Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel


Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern was Queen of Denmark and Norway from 1752 to 1766 as the second consort of King Frederick V of Denmark and Norway. She was mother to the prince-regent, Hereditary Prince Frederick of Denmark and Norway, and was herself de facto regent from 1772 to 1784. King Christian VIII of Denmark and every subsequent Danish monarch excluding Christian IX descends from her.

Life

Early life

Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was born on 4 September 1729 in the town of Wolfenbüttel, the residence of the Brunswick Princes of Wolfenbüttel. She was the 11th child and 6th daughter of the Austrian field marshal
Duke Ferdinand Albert of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Antoinette Amalie of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. At the time of her birth, her family constituted the princely cadet line of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern, but after the death of his cousin and father-in-law Louis Rudolph in March 1735, Ferdinand Albert inherited the Principality of Wolfenbüttel and resigned as field marshal. However, he died unexpectedly just six months later.
Among her many siblings were Duke Charles I of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Duke Anthony Ulrich, spouse of the Russian regent Anna Leopoldovna, and Duchess Elisabeth Christine, wife of Frederick the Great of Prussia. Like her siblings, Juliana Maria was given the simple but very strict upbringing usual at many of the smaller princely German courts. As a child, she appears to have stuttered, as did several other members of the house of Brunswick.

Marriage

In 1752, a dynastic marriage was negotiated between Juliana Maria and King Frederick V of Denmark and Norway who had lost his first wife Louise of Great Britain the previous year. The marriage was arranged by the king's favourite, the powerful lord chamberlain Count Adam Gottlob von Moltke, who thought it best that the king remarried as soon as possible, in an attempt of stabilizing his behavior. The marriage did not come about on the best terms: The king was initially unwilling to remarry a foreign princess, unless it was with a British princess, none of whom were available at the time. Reportedly, in 1751-52 the king had a wish to marry Moltke's own daughter, maid-of-honor Catharine Sophie Wilhelmine von Moltke, a match Adam Gottlob did not wish and prevented by quickly having her married to Count Hannibal von Wedell-Wedelsborg. Moltke then drew the king's attention to Juliane Marie. After having seen a portrait of Juliana Maria, and after having made some additional investigations and met with satisfying answers, the king expressed himself willing to marry her.
The wedding was celebrated on 8 July 1752 at the chapel of Frederiksborg Palace, just a little more than six months after the death of the king's first wife, with Juliana Maria being crowned the same day. She was given a household headed by queen Louise's old chamberlain Carl Juel and head lady-in-waiting Christiane Henriette Louise Juel. The wedding was celebrated by a number of court festivities on the royal palaces around North Zealand during the following summer months, but "among the common men the mood was more still, as this seems to them to be so sudden after the mourning of Queen Louise".

Queen Consort

Queen Juliana Maria was described as shy, reserved and somewhat stuttering when first introduced to the Danish royal court as its new queen; having been given a strict education, she submitted to fulfill her duty as the second queen of Frederick V and the stepmother of his children, but reportedly felt uncomfortable at the situation and the pressure put upon her in her new role. Juliana Maria was personally described as good-looking and sensible, but the marriage was not popular in Denmark, where it was considered to have taken place too soon after the death of her predecessor, the popular queen Louise, and it was a difficult task for her to replace her popular predecessor.
Despite the constant infidelity of King Frederick V, she was regarded to have illustrated an ideal of a spousal duty, accepting his infidelity without complaint and nursing him during his illnesses, such as during his illness in 1760 and his final illness in 1765–66, which ended in his death. She reportedly nursed him in parallel with his long-term-mistress Charlotte Amalie Winge. She noted each day of his progressing illness in her diary, and upon his death, she referred to him as "le meilleur des rois".
She had several stepchildren by marriage, but she was given no influence over their upbringing. She did exchange visits with them, and referred to her stepchildren as "My daughters", "My son", "My children" and "The Good Children", and her diaries are full with notations of how she spent time with them. On 4 August 1760, for example, she noted "The dear crown prince visited Hirschholm for the first time after his illness", and on 8 October 1766, she accompanied her stepdaughter Sophia Magdalena of Denmark when she departed for Sweden for her wedding to the Swedish crown prince: "The queen and I left for Kronborg, to which Sophie Magdalene and the rest of the family had arrived the previous day, and eleven o'clock, the good child embarked and sailed across the water, and the king, the queen and the family returned to Fredensborg". Her relationship with her mother-in-law Queen Dowager Sophie Magdalene, was a close one, and the two queens often visited each other and spent time together.
While she had no influence upon the upbringing of her stepchildren, she was given much freedom in the education of her own son, and had two Danes in succession, J. Schielderup Sneedorff and Guldberg, appointed governors responsible for the tutelage of her son, Hereditary Prince Frederick, who thereby became the first Danish prince in generations to speak the Danish language as his mother tongue. Her selection of Tyge Rothe, J. S. Sneedorff and O. H. Guldberg were to have great significance later on: her son's tutors were all members of the Danish patriotic movement, and particularly Guldberg is known to have influenced her to a point where she eventually became the leader of this court faction during her time as queen dowager. While she lacked all influence in politics, as her own son progressed in age, she reportedly came to the conclusion that he would be more suitable as ruler than her stepson, the crown prince.
Juliana Maria was not mentioned much during her years as queen consort, and it was mainly noted that she lived a quiet life devoting herself to domestic duties and family life and considered honorable and virtuous but insignificant. While Frederick V was notorious for his drunken parties and debauched life style, these parties did not take place at court, and the court life of Juliana Maria was by contrast described as completely correct. Her diary as queen describe a number of days dominated by a quiet family life exchanging visits with members of the royal family, illustrated by one line: "Everything was as yesterday."
She did her best to accustom herself to Denmark and make herself popular as queen, and although she never fully mastered the Danish language, she frequently used it both in speech and writing. Despite these efforts, she never managed to make herself a popular queen.
Queen Juliana Maria had nothing to do with the affairs of state whatsoever while her husband was still alive. Her brother-in-law, Frederick the Great, had encouraged her marriage and expected her to act as his agent in Denmark and help him to remove Count Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff from his position, but she never participated in any such thing. She corresponded with her sister, Elisabeth Christine of Prussia, through which she eventually came to correspond with Frederick the Great himself during her tenure as queen dowager; however, while she expressed to her sister that all of Denmark were admirers of Frederick the Great, there are no letters from her to him prior to 1772.
On 14 January 1766, Frederick V died and was succeeded by Juliana Maria's stepson Christian VII.

Queen Dowager

A series of events resulted in Juliana Maria becoming the de facto ruler of Denmark-Norway six years after being widowed. Her stepson king Christian VII rejected her attempts to make contact with him, as did his spouse, Caroline Matilda of Great Britain. It was noted how the younger of the two queen dowagers were neglected by the royal couple: despite the fact that Juliana Maria's summer residence Fredensborg Palace was but a short distance from summer residence of the king and queen, Hirschholm Slot, she was never visited by them; she was only invited to the royal table when it was absolutely necessary, and at those occasions, she was markedly ignored, which demonstratively placed her in a neglected position at court. Nevertheless, it is noted that the queen and the two queen dowagers spent a lot of time together during the king's journey in 1768–69, and that Juliana Maria was given the Mathildeordenen and carried Princess Louise Augusta to her baptism in 1771.
Her position as visibly neglected by the royal couple made her a natural center for the opposition. In 1768, she participated in the banishment of the king's mistress Støvlet-Cathrine, who was believed to have influence over the king. By 1770, her stepson King Christian VII, had become insane and the power had fallen in the hands of his consort Caroline Matilda of Great Britain and her lover Johann Friedrich Struensee. They had liberal political views and issued a series of democratic reforms that raised the opposition to the nobility.
In January 1772, Queen Caroline Matilda, Johann Friedrich Struensee and Enevold Brandt were arrested and their rule ousted in a palace coup led by the opposition under Juliana Maria's confidante Ove Høegh-Guldberg. While she is not believed to have been the instigator of the coup, Guldberg approached her and convinced her to participate to protect Denmark-Norway, and her role was vital to bring the palace coup to fruition. On 17 January, Juliana Maria convinced the mentally unstable monarch to sign the arrest order of the queen, Struensee and Brandt, thereby effectively bringing about a coup. The order was in fact signed after the arrests had already been securely made in the name of the king, legitimizing the acts. In April, Struensee and Brandt were executed, and Caroline Matilda was exiled.
Juliana Maria was hailed in the press, in pamphlets and poems as the leader of the coup and favorably compared to Esther, Deborah, and Judith. The opposition, on the other hand, produced criticism in Germany referring to her as a devil and the cause of all misfortune of Denmark. The king was made to sign a letter thanking her for having "saved" him.