IMAGE: Photo collage of the members of the 1872 carnival committee. Ernberg is to the far left in the second row from the top. Image source: Academic Society Archive.
Johan Otto Ernberg was born in Karlskrona on 4 April 1847, the son of a trader. Originally, he bore the surname Peterson; the more bourgeois-sounding Ernberg was adopted by him, his siblings and a number of cousins later on, after a common ancestor, Otto’s paternal grandmother Gustafva Ehrenberg, whose father in turn had taken the name from the Ernhyltan property in Ryssby parish in the county of Kronoberg. At that time, name changes of this sort often signalled some sort of social advancement and higher status, and one can observe that things went well for many of the “new” Ernbergs: Otto’s brother Axel became an engineer, company manager, Dutch consul and major municipal bigwig in Karlskrona, while a cousin, Jarl, became a government counsel, and another, Harald, a consultant physician at the Sachs paediatric hospital. A third cousin, Albert Ernberg, became a professor of law in Lund.
Otto was also destined to end up – and remain – in Lund. Having completed school in Karlskrona, he was enrolled at Lund University in 1864 at the age of 17 and joined Blekinge Nation. He appears to have studied at a rather leisurely pace: only after eight years did he complete the juris utriusque degree (the Latin term “utriusque” designates the degree as covering both Swedish and Roman law). One possible reason for the delay in Ernberg’s studies was that from 1870 he probably spent a great deal of time on his commitment as a member of the relatively new student fraternity CC, in which he rapidly earned the title of master of justice and, a few years later, grand master.
It is not impossible that the membership in CC contributed to a general opening of doors to a more active student life for Ernberg. In 1872, we find him in that year’s carnival committee, and a strikingly high proportion of the committee members – more than half of them – were also CC members at the time. Regardless, Ernberg would come to hold a number of important positions in the student world over the next few years – despite no longer formally being a student. The highest of these positions was his election in 1873 as head of Blekinge Nation. He would remain in that role for a whole decade, which sounds exceptional nowadays, but was not unusual at the time. At least within Blekinge Nation, Ernberg became the last long-term holder of a position in the old style; none of his immediate successors held the position for more than five years and, towards the end of the century, a formal term of office of two years was introduced. By then, Ernberg had long established himself in a less labour-intensive position within the Nation, namely as one of its honorary members. He had been appointed as such on the same day as he resigned as head, which one can interpret as a sign of his fellow Nation members’ satisfaction with his efforts.
However, Ernberg had an even longer-lasting commitment within the student world as an ombudsman (legal and financial representative) for the Academic Society (AF). He held this position all the way from 1875 until his death – a period of 45 years! Hopefully, this task was not too taxing either, although it required Ernberg to take action on at least one occasion. This was in May 1892, when yet another carnival was about to take place. The Academic Society was struck by the highly precarious circumstance of its restaurateur’s license having expired and, for some reason, not having been renewed by the authorities. The students’ own headquarters thus risked being completely dry during the carnival itself! At that point Ernberg stepped in, pointing at the popular student and carnival organiser Waldemar Bülow (later to become the legendary newspaper editor) with the words: “Bülow is the secretary of the social committee, so it his responsibility to take care of the alcohol; he will be our bartender”. Ernberg then quickly submitted a temporary application to the county council, which was approved; as a result Bülow personally attended the till from two o’clock in the afternoon to two o’clock in the morning, and “personally served every pint of punch” during the carnival day. |
|
|