Struensee, JOHANN FRIEDRICH, COUNT, was the son of a German pastor of Halle, where he was born 5th August 1737. He studied medicine, and was appointed (1759) town physician in Altona. But in 1768 he accepted the post of private physician to Christian VII. of Denmark (1749-1808). He soon gained the complete confidence not only of the weak young king, but also of his consort, Caroline (1751-75), sister of George III. of England, who had a most unhappy lot as the wife of Christian. Struensee and the queen speedily possessed themselves of all power in the kingdom, dismissing the former ministers, forcing the king to abstain from all interference with government, and endeavouring to free Denmark from Russian influence, and to find a natural ally in Sweden. The changes which Struensee undertook in internal affairs were directed to the advancement of the prosperity of the country, of civil liberty, and enlightenment. He put the finances in order, reduced the expenditure, loosened the fetters in which industry and trade had been bound, encouraged education, mitigated the penal laws, and brought order into the administration. An act passed in 1771 to a certain extent abolished serfdom. But by all these measures he offended and outraged the nobility and the clergy, and by the haste and want of statesmanlike tact and skill with which they were carried out he appeared to the peasantry as little different from a despotic tyrant. The disaffected nobles and deposed ministers found a supporter in Christian's step-mother, and procured from the king an order for the arrest (16th January 1772) of the queen and Struensee. From both a confession of criminal intimacy was extorted; the queen was confined in the prison-fortress of Kronborg, while Struensee was cast in chains into the citadel of Copenhagen. Various charges of abusing the royal authority, attempting to force the king to abdicate, besides that of adultery with the queen, were laid to the charge of the favourite, and on 28th April 1772 he was beheaded. Queen Caroline's marriage was dissolved, and, parted from her only little daughter, she was conveyed by a British frigate to Hanover, where she died at Celle in 1775.
See a very full account in the Memoirs and Correspondence (1849) of Sir Robert Murray Keith, who was British envoy to Copenhagen at the time, and saved the queen from the fury of the populace; Wraxall's Life and Times of Queen Caroline Matilda (3 vols. 1864); and the article by Professor Ward on Caroline Matilda in the Diet. Nat. Biog. (vol. ix. 1887).