Prior to the introduction of freedom of the press in the absolute monarchy of Denmark‒Norway in September 1770, censorship was generally carried out, since 1537, as pre-publication censorship of book manuscripts by the professors of the Academic Council at the University of Copenhagen, with theologians being the most influential. Newspapers were censored by officials appointed by the government. The only exceptions were closely monitored and circumscribed. A few recent institutions, the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters (1742) and the Academy at Sorø (1749), were allowed to self-censor their publications by peer review. In the 1750s the government launched a limited public debate on the common good and lent its support to the communication of economic information on a larger scale than had been the case previously. The government tried to benefit from the expanding public sphere and monitor the development of publicity. A general invitation to participate in a supervised patriotic debate on economic matters was issued in 1755, and the ‘most useful’ treatises would be printed in a government-sponsored journal without regard to personal standing and without cost to the author.
1 On the 1755 invitation, see J. Maliks, Vilkår for offentlighet. Sensur, økonomi og transformasjonen af det offentlige rom i Danmark-Norge 1730‒1770 (Trondheim, 2011).Although certain institutions were exempted from censorship – and although many broadside ballads and minor pamphlets managed to pass censorship because the censors did not care to read them – the introduction of freedom of the press in 1770 was completely unexpected.
2 On Dano-Norwegian censorship, see Ø. Rian, Sensuren i Danmark-Norge: Vilkårene for offentlige ytringer 1536‒1814 (Oslo, 2014); J. Mchangama and F. Stjernfelt, MEN: Ytringsfrihedens historie i Danmark (Copenhagen, 2016) and J. Jakobsen, ‘Uanstændige, utilladelige og unyttige skrifter: En undersøgelse af censuren i praksis 1746‒1773’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen, 2017). There had been no thoroughgoing debate on government level of such matters, as was the case in Sweden. The press freedom ordinance was the first action of the silent coup by Johann Friedrich Struensee, the personal physician of Christian VII. The German-born Struensee had gained power by way of his personal influence on the king and through his love affair with Queen Caroline Matilda who was a sister of the English king, George III. The Struensee reign lasted 16 months, during which a string of reforms was launched. The reign was put to an end by a group of coup plotters formally lead by Queen Dowager Juliana Maria and Hereditary Prince Frederick, who seized power during the night of 17 January 1772. In the initial phase Struensee was supported by top militaries such as P. E. Gähler and S. C. Rantzau, who had been plotting against State Council rule since the mid-1760s, and most likely, press freedom had been a theme in the secret discussions of this group. The day after the introduction of freedom of the press, the State Council was purged, and later the same winter, it was dissolved completely, while the practical effects of press freedom in the public were busily exploding.
If we take a closer look at the few sources shedding some light on the decision to introduce freedom of the press, it is striking how a very brief royal order was transformed into an elaborate ordinance, written by the Cabinet Secretary, reflecting the idea of an enlightened general public and the proper patriotic use of the press freedom. On a list of six orders from the king to his secretary, we find this in the king’s own handwriting: ‘(To write) 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.’
3 ‘(Ecrire) 3. Encor un ordre aux chancelleries qui donne la permission sans restriction pour la presse, que les livres doivent être imprimés sans aucune censure’, Danish National Archives, Copenhagen, Kabinetssekretariatet 1766‒1771: Kgl. ordrer til kabinetssekretariatet, Cabinet Order of 4 September 1770. Within what must have been only a few hours on 4 September, this brief order was rephrased by the Cabinet Secretary and appeared as a law ten days later, on 14 September. Struensee no doubt monitored the process carefully if not actually wielding the pen of the king and his secretary:
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 press […].
4 This translation was made by J. C. Laursen and published in ‘David Hume and the Danish Debate about Freedom of the Press in the 1770s’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 59 (1998), 168; translated from the original German in Luxdorphiana, eller Bidrag til den danske Literairhistorie, ed. R. Nyerup (Copenhagen, 1791), pp. 1–2; also in H. Hansen, Kabinets-styrelsen i Danmark, 1 (Copenhagen, 1916), pp. 46f.It came after the Swedish law but was more radical in the sense that it made no room for exceptions. In a sense, it was the world’s first full press freedom. The law was informed by central Enlightenment ideas about the political utility of a free press: the search for truth, the criticism of abuse, the rejection of prejudice. Like informed people in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe, the king was familiar with commonplace contents of the transnational enlightened republic of letters – an interest that he had made a public display of when he in 1768 visited the Academy of Science in Paris and made conversation with prominent Enlightenment figures such as d’Alembert and Diderot.
5 On Christian VII’s knowledge of Enlightenment writers and his visit to Paris, see U. Langen, ‘Le roi et les philosophes: le séjour parisien de Christian VII de Danemark en 1768’, Revue d’Histoire, économie et Société, 1 (2010), 5–21, and ‘Raising a Crown Prince in the Age of Reason’, in V. Gancheva (ed.), The 18th Century and Europe (Sofia, 2013), pp. 164–9.Before becoming a royal physician Struensee had lived in cosmopolitan Altona working as a doctor employed by the city. Altona had for many years enjoyed a reputation as a safe haven for dissidents and heretics of the north German lands, liberty in Altona being considerably greater than in strictly controlled Copenhagen and indeed also greater than in neighbouring Hamburg. In Altona he learned inoculation from the Jewish doctor Hartog Gerson and J. A. Reimarus, a son of the famous Hamburg theologian and secret freethinker Samuel Reimarus, whom Struensee also became acquainted with. In brief, he became part of a North German network of Enlightenment figures, including characters such as Lessing, the reform pedagogue J. B. Basedow and the Jewish philosopher A. E. Gompertz, a friend of Mendelssohn’s and the former secretary of Maupertuis and the marquis d’Argens.
Like many others in the period, Struensee admired Montesquieu and Voltaire, but his favourite authors among the emerging French High Enlightenment seem to have been Helvétius and Boulanger; the former for his scientific approach to the soul and for his support of free speech, the latter for his analysis of religion as a way of politically exploiting the fears of believers.
But Struensee also acquired hands-on experience of Dano-Norwegian censorship in addition to his grandfather’s case from 1742. One of his intellectual friends was the Danish deist Georg Schade, who anonymously published a large Leibnizian treatise on natural religion and reincarnation in Altona in 1761. His anonymity was broken, however, by the powerful Lutheran heretic-hunter J. M. Goeze in Hamburg’s Katharina Church. Schade was turned over to Dano-Norwegian authorities in Altona, and without a court case he was banished for life to the small Danish Baltic islet of Christiansø north of Bornholm. When in power ten years later Struensee saw to the early release of his old friend. But Struensee’s own publications were also indicted by Dano-Norwegian censorship. In his periodical
Zum Nutzen und Vergnügen (For Benefit and Pleasure) Struensee argued for medical-inspired state policies as well as the virtues of satire, and he took aim at Altona’s best known and revered doctor, J. A. Unzer, founder of the successful weekly
Der Arzt (The Doctor). Because of this article, his journal was proscribed by the Dano-Norwegian State Council. Struensee, in short, did not only harbour transnational Enlightenment ideas of press freedom on the fundamental, abstract level gleaned from the reading of contemporaneous French Enlighteners and his dinner discussions in Altona. He also had direct, personal experience of the effects of Dano-Norwegian censorship at several different levels.
6 On Struensee’s intellectual foundations and the transnational networks in Altona, see H. Horstbøll et al., Grov Konfækt: Tre vilde år med trykkefrihed 1770‒73, 1 (Copenhagen, 2020), pp. 479‒91. Since we wrote this chapter an abridged version of this two-volume work has been published in English by the two main authors: U. Langen and F. Stjernfelt, The World’s First Full Press Freedom: The Radical Experiment of Denmark–Norway 1770‒1773 (Berlin, 2022).Unlike the Swedish case, there was no pre-legislative process which would indicate any considerations on possible uncertainties or grey zones, for instance regarding author responsibility or defamation. No clearly delimited exemptions were stated, as in the Swedish law. It was also not clear how the cancelling of all censorship would affect the existing strict limits on public expressions by post-publication punishments in the Danish Law of Christian V (1683); the new legislation did not mention these at all. In short, the discussions on the nature, the function and not least the ways of applying press freedom began only after the ordinance was passed. Furthermore, it is important to underline that this discussion took place within the new public sphere created by the introduction of press freedom.