The present article argues for caution in projecting the modern concept of class back into pre-modern Danish society. Social stratification at that time was not determined in the modern sense of economically defined classes, but by a division of estates: nobility, clergy, burgher and peasant. While the social groups of class society are defined by their relations to the means of production (workers vs. employers), those of an estate society are characterised by other traits, especially by the degree of mutually accorded honour. In other words, the four estates are defined not by economic, but by cultural criteria.

Prior to the introduction of the absolute monarchy in 1660, estate society was premised on the conception of a primordially determined place for every individual in his or her proper estate, there where God willed that he or she should live and work. In principle, the concept of estate was tantamount to social position by divine ordinance; thus social mobility between estates was - in theory, if not always in practice - decried as manifestly contrary to the divine will.

In 1671, however, the recently established absolute monarch introduced a new ordinance of social rank, creating a new, official social system that radically defied estate conceptions. The traditional designations of honour (or the lack of them) associated with each of the various estates were formally abolished, and instead all marks of honour were bestowed as a sign of royal favour by assigning an individual to a place in the new hierarchy of rank. Nobles could no longer per se claim greater honour and respect than others; this required that they had been granted a rank in the new system. Provided any burgher or even someone born as a peasant was in possession of rank, he always preceded any noble lacking rank. With the lapse of time, however, nobles generally held a rank, and since old ideas about the superiority of the nobility proved durable, the nobility retained its special aura.

The article analyses how the old culture of estates functioned, and how the new culture of ranks gradually undermined the conception of a predetermined social order. It shows, moreover, how the struggle for status symbols in the culture of rank was carried on at the level of everyday life. Although the system of rank actually enabled burghers to rise to the pinnacle of honour, this did not lead to the elite's assimilation of a burgher culture, but rather the burgers' assimilation of aristocratic culture. Persons of rank were granted privileges of nobility and therefore adopted the life style of nobles, giving great importance to splendid manners and appearance, lavish spending on grandiose living, and virtually uninhibited luxury - conspicuous consumption.

The study argues, finally, that the system of rank unleashed a social and genteel rivalry between the old estates never seen before, creating a real possibility of social mobility for those with ambition, talent and economic means. The rank

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system thus became a battering ram in the transition to modern society, where success reputedly depends on the individual's talent and industry, and where birth plays only a minor role - something virtually inconceivable in the pre-absolutist period of estate society.

The culture of rank and social rivalry generated, however, such a powerful degree of social control and so many norms for what "one" does and what "one" does not that social intercourse came to resemble a carefully choreographed stage play, where certain things were to be done in a certain way, if one wished to be taken into account. It was also a society, where a downfall from social grace struck those who failed to master the aristocratic code of honour and aristocratic norms of elegant conduct. It could be called a kind of theatre culture, where social roles were precisely defined, and where all the actors were expected to act out their parts in a previously prescribed manner. This was the rigid Rococo play that was ousted in the 1780s and 1790s in a movement that found its strongest expression in the French Revolution and the bourgeois currents of fashion that later eliminated aristocratic culture from the social map.

Translated by Michael Wolfe