Court intrigues between public and secret history: Some 18th-century Danish solutions

The present chapter examines how a selection of 18th-century Danish historians dealt with the subject matter of court history and negotiated the boundary between public and "secret" history. The civil servant and former royal historiographer Andreas Hojer (1690-1739), who wrote contemporary history (the life of King Frederick IV), tried to include as much secret history as possible but had to restrain himself because his work was destined for print. The gentleman historian Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754) would have loved to include much more secret history in his monumental History of Denmark (1732-35) but was hindered by lack of sources. The enlightened public intellectual P.F. Suhm (1728-98) tried his hand at real secret history but failed as an author. The radical N.D. Riegels (1755-1802) attempted the same but was frustrated by lack of sources. The only one to succeed in producing a comprehensive, frank, well informed and coherent piece of Danish secret history was the author Charlotta Dorothea Biehl (1731-88). Her "Historical Letters", dealing with the reigns of Frederich V, Christian VI, Frederick V and Christian VII, were written in 1784 for the information of the Crown Prince Frederick (VII) and for the enlightenment of posterity (published 1865).