1905-07-29

DAG HAMMARSKJÖLD, Swedish diplomat and United Nations Secretary-General, born (d: 1961); During the turbulent years that he was Secretary-General of the United Nations, rumors swirled that Hammarskjöld was homosexual. His acquaintances say that he was, instead, queer in another way: he was asexual, a workaholic, and an intellectual, whose only corporal indulgence was his love of gourmet food and flowers. The secretary-general dealt with the rumors by writing a haiku: “Because it did not find a mate / they called / the unicorn perverted.” His official biographer writes that “stupid or malicious people sometimes made the vulgar assumption that, being unmarried, he must be homosexual…” Stupid, malicious, vulgar? Perhaps some were merely wishing the Swedish unicorn a modicum of pleasure and happiness.

The exact cause of his death has never been conclusively determined. He is the only person to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously. In September 1961, Hammarskjöld found out about the fighting between non-combatant UN forces and Katanga troops of Moise Tshombe. He was en route to negotiate a cease-fire on the night of September 17-18 when his plane crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). The crew had filed no flight plan (for security reasons), and a decoy aircraft (OO-RIC) went (via a different route) ahead of Hammarskjöld’s aircraft.

He and fifteen others perished. The explanation of investigators at the time is that Hammarskjöld’s aircraft descended too low on its approach to Ndola’s airport in clear weather at night. No evidence of a bomb, surface-to-air missile, or hijacking has ever been presented, even though, following the crash, 180 men searched a six square kilometer area of the last sector of the aircraft’s flight path, looking for such evidence. Neither was any evidence of foul play found in the wreckage of the aircraft.

In 1998, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairman of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), stated that recently-uncovered letters had implicated British MI5, American CIA and South African intelligence services in the crash. One TRC letter said that a bomb in the aircraft’s wheel-bay was set to detonate when the wheels came down for landing. Tutu said that the veracity of the letters was unclear; the British Foreign Office suggested that they may have been created as Soviet misinformation.

Hammarskjöld is still the only U.N. Secretary-General to die in office. John F. Kennedy called Hammarskjöld “the greatest statesman of our century.” Although as an adult he rejected his family’s Lutheran faith, he continued to search for spiritual meaning. His collection of spiritual notes was published posthumously under the title Markings, which instantly became a best seller and a Christian classic.