Henry Grünbaum

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Henry Grünbaum (born July 27, 1911 in Copenhagen , † January 5, 2006 ) was a Danish union functionary and social democratic politician . He came from a family of Jewish craftsmen who came to Denmark from Poland before the First World War . In 1964, Grünbaum became the first Danish minister with a migration background .

Life

Origin, union official and studies

Grünbaum's father was a master shoemaker and was involved in the social democratic party and in the trade union . He too became an active member of the labor movement in his youth . After attending school, he completed vocational training as an engraver and in 1931 was one of the founders of the youth association of engravers, of which he became chairman in 1933. At the same time he was a member of the board of the gold and silver workers' union between 1934 and 1938.

During this time he attended evening schools for further education and began studying economics after graduating from high school in 1936 . At the same time he became a member of the Economic Council of the Labor Movement ( Arbejderbevægelsens Erhvervsråd ) and during this time he got to know Jens Otto Krag , who later became Prime Minister and party leader of the Social Democrats .

During the Second World War , Grünbaum had to flee to Stockholm , where he became a member of the liaison committee of the Danish resistance movement. After the war he continued his studies and graduated in 1949.

Grünbaum then became an economic policy employee for the daily newspaper Social Democrats in 1949 and worked there until 1956. He then became the head of the economic office of the Workers 'and Skilled Workers' Union ( Dansk Arbejdsmands- og Specialarbejderforbund ) and was most recently editor of the association's newspaper from 1962 to 1964 .

Minister, Member of Parliament and State Auditor

On October 8, 1964, Grünbaum was appointed by Prime Minister Krag to succeed Poul Hansen as Minister of Economics in his second government and at the same time appointed Minister for Nordic Affairs. Grünbaum was the first minister in the history of Denmark to come from an immigrant family .

After Poul Hansen resigned from the cabinet due to illness on August 24, 1965, Grünbaum took over his office as finance minister , while Ivar Nørgaard himself succeeded him as economics minister. He held the office of finance minister until the end of Krag's term of office on February 2, 1968. During this time, in 1967, the introduction of value added tax and withholding tax fell , which he largely prepared. Despite these important ministerial posts, however, Foreign Minister Per Hækkerup was the second most important man in the "red cabinet" Krag ('det røde kabinet'), which had to secure the support of the Socialistisk Folkeparti (SF) under the parliamentary group leader Aksel Larsen in certain votes .

In the parliamentary elections on November 22, 1966 , Grünbaum was elected as the successor to long-time MP Holger Eriksen for the first time as a member of the Folketing and represented the Aarhus-Nord constituency there until the 1981 Folketing election .

After losing the government majority in the Folketing elections in 1968 , he became involved in the opposition and was a member of the Folketing Finance Committee. In addition, he was involved in the trade union federation Landsorganisation i Danmark (LO), for which he worked out a draft program for a democratic economic life, which also included an analysis of accession to the European Communities .

When Krag was able to form his third government on October 11, after the success of the Social Democrats in the Folketing elections in 1971 , Grünbaum was again Minister of Finance and retained this position in the first government formed by Krag's successor, Anker Jørgensen on October 5, 1972 until December 19 1973.

On February 13, 1975, Grünbaum was not appointed by Jørgensen to his second government , but was appointed parliamentary auditor ( Statsrevisor ) in 1976. He remained in this position until 1982. At the same time, in 1978, he was briefly chairman of the Folketing Finance Committee. In this function, however, he sharply criticized the economic policy of the Jørgensen government, which put a considerable strain on his relations with the party leadership.

Grünbaum's older brother was the Marxist economist Isi Grünbaum ; the writer Ole Grünbaum is Henry Grünbaum's son.

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