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At one of the bends around the castle of Brahetrolleborg there is a monument by the roadside, just before the ascent to the Alps of Fyn, with the inscription “Friend to the Children and Friend to the Peasants”. It was raised in memory of the philanthropist, educationalist, politician, and estate owner Johan Ludvig Reventlow. From his seat at Brahetrolleborg he influenced this area of south Fyn in various respects, in a way that is typical of the work of enlightenment and modernization that took place in Denmark in the years leading up to 1800. The obelisk, with a medallion portrait of J.L. Reventlow on the front, was raised in 1888, as we learn from an inscription on the back, to mark the centennial of the abolition of adscription, the law that had tied peasants to the soil, and in memory of the schools founded by Reventlow in the area. Naturally, Matthias Lunding did not see this monument on his journey, but there were other visible signs of the enterprising work of enlightenment and reform. In the desolate area south of the lake Brændegård Sø, in a trial forestry plantation at Bremerhus, we can still see the huge oak trees that J.L. Reventlow – probably in the autumn of 1784 – had planted for use in shipbuilding. The Brahetrolleborg forestry district was in general one of the first places to introduce an organized form of management, as one can confirm for oneself by looking at the solitary estate landscape, devoid of people, between the castle and the Fåborg–Svendborg road.

In the nearby village Gerup, there still stands one of the peasant schools that Reventlow built to promote popular enlightenment on his estate. It originally bore the name Sybillesminde in memory of Reventlow’s wife (a sister of Schimmelmann’s wife, whom Miranda the charmer found rather pleasing). The Reventlows were close friends of the poet Jens Baggesen, and the district around Brahetrolleborg is full of sites christened by Sybille Reventlow and Jens Baggesen on their emotional strolls in the district. Names like Korinth, Amsterdam, Troja, and Neapel (i.e. Troy and Naples) are the result of the imaginative friends’ exalted walks. The more rationalistic side of the enlightenment project can be found in farm names such as Flids-ager (“diligence field”) and Nøjsomhedsglæde (“joy of contentment with one’s lot”), which bear witness to the virtues extolled by the bourgeoisie in those days.

The poem Landforvandlingen (The Transformation of the Land), “written in a hollow oak in the forest at Christianssæde” and with an indirect mention of J.L. Reventlow, depicts in a dreamlike vision the harmonious consequences the agrarian reforms would have for the landscape and the population:

Solemn forests, relieved by gentle dales,

Then by limpid rivers as I passed;

All was full of life, by order ruled,

Nature here was intertwined with art;

Scattered lay the happy little roofs,

Under which the earth’s great riches lay,

Thither went the man, and here his wife,

He to tend his fields, and she to tend her children.

(Baggesen 1907: 300 f.)

We can easily suspect that the staged emotionality – the sentimentalism – and the bold utilitarianism are two sides of the same modernistic enlightenment project. As we shall see below, this dual vision also concerned the attitude to the body, which was now both stylized and sentimentalized.

Here the body is neither an object for rational educational projects as in the young Mathias Lunding, nor a means to a sensual-revolutionary hedonism as in Miranda. Here it is instead an occasion for emotionality. The body is used as a way to alter emotional states; in itself it is of little significance.

J.L. Reventlow was not the only pioneer as regards agrarian reforms and public education in south Fyn. In 1784 the county of Muckadell was created by the amalgamation of four estates, Arreskov, Brobygård, Gelskov, and Ølstedgård. Here Count Schaffalitzky de Muckadell at Arreskov had set up domestic industries, with spinneries and spinning schools for the poor people on the estate, and there was close cooperation with the master linen weaver, I. Chr. Thorning at Brahetrolleborg. The patriarchal and philanthropic element here was expressed in the free issue of medicine to everyone on the estate who needed it. (Paludan 1979: 20).

On the Hvidkilde estate Baron Poul Abraham Lehn, one of the richest landowners in Fyn, who in 1731 had inherited the estate from his uncle Johan Lehn, set up a small cotton factory to produce fustian and ticking. It was managed by Anton Sturm, whose father had emigrated from Germany. Here the poorest of the peasants were taught how to card and spin cotton. It was very important to the baron that this factory, and a comparable one that he owned in Smørum, should not be subsidized by the state factory fund but should survive on its own profits, in the private, liberal spirit (Paludan 1979: 19).

Baron Lehn likewise invested in the improvement of the peasants’ farms and housing conditions, and he was generally interested in the well-being of his subjects. He also acted to have the copyholders’ farms enclosed and moved out of the villages, just as he was a pioneer and advocate of a series of agrarian reforms. Although he did not show the same airy, romantic zeal as Reventlow, his tenants were among the most prosperous peasants in Fyn, and it was he who laid the foundation for the flourishing fruit-growing and production of fruit wines around Svendborg, by giving his peasants fruit trees. The “alertness” that was to characterize south Fyn in the nineteenth century was due not least to Baron Lehn’s many rationalistic initiatives, which provided the basis for material prosperity, which in turn generated a surplus for more spiritual pursuits, the fruits of which were harvested by high schools and free schools throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Further west, in Dreslette, we see yet another side of the rationalistic spirit of the age, with reforms and modernization as the guiding stars. In 1785/86 the Councillor and estate owner Niels Ryberg of Hagenskov had an astronomical observatory built here on a platform above the church tower (Rasch 1964: 299). Although the idea was scarcely unchristian, this addition to the church is a visible proof of the rationalistic thirst for change and disregard of the traditions and conceptions of the old world, which meant that even the church and religion were no longer sacrosanct. What was given was no longer good enough, it had to be expanded and changed. Knowledge, enlightenment, and reforms were the ideals of the times. Enterprise, growth, and improvement, propelled by bourgeois virtues such as diligence, thrift, common sense, and a comprehensive outlook were key words in the minds of these reformers. Niels Ryberg’s observatory on Dreslette church is one visible expression of this. At Køng between Næstved and Vordingborg in Southern Sjælland there is another. Here Ryberg built a rural factory on his estate of Øbjerggård, and although it, like the other factories, never produced a surplus, it did lead to a vigorous population growth on the estate in the first twenty years, and this alone was a sign of success, growth, and enterprising spirit.

The real purpose may not in any case have been profit, but rather a demonstration of economic enterprise and patriotic concern for the population. Also attached to the linen factory in Køng were spinning schools for the poorest elements of the peasantry, who were to be taught how to cope for themselves and thus benefit the country.

The awareness of this patriotic belief in helping people to help themselves is clearly expressed by Lunding, who praises “our patriotic Ryberg” and adds:

So much money has been distributed among the poor in these times when everything is expensive, and so many young people of both sexes have thereby been rendered capable of earning their bread and been prevailed upon to spread this useful branch of manufacturing enterprise! (Paludan 1979: 77)

The means for this were to be a combination of work and schooling; people were generally taught for a few hours in the morning and worked the rest of the time. To support the learning of order, diligence, and discipline in these spinning schools, a number of spinning songs were written at Rydberg’s expense, professing moral virtues. The author was a clergyman from Ærøskøbing, Hans Chr. Bunkeflod, who in 1783 published Forsøg til Viser for Spindeskolerne i Sielland (An Attempt at Songs for the Spinning Schools of Sjælland). These versified disciplining tools were used not only in spinning schools but also in the schools of the Næstved Patriotic Society.

They hit out especially against laziness and drunkenness, enjoining people to obedience and fidelity in general and to employers in particular. They attacked begging and praised industrious work as a way to eliminate it:

So many men a-begging go

From house to house, ’tis pity

They suffer and are turned away

Because they could learn nothing

O girls, if they could spin like us

Then they would not go hungry

They would not tread the trackless ground

But they would praise our maker.

(Bunkeflod 1786: 12 f.)

And mere spinning was not enough. The employees also had to compete among themselves to see who could spin the most. A song about the bliss of country life says:

We all sit here spinning

To see who is winning

Spin well and spin better than me!

I’ll wager a treasure

There’s no greater pleasure

Than spinning as nicely as we.

(Bunkeflod 1786: 8)

These ideals were accompanied by moralizing and admonitory texts in the same spirit, preaching a pragmatic utilitarian morality for all aspects of life, from work to marriage and love. V. K. Hjort’s Sange for unge Piger, især med Hensyn til Offentlige Arbejdsskoler (Songs for Young Girls Especially Intended for Public Work Schools, 1799) contains numerous examples of this kind of propaganda. In the preface to the collection Hjort writes that, as a “citizen of the state”, he has published these songs with the aim of “spreading morality, love of work, and a more refined taste among the common people” (Hjort 1799).

One notices here an idealistically envisaged educational aim, the target group of which is not just potential recipients of poor relief but the common people as a whole. It is likewise characteristic that the goal is not only to bring about improved attitudes and characteristics, but now even more to instil aptitudes and skills.

Once again it is clear that this construction concerns bodily matters. The idea is to stimulate the readiness and willingness of the flesh. In Hjort and Bunkeflod, however, this takes place not as in Baggesen, from a sentimental standpoint but from moral aspirations. In other words, we see here a fourth variant of the view of the body. We may now try to sum up these four aspects of the new interest in the body.