Knud Lausten Knudsen

Knud Lausten Knudsen

Knud Lausten Knudsen (born December 17, 1806 in Ribe ; † June 16, 1866 ) was a Danish squire and politician .

biography

He was the son of the inn owner and cattle dealer Christen Knudsen (November 20, 1773 - April 16, 1859) and Maren, née Oksen (April 16, 1782 - March 17, 1869).

family

Knudsen married Gyde Marie, née Oksen (October 29, 1806 - March 19, 1884) in 1826, daughter of the farm owner Hans Oksen (died in 1824).

farmer

Through his marriage in 1826 he became the owner of important farms in Forballum in the parish of Medolden and in 1851 he bought the Trøjborg estate with the associated farm Visby Hedegård and the leasehold farms below, which he sold to the lessees over the course of a few years on cheap terms. He offered the government the main house, i.e. the castle, as a building for a teachers' college , but when the offer was turned down, he demolished the castle in 1854. When the bridge over the moat collapsed, the demolition stopped. He justified the termination with the fact that he was only a farmer and did not want to be called anything else.

politics

That is why he turned down the title of chamber councilor , which he was offered in 1851. Knudsen was a capable farmer who in 1851 became a member of a government commission on stud farms. In 1854 he was a co-founder of an agricultural cooperative and from 1856 its chairman. He also played a major role in the drainage of lakes Rolfsø and Filsø from 1848-50, which until then had been the second largest in Jutland.

Visions

For a long time Knudsen was the driving force in the pietistic awakening movement in northwestern North Schleswig . Christen Kold was his tutor and also let him teach the neighboring children in his home. The idea of ​​a Grundtvigian adult education center was a topic as early as 1841 . When the Volkshochschule in Rødding was founded in 1844, Knudsen became a member of the board of directors and later one of the school's three shop stewards. In April 1848 he gathered a band of peasants and occupied Tønder , but later had to seek refuge in the Danish kingdom himself. He was elected to the Landsting in 1849 , but resigned his mandate after the first two meetings. In the years 1861–63 he was one of the so-called 'monastery brothers' (monastery brothers was the derisive name for the participants in a meeting that took place in April 1861 in Lügumkloster ). They demanded freedom in church and school conditions in the Duchy of Schleswig in the hope of reconciling the Germans in the Duchy with Danish rule. The outcome of the war in 1864 broke his courage to live and he died on June 16, 1866.

swell

• Emil Elberling, "Knudsen, Knud Lausten", in: CF Bricka (red.), Dansk Biografisk Lexikon , København: Gyldendal 1887–1905.