Ole kirk christiansen biography video of albert

Biography of Ole Kirk Christiansen

Ole Kirk Christiansen was born in 1891 in Filskov, Denmark. He was the 10th child in a poor family and trained as a carpenter. In 1932, after losing his job during the Great Depression, Christiansen managed to establish his own workshop for producing ladders, ironing boards, and wooden toys.

Working alongside him in the company was his son, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, who started working with his father at the age of 12. It is Godtfred's name that is often associated with the rise of the LEGO empire. Starting with the production of wooden toys, Christiansen gradually expanded the business, and by the 1930s, the company had seven employees.

The word "LEGO" appeared in 1934, meaning "play well" in Danish ("LEg GOdt"). Over time, it also acquired the interpretation of "I learn" or "I assemble" in Latin. In the 1930s, the Christiansen company began manufacturing wooden toy cars and miniature furniture sets. However, in 1942, their factory burned down. Ole managed to rebuild it, constructing larger buildings, and by the mid-1940s, it had transformed into a family enterprise with around 40 employees.

In 1947, the production of plastic toys began, making Christiansen's company the first in Denmark to acquire a machine for casting plastic toy models. A few years later, in 1949, the first batch of wooden and plastic elements that could easily be interconnected was produced. These were the precursors to the world-famous LEGO bricks.

In 1953, the production of the iconic LEGO bricks began, and on May 1, 1954, the company was officially registered as "LEGO" in Denmark. By that time, Ole Kirk's son, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, had taken over as the director of the family company on his 30th birthday.

The company continued to thrive, with LEGO sets becoming popular worldwide. However, the story of the LEGO company, its rise, and the subsequent decline caused by the computer age, is a separate tale. As for Ole Kirk Christiansen, he suffered a stroke in 1951, after which his health never fully recovered. He lived until the age of 66 and passed away on March 11, 1958.

Ole Kirk Christiansen married Kirstine Sørensen, whom he met in Norway. They had four sons: Johannes Christiansen (1917), Karl Georg Kirk Christiansen (1919), Godtfred Kirk Christiansen (1920), and Gerhardt Kirk Christiansen (1926). After the birth of their fourth and youngest son, Kirstine passed away, leaving Ole alone to care for their four young children.

Ole Kirk Christiansen was a strong and resilient individual, whose life began with a struggle against poverty and was never particularly easy. Nevertheless, he managed to build a company almost from scratch, which, without exaggeration, captured the entire world.

It is known that in the early 1930s, when his factory employed less than 10 people, Ole pinned a poster on the workshop wall that read, "Only the best is worthy."