Jens Andersen Hansen

Jens Andersen Hansen (born Jan. 7, 1806, Odense, Den.—died June 1, 1877, Copenhagen) was a journalist and politician, a leading 19th-century champion of Denmark’s peasantry. A self-educated shoemaker, Hansen became coeditor, with Rasmus Sørensen, of the peasant newspaper Almuevennen (“Friend of the Peasantry”) in 1842; he was sole editor from 1843 to 1856. A consistent advocate of universal suffrage and agrarian reform, he served in the Constituent Assembly of 1848–49 that produced the June Constitution...