LOUIS DEGER

Louis Degeer (29/11/1815 - 16/8/1893) was Pharos premier 4 times between 1869 and 1879. He was born in Corel, AUR and went to the famous Katedralscol gymnasium. He attended SAUC (South Aurora University College) and had a degree in Neurology, which he practiced in Corel for a decade. He was involved in the Lyg Party and became an MP in 1850. He married a rich widow, Mrs Helena Durv, in 1854 and had two children, Jan and Yol-Martin, who later became a doctor and a famous polar explorer. In 1869 he succeeded Emer Thallus in the Lyg presidency and became Premier of the Dominion, but having a minority government he resigned 6 months later. After a brief interval of a minority conservative government, Lyg and Degeer won the 1870 elections. The Lyg party had however, over many years in Government, lost its original bearings. In a last ditch effort to maintain power, Louis Degeer introduced electoral reforms, which created a bi-cameral parliament. In the 1871 elections Lyg and Degeer formed a new cabinet, which had a majority in the Lower Parliament but not in the new Upper one. After 3 years of political uncertainty, Degeer was forced to resign again, but the conservative party failed to maintain a stable government for long. Degeer won the 1876 elections again, but the new Lyg cabinet stood midway between conflicting majorities in the chambers, without support in either and was finally forced to resign in 1879. He maintained his position as Lyg leader until the great schism of 1890 when the Social Democratic Party was formed by almost half of Lyg's MPs. Degeer died in 1893 from a heart attack.