Sigurd Lorentzen
Sigurd Juell Lorentzen (1916 – 1979) was a Norwegian judge and civil servant.
He graduated with the cand.jur. degree in 1938, and worked as a secretary in Trustkontrollkontoret from 1939 to 1940 and in the Norwegian Price Directorate from 1940 to 1945. After a brief time in the Ministry of Finance in 1945,[1] to which he was summoned by Wilhelm Thagaard,[2] he returned to the Price Directorate and remained here until 1949. He was a deputy under-secretary of state in the Ministry of Finance from 1951 to 1960, permanent under-secretary of state in the Ministry of Transport from 1960 to 1972 and a Supreme Court Justice from 1972 to 1979.[1]
When hired as deputy under-secretary in 1951, Lorentzen edged out applicants who were generally believed to be better qualified, especially Einar Grøstad. This was a personal decision by Minister of Finance Trygve Bratteli.[3] Lorentzen was the youngest of the applicants, and the second youngest permanent under-secretary in the Ministry at the time.[2] He was also known to be, as a person, quite similar to Trygve Bratteli.[4] He became quite strong; historian Einar Lie has noted that "in reality", the permanent under-secretary of state Friedrich Georg Nissen did not function "as a real superior to Lorentzen".[5] In 1957, both Grøstad and Lorentzen applied to become the successor of Nissen as permanent under-secretary, the highest position in the Ministry. However, this time Trygve Bratteli chose economist Eivind Erichsen; Grøstad and Lorentzen were both jurists.[6] Einar Lie has called this "likely [...] the only defeat in Lorentzen's own career".[7] Soon, Lorentzen developed a reserved relation to Erichsen as well as Per Kleppe—principally, though, since the latter two were economists and Lorentzen was a jurist. Einar Lie wrote that when Trygve Bratteli brought Lorentzen to the Ministry of Transport, he "solved" a problem. It also paved the way for up-and-coming economist Hermod Skånland.[8]