Marga Klompé

Marga Klompé (1956)

Marga Klompé (Margaretha Albertina Maria) (born August 16, 1912 in Arnhem , † October 28, 1986 in The Hague ) was a Dutch politician .

Life

Marga Klompé was one of six children of the stationery manufacturer Joannes PM Klompé and his wife Ursula MJA Verdang. In 1929 she began to study chemistry at the University of Utrecht , where Hugo Rudolph Kruyt was one of her teachers. Since 1932 she has also been teaching at the Mater Dei girls' college in Nijmegen in order to finance her studies. In 1941 Klompé made her doctorate; the subsequent medical studies she had to break off in 1942 because the university was closed. From a long crisis of faith she emerged deeply religious; the experiences she made as a volunteer during the war years reinforced her in this attitude. Marga Klompé participated in the resistance against the German occupation.

After the end of the war, she joined the Katholieke Volkspartij (KVP) and committed herself to the role of women in politics, without seeing herself as a feminist. In 1947 she was sent to the first general assembly of the United Nations as a member of the Dutch delegation . Although Klompé was originally not interested in a seat in the Dutch parliament, she succeeded in the Second Chamber in 1948 , where she became involved in foreign policy. From 1949 to 1956 she was also a member of the Council of Europe and from 1952 to 1956 of the Parliament of the European Coal and Steel Community .

In 1956, Marga Klompé became Minister of Social Work and thus the first female member of the government in the Netherlands. Although her newly created department was small and initially not taken seriously, Klompé managed to get her work recognized. Her greatest success was the introduction of the General Social Welfare Act in 1963. In the same year she gave up her ministerial office, but remained a member of the Second Chamber. From 1967 to 1971 Klompé took over the Ministry of Culture, Recreation and Social Work; the request of her group to run for the office of prime minister, but refused. In 1971 she was appointed Minister of State. After her retirement from active politics, Klompé remained a sought-after advisor and was heavily involved in the ecclesiastical field, including for the papal commission Justitia et Pax , the Council of Churches in the Netherlands and the Bishops' Conference.

Web links

Commons : Marga Klompé  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography on parlement.com (Dutch)
• Biography on inghist.nl (Dutch)
• Profile: Marga Klompe on reporter.kro.nl (Dutch)