Christina Piper

Christina Piper, née Törne (1673 in – 1752 in Krageholm Castle, Scania), was a Swedish countess, landowner and entrepreneur, married to the statesman and military count Carl Piper. During the tenure of her spouse in office, she played a considerable political role. Christina Piper became known in history as a landowner and builder. She is known as one of the most successful female entrepreneurs in contemporary Scandinavia, and as one of the greatest builders in the history of Scania.

Christina Piper was born to the very wealthy merchant and city official Olof Hansson Törne and Margareta Andersen. Her father was ennobled by the name Törnflycht in 1698, but as she married eight years before this, she never wore that name herself. On 13 February 1690, she married the royal official Carl Piper, who was 26 years her senior and the stepbrother of her father. The marriage was arranged for economical reasons: her husband was in need of funds, and as a relative with a good career (he had been ennobled during his career in royal service) he was seen as a good asset to keep in the family. The couple had eight children.

In 1697, her spouse was appointed statsråd and the following year baron and count, and it became clear he had replaced Bengt Gabrielsson Oxenstierna as the perhaps most favored of the advisers of the monarch, a position he kept until 1709. As was normal for the wife of a politician at the time, this gave Christina Piper an influential role, as she was seen as a potential channel to her spouse, and she began to host a receptions and participate in court life, where she was besieged by diplomats and supplicants attempting to reach her spouse (and by him the King) through her. During the 1700s, Christina Piper and Carl Piper played a similar role as Magdalena Stenbock and Bengt Gabrielsson Oxenstierna in the 1680s and 1690s, and as Margareta Gyllenstierna and Arvid Horn in the 1720s and 1730s: that of a married couple acting as political colleagues. Carl and Christina Piper gained a notorious reputation by their contemporaries for being corrupted by bribes. It is noted that Carl Piper were often offered gifts in exchange for making advises and recommendations for posts to the monarch on behalf of diplomats and supplicants, which was not unusual in that period, but that he normally refused to accept gifts. However, he did accept and even encouraged petitioners to give gifts to his wife: she would then make the recommendations on behalf of the petitioners to him, often successfully. This was, not an unusual method for contemporary officials - their predecessors as a political power couple, Bengt Oxenstierna and Magdalena Stenbock, had in fact done the same - and one reason to why they were given such a notorious reputation because of it may have been the fact that they, being members of a very recently ennobled noble family, were resented by the older nobility as upstarts.

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