Frederick VI of Denmark

Childhood and upbringing

At the time of Crown Prince Frederick's birth, conditions at the Danish court were characterized by Christian VII's increasing mental illness, including suspected schizophrenia expressed by catatonic periods. In the resulting intrigues and power struggles which followed, Christian's personal physician, the progressive and radical thinker Johann Friedrich Struensee, became the King's advisor and rose steadily in power during the late 1760s, and from 1770 to 1772, Struensee was de facto regent of the country. Struensee soon also became the confidant of Queen Caroline Mathilde, Frederick's mother, partly because during a smallpox epidemic in the autumn of 1769, in which over 1,000 children died, he successfully inoculated Crown Prince Frederick with good results. In doing so, Struensee won the gratitude and trust of the neglected Queen and soon became her lover as well. It is widely believed that Struensee was also the biological father of Prince Frederick's only sister Princess Louise Augusta, who was born in 1771.

Both the Queen and Struensee were ideologically influenced by Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Therefore, the Queen also fully approved the harsh education recommended by Struensee for the Crown Prince, who was perceived as weak and needed to be strengthened physically and mentally. While Struensee was in power, the young Frederick was raised at Hirschholm Palace following an interpretation of the educational approach advocated by Rousseau in his famous work Émile. Instead of receiving direct instruction, Frederick was expected to learn everything through his own efforts through playing with two commoner boys as per Struensee's instructions.

The general ill will against Struensee found expression in a conspiracy against him in the name of the Queen Dowager Juliana Maria, and in the early morning of 17 January 1772 Struensee was deposed in a palace coup. Struensee was later executed, while the King and Queen were divorced. Queen Caroline Mathilde was exiled, and the four-year-old Frederick and his sister were left behind, never to see their mother again. After the revolt against Struensee, Frederick's 18-year-old half-uncle Hereditary Prince Frederick was made regent. The real power, however, was held by Hereditary Prince Frederick's mother (Crown Prince Frederick's step-grandmother), Queen Dowager Juliana Maria, aided by Ove Høegh-Guldberg. Frederick was raised under the supervision of Margrethe Marie Thomasine Numsen and then under his chamberlain, Johan Bülow.

Frederick VI was known as a patron of astronomy and in 1832 offered gold medal prizes to anyone who discovered a comet using a telescope. His successors continued this until 1850. The prize was terminated in the aftermath of the Three Years' War. On 23 February 1827, he granted a royal charter giving Serampore College in Danish India the status of a university to confer degrees. It became the third Danish University after those in Copenhagen and Kiel. After the discovery of the Haraldskær Woman in a peat bog in Jutland in the year 1835, Frederick VI ordered a royal interment in an elaborately carved sarcophagus for the Iron Age mummy, decreeing it to be the body of Queen Gunnhild. Later this identification proved incorrect, but the action suited his political agenda at the time.

Frederick VI died at the age of 71 at Amalienborg Palace and was buried in Frederick V's chapel in Roskilde Cathedral. Frederick reigned over Denmark for a total of 55 years; 24 years as crown prince regent and 31 years as king. He was the 894th Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece in Spain and the 654th Knight of the Order of the Garter in 1822. The Royal Frederick University (now University of Oslo) in Oslo was named in his honour.

As Frederick VI had no surviving sons to succeed him, so he was succeeded on the throne of Denmark by his paternal half-first cousin Christian.

Birth and family

The future King Frederick VI was born between 10 and 11 p.m. on 28 January 1768 in the Queen's Bedchamber at Christiansborg Palace, the royal residence in central Copenhagen. He was the first child born to King Christian VII and Queen Caroline Mathilde of Denmark and Norway. He was born 15 months after his parents' wedding, the day before his father's 19th birthday, and while his mother was just 16 years old. The King had shown little interest in the Queen after the marriage and only reluctantly visited her in her chambers. The King's advisors had to step in, among other things with love letters written in the King's name, in an attempt to make the marriage lead to a pregnancy and thus an heir to the throne.

The young prince was baptised already two days after the birth on 30 January at Christiansborg Palace by the royal confessor Ludvig Harboe, Bishop of Zealand, and was named after his late grandfather, King Frederick V. His godparents were King Christian VII (his father), the dowager queen Juliana Maria (his step-grandmother) and his half-uncle, Hereditary Prince Frederick.

Marriage

After Crown Prince Frederick was declared of legal majority and assumed the regency in 1784, the Danish royal court started to make inquiries to arrange a marriage for him. There was speculation that he was to marry a Prussian princess, a choice supported by his step-grandmother Juliana Maria and her brother-in-law Frederick the Great. To demonstrate his independence, however, he personally selected his first-cousin Marie Sophie of Hesse-Kassel, a member of a German family with close marriage links with the royal families of both Denmark-Norway and Great Britain. They married in Gottorp on 31 July 1790 and had eight children. Their eldest daughter, Princess Caroline married her father's first cousin, Ferdinand, Hereditary Prince of Denmark. The youngest, Princess Wilhelmine, became the first wife of the future Frederick VII of Denmark.