Piet de Jong

Piet de Jong (1970)

Petrus Josef Sietze "Piet" de Jong LVO , ([ 'pit də' jɔŋ ] * April 3, 1915 in Apeldoorn ; † July 27, 2016 in The Hague ) was a Dutch naval officer and politician of the Katholieke Volkspartij (KVP) and from 1967 until 1971 Dutch Prime Minister .

Life

Piet de Jong was born as the son of the locomotive fitter Joännes de Jong (1878-1931) and his wife Gijsberta Adriana Schouten and raised in the Catholic faith.

Naval officer

After completion of the Hogereburgerschool (about the secondary school in Germany accordingly) De Jong joined as a 16-year-old in the Koninklijke Marine (Royal Netherlands Navy), and completed his training at the Royal Instituut voor de Marine in Den Helder . From 1935 to 1947 he served on submarines , when the Wehrmacht invaded the Netherlands on the Hr.Ms. O 24 . On April 13, 1940, Mr. Ms. O 24 the attack of the German troops in England. De Jong was deputy commandant, then, from October 25, 1944 to April 8, 1946, commandant of Mr. Ms. O 24 . The Mr.Ms. O 24 sank four Italian ships in the Mediterranean and - from 1942, from a base in Colombo - three Japanese ships in the Java Sea . That was it - according to Ms. O 21 - the second most successful Dutch submarine in World War II; De Jong was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross .

In 1947 De Jong was seconded to the Naval Staff in the Ministry of War and the Navy ( Ministerie van Oorlog en Marine ). In 1948 he became aide de camp of the War and Navy Minister Wim Schokking. From 1951 to 1952 he commanded the frigate Hr.Ms. De Zeeuw . In 1952, he became the staff of the established in the same year NATO commandos Allied Commander-in-Chief Channel (Acchan) in Portsmouth seconded. In 1955 he was appointed Chief of Staff to the Inspector General of the Navy, Prince Bernhard . He was also Queen Juliana's aide de camp . In 1958 another naval command followed with the rank of sea captain ( Kapitein-ter-zee ): De Jong became the commander of the submarine hunter Mr.Ms. Gelderland .

Political activity

→ Main article : De Jong cabinet

In 1959, the Katholieke Volkspartij, which had the right to present , looked for a successor to the Secretary of State for Defense and Naval Affairs, Hendricus Cornelis Willem (Harry) Moorman, and offered De Jong the office. Looking back, he said of his unexpected entry into politics - after 28 years as a naval officer: “I got into it by chance. There weren't many Catholic naval officers at the time. Although I was not a member of the CIP, I was found while going through the list. ”De Jong agreed and on June 27, 1959, he became State Secretary in the De Quay cabinet . In 1963, he succeeded Sim Visser as Defense Minister in the Marijnen cabinet (1963–1965). He also kept this office in the cabinets of Cals (1965–1966) and Zijlstra (1966–1967). He energetically tackled the restructuring of the Dutch armed forces ( Nederlandse krijgsmacht ), which he aligned with the requirements of the strategy and the structures of the NATO alliance. His critics accused him of robbing the Netherlands of the ability to wage war independently. A motion was therefore introduced in parliament to symbolically reduce his ministerial salary by one guilder and to give the saved amount to the army. De Jong reminded his critics that the Gouden Eeuw and with it the time of the Dutch military power was over, and pushed through the shortening of the duration of the conscription from 22 to 18 months.

De Jong was Prime Minister of the Netherlands from April 5, 1967 to July 6, 1971. It was also the time of student unrest and protests by the 1968 movement in the Netherlands . For a week, from January 7-14, 1970, after Leo de Block's resignation, he was also Minister of Economic Affairs. From 1971 to 1974 he was group leader of the KVP in the first chamber of the Dutch parliament.

De Jong was considered an excellent team leader as Prime Minister and was the first Dutch Prime Minister to hold weekly press conferences. During his time as Prime Minister, a minimum wage was introduced, compulsory voting was abolished, birth control pills approved, divorce law was amended and - with this de Jong made the Netherlands a pioneer - the goal was set to provide development aid with 1% of the country's economic output. This requirement was adopted worldwide in a weakened form in 1970, when the industrialized countries committed themselves in a resolution of the United Nations to spend 0.7% of their gross national income on official development aid.

Honors

After the end of his ministerial presidency, Piet de Jong was awarded the Grand Cross of the Orde van Oranje-Nassau .

Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order

literature

• Jan Willem Brouwer, Johan van Merriënboer: Van buitengaats naar Binnenhof: PJS de Jong, een biography . Sdu Uitgevers, The Hague 2001, ISBN 90-12-08774-0 (biography, Dutch)

Web links

Commons : Piet de Jong  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Piet de Jong  - Quotes

• Portrait at Parlament & Politiek (ndl.)

References and footnotes

1. ^ Oud-premier Piet de Jong (101) overleden . de Volkskrant , August 1, 2016, accessed August 1, 2016 (Dutch).
2. ↑ Mr. Ms. O stands for "Harer Majesteits onderzeeboot" = Her Majesty's submarine.
3. ^ Jan Willem Brouwer, Johan van Merriënboer: Van buitengaats naar Binnenhof: PJS de Jong, een biography . The Hague 2001, p. 23.
4. ^ Jan Willem Brouwer, Johan van Merriënboer: Van buitengaats naar Binnenhof: PJS de Jong, een biography . The Hague 2001, p. 22.
5. ^ ^{A b} Petrus Franciscus Maas: Kabinetsformaties 1959–1973 . Staatsuitgeverij, 's-Gravenhage 1982, ISBN 90-12-03998-3 , p. 241.
6. ^ Jan Willem Brouwer, Johan van Merriënboer: Van buitengaats naar Binnenhof: PJS de Jong, een biography . The Hague 2001, p. 58.
7. ↑ Obituary on NiederlandeNet , an institution of the University of Münster , accessed on 6 August 2016
8. ↑ Michael Stabenow: Piet de Jong died . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of August 2, 2016, p. 5.