view his body, there would be no autopsy, no photographs were taken, and no
death mask was made. Strindberg had also requested that his funeral should take place as soon as possible after his death to avoid crowds of onlookers. However, the workers' organisations requested that the funeral should take place on a Sunday to make it possible for working men to pay their respects, and the funeral was postponed for five days, until Sunday, 19 May. According to Strindberg's last wish, the funeral procession was to start at 8am, again to avoid crowds, but large groups of people were nevertheless waiting outside his home as well as at the cemetery, as early as 7am. A short service was conducted by
Nathan Söderblom by the bier in Strindberg's home, in the presence of three of Strindberg's children and his housekeeper, after which the coffin was taken outside for the funeral procession. The procession was followed by groups of students, workers, members of Parliament and a couple of cabinet ministers, and it was estimated that up to 60,000 people lined the streets. King
Gustaf V sent a wreath for the bier. ==Legacy==