Kreuger is our largest venue where you can host parties, conferences, dance, practice yoga, showcase new cars, have fashion shows, listen to concerts... Well, you get it, it's a large room with high ceilings.
The Kreuger brothers were among the economic luminaries of their time. Torsten and Ivar had an influence on the Swedish economy that is difficult to comprehend today. Especially Ivar had a career and a life path that seemed like something out of an old-fashioned adventure film. However, it all came to a horrifying end when he was found shot in Paris in 1932.
Even today, there is speculation about whether it was suicide or murder. For example, why were his posthumous letters to the Swedish staff written in English? Theories about what really happened to the world's matchstick king, a man so wealthy that he lent his own money to countries like France, Poland, Bolivia, Turkey, and Germany, with 250 factories in 43 countries, abound on the internet and in several books.
In addition to business, older brother Ivar and Häringe's owner Torsten Kreuger shared a significant common interest – specifically, custom-built motorboats. Many of them were moored here at the dock over the years.
Younger brother Torsten bought Häringe in 1929. His great curiosity for fun and quirky inventions resulted in several novelties. Among the more conventional efforts was Häringe's three-mile-long fence that once enclosed the estate and preserved the deer for the autumn hunts. Among the more unconventional were the slide from the second floor (later removed by Marguerite Wenner-Gren), the mechanical bowling alley (the first of its kind in Sweden and still in use), Sweden's first outdoor pool, and a practical underground passage that connected the main building with the wing and ensured that the ladies didn't get wet hair.
Torsten himself also saw to it that the castle was renovated to make the rooms larger and brighter, something appreciated by his guests during the many parties and official dinners, where cocktail waiters sometimes served naked. Although Torsten was married three times, his wives and children did not come to the castle because Mr. Kreuger considered it his Playboy Mansion.
Before Torsten was sentenced to penal labor for fraud and false bookkeeping, a trial later called a straightforward Swedish judicial murder, Torsten Kreuger focused on banking, industries, and newspaper operations. During his years at Häringe, he owned Aftonbladet, Stockholms Dagblad, and Stockholms-Tidningen. But despite being the king of so much editorial space and fighting for his case through it, he did not get a retrial.
In the end of his life, he chose to live in Geneva, largely due to what had happened. People who met him always spoke warmly and gladly about what an extraordinary man he was, despite his sometimes tragic life.
