Leffler and Mittag

Abstract

In 1896, on his 50th birthday, Gösta Mittag-Leffler received a large genealogical chart of the family tree, created by his brother Frits. Ever since his student days, Frits had been involved in mapping the family’s ancestral roots, and when he presented his work to his brother, it included 530 branches of the family. Among them were a number of well-known families within the fields of science, art, industry, and government – both in Sweden and abroad. Several could be traced as far back as the 13th century. The most famous representative of the von Angerstein lineage founded the Avesta copper foundry in 1639. In the Bellinus family the most notable member was a bishop who lived to be 103 years old and had served as the leading advisor on ecclesiastical matters for the Vasa King Johan III. One distinguished member of the von Braun family was the author Wilhelm von Braun (1813–1860). The von Bülow lineage was also part of Frits’s family tree that included other names such as von Jahnke, von Koch, von Lübeck, von Stedingk, Scheffer, Helsingius, Hülphers, Sodenstjerna, Tessin, and Wahrendorph. The Hildebrandt family, with several famous artists, was also included. There were also links to the Scheele family with its great chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742–1786), and to the Grubbe family, whose most famous member was the philosopher Samuel Grubbe (1786–1853).