Thorvald Stauning served as Prime Minister from 1924 to 1926 and again from 1929 until his death in 1942.
12 Facts About Thorvald Stauning
2.
Thorvald Stauning was trained as a cigar sorter and soon became involved with trade union activity.
3.
Thorvald Stauning participated as Minister without Portfolio in the Cabinet of Zahle II from 1916 to 1920.
4.
Thorvald Stauning was elected to government as prime minister in 1924 for the minority cabinet Cabinet of Thorvald Stauning I which would survive until 1926.
5.
Thorvald Stauning's cabinet was considered ground-breaking not only as it was the first purely Social Democratic cabinet, but because a woman, Nina Bang, was appointed Minister of Education, which attracted some international attention, as she was one of the first female ministers in the world.
6.
Thorvald Stauning holds a record in Danish politics, in having successfully sought re-election no less than three times.
7.
Thorvald Stauning reportedly considered resigning in the wake of the referendum failure, but was persuaded to stay on.
8.
Thorvald Stauning died in 1942, deeply depressed about the future of social democracy in a Nazi-dominated Europe.
9.
Thorvald Stauning was given a state funeral in 1942, an honour normally not bestowed on Danish prime ministers.
10.
Thorvald Stauning played a major role in containing the constitutional Easter Crisis of 1920 where he brokered a deal with the king in which the monarch accepted a reduction of his own role to a merely symbolical one, avoiding any future interference in the functioning of parliamentary democracy.
11.
In return, Thorvald Stauning kept the pro-republican elements of the Social Democratic Party in line, and ensured his party's political support to the continuation of the Danish monarchy.
12.
Thorvald Stauning's government was responsible for laying the foundations to the future Danish welfare state.