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Johannes Lauridsen,
Director of the National Bank

1917
 
Full size, 25K  

 

Plaster, 1917. 49,5 x 62 x 31,5 cm. Inv. no. 156. Donated to the museum by Niels Hansen Jacobsen. Marble 1920. Inv. no. 1143. Purchased in 1998 with funds from the National Council of Museums. Monument at Vejen railway station 1928. The photograph shows this later version of the bust.

 

Exhibitions

The Free Exhibition, 1920. Marble.
The catalogue notes that the bust was in the collection of Johannes Lauridsen.
The Free Exhibition, 1929. Material not identified.
The catalogue notes that the bust was a model for the monument in Vejen.

 

Johannes Lauridsen (1847-1920)

Johannes Lauridsen was born in Vejen and took over the family farm, Grønvang, together with his wife, Maren, after their wedding in 1877. The couple had six children. Johannes Lauridsen was a very enterprising businessman who did not confine himself only to agriculture. He made his fortune with the Nørrejylland chicory factory, which made ersatz coffee, and quickly expanded his business to include a dairy, a brickyard, a telephone company, and many other things. He is probably best known today as the founder of Vejen's two big companies, the Alfa margarine factory and Phønix tarpaper factory. From 1907, when Johannes Lauridsen was elected to parliament, the couple lived in Copenhagen. In 1908, he was appointed director of the National Bank.

 

The issue of reunification

Johannes Lauridsen was an enthusiastic local patriot who worked for the reunification of North Schleswig with Denmark as chairman of the Skibelund Association. A reunification monument designed by Niels Hansen Jacobsen was erected at his initiative at Skibelund Krat in 1920.

 

The bust

 

The bust was evidently commissioned by the family, perhaps for Johannes Lauridsen's 70th birthday in 1917. It was shown at the Free Exhibition in 1920. In 1927, a collection was taken to erect a monument to Johannes Lauridsen. The monument was unveiled in a grand ceremony in front of the railway station in Vejen on September 6, 1928, with speeches by prominent personages. The monument consists of a granite column decorated with a bronze laurel wreath and Johannes Lauridsen's birth and death dates. At the top of the column is a slightly altered version of the portrait bust. It is dated 1928, and a model of it was shown at the Free Exhibition in 1929.

 

 

Niels Hansen Jacobsen's monuments

Niels Hansen Jacobsen created numerous memorials and monuments. At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, it was quite common to raise monuments of this kind to prominent persons and to commemorate events such as the First World War and the Reunification. Some of Niels Hansen Jacobsen's monuments are found at Skibelund Krat. The most prominent is the monument to "Our Mother Tongue," a commission for which Johannes Lauridsen was partly responsible.

From the Ahlmann Monument at Langholt in the north to the Reimer Monument at Sønderborg in the south, work by Niels Hansen Jacobsen is found throughout Denmark, especially in cemeteries, where he created many types of tombstones.

The Ahlmann Monument at Langholt