Waldemar Hammenhög
Swedish writer (1902-1972)
Per Waldemar Hammenhög (18 April 1902 – 1 November 1972) was a Swedish writer and novelist. The trivial, petty bourgeois urban environment forms the basis of many of his early realistic novels, whereas his later works turned towards religious and moral issues. Writing more than 40 novels, Hammenhög is probably best known for Pettersson & Bendel (1931), a humorous novel adapted twice to screen.
Life and work
Born in Stockholm in 1902 as Waldemar Anderson, he was the son of foreman Per Anderson and his wife Lydia Källgren. After graduating from the Högre realläroverket å Östermalm high school in Stockholm in 1919, Hammenhög worked as an office boy, and later office clerk until 1930. He left his job as a clerk after he was awarded first-prize in a novel competition organized by the Stockholm-based publishing house Natur & Kultur with his debut novel Esther och Albert. He submitted the text under the pseudonym "Hammenhög", which became his official name in 1931.
Among Hammenhög's writing highlights is the humorous novel Petterson & Bendel (1931), adapted to screen in 1933 starring Adolf Jahr as Pettersson; and as P&B (1983) starring Stellan Skarsgård as Petterson and Allan Edwall as Bendel. Esther och Alberts äktenskap (1936) was also a success, adapted to screen as Ung man söker sällskap (1954), starring Ulf Palme and Gaby Stenberg.
In the late 1940s, Hammenhög's writing turned from realistic humor towards moral issues as he was struggling with personal alcoholism.
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This entry incorporates text from “Waldemar Hammenhög” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.