| Despotism
| | It is evident that the absolute monarch in practice couldn’t exert power, pass sentence and in particular make laws and reforms in these areas. The king needed good officials. The scientist Ole Rømer was one. |
Absolute Monarchy
The Danes of course considered the loss of the Scanian countries in 1660 a catastrophe, but the simultaneous transition to absolute monarchy, gave the events another perspective. With the introduction of absolute monarchy the days of the nobility rule was numbered. And the impotence of the nobility during the war set the scene for a clash with the privileges of the class. A strengthened central power headed by the king took over and began to create a modern state government. A new tax system, which broke with nobility´s exemption from taxation, was introduced, office conduct was changed and in many ways the state government was put into a more modern framework.
Homage to the Autocratic Monarch |
Aministration Reforms
The introduction of absolute monarchy in 1660 involved radical changes in the Danish government. The end of the privileges of the aristocracy meant the introduction of a so-called college management and the former fiefs were replaced by counties. Overall legislation was introduced. Danske Lov (Dansih Law) 1683, for the entire kingdom, new regulations involving market towns and guilds in 1682 and a new church ritual in 1685. In 1683 there were reforms concerning measurements and weights, the surveying of the roads in the kingdom and in 1700 a calendar reform, which introduced the Gregorian calendar.
Important was also the so-called Store Matrikel (Great Land Register) in 1688, which became the foundation of the tax state: A centralised state with needs and possibilities for increasing the income and expenses of the country. The historians still debate what the purpose of the reforms and the increased taxation was. Larger flexibility and cementation of the absolute monarchy played an important part, the political showdown about the privileges of the aristocracy was behind it and the foreign policy was marked by a revenge against Sweden until the end of the Nordic War in 1720.
The Servants of the State
It is evident that the absolute monarch in practice could not exert power, pass sentence and in particular make laws and reforms in these areas. The king needed good officials. He could ecruit these among gifted citizens and foreigners, and especially Germans played an important part.
On the other hand there was a danger that prominent official usurping too much power, as was the case with the commoner Peder Schumacher Griffenfeldt, who was the man behind the King´s Law, but he dismissed in 1676 around the beginning of the Scanian War. Later, in 1771-73, Struensee is an example of a commoner usurping power under the mad King Christian 7.
The Career of Ole Rømer
The experience of the Griffenfeldt-affair dictated that the absolute stat avoided giving individuals too much power, but instead spread tasks to a number of faithful servants. An example of this is the astronomer and scientist Ole Rømer. In posterity Rømer is first and foremost known for his discovery of the hesitation of the light, which he described in 1676, but his career in the absolute administration is just as remarkable.
Rømer participated in the work with the land register in 1688, he played a central role in the shaping and implementation of the reform concerning measurement and weight in 1683, and he was the anchorman in the surveying of the kingdom. From 1693 he functioned as a judge in the Supreme Court. In 1705 he becomes chief of police in Copenhagen and his crowning achievement is his baronage in 1706. This means that he and his family gain access to court and state events.
Ole Rømer | 
Surveying | 
Milestone | 
Milestone Mound |
The Records of Ole Rømer and Tycho Brahe
Ole Rømer was originally from Århus, but after high school he was admitted to the University of Copenhagen in 1662. Here he stayed with mathematics professor Rasmus Bartholin. He trained his skills in mathematics and astronomy occypying himself with the observations of Tycho Brahe, which was decisive factor in his further development.
When Tycho Brahe left Denmark in 1597 he took with 21 years of records from Hven. They were left to Johannes Kepler, when Brahe died. Kepler formulated the gravitation laws of the planets´ mutual circulation on the basis of Brahe´s notes. In 1655 the Danish king Frederik 3. bought Tycho Brahe´s records back and in 1664 they were let in the hands of Rasmus Bartholin, who lets them be worked over by 6 students with the purpose of publication. Ole Rømer was one of these 6 students.
The Meeting with Picard
Tycho Brahe’s edited notes were ready for print in 1669, but the new King Christian 5. did not want to use money on this expensive endeavour. Around 1671 new opportunities occur, which directly involves Ole Rømer. In August 1671 the French astronomer Jean Picard from the Royal French Scientific Society arrives in Copenhagen in order to compare new observations from the observatory in Paris to Tycho Brahe´s observations from Hven, which required a determination of the difference in longitude between Uranienborg and Paris.
Thus Picard came to Copenhagen to visit Hven, but he hadn´t taken into consideration that Hven after 1658 was Swedish. However he succeeded in obtaining a visa and access to Hven, which he visited with Bartholin og Ole Rømer. The windy autumn weather of the Sound did not agree with Picard and he preferred to stay in Copenhagen and left the practical work to Rømer. The observations continued until the spring of 1672, where the time difference, the longitude could be determined.
Observatories | 
Hven Map | 
Oversæt |
Rømer in France 1672-1681
By the end of the project asks Rømer to accompany him to Paris in order to attend to the printing of Tycho Brahe´s records in the royal printing house. Rømer is granted a yearly support of one hundred rix-dollar and leaves in May 1672. He was 27 at the time.
Rømer takes residence close to the observatory in Paris. He gains access to the observatory and soon after to the circle around the French Academy. Rømer begins a close collaboration with Picard. Apart from astronomy Rømer also occupied himself with cartography, levelling and hydraulics. The first with reference to a surveying of France, a job Rømer later benefitted from in Denmark. Levelling and hydraulics were to be used for the construction of fountains in the Versailles Park.
The Meeting with John Locke
During his man years´ stay in Paris Ole Rømer met scientists and intellectuals from all over Europe and among them the Englishman Johm Locke, one of the mos important thinkers of the time. Among other things he formulated some of the basic principles of state formation and he became perhaps the most important inspiration for the French Enlightment philosophers.
Locke came to Paris in June 1677, where he met Rømer and persuaded him to travel to London to visit Flamsteed and the Greenwich observatory. Here he met the most prominent English scientists and busied himself so much that Locke complained that he did not have the opportunity to spend much time with him. His stay in England was very short and he probably didn´t have time to descuss politics with John Locke – if Rømer at all was interested in that. However, there was good reason for that as France was becoming more and more intolerant towards the protestant minority. Nevertheless Ole Rømer was selcted to become the private teacher of the French Crown Prince. He probably demonstrated hsi two planet machine and a so-called Eclipsearium, which could show all solar and lunar eclpses between 1580 and 1780, for the prince and the French Academy.
The Heliocentric Picture of the Universe
The encounter with Tycho Brahe´s records created a lifelong ambition to finally prove the new heliocentric picture of the universe. In a letter to the German philosopher G.W. Leibnitz in 1703 he reveals his ambition to combine the systematic and precise observations of Tycho Brahe with the new technical possibilities, which the telescope, the pendulum and the micrometer provided. However, Ole Rømer´s many activities and posts in Denmark prevented him from continuing the systematic scientific work, but this was probably not the only reason.
Ole Rømer´s discovery of the hesitation of light was only recognized after many years of intense debate and it seems that Rømer did not want to enter these wearying discussions again. In a letter to Lebnitz April 21st, 1703 Rømer mentioned this. After his arrival in Copenhagen Rømer was happily married and he lived until 1710, without having published his final evidence of the heliocentric picture of the universe. |