While Rothe satirized about general matters, the pamphlet about the pixie took a specific target. In the eighteenth century, a traditional distinction was made between satires dealing with general social matters and lampoon or pasquinades, characterized by mocking personal attacks. Thus, the Danish-Norwegian playwright Ludvig Holberg maintained a distinction between permissible satire aimed at the ordinary and impermissible satire aimed at "either innocent or guilty persons" – a distinction repeated by the young Struensee in his Altona periodical. Handwritten lampoons were common in eighteenth-century Copenhagen as a limited and clandestine alternative to the government-controlled public. Mostly, anonymous authors

266 [anonymous], En saare mærkværdig Tildragelse som er skeet i den Stad Antwerpen med et forhexet Drengebarn der var en Nisse men omskabte sig til en Skoebørste med mere som Historien fortæller. Først skrevet i Hollandsk ved Heer de Calmuysen og i det Danske oversat ved Claus Lille, fordum Sogne-Degn, og nu til Trykken befordret ved Casper Ebletoft samt hosføiet en Lovtale over Skoebørsterne,, no place or printer, 1771 (30 January 1771).

267 Nyerup (ed.) 1791, 513.

268 Jensen 1973, 42–43.

attacked named or easily recognizable senior officials and criticized nepotism and the abuse of power.269

The pamphlet about the pixie significantly differs from Rothe's Eulogy to the Shoe Brush in the sense that it is written in the new situation without censorship. While lampoons and satires before September 1770 were, as mentioned, written and circulated along hidden channels to avoid censorship, there was now a legal carte blanche to ventilate criticism. The strong personification of the object of satire in the tale of the pixie indicates a change in satirical approaches brought about by Press Freedom. There are many indications that personal attacks – directly and indirectly – came to constitute an essential element in the new public sphere; while lampoons and squibs used to thrive as a concealed underground part of the public, Press Freedom turned them into a regular genre. One can ask, furthermore, whether content and quality of satire also changed with the abolition of censorship.270 It was the specifically harsh satirical and personally insulting content in some of the Press Freedom Writings that was pointed out as the problem in the motivation for the restriction of the Freedom of the Press half a year later, on 7 October 1771.

With the two spectacular texts about the shoe brush religion and the pixie from Antwerp, the shoe brush debate had only just begun. A string of pamphlets was published with comments on the death of Nissen and further contributions to the debate. It took on a fresh turn when, on 12 February 1771, the government issued a Cabinet Order stating that servants who had been taking care of their master's personal waiting were not to be employed in public office. It was not entirely clear how such a "Domestique oder Bedienter", as it was phrased in German, was to be defined. Who was covered by the ban and how was it to be administered? No doubt, this law was inspired by the shoe brush debate, and contemporary observers like Luxdorph pointed to Eulogy to the Shoe Brush and the lampoon against Nissen as the direct cause for the new government to issue the Cabinet Order. This would imply that either the King, Struensee or an influential person in their circle had followed the debate and acted accordingly. Whether this was the case or not, the Cabinet Order indicates that the lackey-nepotism issue was occupying the minds of many Copenhageners. We may add that Struensee, again in his youthful Altona periodical of 1763, had satirized the magical act of transforming a lackey into a public official. Furthermore, the ban was in line with the meritocratic reforms of administration and civil service that had been on the Cabinet's agenda since September the year before.

269 On lampoons in eighteenth-century Denmark-Norway, see Færch 2010. Holberg is quoted from this essay. See also Bartholdy 1972.

270 Satirical creativity with or without censorship respectively is a classic theme within satire research: Burke 1941, 231–232; Elliott 1960, 264–265; Griffin 1994, 138–134; Hodgart 2010, 39. On the tradition of anticlerical satire in particular, see Brink 2015, 2018.

#### After the Anti-Shoe Brush Cabinet Order

Several new Shoe Brush-pamphlets followed, and in the period from 8 March to 8 April, at least 14 publications about shoe brushes came out. It is characteristic of this series of shoe brush pamphlets that social and economic matters in Copenhagen played a particularly important role in the perception of injustice. One example, the pamphlet The Fall of the Shoe Brush 1771. Described by Jens the Servant, published shortly after the Cabinet Order, takes place in America.271 In a situation with no relatives, parents, and friends, a young boy grabs the brush and takes to shine people's shoes at the city gate.  He learns to use both men's and ladies' pens and comes to court where he becomes a kitchen scribe. He earns money and gets a reputation, among other things because he ingratiates himself with noblemen and provides them with mistresses. The author highlights that the mindset of a Shoe Brush can be found anywhere in society, and he presents a string of examples on how the new law will benefit social justice. It will no longer be possible to bribe one's way into office and the Municipality will, from now on, consist of enlightened men, not of Shoe Brushes.

The story is a tribute to the newly issued Cabinet Order banning the employment of servants; a kind of projection of the effects of the law. Social conflicts will be minimized when knowledge and insight have replaced nepotism and self-interest, and harmony and respect between the various social groups of the city will emerge. The pamphlet is a social policy statement that is not just about fighting nepotism. In addition to the appreciation of formal criteria for access to positions and assessment of qualifications, it is about the human qualities of employees. When people no longer find it reasonable and necessary to act in accordance with the rationales of a corrupt hierarchy where it is simply a matter of making up to one's superiors, ways of thinking will change, and civil servants and the Municipality will take a more compassionate approach to being in office. It is the return to a natural order. An important result is that the economic exploitation of the poor will decline.

The exploitation of common people was also the main perspective of A Breadless Lackey's deplorable Letter to his Uncle (March 8 1771).272 In this pamphlet, the shoe brush problem is linked to another current and quite serious matter, namely the grave food supply situation in the ice winter of 1770 to 1771. The lack of food had forced the government on 24 December 1770 to ban the production of distilled spirits using rye. On February 14, the Municipality was ordered to be in charge of baking

271 [anonymous], Børsternes Endeligt 1771. Beskreven af Jens Gaardskarl, no place or printer, 1771 (20 February 1771).

272 [anonymous], En brødløs Lakeys begrædelige Skrivelse til sin Farbroder vel bekiendt Kornpuger i Jylland angaaende Rugens faldne Priis og den ædle Skoebørstes Forhaanelse i Dannemark til Trykken befordret af Rasmus Ligefrem, no place or printer, 1771 (March 8 1771)

bread to be sold to the poor at the lowest possible prices. In terms of genre, the story of the breadless (brødløs, i. e. unremunerative) lackey does not belong to the ensemble of travel stories, but was what one might call "the mediated letter" in which a person brings a assumedly found letter into print; a type of text that was quite prevalent among the Press Freedom Writings and was part of a long tradition.

In this pamphlet, the disapproval of 'shoe brushing' turns into a social criticism that is not just about nepotism and offices but has a number of other implications presented by Jens the Lackey in his letter: pretence, self-presentation, social hierarchies, and social conventions, excessive consumption, food hoarding, conditions of the poor, masquerades, and gambling. Certainly, Jens possesses all the negative human qualities characterizing a Shoe Brush, but he is just as much a product of snobbery, superficiality, and the prevailing patron-client system of society. In addition, there is a more unnoticed implication about gender and sexuality.  Another shoe brush pamphlet highlights, in versified form, how a shoe brush almost becomes lord of the house because of the sexual power he obtains over the women of the household:

I often please the women of the house At times they take favors from the joy of my brushing I therefore rule all of the house Sometimes violently, sometimes cunningly, I do my deeds.273

Although the women of the house are formally his superiors, the lackey achieves a superior position through his sexual services. Thus, the criticism is no longer just about shoe brushes in undeserved offices, but just as much about the function of the shoe brush in his lackey service and the corrupting power he exercises in private contexts as well.

### Shoe Brushes versus Students

The problem of shoe brushes is also discussed – albeit satirically and condescendingly – from a different perspective. The people who lose out because of the new law on domestics are mentioned in A Conversation between two Girls about the Fall of the Shoe Brush, made from Nye-Gaden to Amager-Torv. Brought to the Press by Morten Slowly, which is staged as a piece of intercepted reality from Copenhagen street life.274 The title page is provided with a vignette depicting shoes, boots, brush,

273 [anonymous], Skoebørstens Svanesang, Copenhagen, no printer indicated, 1771 (13 March 1771). 274 [anonymous], Samtale imellem tvende Piger om Skoebørstens Fald, holden fra Nye-Gaden til Amager-Torv. Til Trykken befordret af Morten Langsom, no place or printer, 1771 (18 March 1771).

comb, and a heap of hair, in which the name Lars is seen on a ribbon. Under the vignette is written: "The Brush has given Bread". The subject is both visually and metaphorically clear, pointing to the fact that as early as 18 March when the publication was announced for sale, the shoe brush theme was so generally understood that the title page's illustrations and text were expected to be easily decoded by buyers at printers and booksellers.

The satirical pamphlet portrays a conversation between two sisters as they stroll along the main street of Nygade down to Amagertorv – an important central square in the public sphere of the Press Freedom Period. In this text, the legal intervention against the shoe brushes is presented as a social degradation. Disappointed hopes and a loss of confidence in the customary system of nepotism characterize the two women. Pale-looking and without her usual fashionable clothes, one sister complains that she no longer sees any prospect of marrying Lars Brush, with whom she is engaged. The other sister objects: Lars can accommodate, he can shave and speak French, which are all valued sciences. And most importantly; he is the servant of a powerful man. Many have become considerable men with the help of the brush.

The first sister is annoyed that she can no longer expect to receive the new clothes that her boyfriend has promised her. She says that she has read about the Shoe Brush Act in the newspaper, which she is now pulling out to let her sister share the bad news. Both are horrified by the consequences of the new law. The second sister is appalled by the news because her husband, a coachman, is courting to become a town hall attendant. He cannot calculate or write, but he has learned to take payment for services done. They soon reach Amagertorv where a peep show is displaying pictures of the fall of the Shoe Brush and his crashing from the mountain of honor. Depressed and disillusioned, the two sisters leave the square.

The text portrays an urban oral culture where newspaper reading is involved as an informative and clarifying practice. These women are readers, while at least one of their male fiancés cannot read. The image of Copenhagen street life, giving space to the discussion of the Shoe Brush Act, is emphasized by locale and mobility when the two sisters move along the central axis of Nygade to Amagertorv while talking. It is worth noting the communicative practice depicted, albeit in a parodic interpretation; the Shoe Brush Act, the textualizations of the newspapers, the oral processing and the visual representation of peep show are connected in a communicatively interpretive interweaving, in which the newspaper is highlighted as documentation.

In a surreal narrative based on traditional folklore about elves and supernatural creatures, we move from Amagertorv to Valby, a village not far outside of Copenhagen, in the pamphlet A Wondrous Sight. 275 One night, a schoolmaster witnesses a magnificent and grotesque funeral ceremony among supernatural creatures, in

275 [anonymous], Et forunderligt Syn som blev seet en Nat i W\*lb\*\* Skole der forestillede en Liigbegængelse med Skoebørster samt en Liig-Tale som blev hørt af underjordiske Folk. Optegnet og til Trykken befordret ved Mogens Skolemester, no place or printer, 1771 (18 March 1771).

which the insignia of the deceased is carried on striped pillows; clothes-brush, comb, pomade box, powder puff, soap, razor, slippers, dressing gown, chamber pot, shoe polish, shoe brush, and so on. A hair bag, white silk stockings and a muff are placed on the coffin. Every material representation of a Shoe Brush is present. A funeral speech is delivered using a frame of contrasting social characteristics: before the Act, the Shoe Brushes walked about with offices in the pocket and distinctions in the stomach, but now they are left to the circle of provision dealers, kældermænd (basement men, i. e. tenants or shopkeepers in cheap basement leases) and bottlers. Lambskin coats now suit their bodies better than velvet jackets. This reference to costumes is commonly used for social stereotyping; skindpels (a lambskin coat) was frequently used name for a – tarnished – provision dealer.

Back in his house, the schoolmaster records the experiences of the night. The next day, the narrator goes to Copenhagen and visits a place in Pilestræde (probably the printing business of the Berling brothers), where he usually reads newspapers. He reads something – most likely a notice on the Shoe Brush Act – so that the strange scene he witnessed the night before suddenly makes sense. Once again, newspapers are referred to as explanatory and conducive, just like in the story of the two sisters walking along Nygade to Amagertorv.

The following night, a creature appears to the schoolmaster and commands him to note down his experiences and have them printed. The next morning, he edits his manuscript and goes to a printing shop in Copenhagen to have it published. In a way, this finale gives a snapshot of the writing and printing practice of the Press Freedom Period, in which one senses the new short and fast path from pen to print. But the main conclusion of the pamphlet is about social tensions between lambskin coats and servants who rise to glory, versus cowed students who do not. The opposites are also illustrated in the contrast of fine garments (superficiality) and knowledge (profundity).

The tensions between uneducated brushes and scholars are expressed even more clearly in a pamphlet entitled Money is better than Mind and Knowledge. 276 The text is written as a funeral speech in which Hieronymus Blockhead speaks harshly to his fat-headed audience. What is science and reading good for, he asks, and heads into a lengthy ridicule of the learned as a social stereotype; his weak and stooping appearances, his worn-out clothes, his failing eyesight from too much reading and his everlasting financial difficulties. No, the half-learned fool in a nice coach, fashionable outfit and with money in his pocket is the ideal. He may write an occasional poem so that everyone thinks he has spirit. That will suffice. Who wants to spend his life rummaging old Latin writings only to receive contempt, ridicule, and poverty in return? The opposition to the scholars is sharply drawn up with a direct incitement

276 [anonymous], Penge er bedre end Forstand og Lærdom: Forestillet i en kort Afhandling holden som en Oration paa det øverste Auditorio i \*\*\*\* af Hieronimus Dumrian, no place or printer, 1771 (22 March 1771).

to hatred; one shoe brush advice is to persecute and hate all "those whom the world calls scholars". Love the gaudy frock, hate the black one, as it is proclaimed with reference to the traditional uniform of the students.

Another pamphlet, Twelve Letters from a Peasant to his Lord, mentions how students have suffered for centuries while the fall of the shoe brushes has now paved the way for the rise of the book.277 The hatred of shoe brushes towards the learned will be replaced by the victory of erudition and academic studies over nepotism and incompetence. Yet another author contributes to this theme by letting a student proclaim a verse:

Now is the golden age for the students Speak about what we know, and we shall be happy By means of our studies we can now succeed For the brush who used to oppress has disappeared (15).278

A fictitious patriotic professor – in another pamphlet – mentions how offices that were previously occupied by shoe brushes have now been opened to students.279 In still another text, an author makes a proposal for how shoe brushes can make themselves useful and enter the Copenhagen labor market, now that they can no longer get offices.280 As they are used to wait and have been trained to 'a certain kind of courtesy', they will be well suited for the catering business.

While the early shoe brush texts were exclusively about clientelism, the later texts spread into elements such as gambling, injustice, pretense, the devaluation of learning, the relationship between the sexes in the household, etc. It is remarkable how the shoe brush debate in some texts was closely linked to considerations on the Copenhagen Magistrate, but the most striking thing is probably the quite explicit display of experiences of – or perhaps sometimes only the notions of – a thoroughly corrupt civil service. Whether the pamphlets reflected a regular unveiling of extraordinary corruption in the municipal government or rather a more general and longsimmering dissatisfaction with an ingrained clientelist system, the texts constituted a harsh political critique of the civil system by attacking both administrative and civil service culture of Danish absolutism and the absurdities of prevailing social hierarchies. It had by no means been possible until 14 September 1770.

277 [F. A. Pflueg], Tolv Breve, fra en Bonde til sin Herremand, Copenhagen: Borups Efterl., 1771 (20 March 1771).

278 [Martin Brun], Forsvars-Skrift for Fanden og Jøderne. Skrevet af Anne Blyetækkers, Copenhagen: Borups Efterleverske, 1771 (3 April 1771).

279 [Martin Brun], Samtale imellem en ejegod, viis og stor Fyrste og en Minister, Borger, Bonde, Philosoph, Professor, Kiøbmand og Krigsmand angaaende Finantserne, Handelen, Laugene, Krigsmagten til Lands og Vands, Lærdommens Udbredelse, Agerdyrkningen og de dyre Tider. Til alle Stænders fælles Velfærd og Lyksalighed, Copenhagen, no printer indicated, 1771 (10 April 1771).

280 [F. A. Pflueg], Tolv Breve, fra en Bonde til sin Herremand, Copenhagen: Borups Efterl., 1771 (20 March 1771).

#### Food, Hunger, and Hard Times

Steady food supplies and food price levels perceived by the urban population as fair were decisive factors in the maintaining of social stability in early modern cities. The Luxdorph Collection contains the new Municipality's printed rules about food prices and quality, which were included in the collection to provide the proper context for a pamphlet debate on the measures taken by the government and the city council to curb high living costs and food shortages. The ubiquitous Martin Brun paid tribute to the new Municipality in verse ventilating his hopes for its ability to do something about high prices and bread shortages and particularly to take care of the predicament of the poor.281 Other authors were less enthusiastic – the anonymous pamphlet Civil Considerations on the City Regulations issued by the Copenhagen City Council delivered a scathing attack on the new city council, which was described as ignorant and uninformed of the state of the city.282 Furthermore, there was added an ill-concealed critique of the new Municipality's German tinge; the Lord Mayor Holstein was a Holsatian German, like several other members of the new city council, which is why they were considered ignorant of Copenhagen conditions. Despite the hard words that fell on the new magistrate, the author assured that they were written out of a pure patriotism and that "a permitted freedom to put forward my thoughts in public has carried them to the press". The author was well aware that his critique could never have been made if it were not for Press Freedom.

The discussion about prices and storage of grain came on the heels of a severe winter with food shortages. A collection of fictitious letters from a farmer about conditions in Copenhagen described the hunger and poverty in the winter-plagued city.283 A husband goes out in the bitter cold to find work while his wife stays at home to take care of the children screaming for bread, but he comes home emptyhanded in the evening. Trade and factories almost stand still, while smuggled goods destroy city trade. Artisans do not have enough to order and have no income. The fatal consequences of rising food prices were also described in Thoughts on Distillation of Spirits. 284 When food "becomes expensive, it is difficult for the poor to earn his bread, and an overwhelming poverty in a country diminishes in many ways the number of its inhabitants, the children die of hunger at the breasts of a hungry mother, parents are suffocated by sorrow, the beggars implore in vain" (17). It is a

281 [Martin Brun], Fandens Liv og Levnet første gang til Trykken befordret ved Doctor Faust, Venedig [?], no printer indicated, 1771.

282 [anonymous], Borgerlige Betænkninger over det fra Kiøbenhavns Raadstue udkomne Stad-Reglement, viisende i visse Maader dette Reglements fortrædelige Indhold og skadelige Følger, no place or printer, 1771 (20 September 1771).

283 [F. A. Pflueg], Tolv Breve, fra en Bonde til sin Herremand, Copenhagen: Borups Efterl., 1771 (20 March 1771).

284 [anonymous], Tanker om Brændeviins-Brænden. Skienket til Stiftelsen for nyefødte Børns Opdragelse, Copenhagen: L. N. Svare, 1771 (28 June 1771).

downward spiral, and evidently the patriotic notion of the benefits of population growth plays a significant role in the argument. In a pamphlet staged as a conversation between a traveler, an officer, and a Copenhagen citizen, food prices are discussed and the officer explains that food has "risen to an excessive and oppressive price, especially for the poor and those with low income and large families". 285 The traveler cannot understand why a grain-producing country like Denmark is unable to feed its own population and, furthermore, why a trading city like Copenhagen does not have stocks to last for a least six months. The citizen replies that royal storages, which are normally intended for the Army and Navy, have already been distributed, but that there are hardly any merchants with large stocks of grain and fatty goods in the city. The traveler is reminiscent of the grain hoarders that have recently been uncovered in Bohemia and Moravia hiding grain in order to push up prices, and, echoing Philopatreias, he suggests that something similar may be the case in Copenhagen.

In one of his fictitious conversations between a prince and his subjects of different classes and professions, Martin Brun gives voice to a subject who humbly thanks the prince for handing out bread to his people, although he is still increasingly worried about the future.286 The prince promises to take care of it, but he needs time and the help of Providence. The regret of the prince contains two assumptions also found in other pamphlets; that the high meat prices were due to the premature slaughtering of lambs and calves, and that food shortage was linked to an unpatriotic export at the expense of Danish subjects. Press Freedom writers were intensely discussing where to place the responsibility for rising prices and the resulting poverty. The undisguised social critique in the discussions about food shortages and prices reveals a hitherto rather unnoticed side of the Press Freedom public. The public discussion of poverty and trade had previously taken place in closed expert circles, among the learned, in the civil service, or in a few specialized treatises. Now it was unfolding as a conversation between concerned citizens. This was a significant and far-reaching opening of the realm of debate.

Social perspectives became more common in many pamphlets dealing with urban matters, particularly the functionality and social use of urban space were recurring themes. Frustration and suggestions for improvements, which had previously either been discussed orally or were communicated in a more formal manner through mainstream channels such as petitions to the Municipality or to the King,

285 [anonymous], Discours imellem en fremmet Reisende, en Officer og en Borger ved Navn den Tænkende. Handlende 1. Om de høie Priser paa Brød og Fødevahre, 2. Om det Fattiges Væsen, 3. Om Skifter, 4. Om Procuratores Antal for Underretterne, 5. Om Gade Løgter, 6. Om Gade Vægterne, no place or printer indicated, 1771 (29 April 1771), 3.

286 [Martin Brun], Samtale imellem en ejegod, viis og stor Fyrste og en Minister, Borger, Bonde, Philosoph, Professor, Kiøbmand og Krigsmand angaaende Finantserne, Handelen, Laugene, Krigsmagten til Lands og Vands, Lærdommens Udbredelse, Agerdyrkningen og de dyre Tider. Til alle Stænders fælles Velfærd og Lyksalighed, no place or printer indicated, 1771 (10 April 1771).

were now shared with the public in expectation of attention from co-citizens. Debates often took their point of departure in considerations on solving a specific practical problem in urban public space. One example is the debate on street cleaning, which began with pragmatic suggestions and considerations on the pro and cons of public, municipality-organized street sweeping to turn, after a few pamphlets, into social satire. In this style, an author argued that the sweeping of the large, wide streets must precede the sweeping in the small narrow alleys, because noble carriages always take the large streets. And the nobles must always be supported. Their carriages must be able to move quickly because the business and affairs of nobles are so important that they should withstand 'no protraction or delay' (13). The fact that there are so few sweepers in the small streets may be regarded as a sign of helpfulness from the scavenging department; as it is difficult to get through the small streets, the department will not make the passage even more difficult by sending too many sweepers into them. So, in small streets they have to live with the stench in order to grant better passage. The social geography of the city is made explicit in the contrast between the great and the small streets, so that there is nothing to misunderstand: "Just as the small animals are created and live to serve the larger animals, so the small streets must give up their full contingent, so that the great streets can be better served". 287

The introduction of public street sweeping a few years earlier was criticized by the pseudonymous Harlequin Savage, and once again, the city's social inequalities are reflected in the universe of street sweeping.288 If public street sweeping were abolished, everyone would have to "sweep his own street without respect to persons, both rich and poor, both titled and untitled, both high-born and low-born" (18). Private sweeping will simply have a socially leveling effect – at least while it is going on. The same was stated by Martin Brun in one of his pamphlets; if public sweeping was abolished, everyone again would have to sweep (or having swept) their own street "without distinction of rank and condition" (9).289 Following this point of view, public sweeping had removed the performative equality-making practice of private sweeping.

Shoe brushes, the municipality, corruption, food prices, and street sweeping were separately dealt with in many pamphlets but just as often such issues appear in mixture with many others. Quite a few pamphlets took a full tour in the urban

287 [anonymous], Fundne Breve. Første Stykke indeholdende: Om de til Kiøbenhavns Gaders Reenholdelse afgivende Feye-Penge, no place or printer indicated, 1771 (2 April 1771)

288 Harleqvin-Vildmand [anonymous], Harleqvin-Vildmands Betragtninger over Statens Tarv, Feil og Forbedring. Skreven i Snakke-Maaneden, først i Aaret efter Skrive-Friheden, Copenhagen; Borups Efterleverske, 1771 (21 May 1771). Harlequin writes in the "Chattering month" in the early year after the Freedom to Write, as he says. He knows he owes Press Freedom his possibility of voicing public complaints.

289 [Martin Brun], Lucifers Begrædelse over Helvedes Forstyrrelse og de Onde Aanders Udryddelse, no place or printer indicated, 1771 (10 April 1771).

subject catalogue with interlacements of comments, assessments, and ridicule, which differed, in every way, from the stringent, reasoning, and discussing form which had, ideally at least, characterized the academic style of most pre-Press Freedom scripts. The current of urban pamphlets can be read as detailed snapshots of the topics occupying Copenhageners in the spring of 1771. One of these topics were about sumptuousness and social appearance.

#### Opulence and Frugality

In relation to the debate on poverty, material signs of wealth became a hot topic for many writers. In the pamphlet Twelve Letters, from a Peasant to His Lord, a socially differentiated taxation is proposed by the industrialist F. A. Pflueg, so that the tax be not levied on the common people, but on 'all useless and boastful splendor. The big mirrors, the ingenious clocks, the proud tapestries, the gilded carriages [and] the lavish clothing' (22). The objects are presented as evidence of the owners' boastful behavior – and in these times of scarcity – as a lack of community spirit and failing understanding of the desperate situation of others. Therefore, they should be taxed. In one of his fables, Martin Brun regards the spectacular consumption of the rich as an insult towards all the Copenhageners who have suffered from the cold and scarcity of the cruel winter: "The gentlemen in their long fur coats ride the sleighs and enjoy themselves at the expense of the weather. The rest of us stay at home freezing and starving, so that even our souls tremble". 290 Fur-clad masters and mistresses appear again and again as an example of social injustice, even the magnificent fur coats of Struensee and Brandt are mentioned in a pamphlet following their arrest in January 1772 (see Chapter 11). Sleigh-riding is portrayed as an inconsiderate pleasure: the high and mighty rush through the snow-covered streets in their fast sleighs just for fun, surrounded by torch bearers, while common Copenhageners have to struggle onward in knee-deep snow, having a hard time staying warm because of the shortage of firewood, while the sea is frozen, so that no goods can be shipped into the starving city.

Abundance viewed as an explicit expression of social inequality gave rise to a fictional letter by the active pamphleteer F. C. Scheffer, in which a Muslim man explains a Turkish vizier why abundance of food and drinking is both harmful and punishable, because the rich and voluptuous consume, in one meal, more than what ten poor people could live off for many days.291 In addition, excessive con-

290 [Martin Brun], En Samtale holden i Niels Klims Rige, imellem Keiser Klim selv, nogle af Ministerne, en Borger, en Bonde og Klims Hofnar, no place or printer indicated, 1771 (8 April 1771).

291 [F. C. Scheffer], 1ste Brev til Løven, fra Cameleon, 2det Brev til en Storvizir, fra en Muselmand, og 3die Brev til den Tyrkiske Mufti, fra en Christen Slave, alle 3 oversat af Tyrkisk. Saa og trende Fabler. 1) Om Løven og Ræven. 2) Om Hoppen og Koen. 3) Om Hyrderne og Faarene, no place or printer indicated, 1771 (11 June 1771).

sumption of food will cause prices to rise to the detriment of the poor. But if a rich man wants to waste his money on clothes, let him spend a fortune on a turban and a robe, as long as they are produced within the borders of the country. If he may destroy himself with his lavishness, yet he will nourish many industrious fellow-citizens, "whose hands are set in motion by his opulence, whose merits give them again the ability to pay for the diligence of other fellow-citizens" (15). Here, economic reasoning comes before moral judgment.

Authors contrasted opulence and superficiality on the one hand with utility and education on the other. In Martin Brun's allegory, where the fine coffee pot, the less fine teapot, and the not-fine-at-all chamber pot discuss their lordship, the chamber pot has noticed how what is useful is not appreciated.292 The chamber pot observes how the schoolmaster in the house is treated with contempt and have to remain in a corner, while the dance master and the hairdresser receive all the attention. "The schoolmaster, on the other hand, who is to form their minds and hearts, has no esteem at all. Had he not been so fortunate as to know a little French and music, he might hardly have been considered a human being in this house" (4). In addition to the useless skills of the dance master and the hairdresser, French and music are also considered to be superficial capacities, which the lordship values, but which are not worth much. The same reasoning is found in Pflueg's mentioned Twelve Letters, from a Peasant to His Lord where a hope is aired that the rich will, in the future, spend money on their children's education instead of on "abundance", on "dance masters, hairdressers, and so forth" (19).

Even worse is it when conspicuous consumption forces citizens to opt out of the basic necessities of life in order to maintain a lavish lifestyle. One pamphlet mentions how a gentleman "whistles and dances for so long, keeps hairdressers and tailors, until his intestines prove that there is a vacuum or emptiness, and he is dragged to prison, after first cutting off his galloons, removing his fancy hat, and stripping him almost as naked as when he was born". 293 The superficial opulence has such a strong hold on the gentleman that he does not give heed to his hunger and heads directly towards humiliation, ruin, and debt imprisonment.

To some writers, the socio-economic aspects of the issue of luxury consumption were the most important argument; this was a debate on consumerism which had been prominent in large parts of Europe during the eighteenth century.294 In his Collections, P. F. Suhm elaborates an argument on simplicity, i. e., in the contemporary use of the word; modesty and frugality. He evidently builds on theories on national

292 [Martin Brun], Samtale imellem Kaffekanden og Thepotten samt Kammerpotten. Skrevet i Fryse-Maaneden, Copenhagen: Borups Efterl., 1771 (6 March 1771), 6.

293 [anonymous], Harleqvin-Vildmands Betragtninger over Statens Tarv, Feil og Forbedring. Skreven i Snakke-Maaneden, først i Aaret efter Skrive-Friheden, Copenhagen; Borups Efterleverske, 1771 (21 May 1771), 5.

294 See for instance Berg and Eger 2003, 7–27. The Danish debates, see Dalgaard 2015 and Pedersen 2013.

characteristics when arguing that Danes and Norwegians are, by nature, more devoted to simplicity and frugality than to lust and opulence.295 Still, "Yppighed", i. e., splendor, luxury, and opulence, had progressed, especially in Copenhagen. This development was based on an illusion of wealth, the pandering to everything French and a desire for comfort and pleasure, but at the same time these tendencies impoverished the country as it pushed and distorted the national import-export balance. In addition, it had consequences for morality. But as soon as someone mentioned the idea of even the slightest restriction of 'the so-called good way of life everyone is shouting and whining, even those who preach against opulence, and who, however, most often practice it the most' (50). Hypocrisy flourished, but the message of Suhm, himself very wealthy, was clear: Nothing but the strictest simplicity would save the Danes. The royal court ought to lead by example and 'become simple' because it would have an immediate spill-over effect on the subjects. Next, the authorization to wear gold and silver was to be revoked, the use of costly costumes was to be limited, servings even at private banquets were to be restrained by law, the import of lace, cambric, perfume, wine, and coffee was to be restricted (52). This was to be complemented by strong encouragement of domestic trade, industry, mining, fishing, and agriculture, combined with new tariff rules and monetary reforms. Evidently, Suhm argues within the framework of cameralism, and the acquisition of luxury items such as jewelry and expensive clothes was viewed as losses, as seen from a state economic perspective. Furthermore, he subscribed to a prevalent, somewhat culturalist idea that expanding Francophilia fed into the increase of superficiality and undue refinement.

#### Women between Depravation and Ideals

Wardrobes, equipment, and appearances constituted an essential part of city social life and could not be separated from the intricate system of performativity and ambition represented in several Press Freedom Writings. As we have seen, Martin Brun was particularly active in this debate. His descriptions of petits maîtres (he often used the phrase Smaaherrer, i. e., little gentlemen), which, with the help of splendid attire and polished behavior, ingratiate themselves with the ladies, are repeated in pamphlet after pamphlet, beginning in his very first publication A Letter from Caroline, Mama's Only Daughter, to Pastor Fido, her Confessor in which he writes about "the evil spirits with ostrich feathers in their hats" and "petit-maîtres with watery eyes and greasy mouths from mere appetite for women". 296 Notwithstanding Brun's

295 P. F. Suhm, Samlinger, Udgivne af Peter Friderich Suhm. 1. Bind 1. Stykke, Copenhagen: Brødrene Berling, 1771 (18 February 1771).

296 [Martin Brun], En Skrivelse fra Caroline, Mamaes eneste Datter, til Pastor Fido, hendes Skrifte-Fader, Copenhagen: [Svare?], 1770 (31 October 1770).

quarrel with such male urban youngsters, it was often women who were his primary target, as can also be seen in the number of caricatured or directly derogatory representations of women in the Press Freedom Writings. With Press Freedom, the framework for representations of women – and especially Copenhagen women – had expanded considerably, and the soft, harmless, and cheerful style found in a pre-Press Freedom novel on women and fashion like The Envelope was replaced by vicious satire, rumbling condemnations or sarcastic extradition of the hypocrisy that women were performing or were exposed to.297

Attention to women's appearance and bearing in urban public space was particularly linked to the use of dress. 'Fashion disease' and inordinate love of finery were, as mentioned, presented by writers both as a moral problem and as an economic one. A direct connection was claimed between the desire to dress modern and a deeper moral corruption. Again, Martin Brun is at the forefront with his fictitiously reporting narratives, for example in Letters to Mette Corporals from an Acquaintance in Funen. 298 One of the pamphlet's female characters has often observed a young woman by the name of Mette (with whom she is acquainted because they grew up in the same village) going to the theater or on private visits wearing long tugs, combs in her hair, envelopes, white silk stockings, and velvet shoes. Another figure in the pamphlet recalls Mette as she once was: a poor peasant girl dressed in old rags, and a critical contrast is established between Mette's previously wretched clothes and her new, sophisticated wardrobe. In the past, Mette would have been delighted with a simple garter, but now she is much more demanding. Clogs have turned into velvet shoes, cambric and fine lace have replaced calico caps and now "the body that used to be covered in a rough dress is wrapped in so much silk cloth that half an acre of it is sweeping the streets of Copenhagen". When Mette's attire and posture are, at the same time, linked to rumors about the many "cheerful men" visiting her while her soldier husband is on duty, the negative connection between outfit, the female body, sociability, and corrupt sexual morality, even outright prostitution, becomes unmistakable. The details of the materiality of clothing constitute an important point of reference in the letter's social descriptions. Mette's costume and bodily behavior become the subject of the narrator's fairly obvious slander.

Furthermore, Maren – the letter narrator – reports how the ladies in Copenhagen do not have the time to repair their socks full of holes because they are so busy making social calls; apparently necessity gives way to courtesy. That must be the reason, Maren continues with more or less feigned naiveté, why the women wear long silk trains, so that no one can see their ruined stockings. Maren finds it strange that the women are prepared to waste good silk on sweeping the streets, but at the same time

297 C. A. Thielo, Enveloppens eller Saloppens forunderlige Hændelser: en comisk Roman oversat af Vers, Copenhagen: L. N. Svare, 1763.

298 [Martin Brun], Brev til Mette Corporals fra en Bekiendt i Fyen, Copenhagen: [Svare?], 1770 (14 November 1770).

do not have the strength to repair their own socks. The urban women must be freezing with their thin and worn-out socks, unlike people in the country who wear two pairs of wool socks and straw in their clogs.

The letter writer's judgmental tone is dressed in a false care for her girlfriend in the big city. Through the textualization of materiality ranging from the straw in the clogs to the worn silk stockings, the narrator stages a string of contrasts between country and city life, between frugality and ornamentation, between the naturalness of folk costume and the unnatural creations of fashion, between rural chastity and urban licentiousness, between provincial honesty and urban superficiality and calculation. It is significant that none of the three women in the pamphlet appear particularly likeable, one is naïve, one is licentious, one is a disloyal gossiper; misogyny is quite evident. The traditional critique of women's behavior that was an integral part of moral narratives in the pre-Press Freedom spectator periodicals had developed into a detailed and depreciatory system of urban female social stereotypes. Before the introduction of Press Freedom, female presence – whether fictitious or real – as acting, reading and writing individuals in the public was primarily represented in educational literature and moral periodicals inspired by the English spectator genre.299 One of the more spectacular examples of this had been the female "sender" in the periodical La Spectatrice Danoise, ou l'Aspasie Moderne, written and published by the author L.-A. de la Beaumelle (1748–1750) during his residence in Copenhagen. As the title indicates, the sender was a female spectator, while the contents were addressing both female and male readers presenting moral essays based on concrete experience and lived situations, although it was written by a man under a female pen name.300

In 1767, the periodical The Female Times and the Friday Society had been introduced and became a relative success. The Female Times was staged as being authored by a society of female narrators made up of type characters; six women of different age embodying different social status and human qualities; a serious widow of a priest, an experienced housekeeper, a young and gay lady, and so forth. Readers were encouraged to submit 'useful and amusing manuscripts' to have them published in the periodical or to pick a subject to be presented by one of the female characters. The editorial twist was to create accordance between the constructed personality of a specific narrator and the nature of the subject. The fictitious society of characters in The Female Times was ideally a collectively created mouthpiece for the female readership. This openness towards the contributions of the readership was an important attempt to create a community of readers and writers around the peri-

299 The moral and educational literature for women (written by men) were often published as collections, not as regular periodicals. See for instance C. A. Thielo, Den borgerlige Hovmesterinde eller en Samling af moralske, critiske og oeconomiske Tanker for Fruentimmerne (1759) and Pierre-Joseph Boudier de Villemert, Fruentimmerets Ven (1761), which a translation of a French bestseller (L'ami des femmes).

300 See Krefting 2008.

odical. Basically, the readers were offered influence on the creation of the female narrators as a reflection of their own image. Furthermore, the development of the characters over time contributed to strengthen this link and consolidate the community. This is why seriality was a constitutient element of periodicals such as The Female Times. 301 With the introduction of Press Freedom, however, a much more radical criticism of gender roles, particularly their female versions, became possible.

In addition to the above-mentioned moralist link between female finery and depravation, an opposition between patriotic ideals and fashion emerged, as for example in the pamphlet Madame House-Proud's Home-Visits to the Copenhagen Women, which must now report on their Housekeeping, whether they serve and have served the Danish State written as a call to Danish Jomfruer, i. e. young, unmarried women.302 The author sends out the fictional Mrs. House-Proud on house searches to confront the young women. A young girl confesses that her mother has provided her with skills in dressing, decorating, and mirroring herself instead of "learning housekeeping and doing something good and useful with her hands", so that she will not be despised in a world of 'gentlemen, who knows how to live, and demands of the daughters of the capital a certain way of life', which is the opposite of the common lifestyle found in the country (10). For the same reason, all honest and proper parents are warned against sending their children to the capital for upbringing.

Country girls learn how to be useful and use their hands, while city girls dress up and make up to catch the attention of men, thus causing the ruin of those men.  Actually, the daughter is more inclined to follow her conscience and be of use, but she is constantly rewarded for the opposite. In this way, women cannot become "useful and edifying members of the state", the author claims (15). Such women thus have a share in the "pitiful poverty and great disorder" of the state. It is quite a responsibility that the young women have to take on.

The contrasts between country and city, between utility and superficial skills, and between the interests of state and the commandments of fashion are the main themes of the pamphlet. But there is also the conflict of interest between the fashionable mother who teaches her daughter useless skills and the daughter who is inwardly inclined to utility and patriotic behavior. Such conflicted relations between mothers and daughters are a recurring theme in the Press Freedom Writings.

301 An analysis of seriality and reader communities is presented in Maidment 2009.

302 [anonymous], Frue Huusligs Huus-Søgning hos de Kiøbenhavnske Fruentimmer, der nu maae aflegge Regnskab for deres Huusholdning, hvorvidt de tiener og har tient den Danske Stat, Copenhagen: L. N. Svare, 1771 (29 October 1771).

Fig. 23: A considerable part of Press Freedom Writings targeted a female audience, both by thematizing women and female behavior, by pretending to be authored by women, and by explicitly addressing female readers. There is no doubt that Press Freedom Writings actually reached a large and growing female readership, which we also find portrayed in Press Freedom Writings and other contemporary sources, such as this painting of a reading housemaid. Kitchen Interior with Reading Girl, painting by Jens Juel, 1764. © National Gallery of Denmark.

The anonymous publication by the Danish-German baroque composer J. A. Scheibe, A Russian Traveler's Anecdotes, tells the story of a fictional traveling Russian who, among many other observations, is amazed at the splendor of the attire he notices in a company of simple traders in Copenhagen (twelfth letter).303 In the capital, an exu-

303 [J. A. Scheibe], Anekdoten eines reisenden Russen über die Staatsverfassung, Sitten und Gebräuche der Dänen, in Briefen an seine Freunde, Copenhagen: Lübeck auf Kosten des Herausgebers [?], 1771 (5 April 1771).

berant penchant for luxury is reigning so as to make it impossible to distinguish the noblest lady in the kingdom from a common burgher wife. He suggests that a legal code on dresses curtailing the consumption of luxury would be of great benefit and support the ability to 'separate one class from the another' (63). The effacing of distinctive visual class characteristics was to be avoided.

In contrast to this distinction argument, a widespread idea claimed that all estates ought to exercise restraint. And women should lead the way. The relation between costumes and women is raised to an affair of state in the pamphlet The Power of Women to Support the State, in which economist O. D. Lütken directly addresses the female readership.304 Most people know, the author claims (echoing the argument of P. F. Suhm above), that splendor and opulence are the cause of Denmark's misery, and simplicity and frugality are the only tools to help getting the country back on its feet. And women should take the lead because, as everyone knows, they are controlling men. The pamphlet is a call to women to assist the state, and the author mentions several examples of heroic deeds of good women that have proven historically significant. Now is the time for the women once more to step forward to "bring the entire country to regard simplicity with the same affection as splendor and finery are regarded these days" (10). The author explains how young women arriving in Copenhagen from the countryside or from Norway – where they have socialized with their mothers and sisters only – are poorly dressed. But as soon as they begin attending parties in the city, they start relishing for opulence and "all kinds of spectacles and merriment". Once again, naturalness is opposed to artificiality, the unspoiled livelihood of the rural population versus the unnatural craving for finery and amusement of urban residents.

Without embellishment and by decent simplicity, nature comes into its own, and women will appear in their "proper beauty" (13). After a short while, the women will be adorned with the endearing beauties of nature and not with "France's innumerable, poisonous, and cunning inventions". Again, France is singled out as the originator of destructive opulence. On the other hand, the author highlights the English women in New England agreeing not to drink tea because the American colonies had been imposed a stamp tax. By abstaining from tea-drinking, the women would inflict losses on England and thus force the English King to abolish the tax. In the same way, "our ladies in Copenhagen" ought to set a good example, so that it would spread to smaller towns.

304 [O. D. Lütken], Fruentimmerets Magt til at ophielpe Staten, Copenhagen: N. Møller, 1771 (5 June 1771).

#### Drinking Contested

In Press Freedom Writings, clothing, gender, sociability, and urban life were represented and debated through situational portrayals, deliberately imposed prejudices and views of different sender positions. To this may be added another dimension that seems to be of crucial importance for the understanding of the complicated entanglements of city life – the alcohol consumption of Copenhageners.

The unemployed theologian and frequent pamphleteer F. C. Scheffer published A letter, from the Flighty to the Flighty in which he, as first-person narrator, tells a story of a man who cannot find work and hits the bottle, gets sick from drinking, and ends up hospitalized.305 Unfortunately, he is forced to leave the hospital without having recovered, because he cannot treat the nurse with "coffee and morning brandy". From here, the narrator goes on to describe Copenhagen sociability in somber colors. No one cares about the well-being of the country, instead, everyone is preoccupied with superficial pursuits. In respectable society, people do not talk about serious topics out of fear of being considered a bore, but keep on about spectacles, sleigh rides, and love affairs – all without taste. They go to the theater only to see and be seen, not because of interest in the plays. Later, the author describes how one of his sisters dresses up and looks like a princess, while she is starving and thirsting until evening, when her beautiful daughter 'knows how to cash in', i. e., by prostitution. His other sister, who is ugly and married to a Skindpels shopkeeper who has become wealthy on the misfortune of others, takes to drinking. Her husband tries to keep her from alcohol by beating her, so she ends up leaving him. The stories of the two sisters develop over a number of pages and many topics are touched upon, but the important thing is that the description of superficial sociability and social stereotypes not only highlights clothing and behavior as social markers, but also focuses upon drunkenness as an important factor, which is also found in a number of other representations of urban sociability.

Due to severe winters and the resulting poverty, the distillation and consumption of spirits in Copenhagen was thematized in a number of pamphlets. During the winter period, distillation using rye was banned to keep grain prices from rising, and the connection between grain prices and spirits infused the discussion with a socio-political dimension that was highlighted over and over again. In the Press Freedom periodical par excellence Magazine for Patriotic Writers, no. 20, a reader rhetorically asked: "There are only 48 bakers in Copenhagen but 294 distillers, so it is fair to ask: Whether the latter do not cause high prices on the beloved bread when there is crop failure on rye, and if is not better to dispense with schnapps than bread?" It was basically a question about the conditions of the poor and the common people. On a daily basis, many of the authors witnessed the growing poverty in the

305 [F. C. Scheffer], Et Brev, fra den Forfløine til det Forfløine, Copenhagen: Borups Efterleverske, 1771.

closed Copenhagen urban environment, and it is not surprising that it grew to an important topic in Press Freedom Writings.

One author called attention to this fact in the introduction to a lengthy booklet on the distillation of spirits: "By reading a good deal (no one can read all of them) of the patriotic scripts to which Press Freedom has given birth, I have noticed that nearly everyone is complaining about shortcomings and disorder, and a great number has assumed the task of showing the cause of the evil, the difficulties of earning one's living and the general poverty" (3).306 This paragraph reflects reader and writer in the same persona, considering Press Freedom to be a patriotic project to the benefit of the common good in line with the statements in the Press Freedom Act, trying to keep up with the ongoing flood of pamphlets and singling out poverty and high prices to be the most urgent social problems. That point of view is also present in a passage in which Press Freedom is once more brought into attention: "Is a subject or a citizen allowed to be silent about what he believes to be to the benefit or the detriment of King and country when he has the freedom to write about it?" (6). It is a patriotic duty to use the freedom granted by the mild monarch not to be silent about liquor and poverty.

The author explicitly makes a point of wanting to discuss the pros and cons regarding the production of liquor but after a long series of considerations, examples, and calculations about especially the unfortunate resource economics and trade consequences for all estates and sections of society, he concludes that liquor is the number one enemy of society. The author mentions how children down to the age of 10 to 12 are now urged to drink schnapps, and that liquor is used as a consolation "when poverty increases" (22). Therefore, a change of mentality is desperately needed. Drinking is a bad habit that must be eradicated because it keeps the poor in misfortune and destitution.

Drinking was a favorite theme, not only in patriotic writings like the above-mentioned, but in religious fulmination and satirical writings as well. In a pamphlet, the farmer Jens Larsen presents a letter fallen from heaven, which he has found on his way from Copenhagen to the village of Emdrup where he lives.307 The letter inveighs against the city of Copenhagen, and a longer tirade against fornication, laziness, corruption, adultery, and degradation develops over 14 pages. There are also admonitions against drunkenness, leading but to remorse, sinful speech, misconduct, and men starting to look for women, ultimately leading to the violation of every single one of the ten commandments. The citizens of Copenhagen are encouraged to lead a different life so that all kinds of accidents and plagues will not fall upon them.

306 [anonymous], Tanker om Brændeviins-Brænden. Skienket til Stiftelsen for nyefødte Børns Opdragelse, Copenhagen: L. N. Svare, 1771 (28 June 1771).

307 [anonymous], Et Himmel-Skrift nedfalden på Veien fra Kiøbenhavn til Emdrup, Copenhagen: A. F. Stein, 1771 (23 October 1771).

Shortly after, none less than the Devil in person responded to this letter, declaring that Jens Larsen must have been intoxicated by schnapps, if he really thought he had seen the sky open up and a letter falling down.308 Maybe, it had just been the contents of a chamber pot poured into his head from a window in the city. According to the Devil, the author of the letter had published it with the sole purpose of making money from his "bitch readers", so he himself can get drunk. He "found it most convenient to write a letter from Heaven; for all the old hags of the city, who believe, drink, gossip, weep, club their half-shillings together, and from this grows a Peru in miniature, who earns the author rivers of liquor" (6). The devil goes on to speak of the readers as "hospital hags", who are but "drunken sows, querulants, envious, hateful, slanderous, contentious", and says that his prose is addressing "some old beer matrons" (16).  Liquor, grub street writers, and mob readers are each other's prerequisites. The anonymous author identifies the readers of such writers as female – and of the lowest strata of the urban society.

 A little further on, the Devil describes a drunkard:

He kills time, and changes from the image of God to a pig. His eyes are darkened, his throat is stinking and burning, his blood is thick and burnt, his hands are shaking, his legs are stumbling, his body is dull and weak, reason is gone, the human is lost and vanished and only the animal remains, new violent and destructive projects are invented to be able to keep drinking, new drunkenness, new sins, and new pleasures for me. (11)

The alcoholic's meltdown as a human being, the degraded body, the week-willed individual, are depicted in strong prose with the Devil's well-satisfied mine. The Devil goes on to tell how he once used alcohol to pull the philosopher Damon away from an immaculate life. The wine made the philosopher burn up, he began to go to bed with his sister, whom he later murdered using poison, after which he hanged himself. The harmfulness of alcoholism – social as well as personal – had never been described as explicit as this in any Danish publication.

Another author claimed in his Evening Walks that liquor drinking was now more prevalent than ever.309 Consumed in moderation, schnapps was "a very useful drink for poor commoners". Soldiers, sailors, and peasants who are particularly exposed to frost, cold, rain and sleet can, "by a drink of schnapps and mouthful of bread, recall the spirits of life and by such a revival gather new strength to withstand the

308 [anonymous], Fandens Svar paa Emdrups Himmel-Skrift. Optagen af Lars Jenssøn Huus-Mand, og af hannem til Trykken befordret, Copenhagen: Morten Hallager, 1771 (1 November 1771).

309 [anonymous], Aftens Promenader eller Samtale mellem Prudentius og Simplicius om Forbud at brænde Brændeviin af Rug og Byg i de 2de Aar, som et sikkert Raad imod høye Korn-Priser; samt om Korn-Brændeviins og Sukker-Brændeviins forskiellige Dyder og Qvalitæter, no place or printer indicated, 1771 (17 July 1771).

difficulties which are a consequence of their calling and standing" (18–19). It would therefore be "a cruelty" to deprive them of this opportunity without giving them anything else in return. The author praises alcohol as a remedy for pain and self-medication, which, however, should be used with moderation. And the problem is precisely that alcohol consumption has taken over. Especially so among the peasants. In the countryside, one can thus meet boys down to the age of five or six who may drink schnapps like adult men, the author claims. This mentioning of the socializing aspect of drinking was, indeed, a critique of the culture of drinking and the devastating effect on the population.

Fig. 24: Hangover. The artist Jens Juel sketched this direct depiction of conditions after a carousal not long after Press Freedom. Drawing, Jens Juel 1777–1778. © National Gallery of Denmark.

An anonymous author presents his hope that the time-limited ban on distilling with rye will lead to a general ban on alcohol, which is, in a 1,000 ways, "to the detriment of the Danish commoners". 310 If one wants to drink liquor, it ought to be rum from the West Indies instead of schnapps. The reasoning is both economic and mentalhygienic: "The West Indies belong to the Monarch. So, they would not lose. And we who kept our rye, our wheat, and perhaps our common sense, would not lose either" (21). But a ban was still preferable, the author wrote.

310 [anonymous], En patriotisk Samtale imellem en reisende Engelskmand og en Kiøbenhavnsk Borger. Holdt paa det Engelske Caffe-Huus paa Christianshavn, Copenhagen: Johan Gottlob Rothe i No. 8 På Børsen, 1771 (4 March 1771).

In his above-mentioned text on simplicity, P. F. Suhm also advocated "eradicating the use of schnapps, if it is possible, instead of considering it a source of income to the King" through taxation (52).311 Martin Brun's fictitious narrator Jeppe the Watchman was also the supporter of a ban, and he suggested that no one should be permitted to sell "strong or harmful drinks" (11).312 He pointed out the paradox of banning and burning atheistic and deistic writings, when all such writings at all times have hardly done as much damage as has liquor in one single day.

The harmful effects of alcohol were evident in the Copenhagen urban environment but were also perceived as a long-term national problem by patriotic writers, such as in a publication that deals with the effect of alcohol "to the human bodies and to the moral of a nation". 313 One thing was the individual consequences, another was long-term effects, because "those who drink too much liquor will have weak and fragile bodies, they become evil and horny people; imagine how a deplorable condition a state would be in if it had too many of those people" (17). The result would be degeneration of the population and national stagnation.

A versifier named Christian Saufhals (i. e., Greedy-Guts; presumably J. L. Bynch) goes in the opposite direction, attributing, in a fictional letter, to liquor the poetic inspiration that helps him write.314 He therefore pays tribute to the distillers for creating the drink, "which is the only element in which I live, float, and move" (3). He would like to see butchers' stalls and bakeries replaced by wineries and taverns and cannot bear the idea of alcohol being banned. The very thought of having to put out the "fire of thirst" that burns in his chest, with the muddled and disgusting water from the standpipe makes him sick. Hopefully, the government is so merciful as not to deprive him and his drinking brothers of their only blessing. Just change everything else but let us keep the schnapps. Christian Saufhals' letter is followed by a text that acknowledges the severe effects of the high prices to all estates and the excessively high level of grain prices but still, he cannot support a ban on distillation. The shortage of grain has other causes, he claims, especially hoarding, which is why the author demands a firmer control over landed nobility farmers and advocates compulsory delivery of grain to the royal magazines.

The pamphlet develops into a social satire against nobility, shoe brushes, provision dealers, and other usual scapegoats. The Danish nation has been drinking ever since Adam was a lad, and the author ironically mentions countless every-day examples of all the contexts in which schnapps is sorely needed. The housewife turns ill if she does not get her "rightful schnapps" at certain times of the day. An old spinning

311 Suhm, Samlinger, 52.

312 [Martin Brun], Jeppe Vægters Betragtninger over Staten og det almindelige Beste, samlede paa hans Natte-Vagt i Aaret 1771, Copenhagen: Nr. 8 paa Børsen, 1771 (29 January 1771).

313 [anonymous], Tanker om Brændeviins-Brænden. Skienket til Stiftelsen for nyefødte Børns Opdragelse, Copenhagen: L. N. Svare, 1771 (28 June 1771).

314 [J. L. Bynch], Saufhalses trøst til Brændeviinslauget som et Beviis at det er utroeligt at Regieringen vil forbyde at brænde Brændeviin, Copenhagen: P. H. Høecke, 1771 (6 November 1771).

woman in her cold attic must have schnapps and a piece of bread instead of a warm soup. A mother with a child at her breast must consume an "appetite schnapps" before breastfeeding, indeed, schnapps is, in general, "a necessity for the pregnant and hefty matrons" (16). The day laborer works better if he can look forward to a drink at the end of his day's work, a sailor needs alcohol on his long journeys, and the tailor must have a schnapps for his split peas, which is good for digestion. Evidently, aquavit is what keeps the wheels turning.

It is striking that the gender distribution between the portrayed drinkers is roughly equal. When the schnapps-loving male narrator lumps himself with "old drunken hags" it is clearly a joke, but the satirical portrayal of drinking women who, under the pretext of health and well-being, use every opportunity and excuse to get a schnapps, paints a picture of gender-specific abuse types (13). And for men, a further social identification of the drinkers is created when day laborers, sailors, and tailors are used as examples, i. e., males from lower social strata.

As mentioned, liquor also plays a role in derogatory characterizations of certain types of Press Freedom authors. Such writers are portrayed as drunken henchmen who will write anything just to get money for aquavit. J. L. Bynch's pamphlet The Heart is my Devil attacking the Queen receives such a review in Fortegnelsen: "Contains a multitude of nasty and rude gossip compiled by a scoundrel to earn a little for liquor from a similarly rude printer or publisher". 315 Another pamphlet is described as a foolish and boring concoction that is "pieced together to earn a little for liquor". 316 Martin Brun's The Life and Times of the Devil is characterized as: "Another worthy product of the three well-known Booze Brothers who for the time being produce most of the mean pamphlets which are published in a certain lady publisher's own printing house". 317

The authors Brun, Scheffer, and Rosenlund make up this triumvirate of aquavit. The above-mentioned pamphlet by Brun is not provided with a place of printing, but it can hardly be any other than the printing shop of Borup's Successor, to which the reviewer alludes as "a certain lady publisher". The widow of book printer Thomas Larsen Borup, Rebecca Buch, continued the printing business of her deceased husband after his death in April 1771, until she married book printer Thiele in October the same year, after which the two printing houses merged.318 During her time as an independent printer, she published at least four pamphlets by Søren Rosenlund, three by Martin Brun, and three by F. C. Scheffer. Several others of the same authors' writings from this period without any printer indicated on the title page may very likely also have been published by Rebecca Buch. The derogatory review more than

315 Fortegnelsen, vol. 2, no. 50.

316 [anonymous], En Satyrisk Fortegnelse paa En Deel Pretiosa, Copenhagen: P. H. Höecke, 1772 (24 January 1772), reviewed in Fortegnelsen, vol. 2, no. 115.

317 Fortegnelsen, vol. 1, no. 186.

318 Harald Ilsøe 1992, 151 and 173.

suggests that the publisher was taking advantage of the three thirsty hacks to make a quick profit on their trash literature.

#### Public Houses as Public Spaces

Production and consumption of alcohol represented a very significant feature of the Copenhagen cityscape. There were hundreds of distilleries in addition to the multitude of brewers and wine tapsters. Aquavit and beer were consumed in pubs, in brændevinskældre (literally, aquavit cellars), in beer houses, at provision dealers – in short, in public houses of many different sizes and types. The Copenhagen Directory for 1773 mentions 277 distillers in Copenhagen; the number had been steadily increasing during the eighteenth century, and towards the end of the century there were 300 distillers and 3,000 brændevinsmænd, i. e., spirit sellers – out of a total population around 80,000.319 Pubs were densely located – "in living rooms, basements and on first floors" – all over the city.320 In accordance with Lord Mayor Holstein's new guidelines for Copenhagen, pubs were, as of April 1771, given the opportunity to stay open all night.

While certain writers, as we have seen, would be scolded as alcoholic grub street hacks, the reference to liquor and pubs was also used in the description of specific types of readers and audiences. In Press Freedom Writings, pubs were referred to both as actual places and as metaphors that painted a – often caricatured or derogatory – picture of different sorts of readers and the literature they read.

The place in which a pamphlet was read indicated something about its literary quality or lack of it. In one pamphlet, the fictional waitress Secilia mentions that the weekly magazine The Danish Argus (Den danske Argus) – one of the earliest and most prolific products of Press Freedom – is delivered to a billiard cellar and read aloud by one of the guests. This paragraph implies both a description of semi-public practice of reading aloud and a categorization of The Danish Argus; it is a weekly magazine fit for being read by guests in a billiard cellar. The latter is not meant as praise.

One pamphleteer was of a similar opinion, believing that much of the production of his co-writers was used merely as entertainment and rarely did any real good.321 Addressing his colleagues, he says: "Most of your writings have been an occasion only for chatter in wine houses and other pubs when passing time with a pipe

319 Kiøbenhavns Politiske Veyviser, 1773, 163–172.

320 On the production of spirits in Copenhagen, see Henningsen and Langen 2010, 17 on and 23; Matthiessen 1924, 82–83.

321 Hans Georg Rasmussen, Betænkninger over de danske Skriveres Arbeide, 1) Hvad 2) Hvortil og 3) Hvorfor de har skrevet, forfattet i Anledning af Skrivefrihedens Indskrænkelse, tilligemed et Vers om de Skrivesyges Udpiibning af Hans Georg Rasmussen, Philosophiæ Studiosus, Copenhagen: J.R, Thiele, 1771.

of tobacco; there you are read with pleasure" (9). The texts are integral parts of pub conversations where guests are amusing themselves with text, tobacco, and alcohol. Precisely this, in the writer's view, is no mark of honor. In this pamphlet, Press Freedom texts are judged by where they are read – pubs –, what they give rise to – talk –, and what effect they have on their readers – pleasure. It is implicitly understood that the opposition to pubs, talking, and pleasure would be home, contemplative silence, and gravity; the virtues of a serious reader. In addition, the author view is that Press Freedom Writings are but a pastime – meaning that you could spend your time better than reading that sort of thing.

Pubs, ale houses, liquor cellars, beer houses, billiard basements, or whatever name they went by, are distinctly present in the Press Freedom Writings and not least in reviews of them. Fortegnelsen provides numerous examples when referring to the pamphlets. The portrait painted by Martin Brun in the booklet The Portraitist is "Nuremberger-work" only, i. e. talentless scam art, but "good enough for decorating an ale-house". 322 Brun's A Conversation in the Realm of Niels Klim, was, according to the reviewer, "written in a tone such that it will hardly have any resonance outside Nyboder, beer houses, and perhaps some other places". 323 We don't know what the innuendo of these "other places" refers to, but the composition of Nyboder and beer houses cannot be mistaken. Nyboder was a district in Copenhagen built in the seventeenth century as a housing project for people employed with the Royal Navy; sailors, ship's carpenters, sailmakers, and so on. Thousands of families lived in this part of town known for its permanent unrest and plebeian atmosphere. So, the reviewer's description of the pamphlet using a combination of the meanest readership one could imagine, namely the socially low-status sailors in Nyboder (and their wives), and intoxicated customers at the pub was a no coincidence; it was a stereotyping with firm references to local urban culture of Copenhagen. Nyboder appears, in many texts, as a spatial metaphor for poor quality of pamphlets as well as a reader typology, for instance when one pamphlet is laconically described as "Written for Nyboder and beer houses". 324

In several pamphlets, the author performed a significant distancing from pubs and the life that unfolded in them. While the social elite distanced themselves from the taverns as locales, the intellectual elite distanced themselves from tavern guests as readership. Even Bynch, who did not belong to the intellectual elite, was quite condescending when describing the "the small beer-skilled statesmen" of the pubs.

322 Fortegnelsen, vol. II, no. 64.

323 [Martin Brun], En Samtale holden i Niels Klims Rige, imellem Kejser Klim selv, nogle af Ministerne, en Borger, en Bonde og Klims Hofnar, Copenhagen: no printer indicated, 1771 (8 April 1771), reviewed in Fortegnelsen, vol.

"So many pubs, so many courthouses, so many guests, so many judges", he continues (50).325

As is evident from the large number of pubs in Copenhagen, they were of great importance in the urban environment. The pub was an extension of the street, but not an extension of the public space, although it was in principle open to all. A pub was a kind of liminal zone, neither public as the street nor private as the residence, although it is clear that the boundaries between private and public was significantly different from later periods.326 In one important way, the pub stood out from public urban space: the spatial function of the pub was defined by economic transactions. In addition to selling alcohol in various forms – often governed by privileges and monopolies, which is why there is both a semantic and functional separation between, for example, a beer house and a liquor cellar – pubs sold momentary residence to the guests. Unlike staying in the street or other public spaces, presence in a pub required the guest to have money and to spend it.

The spatial organization of the pub played a role in the social interaction. Guests were placed at tables in groups (loosely) defined by mutual affiliation and activity; journeymen from the same workshop, acquaintances from the neighborhood, and so on. The gathering at the pub was not organized as were guild meetings, clubs, societies, or Masonic lodges' more or less ritualized gatherings, but although meeting at a pub constituted a more diffuse sociability – often a mixture of familiar faces and strangers who came and went in a steady flow – the guests were not assembled in a completely random manner. Different types of interaction and activities at the pubs contributed to the grouping of the visitors. There were those who played cards or dice, those who just drank and smoked, those who discussed and, as we have seen, those who read aloud and those who listened. The pubs were used to maintain social networks but in a far more loose and improvised way than the use of private visits and organized meetings in societies or guilds.

Frequently, pub visitors would be singing one of the many songs from a bulk of versified Press Freedom Writings which were written to well-known tunes of the time; a genre that literally exploded with mocking ballads about the fallen counts after the coup against Struensee in the late winter of 1772. Some pubs also offered music, often by way of a single violinist who entertained and stoked up a dance tune on his own initiative hoping for a tipping. Music attracted guests and made the individual pub seem more open to passers-by and hard to distinguish from regular low dives (danseboder). The social composition of guests varied from place to place and there was quite a difference between the diminutive liquor cellars and the larger establishments outside the city gates. It is difficult to determine at what time of the

325 [J. L. Bynch], Den paaseende Bias, no. 3, 1772, 5 June 1772, 50.

326 See, for instance, Klein 1995, and Nauman and Vogt, ed., The Private in the Public. Scandinavia in the Eighteenth Century, 2021.

day the pubs were attended the most, but it may very well have been in the first hour after dark.327

When the fixed closing hours of the pubs was abolished by the new Municipality in the spring of 1771, the pattern of access changed, and nightly visits became more frequent. Further, directions from the Lord Mayor to the Chief of Police specified that it was to be of no concern to the police what went on in the houses on Sundays and holidays; consequently, the observance of the third commandment was openly disregarded. This decision was clearly at odds with the laws on sacrilege. Finally, it was declared that it was to be of no concern to the police if drinking and gambling took place in public houses during night-time.328 In this way, the Lord Mayor indicated that no distinction should henceforth be made between night and day, which was a break from the traditional distinction between night and day in early modern cities and the social code that belonged to this distinction. The difference between day and night marked not only a transition between work and leisure, but also between the orderly practices of everyday life and the more disordered nocturnal life outside the searchlight of the authorities and the social control of the surroundings. Therefore, during the second half of the seventeenth century, a strong demand arose among the inhabitants in the cities for god politi (good police), i. e., law, order, and decent behaviour. The hiring of police officers in market towns originated from this demand for supervision of nattesæde ("night-seating", i. e., illegal night-time serving of costumers), which was considered to be sacrilegious, especially if happening on Sundays and public holidays. For the same reason, the first local police officers hired in the towns were paid from the funds of the church. The church bell's evening ringing marked the transition to night-time – "police night" (politinat), as it was sometimes called – with stricter rules for orderly behaviour. However, it was rarely a particularly easy task for the officers to get citizens to abide by the rules.329

The taverns functioned as distribution hubs for hearsay and debate topics. When one pamphlet was characterized as containing "the meanest beer house witticism" it was not solely a comment on the contents, but just as much a judgment on the conversations taking place in the pubs; a kind of prattle in which the reviewer himself would never dream of participating.330 In a review of another pamphlet it

327 No work has been done on the sociology of eighteenth-century pubs in Copenhagen. Knud Bokkenheuser briefly touches upon Copenhagen pub culture (including coffee houses) as a precondition for the establishment of club life in the 1780s (Bokkenheuser 1903, 17–26). The considerations above are inspired by non-Danish material such as Brennen 1988 (especially 228–268), Brennen 2005, 29–43, Kelly 2015 and the essays in Kümin & Tlusty 2002 and Rau & Schwerhoff 2008 (part 1). 328 Copenhagen City Archives: Magistratens almindelige øvrighedsforretninger, Struensees kabinetsordrer m. v. 1770–1772, memoradum written by Holstein (undated). These measures are described in Langen 2021.

329 Regarding nattesæde, see Mührmann-Lund 2015. The concept of "good police" in a Danish context is discussed in Munck 2007. On the early modern night, see Ekirch 2005 and Koslofsky 2011. 330 Fortegnelsen, vol. 2, no. 57.

was stated that, "matter and style correspond very well, and are of the sort that one usually can hear in a drinking house". 331 It goes without saying that pubs served alcohol and alcohol made people drunk, affecting behavior, judgment, and conversation abilities. Notwithstanding the importance of alcohol consumption, it is pivotal to focus on the significance of pub sociability and the communication which took place between the guests. It was – and is – in the nature of pub sociability that the pub was a place where one could speak more or less freely and express opinions without being accountable to authorities of any kind. Instead, judges would be found among the other guests. In the above-mentioned description of pub guests, Bynch emphasized the irresponsible proclamation of opinions taking place in the pub.332 Sitting in a corner of the pub, he observed how an honest, good, but also simple-minded guest with "a facial expression of a statesman" spoke at length about this and that. He solemnly talked about "a good deal of insignificant and unreasonable things built on rumors" but concluded by disclaiming any responsibility for the content of his speech by saying: "Well, I am just a simple man" (50). Another guest – "a furious politicus" – proclaimed his equally insignificant statements with great authority, while a third one was as cool-headed and cold-hearted as Mazarin. Bynch's character sketch of such amateur politician types is no satirical pinnacle, but it touches on one of the pub's important social and political functions; namely as an arena for the exchange of orally communicated views, often in interplay with written sources such as Press Freedom Writings.

The many examples of criticism of the level of pub conversations do not necessarily mean that such conversations were apolitical and lacked the Habermasian dimensions often ideally attributed to coffee houses. Parallel to the criticism of pub conversations ran a critique of the very fact that common people were now increasingly debating politics (for instance, Bynch's Bias, Ewald's The Brutal Clappers or the anonymous Letters of Beelzebul).333 Many observers satirized about this development, and it was a common move to dismiss this kind of talk as "pub rubbish". Traditional urban oral culture and the pamphlets became two sides of the same coin in the new Press Freedom public. Many of the debates surfacing in the Press Freedom Writings were rooted in attitudes and debates which in the days of pre-print censorship had been taking place orally within the walls of the pub and which were now intensified in the emerging political dialogue between pamphlets and beer cellars.

331 Fortegnelsen, vol. 2, no. 79.

332 Bynch, Den paaseende Bias, no. 3, Copenhagen, 1772 (5 June 1772).

333 Johannes Ewald, De brutale Klappere. Et tragi-comisk Forspil, til Brug for den kgl. danske Skueplads, Copenhagen: Hallager, 1771; [anonymous], Beelzebuls Breve til Nogle sine Venner i Kiøbenhavn, Copenhagen: A. F. Stein, 1772 (18 September 1772).

Fig. 25: The Copenhagen harbor was center of town, both for merchants and the navy, and sailors were a constant presence in the streetscape, with a reputation for less inhibited speech and behavior than most. Drunken Sailors at a Drink Stand, painting ascribed to Johannes Senn, early nineteenth century. © Øregaard Museum, photo: Ole Haupt.

A frequently used indication of place in Press Freedom Writings is the term cellar. In the eighteenth-century Copenhagen housing stock, the many darkish, swampy, and damp basements constituted the absolute least attractive housing and commercial leases. Basements were literally low-status, and people who lived or worked in basements were simply called "kældermænd"–"basement people". Among servants, the so-called basement girls, viz. waitresses, belonged to the lowest part. It was no coincidence that the Danish Argus categorized his female opponent Secilia as a basement girl; something which promoted associations in the direction of the easy-going.

One pamphlet emphasized the disturbing fact that night watchmen who were to keep an eye out for fire, were absent in the streets after midnight, because they "rest in a liquor cellar or a beer house, where they drink and play cards in a warm room, or they go to their own basements where they live". 334 To add yet another pejorative dimension to the portrait of the night watchman, the author places him in a basement dwelling. Fortegnelsen used the term "basement poet" about a poor author who handed over his manuscript to a publisher so as to earn a penny by putting "dirt in print". 335 Bynch describes himself as a "basement poet" in Eve's Nightgown when describing how he has been "running breathlessly around his basement (where I lodge) and often jumped on the stove to heat up the vital spirits (Lebens-Geisterne)" (76).336 Likewise, Brun's Den politiske Spækhøker contains a supplement allegedly written by a "basement poet". The Observant Bias (Den paaseende Bias alias Bynch) writes about a broadsheet print depicting the cut-up corpses of the executed Struensee and Brandt, that it will surely adorn the interior of many a servant girl's coffin lid, hang in basements and in Nyboder (54) – particularly if it displays their private parts.337 Servant girl as an occupation, basement as a residence, and Nyboder as a place serves to emphasize the low, the popular and the simple. In Brun's above-mentioned pamphlet about the coffee pot, the tea pot, and the chamber pot, Nyboder is used several times as a social marker. For instance, the chamber pot says to the coffee pot: "You are said to be distinguished, but you speak as if you had just arrived from Nyboder". 338

In addition to unnamed pubs, random basements, and Nyboder, a further specific place was used to indicate lack of literary quality by giving name to low-status readership and textual low points in the Press Freedom Writings. This place was Gammel Strand (lit. Old Strand) by the high bridge from the city to the castle, were fishwives sold fresh catch from stalls and buckets. One pamphlet is staged as a conversation between two philosophers but according to a reviewer, it was easy to con-

334 [anonymous], Discours imellem en fremmet Reisende, en Officer og en Borger ved Navn den Tænkende. Handlende 1. Om de høie Priser paa Brød og Fødevahre, 2. Om det Fattiges Væsen, 3. Om Skifter, 4. Om Procuratores Antal for Underretterne, 5. Om Gade Løgter, 6. Om Gade Vægterne, no place or printer indicated, 1771 (29 April 1771), 19.

335 Fortegnelsen, vol. 2, no. 122.

fuse it with a chat between two fishmongers from Gammel Strand.339 In fact, the reviewer suspects the author to be a fishwife or a guttersnipe. The pamphlets "are of the same common and whore-like rubbish, which has for so long caused the readers of good taste the worst disgust". Despite the low literary level these "mob writers" still make a living from their writings, the reviewer concludes. In a few lines, the reviewer makes an assembly of fishwives from Gammel Strand, street urchins, smut ("whore-like rubbish"), and "mob writers" in a mosaic depicting all the worst that Press Freedom has produced. Bynch also mentions Nyboder and Gammel Strand in a characterization of the poets of the moment: "Isn't Gammel Strand and Nyboder an echo of the balladmongers' harmonic merits?". 340 The hack writers, the fishwives of Gammel Strand, and the sailors of Nyboder (and their wives) seem to form a symbiosis of trash – and one and the same writer, such as Bynch, might be ridiculed for belonging to this rubbish heap at the same time as he himself repeatedly voiced exactly the same attack on other authors.

339 [anonymous], En Samtale imellem Democritum og Heraclitum om vore Tiders Contrast eller stridige Ting tilligemed en nye Opdagelse ved Natbordet alt sammen samlet ved Professor Babe. den 6.te Junii imodtaget, Copenhagen: J. R. Thiele, 1771 (29 October 1771). 340 [J. L. Bynch], Den paaseende Bias, 52 on.

# 8 A Copenhagen of Books and Pamphlets

#### Booksellers, Printers, Ballad Hags

The spaces and places of Press Freedom were not limited to metaphors and connotative indications of locale but were, to a large extent, rooted in actual urban topography. Press Freedom Writings were sold at the printing houses that produced them as in the bookstores of the city. Not everyone was excited about the new items on the shelves. One reviewer made remarks about how inferior publications were now polluting the bookstores. But fortunately, he continued, quality would "soon kill the swarm of evil insects which have, for some time, covered our bookshelves with their disgusting brood". 341 The insect metaphor was repeated in a pamphlet (1.18.10) mentioning "the harmful grasshoppers and deformed insects in our republic of letters" (9) as a consequence of the Press Freedom that had produced countless "mean publications". 342 In addition to the biblical reference to grasshoppers, it was not uncommon to compare literary trash with the underworld of insects. In the poem Le Pauvre Diable (1758) Voltaire had described the trash ("la basse littérature") with a remark that ancient Egypt had fewer locusts.343 In Copenhagen, one of the leading Press Freedom authors Bie often ironically played on his own insect name of bee.

Either way, the bookstores were no longer safe spaces for people of good taste. A writer describes the changed state of the bookstores after the introduction of Press Freedom: "Our bookstores were flooded with numerous and bad treatises; this deplorable multitude grew and ate away like cancer and dead-flesh (Død-Kiød)" (5).344 A violent image of the new publications. It was an unholy alliance between stakeholders in the market that undermined good taste and created an unhealthy demand.345 This "new and bad taste" meant that everything was devoured, in the same way as children eat sweets – and writers, publishers and booksellers make money. One can only hope for the new profit to be used on publishing a few publications of good quality. Criticism of booksellers was no novelty. Twenty years earlier, the bookseller and publisher Pelt (who had a stall in Børsen) had, in a preface of one of his publications, expressed that if he followed the taste of the learned only, he would soon find himself in a commercial distress. A publisher could survive only if he succumbed to "the prevailing taste" and "the audience, the largest group of readers".

341 Fortegnelsen, vol 1, no. 88.

342 Gustophilus, Velment og nødsaget Erindring til de Danske Fruentimmer, angaaende den nærværende slette Smag i den smukke Litteratur. af Gustophilus, no place or printer, 1771 (9 October 1771). 343 The poem can be found at: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k8598918/f5.image.

344 Gustophilus, Velment og nødsaget Erindring til de Danske Fruentimmer, angaaende den nærværende slette Smag i den smukke Litteratur. af Gustophilus, no place or printer, 1771 (9 October 1771), 5. 345 [anonymous], En ubetydelig Samtale imellem en Skribent og en Forlægger i Anledning af den i Aviserne fremsadte Snik-Snak om Skrive-Friheden, under Artiklen fra Kiøbenhavn og Stockholm, no place or printer indicated, 1771 (6 September 1771).

Open Access. © 2022 Ulrik Langen and Frederik Stjernfelt, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110771800-008

Pelt elaborated: "I know what reproaches people of my profession must endure from the learned. It is said that we – by publishing bad books – spoil the common taste". But it was too much ask of the booksellers to become "martyrs of good taste" and publish and sell publications only, "which no one reads, except for a small number of people with special interests". 346

Fig. 26: The task of bookprinters and bookbinders is illustrated and celebrated in this 1766 broadsheet. The bookprinter appears as a hero of Enlightenment, he "doesn't save his labor and diligence, / To the best of himself and co-citizens / […] Our world has become enlightened and neat, / When the printing of books was learned. / Earlier everything mostly went wrong;/ But now just in single cases". The work of the bookbinder, by contrast, has a more aesthetic character, he "folds the paper so nice", and the result is that on the "back of books titles appear, / the back is gold plated like flames. / Everyone receives his requests, / even appearing like marble". The Bookprinter and Bookbinder (Bogtrykkeren og Bogbinderen), colored broadsheet, Copenhagen 1766, printed by Thiele, woodcut by Thomas Larsen Borup. © Royal Danish Library.

346 Eustache le Noble, Den Tyrkiske Robinson eller Prinds Eberards af Westphalen, Eleonores og Zulimas Kierligheds- og Levnets-beskrivelse, hvortil er lagt Fr. Chr. Eilschovs Kritik over denne Roman, Copenhagen 1750, unpaginated preface by the publisher.

Commercialization was a recurring complaint, as it was expressed in the aforementioned pamphlet on the new and bad taste.347 It forced book printers and booksellers to act against their will in order to "maintain a small income" and, furthermore, "to give in to the many Copenhageners who wanted nothing but news, and preferably bad ones" (13). It is the whole of the new commercial circuit between authors, printers, publishers, readers, and booksellers that is presented as subversive, and it is the written word as a commodity and the interest in news as a driving force that takes Copenhageners away from traditional serious reading towards the unprecedented publication current on the bookstore shelves. That book printers and booksellers should act directly against their will and instinct in order to satisfy the audience is an interesting, but not very plausible, analysis. There was money to be made.

Fig. 27: Anna Magdalene Godiche, a daughter of bookprinter Høpffner, led with her husband A. H. Godiche the reputable printshop of the same name in Skindergade. After the death of her spouse in 1769, she continued business at Gammeltorv with her son F. C. Godiche and published some 40 Press Freedom Writings, among those bestsellers such as the verdicts of Struensee and Brandt in 1772 to which she secured printing privileges. A. M. Godiche, painting by Ulrich Ferdinandt Beenfeldt, 1776. © Frederiksborg Museum of National History, photo: Kit Weiss.

347 [anonymous], En ubetydelig Samtale imellem en Skribent og en Forlægger i Anledning af den i Aviserne fremsadte Snik.Snak om Skrive-Friheden, under Artiklen fra Kiøbenhavn og Stockholm, no place or printer, 1771 (6 September 1771).

During the Press Freedom Period, reviewers did not hesitate to criticize named booksellers and publishers for the way they did business. The novel Muhammad's Cousin – a translation from French – was labelled "a lecherous novel" and described as a story of a carried-away school-boy "filled with the most disgraceful actions with Turkish women" by a reviewer, who attacked the bookseller Proft at Børsen for selling this piece of harem garbage.348 Previously, Proft had been criticized for marketing the soft-porn publication Celadon and Cloris and now he was at it again: "To Mr. Proft and the likes of him (not to the self-respecting and righteous booksellers), we present the following problem.  349 Proft was later, during the demise of Press Freedom in 1773, to be prosecuted for trading illegal books and pamphlets.

The city's printers and booksellers conducted their business from specific places which were part of the new Press Freedom topography. Going through Fortegnelsen reveals that some publications were not sold by the printer who produced them but were handed over to be sold or commissioned by other printing houses.350 In addition, bookbinders sold books in hardcover bindings, but were also poaching on the booksellers' preserves and appeared in Fortegnelsen's references to sales outlets for unbound Press Freedom Writings. The group of distributors of literature and Press Freedom Writings also included private rental libraries and self-appointed distributions agents of individual publications.351 Secondhand book traders formed a further part of the picture. While printers, booksellers, bookbinders, pamphlet-selling grocers, and rental libraries were part of an established infrastructure of localities and connecting lines, there was an important but looser and more indefinable group of agents who operated as mobile units unattached to specific places. This comprised the female ballad sellers (visekællinger, literally, ballad hags) and circulating boys and girls who seized parts of the public space and the urban soundscape with shouts and singing of ballads. In contrast to producers and salesmen with fixed addresses waiting for customers to come by, ballad sellers and the children with their baskets full of ballads and pamphlets acted as a sort of sales guerillas sent out in the urban space by the printers. The stationary components in the urban communication circuit were supplemented by these autonomous satellites. In a Copenhagen periodical, one writer uttered his disgust with the sight of "ragged hags, barefoot girls, and naked boys running up and down the street while shouting: New ballads for sale!". A writer in another periodical was revolted with the horrible and abominable voices

348 N. Fromaget, Mahomets Fetter, eller hans forunderlige Tildragelse i Soldan Mahomets Serail i Constantinopel, Copenhagen: Børsen i No. 11, 12 og 13, hos Rothes Arvinger og Prost, 1772 (15 April 1772).

349 [J. von Besser], Celadon og Cloris. En Fortælling, no place or printer, 1771 (15 April 1771). Review quoted: Fortegnelsen, vol. 2, no. 162.

350 Nyrop 1870, 308.

351 Nyrop 1840, 309. Renting outside Copenhagen; Jakobsen 2012.

that "proclaim the taste of the common people in Denmark". 352 Both before and after the Press Freedom Period attempts were made to put an end to the activities of ballad sellers. It seems to have been the blurry boundaries between written and oral culture that appeared as provocative; it was the verbal exposure of written products in particular that was resented by critics. One thing was that all sorts of trash were flowing from the printing press – after all, one could choose not to read it. Another thing was when the ballad sellers sang or shouted out print texts and thereby forced the trash on innocent pedestrians.

Map. 4: A Copenhagen of Books. © Karoline Stjernfelt.

The metabolism of print in Copenhagen was concentrated to a relatively small area in the city. This map indicates bookprinters, bookbinders, a foundry of types, bookdealers, and other book sales like the book stalls at the Bourse and some provision dealers also marketing pamphlets.

352 Aften-Posten, 1785, no. 61 and Morgen-Posten, 1786, no. 1, 4.

When collecting Press Freedom Writings, the official Bolle Luxdorph left out normal literary and scholarly publications while including pamphlets, songs, pasquils, which in his judgment were of concern to Press Freedom or were the results of it. Many of the writings call themselves "Observations", "Comments", "Thoughts", etc.; in this book we use "pamphlet" to refer to writings debating an issue. Pamphlets combine form and content: as to form, Press Freedom Pamphlets were typically a few sheets in octavo format – as against papers, journals, periodicals which used the larger quarto format. One sheet in octavo would give 16 pages, and the typical Press Freedom Writing numbered around 16 to 48 pages; the average length of writings in Luxdorph's collection is 30 pages. Pamphlets now filled this format with debating content – as against other small prints with stories, narrations, edifying Christian writings, etc. Press Freedom Writings and pamphlets, thus, are categories with a large intersection.

Luxdorph's collection primarily covers the years 1770–1773, but he included a number of writings from 1774–1775, all of which he bound in 47 volumes, including one collecting broadsheets in folio format. The coup against Struensee on 17 January 1772 was the obvious turning point splitting Luxdorph's collection in two chronological halves. Within each of these parts, Luxdorph strove to organize his collection thematically so that when one piece triggered answers, debate, and polemics, he collected all of them in the same volume.

Luxdorph's collection had a parallel in the continuous review periodical Fortegnelsen, appearing through the three years from 1771 to 1773. It included more traditional publications and less songs, etc. than Luxdorph, but the two supply each other. While Luxdorph includes 914 pieces plus 66 broadsheets, Fortegnelsen reviewed 952 publications. Luxdorph left out most theater-related issues, collecting documents pertaining to the Theater Feud in a special volume outside of the main collection, just like another such volume is consecrated to international reactions to Caroline Matilda's case. More than 10 % of the collection is in German, some are original German pamphlets published in Copenhagen, others are translations of Danish pamphlets, still others are foreign reactions to the coup or German newspaper reports on Danish events. This testifies to a significant German public in Copenhagen, and there was a German newspaper in Copenhagen which is, unfortunately, not preserved. Many Danish-speaking Copenhageners, particularly in the elites, would understand or speak German. So, an important aspect of Press Freedom was German.

Five small print shops proved particularly active on the new book market. J. R. Thiele printed at least 133 Press Freedom Writings, closely followed by A. F. Stein with 108 publications. P. H. Høecke with 86 writings, Lars Nielsen Svarre with 75, and finally Morten Hallager became active after a late start in 1771 with 65 publications, often collaborating with the new publisher Søren Gyldendal. The pamphlet output of these printshops dwarfed more traditional elite bookprinters such as A. M. Godiche, Nicolaus Müller, Hans Jensen Graae, and Claude Philibert. Thiele had an emphasis on very popular content and published some of the more radical pamphleteers, while Stein also published established elite authors on the new pamphlet market, such as Jacob Langebek, P. F. Suhm, and Ove Guldberg.

Printing small writings with few pages on coarse paper considerably sped up the production process, now that the slow censorship phase was canceled, which made it possible for such small printers to service the new public in a hitherto unseen pace, suddenly making the back-and-forth of swift debates possible. Simultaneously, small publications were cheap, reached a wide readership – circulations of 1 to 2,000 are mentioned in the debates – while particularly popular writings would see several print rounds. So, an overall effect of Press Freedom was also that the total output on the bookmarket considerably grew – and remained on a stably higher level even after the end of Press Freedom in 1773.

The female ballad sellers blended in with apple sellers, lemon girls, soldiers' daughters with chestnuts, oysters and fruits and other mobile women with baskets: Press Freedom Writings were offered as one kind of cheap commodity among many others in the streets of Copenhagen.353 Importantly, this fact demonstrates how a considerable part of Press Freedom Writings were produced for a rapidly growing popular readership whose encounters with literature were based in the streets rather than in the bookstores.

#### Book Stalls at Børsen

A very special place in the topography of Press Freedom was Børsen (the Bourse or Exchange), which contained a number of bookstalls. This impressive, red-stone renaissance building dating back to 1623 sat in the immediate vicinity of main power centers like the royal palace of Christiansborg, the Danish Chancellery and the church of the Royal Navy (Holmens Kirke). Børsen was primarily a market hall, a center for very diverse commercial activities. A description of Børsen from 1783 gives a sense of the lively and complex place.354 The lower floor consisted of a large number of vaulted rooms on both sides of the building, each with its own entrance at street level, with stalls open to the outside. A number was painted on the doors to the stalls so that suppliers and customers could find the right place, whether they were looking for flax, hemp, iron, tiled stoves, tar, pitch, train oil, dried fish, herring, salt, hops, grindstones, and whatever else was sold. There were canals along both sides of the building giving ships direct access to unload goods at the entrances to the storerooms and basement stalls on the lower floor.

Going up the wide ramp to the main entrance facing west towards the palace square, one entered the upper floor which had open passage through the entire length of the building but was divided into several sections. First, there was a large assembly hall for merchants and brokers who conducted their daily meetings between noon and 1 pm.; the so-called trading time. Boards with auction posters and shipmasters lists offering cargo transportation to foreign destinations were hung up on wooden pillars. On the sides of the entrance were offices for insurers, brokers, exchange commissioners and notaries drawing up contracts and a table from which auctions were held for incoming shiploads and goods. Next to the auction table was a shop selling haberdashery. A low wooden railing separated the assembly hall from the next, larger section with stalls and stores. The numbered stalls ran lengthwise in the hall in four rows along two passageways and were "filled with all kinds of groceries, finery, hardware, furniture like chests of drawer, dressers, beds, mirrors, all

353 On visekællinger, see Matthiessen 1924, 128–134. Soldiers' daughters selling chestnuts, oysters and fruits, see National Archives: Københavns politi, politimesterens korrespondanceprotokol 1766–1774, politimesteren til Admiralitets- og Generalkommissariatskollegiet, 17 September 1773. 354 Jonge 1783, 415–420.

kinds of tables, suitcases etc". Then came the bookstores with books, maps, and engravings.

The booksellers made up a considerable part of Børsen's traders.355 Dutch booksellers were among the first to set up bookstalls in Børsen in mid-seventeenth century and gradually, a significant part of the Copenhagen book traders was working out of Børsen. In 1728, Frantz Christian Mumme opened at bookstore which for many years to come would be a dominant one in Børsen. Mumme's bookstore kept its name after the death of Mumme in 1759 and was continued by J. F. Heinick and J. J. Faber who still ran the bookstore when the Press Freedom Period began in 1770. In addition to Mumme's, selling books from stall no. 5, several reputable bookstores were established on Børsen, for instance J. G. Rothe's Royal Court and University Bookstore (no. 8), C. G. Proft's Royal University Bookstore, which had three stalls at its disposal (no. 11, 12 and 13), just like F. C. Pelt's Royal University Bookstore.356 Some of these booksellers also acted as publishers.357

Life at Børsen was varied. Despite a biting cold in the winter and a suffocating heat in the summer and despite an unpleasant mixture of stench from dried fish, tar, and dust, it swarmed with people. Children played in the building, beggars took shelter from bad weather and many people used the building as a passageway when walking from the palace square to the bridge crossing the harbor to the district of Christianshavn. In a letter from the golden year of Press Freedom – 1771 – the superintendent at Børsen gave a vivid glimpse of the conditions at Børsen. In the large assembly hall primarily reserved for brokers had been – unlawfully, according to the superintendent – invaded by other traders. Besides the haberdashery mentioned, parts of the hall were now occupied by all sorts of vendors. The furniture for sale was often painted on the spot, so that passers-by were exposed to the danger of getting their clothes tainted. In addition, soldiers, apprentices, and Børsen's staff passed through the premises carrying all sorts of things, so that people had to step aside in order not to be injured, while doors were kept open, resulting in a terrible draught. Moreover, the entrance to Børsen and the little square at the foot of the ramp were constantly filled "by several saleswomen with baskets on their arms, by soldiers and sailors, by tramps and unemployed persons, by beggars and depraved children, all day drifting about and jumping around, occupying the seats at the benches which the traders have purchased for themselves, even often lying down or sleeping on them, if not, as is often heard of or experienced, seek opportunity to steal from people's pockets as much as they can overcome". 358 Anyone who wanted to enter Børsen to look for Press Freedom Writings had to penetrate this bustle with

355 Andersen 1962–1963.

356 On Proft in particular, see Jakobsen 2012, 2017, and Weitemeyer 1908, 14–24. Bookbinders, printers and sellers tied to the University were outside the jurisdictions of the Municipality and exempt from certain taxes, Weitemeyer 1908, 7.

357 See for instance Fortegnelsen, vol. 1, no. 8.

358 Quoted from Andersen 1962–1963, 59.

the danger of being robbed. However, it hardly kept anyone from visiting the building and it is not difficult to imagine how the bookstalls have been important gathering points for interested and discussing readers – and maybe for Luxdorph the pamphlet collector who had his office just across the street in the Danish Chancellery.

A counting of the first volume of Fortegnelsen – covering the period from September 1770 to September 1771 – reveals that 202 publications out of 322 listed were for sale at Børsen.359 The most frequently occurring bookstore in Fortegnelsen is Rothe (Børsen no. 8), while a number of publications are mentioned as put up for sale under the collective designation "at the bookshops of Børsen". It is not known what agreements on sales, commission and distribution existed between authors, printers, and booksellers. Some publications were sold at all of Børsen's bookstores, while others were only put up for sale at specific publisher-booksellers such as Rothe or Pelt who hoped to profit from their own publications. Perhaps sales calculations and genre considerations played a role too, but it is not immediately possible to detect a pattern.

Fig. 28: The Bourse at the Christiansborg Castle Square was, in the eighteenth century, a sort of shopping mall where goods of many different sorts were on sale. On the first floor, one could find book stalls with a large selection of Danish and imported foreign literature. To the right, between the Bourse and the Castle, the red Chancellery building where Luxdorph had his office. The Bourse (Börsen), copper, Müller's Pinakotek, Copenhagen, n. d. © Royal Danish Library.

359 The number 202 includes publications sold in "all the city's bookstores" (21 occurrences) to which the stalls at Børsen are presumed to belong.

Fortegnelsen reveals that Børsen was by far the largest sales outlet of Press Freedom Writings in the city. Press Freedom Writings appeared in Børsen's distinctive mix of trading and auction house, shopping mall, and general heavy goods trade as a hot commodity. The writings were produced for a new market, and Børsen was both a major player in the retail business and a meeting place for buyers. The authorities also knew about the fact that Børsen was the center of trade in Press Freedom Writings. An example from 1773 shows that the Copenhagen Chief of Police was fully aware of where he had to go to stop the circulation of certain publications about Struensee, by which the post-Struensee government were offended. Instead of publishing a written warning in the form of a public notice, the Chief of Police went straight to Børsen and verbally forbade the booksellers to sell specific pamphlets about Struensee. According to his own statement, the bookseller Proft had not been present when this verbal admonition was delivered, but had heard from his employees, "that the Chief of Police had been in all bookstores and banned the selling of this kind of pamphlets". According to Proft, however, it had not been entirely clear which writings the Chief of Police actually referred to, and some booksellers relentlessly continued selling whatever they had in stock.360

#### The Address Office – Papers, Magazines, and Practical Enlightenment

An equally important place in the new Press Freedom public was the Address Office on the main square of Amagertorv, which had, during the previous decade, established itself as an important hub of urban communication, distribution, and publishing. With the introduction of Press Freedom, the Address Office was quickly becoming the city's dominant media house launching key papers, journals, and publications, directly influencing the content of the new debates arising.361 The Address Office seized the opportunities offered by Press Freedom, quickly adapting to the new media situation and exerting its influence on it, while a number of actors affiliated with the Address Office became important figures in their own right in the new public.

The Address Office was in many ways synonymous with one man, namely the publicist and philanthropist Hans Holck, who acted as author, publisher, editor, reviewer, and salesman supported by a network of writers and editors which he attached to his enterprise.362 He was born in the provincial town of Nyborg in 1726 and

360 Quoted from Jakobsen 2012, 3000.

361 Unless otherwise indicated this passage about Holck and the Address Office is based on von Westen 1780; Prahl 1783; Davidsen, 1884, 180–211; Trier 1900, 59 on; Liisberg 1908; Kirchhoff-Larsen 1942–1962, II, 53–84 and Nøding 2013.

362 Nøding 2013, 119.

since he was a child, he had dreamt of studying theology. But his parents could not afford an education, instead, at the age of 14, he became a commercial apprentice in a grocery shop and later became an employee at trading house in Flensburg. Apparently, it was during his residence in Flensburg that he was seized by pietism and its combination of personal piety and world-improvement. Arriving in Copenhagen in 1750, he was 24 years of age, and the following year he made his debut as a poet when he published two religious poems at his own expense. His former dreams of becoming a priest metamorphosed, he frequently attended pietist congregations, evening singing, classes of spiritual edification, and worship services. For three years he served as a trade assistant, he married in 1754 and started his own business as a tea merchant. At the same time, he experimented with various publications, including printed commodity prices lists, ship lists and a translation of the German popular science journal Relationes curiosæ.

Fig. 29: Hans Holck was a thrifty entrepreneur who simultaneously, with his Pietist background, was the founder of ameliorating social initiatives. He took the Adresseavisen to become the leading newspaper of the time, originally but an advertising paper which gradually grew more editorial material and now appeared four days a week. His central Adressekontor (Directory Office) around the corner of Amagertorv and Købmagergade published several periodicals including the first directory guide of Copenhagen, surviving to this day. He was, in many ways, a driving force for practical Enlightenment in Press Freedom Copenhagen. Hans Holck, painting, maybe by Erik Pauelsen, n. d. © Kraks Fond, photo: Torben Nielsen.

In 1759, Holck and his business partner Andersen took over the monopoly of running an address office, that is, a bureau offering information of addresses of shops, persons, and other useful city knowledge, and immediately they breathed new life into this passive and dormant business. At the same time as taking over the Address Office, Holck and Andersen established a business that, among several other things, sold spring water and rat poison and ran writing rooms. Furthermore, they began selling "various prints", including historical, political, philosophical, literary, and religious publications. The two were already in the process of running a publishing and bookstore business.363 To house the new Address Office, they acquired a property next to the city's most famous pharmacy, Gottfried Becker's house in Købmagergade. A few years later, they added another premises around the corner at central Amagertorv, the two cadasters meeting in the back yard.

To distribute the information and advertisements of the Address Office, Holck had launched a printed advertiser dubbed Adresseavisen (The Address Paper). According to a presentation in the first issue, the main activities of the new paper were to disseminate information on travelers, market and port prices, exchange rates, births, deaths, marriages, sale of goods, transport, search for lost or stolen items, arranging loans, skippers' arrivals and cargoes, arranging positions, in short "everything that everyone finds comfortable to report or demand on the Address Office". In addition, Holck promised that "original dissertations and problemata" and translations of such could also be submitted to Adresseavisen for the benefit of readers. The same applied to more entertaining things.364 Just like the two existing newspapers in Copenhagen, Adresseavisen was subjected to censorship performed by the Municipality and the Chief of Police. While initially primarily an advertising paper, Adresseavisen would gradually extend to include still more editorial content.

To widen the scope of his business, Holck launched various supplements to Adresseavisen. In 1767, a so-called Monthly Supplement was commenced; a literary supplement which was, the next year, dubbed Kritisk Journal, edited and mostly authored by the philologist Jacob Baden in Elsinore.365 In addition to this, Holck either wrote, edited, or published a number of new magazines dealing with topics ranging from trade and foreign news to moral issues and entertainment. It is hardly wrong to view the Address Office also as a literary school for young, talented writers, as an experimental hub for journal editors and writers and as a challenging actor in literary criticism, as well as in the newspaper market.366 Many of these writers and editors came to occupy important positions in the new Press Freedom public.

Adresseavisen was not just a newspaper, not only a network of writers and editors. It had a concrete physical local anchoring in the Address Office on Amagertorv,

363 Adresseavisen, 23 November 1759.

364 Westen 1780, 23–27.

365 Nøding 2018, 142.

366 Nøding 2013, 119 and 136.

from which the publications originated, where people appeared in large numbers to insert ads, respond to ads, or make use of other of Holck's offers ranging from alms to auctions. Messengers, writers, editors, and customers populated the house from morning to evening. In addition to these activities, Holck initiated a number of ventures that gave additional life to the office. He started a fishing company, the purpose of which was to provide fresher fish to Copenhagen, an auction house, a house for handicrafts and established a mail coach route between Copenhagen and the silver mining town of Kongsberg in Norway. In addition, there was the many projects that he started and then handed over to the further execution of others.

Also because of pietist influences, Holck's philanthropic work came to play an important role in his multi-faceted effort. Perhaps it was the daily contact with the many commoners who approached the Address Office that led him, in 1765, to set up a sick-benefit association providing support and medical care for people of humble means. In 1769, he set up a so-called Bespisningskasse (Feeding Box Office) which, on the basis of voluntary donations, distributed meal tickets to the needy so that they could have a meal at eateries or receive money at the Address Office to buy food. Many other initiatives, including establishment of schools for poor kids, could be added to the list.

When Press Freedom was introduced in 1770, the Address Office was the dominant media house in Copenhagen and an important center for trade activities and the exchange of information concerning quite a few matters in the city. Censorship of Adresseavisen disappeared with the introduction of Press Freedom and during the next few months, Holck took a number of initiatives that made him and his office a publicist center of Press Freedom. In October 1770, the first Press Freedom Writings began to appear among the regular book advertisements in Adresseavisen and gradually the majority of Press Freedom Writings were advertised by their printing houses in Holck's paper, rather than in the dominant elite Copenhagen newspaper Berlingske Tidende. Adresseavisen now appeared four times a week, and oftentimes, the columns containing book ads, of which many were advertising Press Freedom Writings, occupied close to a whole two-column page out of the paper's eight pages. In December, Adresseavisen took it a step further. Immediately after the publication of the Philopatreias pamphlet, substantial excerpts of the text were printed on the front page of Adresseavisen over two consecutive days (12 and 14 December), followed by intense reactions also given front page exposure (17 and 21 December), to which Philopatreias replied, in turn, on the front page on 28 December. In this sense, Holck definitely lived up to the statement that Adresseavisen would publish "dissertations and problemata". The huge and influential Philopatreias debate was effectively kick-started by Adresseavisen.

During 1771, a very large part of the Press Freedom Writings that Luxdorph collected in the twenty volumes of the first, pre-coup series of his collection were advertised for sale in Adresseavisen. The paper continuously presented countings of the published Press Freedom Writings and, for example, on 25 January 1771 it was announced that "one now counts a total of 29 small pieces published since the Freedom of the Press, which together amount to 17 mk. 6 sk.". Quite typical of the tabular and informative style of Adresseavisen, the counting of the total purchase price was supplemented, which hardly was a piece of information requested by many. It is not too far-fetched to say that Adresseavisen became the newspaper of Press Freedom; readers could stay informed about every new pamphlet hitting the bookstores, while debates and letters to the editor in the paper were intertwined with the publications of the new public sphere.