Thorvald August Marinus Stauning (26 October 1873 – 3 May 1942) was the first social democratic prime minister of Denmark. He served as Prime Minister from 1924 to 1926 and again from 1929 until his death in 1942.
Biography[]
Stauning was trained as a cigar sorter and soon after became involved with trade union activities. Between 1896 and 1908 he was a leader of the Cigar Sorters' Union, and between 1898 and 1904, he was also editor of the Samarbejdet (Cooperation) magazine of the Federation of Trade Unions. In 1910, he was elected president of the Social Democrats (Socialdemokratiet), a position he would hold for three decades, until 1939. During his government, like the other Scandinavian countries, he developed a social welfare state, and although many of his social democratic ambitions were frustrated in his lifetime by force majeure events, his leadership through very difficult times, positioned him as one of the most admired Danish statesmen of the twentieth century. Stauning died in 1942, deeply depressed about the future of social democracy in a Nazi-dominated Europe.