Einar Gerhardsen

Einar Gerhardsen, around 1920 (third from left)

Einar Gerhardsen, around 1983

Einar Gerhardsen (born May 10, 1897 in Asker , † September 19, 1987 in Oslo ) was a Norwegian politician. He was Prime Minister of Norway from 1945 to 1951, from 1955 to 1963 and from 1963 to 1965 and belonged to the Labor Party . Gerhardsen played a major role in Norway giving up its neutrality and joining NATO in 1949 .

With 17 years in office he was the longest ruling Prime Minister of Norway since the introduction of the parliamentary system of government . He is believed to be the driving force behind the rebuilding of Norway after World War II.

politics

Gerhardsen was originally a road worker and became politically active in the socialist labor movement in the 1920s. He was condemned several times for participating in “subversive” activities until he - in line with developments within the Labor Party - gave up Marxist ideas and took up the ideas of a democratic socialism. By the mid-1930s, the Labor Party rose to become a major player in Norwegian politics, with Gerhardsen as Mayor of Oslo and Johan Nygaardsvold as Prime Minister of a minority government. During the Second World War Gerhardsen took part in the resistance against the Nazi occupation and was interned in Grini and in the German concentration camp Sachsenhausen . After the war, Gerhardsen formed the interim government that ruled from the end of the occupation in May 1945 until the election in November . His party achieved an absolute majority in the Storting Parliament , which it was able to defend until the 1961 election.

During and after his time in office, he was highly respected in Norway across party lines. His government pursued an economic policy in which state regulation of trade, industry and the banking sector was not intended to eliminate market-economy mechanisms, but only to tame them. Poverty and unemployment fell sharply during his reign. His focus was on industrialization and the redistribution of wealth through progressive taxation. In foreign policy he led Norway on the course of the Western powers, after initial hesitation within the ruling party. Norway was a founding member of NATO .

Between 1962 and 1963, several accidents in the Kings Bay mine in Ny-Ålesund on the island of Spitzbergen , in which several miners died, led to the so-called Kings Bay affair . The Gerhardsen government has been accused of not complying with the laws passed by parliament. In the summer of 1963, with the support of the Sosialistisk Folkeparti , there was a vote of no confidence in Gerhardsen's government. It was replaced by a center-right coalition under John Lyng , which was only able to stay in office for four weeks. Gerhardsen returned once more. In the subsequent parliamentary election in 1965 , however, the Labor Party lost significantly. The new bourgeois coalition under Per Borten lasted six years this time. Gerhardsen retired from politics in 1969, but continued to influence public opinion.

Gerhardsen's political legacy continues to be an important point of reference in Norwegian politics, especially in the Labor Party, even if its concrete social policy has changed significantly in line with European trends.

Since 1967 he has given his name to the Gerhardsennuten , a mountain in the Antarctic.

Private

Gerhardsen was married and had two sons and a daughter.

Web links

• Finn Olstad: Einar Gerhardsen - en politisk biografi, 1999 in Norsk biografisk leksikon (Norwegian)
• Literature by and about Einar Gerhardsen in the catalog of the German National Library

predecessor	Office	successor
Johan Nygaardsvold Oscar Torp John Lyng	Prime Minister of Norway 1945 - 1951 1955 - 1963 1963 - 1965	Oscar Torp John Lyng Per Borten