Einar Li

Einar Li (20 June 1880 – 11 February 1955) was a Norwegian newspaper editor and politician for the Labour and Social Democratic Labour parties. He was also known as a conscientious objector, for which he received prison sentences. Biography He was born in Bergen as a son of Lieutenant Colonel John Herman Lie (1840–1923) and Petra Jensine Thaulow Klouman (1844–1925). In 1908 he married Amalie Marie Hansen.

He became known as a conscientious objector, a pioneer as such outside of the religious community. For refusing to enter military training in the summer of 1906, he was sentenced to ninety days of prison in November 1906. He appealed to the Military Supreme Court, but the sentence was upheld on 15 February 1907. Later in 1907 he refused again, and was arrested in November. This time he received a sentence of one year in prison, the most harsh sentence to any conscientious objector in Norway at the time. When he refused to enter the military service for the third time, in the spring of 1908, the prosecuting authority gave up. About 1,400 people honored him in public when he was released.

Political and professional career He attended studies in economics in Oxford, Brussels and Paris. He took the examen artium in Norway in 1904. which he chaired from 1921 to 1945. He issued a book on Ullevål Hageby, one such housing cooperative, in 1942. He also headed the Norges kooperative Landsforening's control committee from 1926 to 1936, and was a board member of the cooperative insurance company Forsikringsselskapet Samvirke from 1925 to 1945 and Samvirkebanken from 1936 to 1945.