The World's First Full Press Freedom

The Radical Experiment of Denmark-Norway 1770–1773

Ulrik Langen, Frederik Stjernfelt

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9783110771862
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia moderna

The book charts an extraordinary period in Danish history: the "Press Freedom Period" of 1770-73, in which King Christian 7's physician J.F. Struensee introduced a series of radical enlightenment reforms beginning with the total abolishment of censorship.

The book investigates the sudden avalanche of pamphlets and debates, initiating the modern public sphere of Denmark-Norway. Publications show a surprising variety, from serious political, economic, and philosophical treatises over criticism, polemics, ridicule, entertainment, and to spin campaigns, obscenities, libel, threats.

A successful coup against Struensee led to his subsequent public execution in Copenhagen, and the latter half of the period saw the gradual smothering of the new public sphere as well as an international pamphlet storm over what was happening in Denmark.

Readers all over Europe proved curious to learn about the radical experiment with enlightened absolutism in Denmark; interest was heightened by the involvement of the Danish Queen, the English princess Caroline Matilda to whom Struensee had an intimate relation.

The book is a detailed portrayal of a seminal event in the development of the public sphere in Europe.

1 Introduction

In the Cabinet

No one knows exactly what happened in King Christian VII's cabinet at Frederiksberg Castle outside of Copenhagen on 4 September, 1770. In the company of his German physician Johann Friedrich Struensee, the 21-year-old king single-handedly wrote a note on a loose sheet of paper. The memorandum was written in French and contained six points that needed to be addressed, including quite varied matters such as the allocation of extra means to the royal theater company, the submission of a report from an agricultural commission, the granting of postage exemption to a particular nobleman, and the preparation of an inquiry into a failed naval expedition to Algiers. One of the points was about exercising future restraint when awarding titles – now, they should be awarded on merit, not preeminence. The third item on the list reads as follows: “3. Furthermore, an order to the chancellery that gives complete freedom of the press so that books can be printed without any kind of censorship”.¹

The sheet was handed to the Cabinet Secretary who rephrased the King's note turning it into a so-called Cabinet Order articulated in a more formal language. The six points were divided into separate orders and then returned for the King and Struensee's approval. The orders had been given a much more detailed wording and motivation, and all was done in German. Eventually, the King signed the orders, and they were paraphed, that is, countersigned by the Cabinet Secretary. This was how a Cabinet Order was produced; the King's personal command, which had not been processed in the State Council or in the ministries, but was emerging directly from his Cabinet, that is, the unequivocal expression of the absolute monarch's will, provided with his signature that gave the words on the paper legal force. The orders were now forwarded to the authorities who were to carry them out. In the case of the Cabinet Order to abolish censorship, it was sent to the Danish Chancellery, which was to forward the order to the relevant authorities in the form of an ordinance, i. e., a piece of legislation. On 14 September, 1770, the Ordinance was released. It was a sensational break. As the first state in the world, Denmark-Norway had introduced full statutory freedom of the press. This is how the final ordinance read:

We are fully convinced that it is as harmful to the impartial search for truth as it is to the discovery of obsolete errors and prejudices, if upright patriots, zealous for the common good and what is genuinely best for their fellow citizens, because they are frightened by reputation, orders, and preconceived opinions, are hindered from being free to write according to their insight, conscience, and conviction, attacking abuses and uncovering prejudices. And thus in this regard, after ripe consideration, we have decided to permit in our kingdoms and lands in general an unlimited freedom of the press of such a form, that from now on no one shall be required and obliged to submit books and writings that he wants to bring to the press to the previously required censorship and approval, and thus to submit them to the control of those who have undertaken the business until now of inspecting them; so have we graciously revealed and made known this our will concerning our kingdoms to our Danish Chancellery. Given at Friedrichsberg, the 4 September 1770. Christian.²

The elaborate passages in the Ordinance were quite far from the King's own dauntless and straightforward formulation. The Ordinance aimed at motivating the decision and explaining the reason for the King's desire to introduce press freedom.³ Looking at the choice of words in the specific sentences, the Ordinance represents an outlining of an Enlightenment program characteristic of radical thought of the period. The Ordinance was based on the notion of an orderly public, in which truth could be located through impartial inquiry: “[T]he impartial search for truth”. This inquiry was to be carried out by “upright patriots” who acted according to their “insight, conscience, and conviction”. The purpose was to use Enlightenment guidelines in order to get rid of “obsolete errors and prejudices” by “attacking abuses and uncovering prejudices”. Thus, there was an implicit assumption in the Ordinance about who would constitute the actors of the public and what the function of the public ought to be. The Ordinance was based on idealistic, patriotic ideas of a public. On the other hand, it was unclear how the actors in practice ought to communicate in this new public. It was not anticipated that views on what exactly would constitute errors, abuses, and prejudices might prove divided.

Until the introduction of Press Freedom, it was the provisions of the Danish Law of King Christian V from 1683 that set the framework for the printed public. In principle, all publications had to be approved in advance by the leading professors in the Academic Council of the University of Copenhagen before printers and booksellers took them to the market. Violations could result in very severe penalties. Censors were particularly aware of the mentioning of religious and political matters, just as they were looking for lampoons and other defamatory writings, not least against court and King, or against foreign powers. Despite the strict wording of the legislation, in practice there were openings in censorship. Scholars could easily acquire uncensored foreign writings, just like numbers of small prints leaked onto the market without having passed the censors.

Fig. 1: The Cabinet Order regarding Press Freedom of 4 September 1770 became the occasion for the September 14 Ordinance which, from one day to the next, introduced Full Press Freedom in Denmark-Norway and the Duchies.

The Cabinet Order of 4 September 1770. © The Danish National Archives.

In the 1740s, institutions such as the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and the Sorø Academy had been given the right to censor their own publications themselves. In 1755, subjects were given access to critical participation in socio-economic debates when the government invited patriots to contribute to Danmarks og Norges Oeconomiske Magazin (“The Economic Magazine of Denmark and Norway” 1757–64).⁴ Anyway, this still remained a strictly monitored and controlled public until the Ordinance of Press Freedom in 1770 completely changed the terms.⁵ The sudden removal of pre-print censorship by ordinance had left out any mentioning to what extent the many provisions of the Danish Law of King Christian V from 1683 still applied to what was actually published. At first, many people seemed to have assumed that Press Freedom meant repealing the provisions of the Danish Law, but this should prove more complicated. Completely unforeseen, Press Freedom opened up completely new types of publics, which were far from devoted solely to the “the impartial search for truth”. New voices, new themes, and new tones quickly gained ground and completely changed the rules of the game.

The Press Freedom Period became a large-scale adventurous experiment. What would happen when a mid-size European absolutist state suddenly abolished all censorship? This experiment can be followed closely in a large collection of close to 1,000 writings collected by the civil servant Bolle Willum Luxdorph including nearly every new writing that flowed into the market after the introduction of Press Freedom until it was revoked at the end of 1773. With a distinctive sense of the exceptionality of this new media situation, he collected everything he considered to be Press Freedom Writings, i. e., publications owing their existence to Press Freedom or being related to subjects or debates born out of the newly gained freedom, leaving out any publication that, in his opinion, would have passed censorship and been approved for publishing before September 14 1770.

Almost all of the writings were published in octavo varying from ballads of eight badly printed pages to treatises of hundreds of pages, and the majority of them were ano- or pseudonymous. Luxdorph arranged his collected publications thematically and had them bound in 47 volumes, which he gave the title “Writings of The Press Freedom”. The Luxdorph Collection is unparalleled and reveals almost on a day-to-day basis how Press Freedom developed. This book is about the outcome of the Press Freedom experiment and is primarily based on the Luxdorph Collection. In this book we use the term “Press Freedom Writings” when referring to publications in the collection and to the little less than 200 related publications which escaped Luxdorph's attention but have been located in other collections.

These Press Freedom Writings have not previously been subject to an in-depth, comprehensive investigation. Some among the approximately 1,000 publications have occasionally been used as source material for various purposes, but for many years the Press Freedom Writings were considered unworthy to be studied seriously. Already at the time, many learned observers frowned at the excesses of Press Freedom Writings, an attitude inherited by most later historians. In 1901, historian Carl Bruun described how “the most miserable writers and cheats criticized everything between heaven and earth, untalented satires, vulgar lampoons, anonymous and pseudonymous slander came into existence in hundreds of ways; it was like a Walpurgis Night of rudeness, stupidity, and meanness”. There were only a few bright spots and writings of any value, and all in all, the Press Freedom Period was “a disgrace to the nation”.⁶ The grand old man of Danish-Norwegian eighteenth-century history, Edvard Holm, was the first to treat the Press Freedom Period en bloc in one of four treatises from 1885 on the publics of eighteenth-century Denmark-Norway. He was far from enthusiastic about it and abstained from dealing with many of the Press Freedom Writings due to – in his eyes – their lack of quality. Regarding a certain volume in the Luxdorph Collection, he said, for example: “I feel very uneasy to quote from the sometimes downright disgusting allusions to the relationship of Struensee and the Queen that are found in the pamphlets published at this time. Whoever wants to get acquainted with these will find them in the above-mentioned volume of the Luxdorph Collection”.⁷ A little less than 100 years later, on the occasion of the 200-years anniversary of Press Freedom in 1970, the historian Harald Jørgensen wrote that “an alarmingly large part” of the Press Freedom Writings was worth nothing at all.⁸ Evidently, not much had happened regarding the view of Press Freedom during the 85 years between these works. Holm, Jørgensen, and many other historians thus generally rejected the value of Press Freedom Writings on the basis of considerations of their transgressions of good taste, their lack of literary qualities and political consistency. The writings were measured by the style and subject requirements of the existing, narrow elite public.

Also among literati, the Press Freedom Writings have been treated with a distance. Literary historian Peter Hansen mentioned that “no other section of our literary history has witnessed such a myriad of authors sprout like mushrooms from the acid soil of ignorance and immaturity as the swarm of popular reformers and political reasoners which the Press Freedom Period called forth”.⁹ In his view, Press Freedom indicated Struensee's lack of understanding of the society he wanted to reform, just as it reflected his naive belief in “liberal Enlightenment”, while literary historian Vilhelm Andersen added, somewhat more optimistically, that “public opinion arose from the mud bath of trash literature”.¹⁰ In recent times, the Press Freedom Writings have received a much more positive treatment by Morten Møller, who regards Press Freedom as a breakthrough in the history of publicity, as well as a political and literary current with qualities in its own right.¹¹ The most in-depth analysis are presently found in Henrik Horstbøll and John Christian Laursen's studies of the Press Freedom Period. They focus on these writings as important evidence when exploring the development of the culture of communication and the history of freedom of expression – an approach which is expanded further in this book.

European Press Freedom

Even if nowhere politically realized to any full extent, Press Freedom as an idea was nothing new in Europe.¹² It had been discussed ever since early Enlightenment in the seventeenth century. Two social roots in particular must be mentioned, that of religions heretics on the fringes of Christianity, particularly on the margins of the post-Reformation Protestant State Churches, be they Lutheran, Calvinist, or Anglican. Protestant churches in general were no more tolerant faced with critics and dissidents than were the Catholics, and heretics, often suffering suppression, developed a natural reason to favor freedom of faith and expression. Another root was that of early networks of the republic of letters in Northwestern Europe, favoring freedom for their own emerging trans-border public outside of the narrow national spheres monitored by princes, courts, and churches, but also developing claims for a more general press freedom. Already by 1700, many of the central arguments for press freedom had been developed. Religious dissenter groups claimed that freedom of expression was needed in order to approach true religion cleansed of superstition, and that princes and churches were but secular powers with no political right to dictate the faith of believers. A more general argument rooted freedom of thought and conscience in the very nature of human beings, often adding social utility arguments that press freedom would lead to the spread of enlightenment and the development of new truths useful for science, state, and policies. During the eighteenth century the important idea was added of press freedom as a bulwark against the arbitrary powers of states over their subjects.

Practical press freedom grew particularly strong roots in the Netherlands and England. In the seventeenth century, the world's commercial center was Amsterdam, people with very different cultural, religious, and political backgrounds flocked here, and in the circle around Spinoza ideas were articulated about “Libertas Philosophandi” – the freedom to think. The decentralized structure of the Dutch republic made it a constant struggle for the Calvinist church to gain political support for censorship. If censored in one city, there was a short walk for an author or book-printer to the next city with a different political authority, ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Eighteenth-Century Denmark-Norway and the Introduction of Press Freedom
• 3 Absolutism and Press Freedom Debated
• 4 Press Freedom Debates During Press Freedom
• 5 Economy and Good Government
• 6 Church and Religion in a Free Public Sphere
• 7 The City of Press Freedom – People and Places
• 8 A Copenhagen of Books and Pamphlets
• 9 How the Pamphlet Market Turned against its Originator and Fed into his Fall – from the Summer of 1771 to the January 1772 Coup
• 10 The New Order of 1772 – A Clerical Campaign and a Clean-Up Party
• 11 Struensee The Monster
• 12 A European Cause Célèbre – the Struensee Affair and its International Reverberations
• 13 An International Pamphlet War
• 14 The Slow Smothering 1772–1773
• 15 Perspectives
• Cast of Main Characters of the Press Freedom Period
• Archive Material, Papers, and Periodicals
• The Luxdorph Collection with addenda
• Literature
• Index