Jens Otto Krag was Prime Minister in the years 1962-68 and 1971-72. He is best known for his work as one of the main architects of the welfare state and as the prime minister who got Denmark into the European Community.

Jens Otto Krag was born in Randers on September 15, 1914 and died on June 22, 1978 in Skiveren.

He graduated with a degree in political science from the University of Copenhagen in 1940 and got a job at the Central Exchange Office. In 1945 he became head of office for the Labor Movement Business Council and two years later became a member of the Danish Parliament. Jens Otto Krag was Minister for Trade, Industry and Shipping 1947-50, Minister without portfolio 1953 and Minister of Economy and Labor 1953-57. In 1957 he was made Minister of Foreign Economic Affairs and the following year Minister of Foreign Affairs, a post he held until 1962, when he replaced Viggo Kampmann as Prime Minister.

Jens Otto Krag in 1968 after announcing to the King that he is stepping down as Prime Minister

Jens Otto Krag started his political career in 1932 as a left-wing radical DSU member and from 1933 was part of the anti-fascist Three Arrows faction of the DSU. He was active in politics until 1975, when he resigned as head of the EC political delegation in Washington.

Jens Otto Krag has been called the chief architect of the welfare state. His drawings consist of numerous economic policy articles in newspapers, magazines and trade journals. But it didn’t stop at the drawings. As a politician, member of parliament, minister and prime minister, he tried to turn them into a building. Numerous political settlements and shipwrecks, meetings and conversations became the solutions that drove the development of Danish society from 1945. Among other things, he was the author of the Social Democratic Party’s program, Future Denmark, from 1945.

Jens Otto Krag wrote, took notes, reflected. Mostly about politics, but he also tried his hand at prose. His archive spans far, wide and deep. From the first exercise books from high school to the final words in his diary from 1978.

Manuscripts, letters, correspondence, minutes, notes and diaries reveal many different aspects of a politician’s life and his great project.
The development of Danish society from 1945 and not least the development of the welfare state economically, politically and socially in an international perspective must be the right heading for Jens Otto Krag’s era.