INTRODUCTION

The long life and long rule of King Christian IV of (1577- 1648) make him anideal figure aroundwhom to group a volume of essays concerning Northern European court culture and its con- texts.1 At the death of his father Frederik II (1532-1588; ruled from 1559), a minority government ruled for Christian. In 1595, he was declared of age in the Duchies (the King of Denmark was also Duke of ), he set his coronation for August of the following year,2 andhe embarked ona tour of North Germancities andcourts — among them , Wolfenbüttel, Berlin, and Rostock. ChristianIV’s court fostered a floweringof the arts inDenmark, attracting English, German, and Italian musicians and singers, English itinerant troupes,3 and Dutch artists and architects,4 while simultaneously Danish artists visited European cultural centers and Danes embarked upon extensive study tours abroad in preparation for service to the . From his coronation in 1596 and his entry into Hamburg and spectacles staged there in1603 through the ‘Great Wedding’of

1 For the best overview of ChristianIV andhis court, see SteffenHeiberg: Christian IV and Europe. 1988 (= Catalogue of the 19th Council of Europe ExhibitionDenmark1988). This catalogue also appeared inDanish. Recent biographical studies of Christian IV include Steffen Heiberg: Christian 4. Monarken, Mennesket og Myten. Copenhagen 1988, and Benito Scocozza: ChristianIV. Copenhagen1987.See also the volume of essays edited by Sven Ellehøj: Christian IVs . Copenhagen 1988. 2 See Mara R. Wade: Öffentliche Geselligkeit am Kopenhagener Hof: Die Krönungsfestlichkeiten Christians IV (1596). In: Geselligkeit und Gesellschaft im Barockzeitalter. Ed. Wolfgang Adam. Wiesbaden 1997 (= Wolfenbütteler Arbeitenzur Barockforschung.Vol. 28), pp. 703-711. 3 See Mara R. Wade: German Theater in Denmark During the Age of King Christian IV (1577-1648). In: Thalia Germanica (forthcoming). 4 See Mara R. Wade: Simonde Pas andKarel vanManderIII at the Court of King Christian IV: The Dutch Emblem Tradition in Denmark. In: The Emblem Tradition and the Low Countries. Ed. John Manning, Karel Porteman, and Marc vanVaeck. Turnhout,Belgium 1999 (= Imgago Figurata Studies 1b), pp. 303-313.

Daphnis 32 2003 6 Mara R. Wade 1634 and the festivities held for the marriages of his children in 1636, 1639, 1642, and 1643, the long reign of Christian IV offers a vantage point for studying the festivals of Northern European courts.5 Inadditionto his Danishcourt which offers a spectrum of festival activity spanning the entire first half of the seventeenth century, Christian IV’s travels and attendant spectacles provide further events for future study. Very much like the Emperor Charles V, the Danish king Christian IV traveled extensively. For the history and scholarship of festival culture, his travels to England, Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, and Wolfenbüttel are of particular interest. The present volume focuses in particular on his connection to Wolfenbüttel in the figure of Georg Engelhard von Loehneyss. Additionally, the Danish court provided a safe haven for artists and musicians from German-speaking lands during the Thirty Years’ War.6 While the study of court festival culture is a burgeoning disci- pline,7 there is a particular dearth of scholarship onGermanProtes- tant courts and their closely related Scandinavian counterparts.8 The research presented in this volume demonstrates the significant cultural connections between Copenhagen and Dresden, Kassel, Wolfenbüttel, Berlin, and the Free Imperial City of Nürnberg on the one hand, and between Copenhagen and Stockholm on the other. All of these cities, in turn, had direct and immediate connections to

5 See Mara R. Wade: Triumphus Nuptialis Danicus: German Court Culture and Denmark. The Great Wedding of 1634. Wiesbaden 1996 (= Wolfenbütteler Arbeitenzur Barockforschung,Vol. 27). See also Mara R. Wade: Emblems of Peace in a Seventeenth-Century Danish Pageant. In: Emblematica 5 (1992), pp. 321-340. 6 See Mara R. Wade: ‘Große Hochzeit’ undGipfeltreffeninKopenhagen1634: Dänische Repräsentationspolitik im Dreißigjährigen Krieg. In: Zwischen Alltag und Katastrophe. Der Dreißigjährige Krieg aus der Nähe. Ed. Hans Medick and Begnina von Krusenstjern in Zusammenarbeit von Patrice Veit. Göttingen 1999, (= Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte 148), pp. 113-131. 7 See, for example, the important journal, The Court Historian. 8 For excellentstudies of Swedish court festivals intheir Europeancontext,see Lena Rangström: Riddarlek och Tornerspel. Tournaments and the Dream of Chivalry. (Bilingual Swedish/English exhibition catalogue) Stockholm 1992, and Karl XI:s Karusell. Livrustkammaren. Journal of the Royal Armory. 1994. See also the two volumes of published lectures from this exhibitionwhich appeared in Livrust Kammaren. Journal of the Royal Armory 1992 and 1993.

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