Jens Christensen (December 8, 1896 – December 29, 1921) became a journalist at Skive Social-Demokrat as a very young man. He made a considerable contribution to the Social Democratic youth movement, but died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. Popular as he was, a memorial was erected in Skive Cemetery.
School, agitator and student journalist
Jens Christensen was born in Nannerup near Jebjerg, where his father was a blacksmith. In 1905, the family moved to Skive, and here Jens Christensen attended Skive Municipal Middle and High School. While there, he published school magazines and short detective novels that he wrote himself, and he participated in political discussions in class, agitating for socialism.
In 1913, he completed his schooling by taking his secondary school exams and then applied to work as a journalist at Skive Social-Demokrat. The magazine’s editor, H.P. Hansen, immediately took him on as a student.
A young journalist – and editor
Skive Social-Demokrat was a so-called partial newspaper, where three of the newspaper’s pages were printed on the social democratic newspaper “Demokraten” in Aarhus, while the fourth and last page was edited and printed in Skive. The editorial staff consisted of the editor, H.P. Hansen and trainee journalist Jens Christensen.
In 1913, H.P. Hansen had been elected to the Danish Parliament for the Social Democrats. This meant that Jens Christensen (at the age of 17!) would work as both journalist and editor when H.P. Hansen was in Copenhagen. An essential part of the editor’s job was to participate in discussions with the editors of Skive’s other newspapers.
The “minor being” and the “caliph”
Among other things, this meant that Jens Christensen participated in debates with the renowned editor Carl Hansen, Skive Folkeblad. Here they often went to blows, as a quote from Skive Folkeblad on November 24, 1916 shows: “During editor H.P. Hansen’s stay at the Reichstag, Skive Social-Demokrat is led by a minor being. The minor writes about the editor of Folkeblad: “Carl Hansen’s mistake is that he thinks he is pope and infallible, that he thinks he is caliph and that his words are wisdom, while the reality is that the man is crazy, that he writes as if he were writing for a bunch of fools. He doesn’t count on the many sensible people who read “Folkebladet”.”
The “minor creature” is Jens Christensen, who, at just 19 years old, did not shy away from using strong words in the debate. And he didn’t just write – he was a skilled caricature artist. This was evident in his drawings for Social-Demokraten’s articles about the so-called “mayor murder” in Skive in 1916. Jens Christensen also wrote poetry and published a collection of short stories “Brudte Strenge” in 1916.
The great youth organization
Newspaper editors and journalists were not only tasked with fighting for the party’s views in the newspaper – they also had to represent the party at political meetings and in other public contexts. The young journalists often joined the party’s youth organization, many times as chairman. It was natural that Jens Christensen came to play a role in the Social Democratic Youth League’s Skive branch. The SUF branch in Skive was founded in 1906, and it quickly became the largest political youth organization in Skive. In 1917, SUF had over 200 members, and in 1919 it reached over 300 members.
The Russian Revolution divides in Skive
It was a period when major upheavals created a new world. First and foremost, the Russian Revolution of 1917 occupied the minds of young people, especially after the Bolsheviks in Russia seized power in the October 1917 revolution. The question of the position on the Russian Revolution split the labor movement into two parts – one social democratic and one syndicalist/communist. The split also affected the SUF branch in Skive, where the majority of SUF joined the Danish Left Socialist Party, which established a branch in Skive in December 1919. The minority – led by Jens Christensen – left SUF and founded Denmark’s first branch of the Danish Social Democratic Youth (DSU) on 18 January 1920. When DSU held its founding national meeting on February 8, 1920, Jens Christensen was unanimously elected editor of the union’s member magazine “Red Youth”, which was printed in Skive.
Tuberculosis
Like so many others during this period, Jens Christensen was attacked by tuberculosis. In the spring of 1921, he became seriously ill, but even though he took his first vacation in years, it didn’t help his health. He was hospitalized at Krabbesholm Sanatorium, from where he was discharged at the end of 1921, as there was nothing he could do against tuberculosis.
The young journalist’s funeral draws a large crowd
Jens Christensen died on December 29, 1921, having just turned 25, and was buried on January 3, 1922 with an unusually large attendance. Skive Folkeblad wrote the same day: “The workers had turned out in very large numbers to pay their last respects to one of their young leaders, but many other citizens of Skive had also turned out to follow the young man to his final resting place.” The stretcher was carried by the deceased’s comrades and fellow party members from the hospital to the old church, which was quite crowded by the large crowd. Above the funeral procession waved 8 flags, representing social democratic associations in the city, the surrounding area and neighboring towns.
Worthy of a memorial stone
DSU decided to launch a collection for a memorial stone for Jens Christensen. There was great support for the collection, and on November 19, 1922, the memorial, made by sculptor Jens L. Rasmussen, Nykøbing Mors, was unveiled at Skive Cemetery. Around 300 people attended the unveiling. There were representatives from several Jutlandic branches of DSU, and speeches were given by DSU’s chairman, Chr. Christiansen, and editor H.P. Hansen, Skive Social-Demokrat.
Sources:
- Henrik Fibæk Jensen: Jens Christensen – journalist and author. In: Skiveegnens Jul 2002, p. 49-56.
- Jørgen D. Jensen: The time during and around World War I. I. History of Skive Municipality from 1880 to 1940, p. 343-348. 2002.