Östen Undén

Östen Undén around 1937

Bo Östen Undén (born August 25, 1886 in Karlstad ; † January 14, 1974 ) was a Swedish lawyer and social democratic politician.

During his long time as Foreign Minister (from 1924 to 1926 and from 1945 to 1962), he shaped Swedish foreign policy like no other; he is considered one of the architects of the Swedish policy of neutrality after the Second World War . The “Undén Plan” that he worked out is also an important step towards nuclear disarmament .

Life

Undén was the youngest son of pharmacist Viktor Undén and his wife Beata Kaijser. From 1904 he studied economics under Knut Wicksell , as well as social science and then law at the University of Lund . Here he made his bachelor's degree in 1910 and his licentiate in law in 1912 . During his studies he was a member of student associations and the Lund workers 'community and completed an internship at a law firm that was involved in the umbrella organization of the Swedish workers' unions .

After his marriage in 1912 he received his doctorate in the same year with his thesis "Kollektivavtalet enligt gällande svensk rätt" and became a lecturer in Lund. In 1917 he was appointed professor of civil law and private international law at Uppsala University. At that time he had already been a member of the Constitutional Committee ( Konstitutionutskottet ) for a year, i.e. since 1916 , a committee dealing with constitutional and administrative issues.

The Sandler government. Undén sitting, second from the right

In 1917 he was appointed minister without portfolio in the Edén government, the youngest minister to date in a Swedish government. Here he became particularly knowledgeable about international law and his interest in foreign policy grew. Under Prime Minister Hjalmar Branting , Undén became Minister of Justice for one year in 1920. In 1924 he became Foreign Minister under Rickard Sandler for two years and was also the Swedish envoy to the League of Nations . Here he successfully mediated between Turkey and Iraq in the so-called "Mosul Crisis" and between Bulgaria and Greece in the Rhodope Mountains.

After his time with the League of Nations he was rector of Uppsala University from 1928 to 1932 and its chancellor from 1937 to 1951. In 1934 he moved into the First Chamber of the Reichstag , to which he was a member until 1965. As early as 1945 he was repeatedly appointed Foreign Minister, this time under Per Albin Hansson . In this time, the jointly responsible for Undén of falls Balts delivery . After Hansson's death at the end of 1946, he temporarily took over the office of Prime Minister from October 6 to 11, before Tage Erlander became the new Prime Minister.

Östen Undén worked actively against the further spread of nuclear weapons. The "Undén Plan" that he has drawn up contains a ban on states that do not have nuclear weapons to manufacture or store them on their own territory. The plan was adopted by UN General Assembly resolution 1664 (XVI) on December 4, 1961. He kept the office of foreign minister until 1962.

literature

• Yngve Möller: Östen Undén: en biografi. Norstedts Förlag, Stockholm 1986, ISBN 91-1-863262-9 .
• Peer Krumrey: The goal determines the means. The work of Östen Undén on the way to the Swedish policy of neutrality . In: NORDEUROPAforum , 2009, 2, pp. 7–35 hu-berlin.de (PDF; 317 kB)
• Michael F. Scholz : East Undén and the GDR. Swedish policy on Germany in the 1950s. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , Volume 41, Issue 3, July 1993, p. 391 ff., Ifz-muenchen.de (PDF; 7.7 MB)
• Bo Östen Undén , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 18/1974 of April 22, 1974, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Östen Undén  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Östen Undén in the catalog of the German National Library
• Östen Undén . In: Theodor Westrin, Ruben Gustafsson Berg, Eugen Fahlstedt (eds.): Nordisk familjebok konversationslexikon och realencyklopedi . 2nd Edition. tape 30 : Tromsdalstind – Urakami . Nordisk familjeboks förlag, Stockholm 1920, Sp. 974 (Swedish, runeberg.org ).
• ÖSTEN UNDÉN Anteckningar 1952-1966 ( Memento from February 17, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) (Swedish)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Östen Undén . In: Theodor Westrin, Ruben Gustafsson Berg, Eugen Fahlstedt (eds.): Nordisk familjebok konversationslexikon och realencyklopedi . 2nd Edition. tape 30 : Tromsdalstind – Urakami . Nordisk familjeboks förlag, Stockholm 1920, Sp. 974 (Swedish, runeberg.org ).
2. ↑ This committee still exists today. See also constitution utskottet (Swedish)
3. ↑ Abstract: The Foreign Policy of Small States: Sweden and the Mosul Crisis, 1924–1925 (English)
4. ↑ Svenska Atlantkommittén - Forum för säkerhetspolitisk debatt  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Swedish)  
5. ↑ http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/documentation/english/a_cn4_523.pdf (link not available)
6. ↑ Uppsala University: Rektorslängd ( Memento from June 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (Swedish)
7. ↑ RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED ON THE REPORTS OF THE FIRST COMMITTEE. Retrieved December 26, 2018 .