On his own estates, he practiced his political ideas long before they were made laws – moreover, he founded schools and abolished the Danish version of corvée – hoveri.

A few years later, in 1721, his half-sister Anne Sophie – Christian Ditlev Frederik's great aunt – was crowned Queen of Denmark, having been king Frederick's mistress for almost a decade.

When Frederik IV died and the legitimate son of his first marriage was crowned King Christian VI of Denmark, however, the golden days of the Reventlow gang were over.

King Christian detested his fathers new queen and banished her from Copenhagen to Clausholm manor – her birthplace – where she spent the rest of her life, practically under house arrest.

C. D. F. Reventlow's father, also named Christian Ditlev (1710–1775) held symbolical political offices, but most likely never took any interest in life at court or in the lifestyle of 18th-century Danish aristocracy.

His famous sons as well as his daughter later emphasised the importance of their ideally rural childhood – and of their father's full satisfaction in working for the benefit of the subjects of the estate.

After having been educated at the academy of Sorø and at Leipzig, C. D. F. Reventlow, in company with his younger brother Johan Ludwig and the distinguished Saxon economist Carl Wendt (1731–1815), the best of cicerones on such a tour, travelled through Germany, Switzerland, France and England, to examine the social, economical and agricultural conditions of civilized Europe.

A visit to Sweden and Norway to study mining and metallurgy completed the curriculum, and when Reventlow in the course of 1770 returned to Denmark he was an authority on all the economic questions of the day.

[1] In 1774 he married Frederica Charlotte von Beulwitz, who bore him thirteen children, and on his father's death in 1775 inherited the family estate in Laaland.

His time came when the ultra-conservative ministry of Ove Høegh-Guldberg was dismissed (14 April 1784) and Andreas Peter Bernstorff, the statesman for whom Reventlow had the highest admiration, returned to power.