Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld was Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 10, 1953 till September 18, 1961. Dag Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash while on a peace mission in the Congo.
He was born in Jonkoping south Sweden on July 29th in 1905. He was the 4th son of Hjalmar Jammarskjöld, Prime Minister o Sweden during WWI. His wife was Agnes (born Almquist).
Dag was brought up in the university town of Uppsala where his father resided as Governor of the county of Uppland.
At the age of 18 years, Dag graduated from college and then enrolled in Uppsala University. He majored in French historical literature, social philosophy and political economy. After two years, he received his Bacholor of Arts degree with honors and then continued to study economics for the next 3 years. He received a "filosofic licenciat" degree in economics at the age of 23. He continued to study for two more years receiving a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1930.
After moving to Stockholm he became a secretary of a governmental committee on unemployment (1930 to 1934). At the same time he wrote his doctoral thesis in economics "Konjunkturspridningen" (The Spreading of the Business Cycle). In 1933, he received his doctor's degree from the University of Stockholm, where he was made assistant professor in political economy.
After a year as secretary in the National Bank of Sweden, at the age of 31, Dag was appointed to the post of Permanent Under-Secretary of the Miistry of Finance. At the same time he served as Chairman of the National Bank's Board (1941 to 1948). Six of the Board's Members are appoointed by Parliament and the Chairman by the Government. This was the first time that one man had held both posts: The Chairmanship of the Bank's board and Under-Sec. of the Finance Ministry.
Early in 1945, he was appointed adviser to the cabinet on financial and Economic problems. He organized and coordinated, among other things, different governmental planning for the various economic problems that arose as a result of the war and the postwar period. During these years, Dag played an importnt part in shaping Sweden's financial policy. He led a series of trade and financial negotiations with other coutnries, among them the United States and the United Kingdom.
In 1947 he was appointed to the Foreign Office, where he was responsible for all economic questions with rank of Under-Secretary. In 1949, he was appointed Secretary-General of the Foreign Office and in 1951 he joined the Cabinet as Minister without portfolio. He became in effect deputy Foreign Minister dealing especially with economic prolbems and various plans for close economic cooperation.
He was a delegate to the Paris Conference in 1947 when the Marshall Plan machinery was established. He was his country's chief delegate to the 1948 Paris Conference for the Organization for European Economic Cooperation. For some years he served as Vice-Chairman of the OEEC Executive Committee. In 1950, he became Chairman of the Swedish Delegation to UNISCAN (established to promote economic cooperation between the United Kingdom and the Scandinavian countries. He was also a member (1937-1948) of the advisory board of the government-sponsored Economic Research Institute.
He was Vice-Chairman of the Swedish Delegation to the Sixth Regular Session of the United Nations General Assembly in Paris (1951-52) and Acting Chairman of his country's delegation to the Seventh General Assembly in New York (1952-53).
Although he served with the Social-Democratic cabinet, Dag Hammarskjöld never joined any political party, regarding himself as an independent, politically.
He became a member of the Swedish Academy on the 20th of December, 1954. He was elected to take the seat in the Academy previously held by his father.
ELECTED TO TWO TERMS AS SECRETARY-GENERAL
Dag was unanimously appointed Secretary-General of the United Nations by the General Assembly on April 7, 1953 (on the recommendation of the Security Council). He was re-elected unanimously for another 5-year term Sept. 1957.
During his terms as Secretary-General, he carried out many responsibilities for the United Nations in it's efforts to prevent war and to serve the other aims of the Charter.
In the Middle-East these included: continuing diplomatic activity in support of the Armistice Agreements between Israel and the Arab States and to promote progress toward better and more peaceful conditions in the area; organization in 1956 of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) and its administration since then; clearance of the Suez Canal in 1957 and assitance in the peaceful solution of the Suez Canal dispute; organization and administration of the Untied Nations Observation Group in Lebanon (UNOGIL)and establishment of an office of the special representative of the Secretary-General in Jordan in 1958.
In 1955, following his ivsit to Peking, (Dec. 30,1954-Jan. 13, 1955) 15 American fliers who had served under the United Nations Command in Korea were released by the Chinese People's Republic.
Dag also travelled to man countries of Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas and the Middle-East. These were either specific government assignments or to further his acquaintance with the officials of member governments and the problems of various areas.
On one of these trips (Dec 18, 1959 to Jan. 31, 1960) the Secretary-General visited 21 countries and territories in Africa--a trip he described later as "a strictly professional trip for study, for information". He said that he had gained a "kind of cross-section of every sort of politically responsible opinion in the Africa of today."
Later in 1960, when President Joseph Kasa-Vubu and Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of the Republic of the Congo sent a cable on July 12th asking "urgent dispatch" of Unitd Nations military assistance to the Congo, the Secretary-General addressed the Security Council at a night meeting July 13th and asked the Council to act "with utmost speed" on the request.
Following Security Counceil action, the United Nations Force in the Congo was established, and the Secretary-General himself made four trips to the Congo in conneciton with the United Nations operations there.
The first two trips to the Congo wre made in July and August 1960. Then, in January of the year, the Secretary-General stopped in the Congo while en route to the Union of South Africa on another mission in connection with the racial problems of that coutnry. The fourth tirp to the Congo began Sept. 12th and ended with the fatal plane crash.
In other fields of work, Dag Jammarskjöld was responsible for the organization in 1955 and 1958 of the 1st and 2nd UN Internation conferences on the peaceful uses of atomic energy in GEneva, and was palnning a UN conference on the application of sceince and technology for the benefit of the less-developed areas of the world, scheduled for 1962.
He held honorary degrees from Oxford University in England; in the U.S. from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Pennsylvania, Amherst, John Hopkins, the University of California, Uppsala College and Ohio University. In Canada: Carleton College and McGill University.
