Hospitalspredikantens arbetssituation i Sverige mellan åren 1894-1917

Abstract

This essay treats the work situation of the hospital preacher in Sweden between the years 1894 – 1917, focusing on the question: what was the work situation like for the hospital preacher and who was or were his superiors? The purpose of this essay is to examine the work prerequisites and job assignments from a national theory of citizenship perspective. This theory is based upon Mats Andréns Mellan delagande och uteslutning […] (2005), primarily the first part which discusses the perspectives on citizenship during the 19th and 20th century. This dilemma is defined by what happens between ideology and reality, as exemplified by the American Declaration of independence, which, while focusing on freedom, evidently excluded other citizens from society.1 To describe this dichotomy we need an analytical tool consisting of four terms: being an active or passive citizen, and having a flexible or a stable perspective. Active citizenship relates to the prevalent view on society during the 18th century, where the working, tax paying, active citizen was valuable for the state, while the passive citizen (lacking work, ill) was a liability.2 Andrén’s concluding hypothesis of the dilemma of citizenship is that it is the oscillation between being and active and a passive citizen that creates the prerequisites for a long term citizenship.3 My application of Andrén’s theories is that the hospital preacher was a citizen on the hospital board. There, flexibility emerged, through the situational oscillations between active and passive capacity for action, where the continuity of the complex structure led to stability. The examination is made by switching between close reading and at the same time interpreting its correlations using an abductive qualitative method. The observational material consists of the regulatory documents of the Church of Sweden and the government regulations defining the work situation of the hospital preacher. The main job assignments for the hospital preacher were education, the parish register, performing church services and supplying pastoral care. This is where the Church of Sweden and the medicinal science met in a joint task to keep and care for the lunatics in life and death. This essay focuses on the meeting point between the regulations of the Church of Sweden and the government agencies on a national level. In conclusion the complexity of the job assignments with the parish registry, providing church services and pastoral care are made more salient by the 1922 hospital charter, which brings a surprising clarity on the subject. This leads me to believe that this hospital charter was made more detailed due to previous ambiguities. My conclusion is therefore that the hospital preachers in general served under the hospital board which is confirmed by the 1922 hospital charter. Moreover, I conclude that many years of flexibility for the hospital preachers gave stability to the hospital. For further research, it would be interesting to examine how hospital preachers today view their own work situation and who their superiors are.