Erik Henrik Fredrik Bergman (22 October 1886 – 26 April 1970) was a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

parish minister of the

Lutheran Church Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched th ...

and the father of diplomat

Dag Bergman Dag Erik Bergman (23 October 1914 – 10 December 1984) was a Swedish diplomat. Biography Bergman was the son of Erik Bergman, a parish minister, and his wife Karin Bergman, née Åkerblom, and the older brother of film director Ingmar Bergman a ...

, novelist Margareta Bergman, and film director

Ingmar Bergman Ernst Ingmar Bergman (14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish film director, screenwriter, producer and playwright. Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time, his films are known as "profoun ...

. Erik Bergman was born at

Mörbylånga Mörbylånga is a locality situated on the southern part of the island of Öland and is the seat of Mörbylånga Municipality, Kalmar County, Sweden with 1,780 inhabitants in 2010. Other settlements in southern Öland are Alby, the site of a Meso ...

Kalmar County Kalmar County () is a county or '' län'' in southern Sweden. It borders the counties of Kronoberg, Jönköping, Blekinge and Östergötland. To the east in the Baltic Sea is the island Gotland. The counties are mainly administrative units. ...

in 1886. He was ordained to the Swedish State Church in

Uppsala Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Located north of the ca ...

in 1912 and served as a priest in Valbo as of 1913. In 1918 he was relocated to

Stockholm Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropo ...

and served as a minister at

Hedvig Eleonora Church Hedvig Eleonora Church ( sv, Hedvig Eleonora kyrka) is a church in central Stockholm, Sweden. It is located at Östermalm and belongs to the Church of Sweden and is parish church for Hedvig Eleonora Parish in the Diocese of Stockholm. The church ...

, where he became the parish

vicar A vicar (; Latin: '' vicarius'') is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior (compare "vicarious" in the sense of "at second hand"). Linguistically, ''vicar'' is cognate with the English pre ...

of Hedvig Eleonora Parish in 1934. In that capacity he also served as a royal

chaplain A chaplain is, traditionally, a cleric (such as a minister, priest, pastor, rabbi, purohit, or imam), or a lay representative of a religious tradition, attached to a secular institution (such as a hospital, prison, military unit, intelligence ...

to the court of King Gustav V of Sweden. He was married to nurse Karin Åkerblom, his

second cousin Most generally, in the lineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a cousin is a type of familial relationship in which two relatives are two or more familial generations away from their most recent common ancestor. Commonly, ...

.Rochelle Wright, "The Imagined Past in Ingmar Bergman's ''The Best Intentions''", ''Ingmar Bergman: An Artist's Journey'', 2011, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. Bergman wrote an

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

for his daughter Margareta in 1941. Ingmar Bergman later consulted it to write the semi-biographical script about his parents' complex courtship in '' The Best Intentions'' (1992), a story that includes the unhappy early years of their marriage up to the point where the mother is pregnant with her second son, effectively Ingmar himself. Erik Bergman was a rather strict father and his complex relationship with his son is a somber theme in Ingmar Bergman films, such as '' Fanny and Alexander''. He was further portrayed in cinema with ''

Sunday's Children ''Sunday's Children'' ( sv, Söndagsbarn) is a 1992 Swedish drama film directed by Daniel Bergman and written by Ingmar Bergman. At the 28th Guldbagge Awards the film won the award for Best Cinematography (Tony Forsberg) and Thommy Berggren w ...

'', directed by Daniel Bergman and released in 1992. Whereas Ingmar's recollections of Erik Bergman are damning in ''Fanny and Alexander'', his study of his father is "far more forgiving" in ''The Best Intentions'' and ''Sunday's Children''. Erik Bergman died in Stockholm in 1970.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bergman, Erik 1886 births 1970 deaths People from Mörbylånga Municipality 20th-century Swedish Lutheran priests