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Dag Hammarskjöld

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Dag Hammarskjöld
2nd Secretary-General of the United Nations
In office 10 April 1953 – 18 September 1961
Preceded by	Trygve Lie
Succeeded by	U Thant
Personal details
Born	Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld 29 July 1905 Jönköping, Sweden
Died	18 September 1961 (aged 56) Ndola, Rhodesia and Nyasaland
Nationality	Swedish
Religion	Lutheran/Church of Sweden

Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld (Swedish: [dɑːɡ ˈhamːarɧœld] ( listen); 29 July 1905 – 18 September 1961) was a Swedish diplomat, economist, and author. The second Secretary-General of the United Nations, he served from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. At the age of 47 years, 255 days, Hammarskjöld is the youngest to have held the post. He is one of just three people to be awarded a posthumous Nobel Prize.^[1] Hammarskjöld is the only U.N. Secretary-General to die in office; his death occurred en route to cease-fire negotiations. American President John F. Kennedy called Hammarskjöld "the greatest statesman of our century".^[2]

Contents

• 1 Early life and education
• 2 UN Secretary-General
• 3 Death
• 4 Honors
• 5 Legacy
• 6 Spirituality and Markings
• 7 Bibliography
• 8 References
• 9 External links

Early life and education

Hammarskjöld's birth house

Dag Hammarskjöld was born in Jönköping, Sweden, but spent most of his childhood in Uppsala. The fourth and youngest son of Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, Prime Minister of Sweden from 1914 to 1917, and Agnes Hammarskjöld (née Almquist), Hammarskjöld's ancestors served the Monarchy of Sweden since the 17th century. He studied first at Katedralskolan and then at Uppsala University. By 1930, he had obtained Licentiate of Philosophy and Master of Laws degrees. Even before he was finished with his law degree he got a job as assistant secretary of the unemployment committee.^[3]
From 1930 to 1934, Hammarskjöld was Secretary on a governmental committee on unemployment. During this time he wrote his economics thesis, "Konjunkturspridningen" ("The Spread of the Business Cycle"), and received a doctorate from Stockholm University.^[3] In 1936, he became a Secretary at the Sveriges Riksbank and was soon promoted. From 1941 to 1948, he served as Chairman of the bank.
Dag Hammarskjöld quickly developed a successful career as a public servant in Sweden. He was secretary of the Riksbank (the central bank of Sweden) 1935–1941, State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance 1936–1945, Governor of the Riksbank 1941–1948, Swedish delegate in the OEEC (Organization for European Economic Cooperation) 1947–1953, Cabinet Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1949–1951 and minister without portfolio in Tage Erlander's government 1951–1953.^[3]
He helped coordinate government plans to alleviate the economic problems of the post-war period. He was a delegate to the Paris conference that established the Marshall Plan. In 1950, he became head of the Swedish delegation to UNISCAN. Although Hammarskjöld served in a cabinet dominated by the Social Democrats, he never officially joined any political party. In 1951, Hammarskjöld became Vice Chairman of the Swedish delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in Paris. He became the Chairman of the Swedish delegation to the General Assembly in New York in 1952. On 20 December 1954, he was elected to take his father's vacated seat in the Swedish Academy.

UN Secretary-General

Hammarskjöld outside the UN headquarters in New York City

When Trygve Lie resigned from his post as UN Secretary-General in 1953, the United Nations Security Council recommended Hammarskjöld for the post. It came as a surprise to him.^[4] Seen as a competent technocrat without political views, he was selected on 31 March by a majority of 10 out of eleven Security Council members. The UN General Assembly elected him in the 7–10 April session by 57 votes out of 60. In 1957, he was re-elected.
Hammarskjöld began his term by establishing his own secretariat of 4,000 administrators and setting up regulations that defined their responsibilities. He was also actively engaged in smaller projects relating to the UN working environment. For example, he planned and supervised in every detail the creation of a "meditation room" in the UN headquarters. This is a place dedicated to silence where people can withdraw into themselves, regardless of their faith, creed, or religion.^[5]
During his term, Hammarskjöld tried to smooth relations between Israel and the Arab states. Other highlights include a 1955 visit to China to negotiate release of 15 captured US pilots who had served in the Korean War, the 1956 establishment of the United Nations Emergency Force, and his intervention in the 1956 Suez Crisis. He is given credit by some historians for allowing participation of the Holy See within the United Nations that year.^[6]
In 1960, the former Belgian Congo and then newly independent Congo asked for UN aid in defusing the Congo Crisis. Hammarskjöld made four trips to the Congo. His efforts towards the decolonisation of Africa were considered insufficient by the Soviet Union; in September 1960, the Soviet government denounced his decision to send a UN emergency force to keep the peace. They demanded his resignation and the replacement of the office of Secretary-General by a three-man directorate with a built-in veto, the "troika". The objective was, citing the memoirs of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, to "equally represent interests of three groups of countries: capitalist, socialist and recently independent."^[7][8]

Death

Flight path of Hammarskjöld's aircraft (pink line) and the decoy (black line), September 1961

Hammarskjöld's grave in Uppsala

In September 1961, Hammarskjöld learned about fighting between "non-combatant" UN forces and Katangese troops of Moise Tshombe. He was en route to negotiate a cease-fire on 18 September when his Douglas DC-6 airliner SE-BDY crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Hammarskjöld and fifteen others perished in the crash. The circumstances of the incident are still not cleared. There is some evidence that the plane was shot down.
See: 1961 Ndola United Nations DC-6 Crash

Honors

• Hammarskjöld posthumously received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961, having been nominated before his death.
• Honorary degrees: The Carleton University in Ottawa (then called Carleton College)^[9] awarded its first-ever honorary degree to Hammarskjöld in 1954 when it presented him with a Legum Doctor, honoris causa. The University has continued this tradition by conferring an honorary doctorate upon every subsequent Secretary General of the United Nations. He also held honorary degrees from Oxford University, England; in the United States from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Amherst, Johns Hopkins, the University of California, and Ohio University; in Sweden, Uppsala University; and in Canada from McGill University as well as Carleton.^[10]

Legacy

• John F. Kennedy: After Hammarskjöld's death, U.S. president John F. Kennedy regretted that he opposed the UN policy in the Congo and said: "I realise now that in comparison to him, I am a small man. He was the greatest statesman of our century."^[2]
• Refusal to resign: One of Hammarskjöld's greatest moments was refusing to give in to Soviet pressure to resign. Dag Hammarskjöld: "It is very easy to bow to the wish of a big power. It is another matter to resist it. If it is the wish of those nations who see the organization their best protection in the present world, I shall do so again."^[11]
• He is credited with saying, "I would rather live my life as though there is a God and die to find out that there isn't, than to live my life as though there is no God and die to find out there is."^[12]
• In 2011, The Financial Times wrote that Hammarskjöld has remained the benchmark against which later UN Secretaries-General have been judged.^[13]
• Historians' views:
  • Historian Paul Kennedy hailed Hammarskjöld in his book The Parliament of Man as perhaps the greatest UN Secretary-General because of his ability to shape events, in contrast with his successors.
  • In contrast, the conservative popular historian Paul Johnson in A History of the Modern World from 1917 to the 1980s (1983) was highly critical of his judgment.
• Libraries:
  • The Dag Hammarskjöld Library, a part of the United Nations headquarters, was dedicated on 16 November 1961 in honour of the late Secretary-General.
  • Uppsala University:
    

    

    The Dag Hammarskjöld Library in Uppsala
    There is also a Dag Hammarskjöld Library at his alma mater, Uppsala University.
• Buildings and rooms:
  • Columbia University: The School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in New York has a Dag Hammarskjöld Lounge. The graduate school is dedicated to the principles of international peace and cooperation that Hammarskjöld embodied.
  • Stanford University: Dag Hammarskjöld House on the Stanford University campus is a residence cooperative for undergraduate and graduate students with international backgrounds and interests at Stanford.^[14]
  • The Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations in Geneva, Switzerland has a room named after him.
  • Dag Hammarskjöld Stadium is the main football stadium of Ndola, Zambia. Hammarskjold's ill-fated flight in 1961 crashed in the outskirts of Ndola.
  • Dag Hammarskjold College: founded in 1972, educating international students from 1972-1974, founded in Columbia, Maryland, and supported by people such as James Rouse, the developer of international acclaim, who provided student housing and academic accommodations, Margaret Meade, and Buckminster Fuller, is another legacy of Dag Hammarskjold, the man. The concept he fostered and believed in: that international relations, in essence, are relationships between individuals, and that the better we understand each other, the better chance there is for world peace, was the centerpiece for this college. Dag Hammarskjold educated students from dozens of countries and educated them while they lived and studied together. As founded, Dag Hammarskjold College was a one-year program of study. Professors were both full-time staff, and visiting professors from other universities, and were Vietnamese, Japanese, Indian, Saudi Arabian, American, etc. Students, as well, were from all over the world, including Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Finland, Malawi, Ethiopia, The United States, Japan, Israel, Peru. The College admitted students from both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Their study at the College began with one semester in Columbia, Maryland, where they studied while living in an international community. Then, all students travelled to the United Nations in New York City, where they attended lectures and symposia on a variety of subjects. In the last two terms, students all travelled to spend 10–12 weeks in another culture, including India, Africa, Japan, and The United States and then returned to Columbia, Maryland to end their year. While plans were for Dag Hammarskjold to expand to include full undergraduate and graduate studies programs, the College, which made education available, not to the most prosperous students in each country, but to students from a spectrum of economic backgrounds, could not raise enough funds to continue beyond 1974. Its legacy, however, continues, with students from that brief two-year period staying in touch with one another (more than a few enduring cross-cultural marriages resulted) and proving Dag Hammarskjold's theory: that individual, personal relationships are important and enduring.
• Streets:
  • Dag Hammarskjölds Gade is a street in Aalborg, Denmark
  • Dag Hammarskjölds Väg is one of the longest streets in Uppsala, Sweden. There are several other streets in Sweden sharing this name.
  • Dag Hammarskjöld's Allé is a street in Copenhagen, Denmark.
  • The headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) in Santiago, Chile lies on Avenida Dag Hammarskjöld.
  • The headquarters of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (German Society for International Cooperation, GIZ), is on Dag-Hammarskjöld-Weg in Eschborn, Germany.
  • Hammarskjöldplatz is the wide square to the north entrance of the Messe Berlin fairgrounds in Berlin, Germany.^[15]
• Dag Hammarskjold Plaza is a Manhattan park near the United Nations headquarters in New York City,^[16] and several of the surrounding office buildings are also named after him.
  • Dag Hammarskjöldlaan is a street in the town of Castricum, Netherlands.
  • Dag Hammarskjöldhof is a street in the town of Gouda, Netherlands.
  • Dag Hammarskjöldlaan is a street in the town of Hellevoetsluis, Netherlands.
  • Hammarskjöld Road is a road in the town of Harlow, UK.
• Religious commemoration: He is also commemorated as a peacemaker in the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on 18 September of each year.
• Schools: A number of schools have been named after Hammarskjöld, including Hammarskjold Middle School in East Brunswick Township, New Jersey; Dag Hammarskjold Middle School in Wallingford, Connecticut; Dag Hammarskjold Elementary School in Parma, Ohio; Dag Hammarskjold Elementary (PS 254) in Brooklyn, New York; Dag Hammarskjold Elementary School in Oakland (now an airport parking business) and Hammarskjold High School in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
• Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation:
  

  

  The Dag Hammarskjöld centre in Uppsala (housing the secretariat of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation)
  In 1962, the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation was created as Sweden's national memorial to Dag Hammarskjöld.^[17]
• Memorial awards:
  • Medal: On 22 July 1997, the U.N. Security Council in resolution 1121(1997) established the Dag Hammarskjöld Medal in recognition and commemoration of those who have lost their lives as a result of UN peacekeeping operations.^[18]
  • Prize in Peace and Conflict Studies: Colgate University annually awards a student the Dag Hammarskjöld Prize in Peace and Conflict Studies based on outstanding work in the program.^[19]
  • Medallion by the sculptor Harald Salomon issued in Denmark 1962 to help financing the Danish Foreign Aid Program.
    

    

    1962 Medal Dag Hammarskjöld by the Danish sculptor Harald Salomon
• Postage Stamps: Many countries issued postage stamps commemorating Hammarskjöld.^[20] The United Nations Postal Administration issued 5 and 15-cent stamps in 1962. They show the UN flag at half-mast and bear the simple inscription, "XVIII IX MCMLXI". The United States Hammarskjöld commemorative 4-cent value postage stamp, issued on 23 October 1962, was actually released twice. Famous for its misprint, the second issue is often referred to as the Dag Hammarskjöld invert.
• On 6 April 2011, the Bank of Sweden announced that Hammarskjöld's image will be used on the 1000 kronor banknote, the highest-denomination banknote in Sweden.^[21]

Spirituality and Markings

In 1953, soon after his appointment as United Nations secretary general, Hammarskjöld was interviewed on radio by Edward R. Murrow. In this talk he declared: "But the explanation of how man should live a life of active social service in full harmony with himself as a member of the community of spirit, I found in the writings of those great medieval mystics [Meister Eckhart and Jan van Ruysbroek] for whom 'self-surrender' had been the way to self-realization, and who in 'singleness of mind' and 'inwardness' had found strength to say yes to every demand which the needs of their neighbours made them face, and to say yes also to every fate life had in store for them when they followed the call of duty as they understood it."^[22]
His only book, Vägmärken (Markings), was published in 1963. A collection of his diary reflections, the book starts in 1925, when he was 20 years old, and ends at his death in 1961.^[23] This diary was found in his New York house, after his death, along with an undated letter addressed to then Swedish Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Leif Belfrage. In this letter, Dag writes, "These entries provide the only true 'profile' that can be drawn ... If you find them worth publishing, you have my permission to do so". The foreword is written by W.H. Auden, a friend of Dag's.^[24] Markings was described by a theologian, the late Henry P. Van Dusen, as "the noblest self-disclosure of spiritual struggle and triumph, perhaps the greatest testament of personal faith written ... in the heat of professional life and amidst the most exacting responsibilities for world peace and order."^[25] Hammarskjöld writes, for example, "We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours. He who wills adventure will experience it – according to the measure of his courage. He who wills sacrifice will be sacrificed – according to the measure of his purity of heart."^[26] Markings is characterised by Hammarskjöld's intermingling of prose and haiku poetry in a manner exemplified by the 17th-century Japanese poet Basho in his Narrow Roads to the Deep North.^[27] In his foreword to Markings, the English poet W. H. Auden quotes Hammarskjöld as stating "In our age, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action."^[28]
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America commemorates the life of Hammarskjöld as a renewer of society on the anniversary of his death, 18 September.

Bibliography

• Durel, Bernard, op, (2002), «Au jardin secret d’un diplomate suédois: Jalons de Dag Hammarskjöld, un itinéraire spirituel», La Vie Spirituelle (Paris). T. 82, pp. 901–922.
• Fröhlich, Manuel (2008) "Political ethics and the United Nations: Dag Hammarskjöld as Secretary-General". Routledge, London.
• Lipsey, Roger Hammarskjöld: A Life (University of Michigan Press; 2013) 670 pages; scholarly biography
• Urquhart, Brian, (1972), Hammarskjold. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
• Velocci, Giovanni, cssr, (1998), «Hammarskjold Dag», in Luigi Borriello, ocd – Edmondo Caruana, ocarm – Maria Rosaria Del Genio – N. Suffi (dirs.), Dizionario di mistica. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Città del Vaticano, pp. 624–626.