Nina Bang
Encyclopedia
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
– 25 March 1928 in Copenhagen) was a Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
social democratic
Social Democrats (Denmark)
The Social Democrats , is a Danish political party committed to the political ideology of social democracy. It is the major coalition partner in Denmark's government since the 2011 parliamentary election, and party leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt is the current Prime Minister of Denmark...
politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
and historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
. In 1924 she was appointed Minister for Education, becoming the first female minister in an internationally recognized government.Alexandra Kollontai
Alexandra Kollontai
Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai was a Russian Communist revolutionary, first as a member of the Mensheviks, then from 1914 on as a Bolshevik. In 1919 she became the first female government minister in Europe...
was People's Commissar for Social Welfare of Soviet Russia
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....
from 1917 to 1918. Countess Markievicz was Minister of Labour
Minister for Labour (Ireland)
The Minister for Labour was originally the name of a government department in the Government of the Irish Republic, the self-declared state which was established in 1919 by Dáil Éireann, the parliamentary assembly made up of the majority of Irish MPs elected in the 1918 general election. Constance...
of the Irish Republic
Irish Republic
The Irish Republic was a revolutionary state that declared its independence from Great Britain in January 1919. It established a legislature , a government , a court system and a police force...
from 1919 to 1922. She resigned as minister in 1926.
Biography
Bang grew up in a right-wing middle-class family, but unlike her brother the politician and physicist Heinrich Oscar Günther Ellinger, who became a member of the LandstingLandsting (Denmark)
The Landsting was a house of the Rigsdag in Denmark from 1849 until 1953, when the bicameral system was abolished. The house had powers equal to the Folketing, which made the two houses of parliament hard to distinguish....
for the conservative party Højre
Højre
Højre was the name of two Danish political parties of Conservative persuasion.The first Højre party existed from 1848 to 1866....
, she became a marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
while studying history at the University of Copenhagen
University of Copenhagen
The University of Copenhagen is the oldest and largest university and research institution in Denmark. Founded in 1479, it has more than 37,000 students, the majority of whom are female , and more than 7,000 employees. The university has several campuses located in and around Copenhagen, with the...
in the 1890s. When she graduated in 1894, she became one of the first women in Denmark to get an academic degree. She had specialized in 16th-century trade and in particular the extensive records in the possession of the Danish National Archives
Danish National Archives
Danish National Archives is the National archive of Denmark. The primary purpose is to collect, preserve and archive historically valuable records from central authorities, such as ministries, agencies and national organisations and make them available to the public...
on the Sound toll collected at Kronborg Castle
Kronborg Castle
Kronborg is a star fortress situated near the town of Helsingør on the extreme northeastern tip of Zealand at the narrowest point of the Øresund, the sound between Denmark and Sweden...
from the 1420s until 1857. Bang saw the records of the ships that passed through Oresund
Oresund
The Sound , is the strait that separates the Danish island Zealand from the southern Swedish province of Scania. Its width is just at the narrowest point between Helsingør, Denmark, and Helsingborg, Sweden...
and the type and value of their cargo throughout centuries as unique historical documents to the economic history of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, the Hanseatic League
Hanseatic League
The Hanseatic League was an economic alliance of trading cities and their merchant guilds that dominated trade along the coast of Northern Europe...
and the Baltic states
Baltic states
The term Baltic states refers to the Baltic territories which gained independence from the Russian Empire in the wake of World War I: primarily the contiguous trio of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ; Finland also fell within the scope of the term after initially gaining independence in the 1920s.The...
. Analyzing the large amount of documents was a huge project, and she published the first two volumes of (Tables of Shipping and Transport of Goods through the Sound) in 1906 and 1922. The project produced seven volumes in all, but Bang was responsible only for the first two.
Bang's political career began in 1903 when she became a member of the executive committee of the Social Democratic Party, where she was the only woman until the arrival of Marie Nielsen
Marie Nielsen
Marie-Sophie Nielsen was a Danish communist leader who was a founding member of the Danish Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party of Denmark.-Political career:...
in 1918: only three women had previously been members. In the 1918 Landsting election
Danish Landsting election, 1918
The Danish Landsting election of 1918 was held on 11 May 1918, with the exceptions that the seats elected by the resigning parliament were elected on 20 March 1918, the Faroese member was elected on 13 May, and the electors that elected the candidates standing in the constituencies were elected on...
—the first under the Constitution of 1918
Constitution of Denmark
The Constitutional Act of Denmark is the Kingdom of Denmark's constitution, or fundamental law. Originally verified in 1849, the last revision was signed on 5 June 1953 as "the existing law, for all to unswerving comply with, the Constitutional Act of Denmark".-Idea and structure:The main...
which enfranchised women—she was elected to the Landsting, and she remained a member until her death in 1928. She was a member of the finance committee of the Landsting, and she participated in several international socialist conventions as a substitute for Thorvald Stauning
Thorvald Stauning
Thorvald August Marinus Stauning 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....
.
When Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Denmark
The Prime Minister of Denmark is the head of government in Danish politics. The Prime Minister is traditionally the leader of a political coalition in the Folketing and presides over the cabinet....
Thorvald Stauning established his first government—the first Danish social democratic government, the Cabinet of Stauning I—in 1924, Bang was appointed Minister for Education, which made her the first female minister in Denmark and one of the first in the world. Bang's primary ambitions as minister was to democratize the school system and to improve the teacher training. Despite being the first woman to reach the top of the political system in Denmark, Bang never engaged in the women's movement but considered the situation of women a part of the regular political struggle, and criticised the right-wing women's movement for obscuring differences between the classes of society.
Bang stirred up quite a commotion when at the 50th anniversary of the new building for the Royal Danish Theatre
Royal Danish Theatre
The Royal Danish Theatre is both the national Danish performing arts institution and a name used to refer to its old purpose-built venue from 1874 located on Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen. The theatre was founded in 1748, first serving as the theatre of the king, and then as the theatre of the...
in 1924, she forbade the playing of the overture to Elves' Hill
Elves' Hill
Elves' Hill is a comedy by Johan Ludvig Heiberg, with overture and incidental music by Friedrich Kuhlau , which is considered the first Danish national play....
and thus the royal anthem Kong Kristian. When a group of students sang the anthem anyway, addressing it directly to King Christian X of Denmark
Christian X of Denmark
Christian X was King of Denmark from 1912 to 1947 and the only King of Iceland between 1918 and 1944....
, she refused to stand up as tradition dictated and as the entire audience did. Some of the other ministers had trouble deciding whether to sit or stand, but only Bang remained fully seated. As a politician, she was uncompromising and aggressive, characteristics that earned her the nicknames "Our Lady of Denmark" and "the only real man in the government".
When Stauning's government resigned in 1926, Bang continued as a member of the Landsting, but due to illness her activity was limited. She died in 1928.