STRUENSEE, JOHAN FREDERICK ( ) , Danish political philosopher, was born at Halle in 1737. His father, subsequently superintendent-general of Schleswig-Holstein, was a rigid pietist ; but young Struensee, who settled down in the 'sixties as a doctor at Altona, revolted against the narrowness of his father's creed, became a fanatical propagandist of the doc trines of the encyclopaedists. He became court physician to Christian VII. Struensee rapidly gained authority in affairs.
For a time Struensee kept himself discreetly in the background, but he soon grew impatient of his puppets. He dismissed the heads of departments, and abolished the Norwegian stadholder ships. Henceforth the cabinet, with himself as its motive power, was to be the one supreme authority in the state. He then began to reform the administration and the law without any regard to national customs and predilections. Between March 29, 1771, and Jan. 16, 1772—the ten months during which he held absolute sway—he issued no fewer than 1069 cabinet orders, or more than three a day. In order to be sure of obedience he dismissed whole sale without pension or compensation the staffs of all the public departments, substituting nominees of his own.
The general ill will against Struensee, which had been smoul dering all through the autumn of 1771, led to a conspiracy against him, headed by Rantzau-Ascheburg and others, in the name of the queen-dowager Juliana Maria. On Jan. 17, 1772 Struensee,
Brandt, the unhappy king's keeper, and the queen were arrested, and "the liberation of the king," who was driven round Copen hagen by his deliverers in a gold carriage, was received with universal rejoicing. On April 25 Struensee and Brandt were condemned first to lose their right hands and then to be beheaded; their bodies were afterwards to be drawn and quartered. The sentences were carried out on April 28, Brandt suffering first.
See Elie Salomon Francois Reverdil, Struensee et la tour de Copen hague (Paris, i858) ; Karl Wittich, Struensee (Leipzig, 1879) ; Peter Edward Holm, Historie, vol. iv. (Copenhagen, 1897-1905) ; Gustave Bascie De Lagreze, La Reine Caro et le Comte Struensee (Paris, 1887) ; Robert Nisbet Bain, Scandinavia, cap. xv. (Cambridge, 1905) ; William Henry Wilkins, A Queen of Tears (London, 1904) ; Georg Friedrich von Jenssen-Tusch, Die Verschworung gegen die Konigin Karoline Mathilde and die Grafen Struensee and Brandt (Leipzig, 1864).