The Hjalmar Branting Monument in Stockholm

The Hjalmar Branting Monument, situated in Stockholm, Sweden, showcases a statue of Hjalmar Branting (1860 – 1925), a Swedish Social Democratic leader. Sculpted by artist Carl Eldh, the bronze relief monument rises 5 meters tall and spans 6 meters wide. It is located in a small park at Norra Bantorget, the traditional Social Democratic grounds of the city, and depicts Branting addressing a crowd during a May Day demonstration. Several of the worker movement's pioneers are found in the crowd, including Axel Danielsson and August Palm.

Eldh started working on the monument in 1926, one year after Branting had died, but it was not erected until 1952. On 17 May 1992, the monument was partly damaged when a small bomb exploded and blew up a hole in the belly of the Hjalmar Branting figure. This was the fourth in a series of five statue bombings in Stockholm that had begun on 25 February and ended on 8 June. A group of seven teenagers, six boys and one girl, were arrested a week later and confessed to the acts of vandalism.

The monument was restored two years later by the local company Herman Bergmans konstgjuteri AB, the foundry that had originally made it in the early 1950s. The restoration cost 320,000 Swedish krona, which was shared by the City of Stockholm and the Stockholm section of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation. News reports indicated no political motives were mentioned for the bombings, as the other statues targeted were not political monuments.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons