Willem Drees
Willem Drees ( born July 5, 1886 in Amsterdam, † May 14, 1988 in The Hague) was a Dutch politician. Between 1948 and 1958 he was Prime Minister of the Netherlands. He belonged to the Social Democratic Partij van de Arbeid and is considered the father of the Dutch welfare state.
Life
Drees put his degree in 1903 at the Amsterdam School of Public Listing from. Until 1906 he worked at the Twentsche Bank in Amsterdam. Subsequently, he was a stenographer in the city council of Amsterdam and from 1907 to 1919 in the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament.
In 1904, Drees was a member of the Social Democratic Workers' Party ( SDAP ), which merged into the Labour Party in 1946. He was from 1910 to 1931 Chairman of the Hague local circle of the SDAP. From 1913 to 1941, Drees was a member of the Hague City Council. In this period was 1919-1931 the area of social responsibility in his and until 1933 the area of finance and the public institutions.
Between 1919 and 1941, Drees was also a member of the Provincial Parliament of South Holland and from 1927 to 1946 he was on the board of the SDAP. 1933 Drees was chosen for the SDAP in the Second Chamber. From 1939 until his retirement in May 1940 he was Leader of the Party.
During the Second World War Drees was imprisoned from 1940 to 1941 in the Buchenwald concentration camp. From 1944 to end of war was to be transferred back to the government Drees member of the Quorum of the confidence men who tried the formal authority in the liberated south of the Netherlands.
From June 24 1945 to August 7, 1948 Drees Minister for Social Affairs in the cabinet Schermerhorn / Drees and in the first cabinet Beel. On August 7, 1948, Drees Prime Minister of the Netherlands and exercised the office in four successive cabinets ( Drees / Van Schaik, Drees I, II and III ) to December 22, 1958 from. During his tenure, the short-lived, non- Dutch - Indonesian Union (1949-1954), which he tried in vain to strengthen falls. After leaving the office of prime minister Drees was appointed by Queen Juliana to the Minister of State.
Drees spoke Esperanto and gave the opening speech at the World Congress of Esperanto in 1954 in Haarlem.
In 1948 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Netherlands Economic University Rotterdam, and in 1952 the University of Maryland.
Drees was very popular with the Dutch. They gave him the nickname Vadertje Drees (Father Drees ). As a social minister, he initiated numerous social laws and laid as early as 1947, the foundations of the Dutch welfare state. Under Drees the General Pensions Act (Algemene Ouderdomswet, AOW ) was introduced, which promised every Dutch taxpayers a basic pension from age 65. Drees was dissatisfied with the links course of his party in the 1960s, but they did not leave, unlike his son Willem Drees jr.