Christian Holtermann Knudsen

Christian Holtermann Knudsen (15 July 1845 – 21 April 1929) was a Norwegian typographer, newspaper editor, publisher, trade unionist and politician for the Norwegian Labour Party. He is known as chairman of his party in three non-consecutive periods, and also founded what would become the main party newspaper. He served three terms in the Norwegian Parliament. Career Media and trade unions He was born in Bergen as the son of a cooper. He finished a typographer's education in 1865, and worked for several printing presses in Kristiania. Most notably he worked for the weekly newspaper Almuevennen, as typographer for six years and manager for eight years. In 1872 he was among the co-founders of the trade union Oslo Typografiske Forening. He chaired this organization from 1876 to 1878, 1879 to 1882 and 1883 to 1885, and in 1883 he co-founded the first trade union center in Norway, Fagforeningernes Centralkomité. In 1884 Knudsen established the newspaper Vort Arbeide ('Our Work'), on behalf of the central committee. The first issue was released on 10 May 1884, and led to Knudsen being fired from Almuevennen. He also had to establish his own printing press since none of the existing printing presses wanted to be affiliated with a labourer's newspaper. The fledgling project was marred by economic problems, and the burden of both writing, editing and printing lay chiefly on Knudsen. In 1885 he founded the association Socialdemokratisk Forening, which formally took over the newspaper. The name was changed from Vort Arbeide to Social-Demokraten ('The Social Democrat') in 1886. At the same time, Carl Jeppesen took over as editor-in-chief, although Knudsen would return as editor from 1892 to 1893.