New propriety and Enlightenment ideas become popular…
1684 CE to 1827 CE
In the last fifteen years of the eighteenth century the authorities relax the censorship that has existed since the beginning of the seventeenth century.
At the same time, a sense of Danish nationalism begins to develop.
Hostility increases against Germans and Norwegians present at the royal court.
Pride in the Danish language and culture increases, and eventually a law bans "foreigners" from holding posts in the government.
Antagonism between Germans and Danes increases from the mid-eighteenth century on.
In the 1770s, during the reign of the mentally unstable Christian VII (1766–1808), the queen's lover, a German doctor named Johann Friedrich Struensee, becomes the real ruler of the country.
Filled with the ideas of the Enlightenment, he attempts a number of radical reforms including freedom of the press and religion, but it is short-lived.
The landlords fear that the reforms are a threat to their power, while the commoners believe that religious freedom is an invitation to atheism.
In 1772, Struensee is arrested, tried, and convicted of crimes against the majesty; his right hand is cut off following his beheading; his remains are quartered and put on display on top of spikes on the commons west of Copenhagen.
The next twelve years are a period of unmitigated reaction until a group of reformers gains power in 1784.
Groups
Topics
Commodities
Subjects
Regions
