URBAN NOISE AND DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY: JOHANN PETER WILLEBRAND AND THE NOTION OF PUBLIC ORDER IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ALTONA

This article explores the links between intolerance of urban noise and emerging notions of privacy in mid-eighteenth-century Altona, a southern provincial town in the Danish monarchy. It focuses on Johann Peter Willebrand (1719–86), who dealt with urban noise both as Altona’s police director and as an intellectual and author of several influential books on the ideal organization of early modern cities. As police director, Willerbrand frequently charged residents with noise-related offenses, including being loudly drunk at night, playing music late at night, and simply disturbing the peace and quiet of their fellow citizens. Such episodes are drawn from the surviving police records of Altona and were later elaborated in his published books on police regulation and the ideal organization of cities. On this basis, the article argues that the practical enforcement of the concept of peace and quiet (the so-called Ruhe) can be understood as an early modern articulation of individual privacy, which was to be protected and guaranteed by the police and municipal authorities, but at the end subjected to the economic interests of the state.