Christian VIII

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Christian VIII, King of Denmark
King Christian VIII
Monogram stone King Christian VIII (formerly attached to a bridge along the Altona-Neustädter Chaussee )

Christian VIII. Friedrich (born September 18, 1786 in Copenhagen , † January 20, 1848 at Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen) was King of Denmark and Duke of Schleswig , Holstein and Lauenburg from 1839 to 1848. He was also briefly King of Norway in 1814 .

Youth and family

Christian VIII was the eldest son of Sophie Friederike von Mecklenburg and the Hereditary Prince Friedrich of Denmark , son of King Friedrich V from his second marriage to Juliane von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel . Hereditary Prince Friedrich ruled together with his mother Juliane from 1772 onwards for his half-brother King Christian VII , who was unable to rule due to mental disorders until the young Crown Prince Friedrich VI. she was disempowered in 1784.

Christian Friedrich was brought up conservatively by the minister Ove Høegh-Guldberg, who was also ousted from the government in 1784 . His love for science and art was awakened early on. In 1809 he became president of the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.

Christian Friedrich was married to his cousin Charlotte Friederike von Mecklenburg-Schwerin for the first time. Because of an affair with her singing teacher, the composer and violinist Jean Baptiste Édouard Du Puy , Charlotte was banished from court at the end of 1809. The marriage ended in divorce in 1810 after just four years. They had two sons:

  • Christian Friedrich (* / † April 8, 1807), Prince of Denmark, and
  • Friedrich VII. Karl Christian (born October 6, 1808 - † November 15, 1863), King of Denmark.

His second marriage in 1815 to Caroline Amalie of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg , a daughter of Louise Augustes of Denmark , remained childless.

He also had several illegitimate children with several lovers, including Countess Elisa von Ahlefeldt .

King of Norway (1814)

In 1811 the prince supported the Norwegians' desire for their own university in Christiania against Frederick VI. with the success that the University of Oslo was founded in 1813 . When Christian Friedrich became governor in Norway in 1813 , he was therefore very popular there. He was called Tvende Rigers Haab (Hope of Two Lands).

On January 14, 1814, the entire Danish state had to cede the Kingdom of Norway to Sweden as a result of the Peace of Kiel . On the one hand, the new personal union was intended to meet the expansion interests of the Swedish Crown Prince Karl Johann - before his adoption as Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, French marshal. On the other hand, Great Britain wanted to weaken Denmark, which was allied with Napoleon I. Christian Friedrich now tried to establish a sovereign kingdom of Norway with the help of the Norwegian people . On February 25, 1814, he was proclaimed regent in Trondheim , and on May 17, 1814, he was elected Hereditary King of Norway at the Diet of Eidsvoll after a new constitution had been passed. However, Crown Prince Karl Johann put an army on the march against Christian Friedrich and the British fleet carried out a blockade against Norway. On August 14, 1814, Christian Friedrich had to sign the Moss armistice , which ended the Swedish-Norwegian War , and abdicate as King of Norway on October 10 of that year. The crown fell to Charles XIII. of Sweden .

Danish prince

After his return from Norway, Christian Friedrich entered into a second marriage in 1815 with Caroline Amalia, the daughter of Duke Friedrich Christian II of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg , who died for himself and his due to his marriage to Louise Auguste of Denmark Family laid claim to the Danish throne. However, this marriage remained childless.

In the same year Christian Friedrich became governor of Funen , but remained without political influence. He could not use “his gifts, which are unusually rich for an Oldenburg,”. From 1818 to 1822 he and Caroline Amalie toured Europe. They worked as a promoter of science and art patrons for Bertel Thorvaldsen , among others , whom they visited in Rome . His democratic tendencies earned him suspicion from the government. It was not until 1831 that his cousin, King Friedrich VI , appointed him . in the Council of State. But although the liberals had high hopes for Christian Friedrich because of the modern Norwegian constitution, he had spoken in 1838 with Metternich in Austria in favor of not abandoning the Estates constitution in order not to endanger the peace in the Reich.

When the Danish-minded lawyer Christian Paulsen published Om Hertugdømmet Slesvigs Folkepræg og Statsret in 1832 , the Crown Prince joined, albeit cautiously, his demand for Danish as the legal language throughout Northern Schleswig . That is why the hope of the Danish Nationals rested on him.

King of Denmark (1839–1848)

After Friedrich VI. Christian Friedrich died on December 3, 1839 without male descendants, and was crowned King of Denmark on June 28, 1840 as Christian VIII. The liberal forces placed great hopes in him, but only a few of them were fulfilled. Copenhagen received a new constitution in 1840, a local reform was carried out, which became the basis for local self-government, and Danish was made the legal and administrative language in North Schleswig. In Iceland , the Althing (parliament) was revived and free trade was introduced in 1843.

The biggest problem during his reign was that the Danish state as a whole was in danger of breaking up due to nationalist tensions between Danes and Germans. Christian VIII, although wise and enlightened, reacted haphazardly and indecisively from the start. His personnel policy was shaped by the desire to do justice to everyone. Johan Gunder Adler , who had been his cabinet secretary since 1814 , remained his most important advisor . He kept all of his predecessor's ministers. As the governor of the duchies , he traditionally installed his brother-in-law Friedrich von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg , a declared opponent of the Danish language. Compared with Orla Lehmann and his followers, who asked with reference to the Norwegian Constitution to create a new liberal constitution for Denmark, he referred to the old stalls Constitution, because he feared that any change to the national forces at risk the balance of the general government.

Question of inheritance

Since his only son had already divorced twice without children and no heirs could be expected, Christian VIII tried the inheritance regulation contained in the Danish royal law of 1665, according to which the female line was also entitled to inheritance - in this case Christian's niece Louise of Hesse , the daughter of his sister Louise Charlotte of Denmark - to enforce also for the duchies, because the personal union between Denmark and the duchies would have ended through the different succession. The assemblies of estates in Schleswig and Holstein favored Christian VIII's brother-in-law, Duke Christian August of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg , who was the son of Friedrich VI. - presumably illegitimate - Sister Louise Auguste would have become Duke under the previous arrangement. Christian August von Augustenburg had already published anonymously a pamphlet entitled The Succession in Schleswig-Holstein in 1837 , in which he justified the validity of Holstein inheritance law for the whole of Schleswig-Holstein and thus his own claims with the Treaty of Ripen ( Up forever ungeled ) .

After the king's open letter of July 8, 1846, in which he declared the Danish royal law to be valid also for Schleswig and Lauenburg, the assemblies of the estates resigned in protest. The governor of the duchies and the head of the Schleswig-Holstein chancellery , Joseph von Reventlow-Criminil , also resigned from their offices. Schleswig asked for admission to the German Confederation . The London Protocol of 1850/52, which brought the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg to the throne, whose claims to Louise of Hesse, the wife of Christian IX , did not bring a final agreement on the succession . , were based.

Constitution

It was only shortly before his death in December 1847 that Christian VIII commissioned the royal commissioner at the provincial assembly in Roskilde and Viborg, Peter Georg Bang , to draft a new constitution for the entire state, in which the absolute monarchy was also to be abolished. However, he died before the draft could be presented to the State Council. The continuation of his policy through his son and successor Frederick VII led in Denmark to the bloodless March Revolution in 1848, since nationalist Danes were concerned about the supremacy of the Germans in the state as a whole, and to the three-year Schleswig-Holstein War because the German-minded Schleswig-Holsteiners feared that the Eider-Danish movement could enforce the incorporation of Schleswig into the kingdom and thus a separation of the duchies.

Quote

“We are poor and miserable. If we get stupid now, too, we can stop being a state. ”- In response to the finance minister's objection to the increase in the education budget.

Memberships

When La Société Cuvierienne was founded in 1838 , he was one of the 140 founding members of the society.

ancestors

 
 
 
 
 
 King Christian VI (1699–1746)
 
 
 
 
 King Friedrich V (1723–1766)
 
 
 
 
 
 Sophie Magdalene of Brandenburg-Kulmbach (1700–1770)
 
 
 
 Hereditary Prince Friedrich v. Denmark (1753-1805)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ferdinand Albrecht II of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1680–1735)
 
 
 
 Juliane von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1729–1796)
 
 
 
 
 
 Antoinette Amalie of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1696–1762)
 
 
 
 Christian VIII King of Denmark
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Christian Ludwig II of Mecklenburg (1683–1756)
 
 
 
 Ludwig of Mecklenburg (1725–1778)
 
 
 
 
 
 Gustave Karoline of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1694–1748)
 
 
 
 Sophie Friederike von Mecklenburg (1758–1794)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Franz Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (1697–1764)
 
 
 
 Charlotte Sophie of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (1731–1810)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Anna Sophia von Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt (1700–1780)
 
 

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Christian VIII of Denmark  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Roar Skovmand: The birth of democracy 1830-1870 , in: Roar Skovmand / Vagn Dybdahl / Erik Rasmussen: history of Denmark from 1830 to 1939. The struggles over national unity, democratic freedom and social equality ; translated by Olaf Klose . Neumünster 1973, pp. 13-208; P. 78.
  2. ↑ a b Skovmand, p. 80.
  3. ↑ Christian Paulsen (Danish)
  4. ↑ Skovmand, p. 67.
  5. ↑ Skovmand, p. 83
  6. ↑ Mikkel Venborg Pedersen: The dukes of Augustenburg ; in: The princes of the country. Dukes and Counts of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg , published on behalf of the Society for Schleswig-Holstein History , pp. 310–341; P. 321.
  7. ↑ Reinhard Kahl: Teachers as Entrepreneurs - Denmark receives the Bertelsmann Prize for its vocational training . In: The time . 39/1999
  8. ^ Société Cuvierienne, p. 189.
predecessor Office successor
Friedrich VI. King of Denmark
1839–1848 		Frederick VII
Friedrich VI. King of Norway
1814 		Charles XIII
personal data
SURNAME Christian VIII
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Christian VIII. Friedrich
SHORT DESCRIPTION King of Denmark (1839–1848), King of Norway (1814)
DATE OF BIRTH September 18, 1786
PLACE OF BIRTH Copenhagen
DATE OF DEATH January 20, 1848
PLACE OF DEATH Copenhagen