1836
“A Somersault into the Siberia
of Freedom of the Press”After the French Revolution and the unrest that followed in its train, the
absolute monarch Frederick VI issued a long series of ordinances and decrees
to discourage in advance those who might entertain liberal or revolutionary
sympathies. On September 27, 1799, he decreed: “For the person who
merely denigrates, ridicules, or spreads hatred and dissatisfaction concerning
the present constitution and government, or who merely denigrates the
monarchical form of government in general, or who undermines belief in
the existence of God and in the immortality of the human soul—for this
person the punishment provided is exile for life or for a specified number
of years. The death sentence awaits the person who agitates for changes in
the existing form of government or for popular rebellion.”
This decree was synonymous with censorship, and among those it chased
into lifelong exile was P. A. Heiberg, whose pen had been a bit too daring.
If a court adjudged that a person had violated the decree on even one occa-
sion, his writings were subjected to lifelong prior censorship by the chief of
police. Thus none of the leading figures of the day felt tempted to flaunt
revolutionary plans, and the common people said nothing at all because
most of them were barely able to read. One firebrand, Dr. J. J. Dampe,
wanted a free constitution, and in 1820 he founded a so-called Iron Ring
Conspiracy, whose members were to wear an iron finger ring. But it re-
ceived quite limited support, and in fact when Police Chief Kierulff infil-
trated the movement the only people subject to arrest aside from Dampe
himself were Dampe’s landlord and a smith named Jørgensen who didn’t
really understand what the conspiracy was all about. Dampe was con-
demned to death but the sentence was subsequently commuted to life im-
prisonment, at first in the Copenhagen Citadel and after 1826 on the island
of Christiansø, where Dampe’s own constitution was forced to endure the
next twenty years under rather unfree conditions.
This political martyr was a source of amusement, especially for intellectu-
als who had long taken up a moderate position with respect to social and60