Place:Flensburg, Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Preußen, Germany

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Flensburg (; Danish, Low Saxon: Flensborg; North Frisian: Flansborj; South Jutlandic: Flensborre) is an independent town (kreisfreie Stadt) in the north of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Flensburg is the centre of the region of Southern Schleswig. After Kiel and Lübeck, it is the third largest town in Schleswig-Holstein.

The nearest larger towns are Kiel ( south) and Odense in Denmark ( northeast). Flensburg's city centre lies about from the Danish border.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Middle Ages

Flensburg was founded at the latest by 1200 at the innermost end of the Flensburg Firth by Danish settlers, who were soon joined by German merchants. In 1284, its town rights were confirmed and the town quickly rose to become one of the most important in the Duchy of Schleswig. Unlike Holstein, however, Schleswig did not belong to the German Holy Roman Empire. Therefore, Flensburg was not a member of the Hanseatic League, but it did maintain contacts with this important trading network.

Historians presume that there were several reasons for choosing this spot for settlement:

• Shelter from heavy winds
• Trade route between Holstein and North Jutland (namely the Hærvejen or Ochsenweg, a name for a series of roads between Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland, possibly dating from the Bronze Age)
• The Angelnway: Trade route between North Frisia and Angeln
• A good herring fishery

Herrings, especially kippered, were what brought about the blossoming of the town's trade in the Middle Ages. They were sent inland and to almost every European country.

On 28 October 1412, Queen Margaret I of Denmark died of the Plague aboard a ship in Flensburg Harbour.

From time to time plagues such as bubonic plague, caused mainly by rat fleas (Xenopsylla cheopis, a parasite found on brown rats), "red" dysentery and other scourges killed a great deal of Flensburg's population. Lepers were strictly isolated, namely at the St.-Jürgen-Hospital (Helligåndshospital, built before 1290), which lay far outside the town's gates, where the St. Jürgen Church is nowadays. About 1500, syphilis also appeared. The church hospital "Zum Heiligen Geist" ("To the Holy Ghost") stood in Große Straße, now Flensburg's pedestrian precinct.

A Flensburger's everyday life was very hard, and the old roads and paths were bad. The main streets were neither paved nor lit at night. When the streets became really bad, the citizens had to make the dung-filled streets passable with wooden pathways. Only the few upper-class houses had windows. In 1485, a great fire struck Flensburg. Storm tides also beset the town occasionally. Every household in the town kept livestock in the house and the yard. Townsfolk furthermore had their own cowherds and a swineherd.

Early modern times

After the fall of the Hanseatic League in the 16th century, Flensburg was said to be one of the most important trading towns in the Scandinavian area. Flensburg merchants were active as far away as the Mediterranean, Greenland and the Caribbean. The most important commodities, after herring, were sugar and whale oil, the latter from whaling off Greenland. However, the Thirty Years' War put an end to this boom time. The town was becoming Protestant and thereby ever more German culturally and linguistically, while the neighbouring countryside remained decidedly Danish.

In the 18th century, thanks to the rum trade, Flensburg had yet another boom. Cane sugar was imported from the Danish West Indies (now the US Virgin Islands) and refined in Flensburg. Only in the 19th century, as a result of industrialization, was the town at last outstripped by the competition from cities such as Copenhagen and Hamburg.

The rum produced in Flensburg then became re-integrated into West Indian trade routes, which as of 1864 moved away from the Danish West Indies to the British colony of Jamaica instead. It was imported from there, blended, and sold all over Europe. There is nowadays only one active rum distillery in Flensburg, "A. H. Johannsen".

History as a German town

Between 1460 and 1864, Flensburg was, after Copenhagen, the second biggest port in the Kingdom of Denmark, but it passed to the Kingdom of Prussia after the Second Schleswig War in 1864. The Battle of Flensburg was on February 6, 1864: near the city a small Hungarian mounted regiment chased a Danish infantry and Dragoon regiment. There is still a considerable Danish community in the town today. Some estimates put the percentage of Flensburgers who belong to it as high as 25%; other estimates put that percentage much lower. The SSW political party representing the minority usually gains 20–25% of the votes in local elections, but by no means are all of its voters Danes. Before 1864, more than 50% belonged to what is now the minority, witnessed even today by the great number of Danish surnames in the Flensburg telephone directory (Asmussen, Claussen, Jacobsen, Jensen, Petersen, etc.). The upper classes and the learned at that time, however, were German, and since 1864, the German language has prevailed in the town.

On 1 April 1889, Flensburg became an independent city (kreisfreie Stadt) within the Province of Schleswig-Holstein, and at the same time still kept its status as seat of the Flensburg district. In 1920, the League of Nations decided that the matter of the German-Danish border would be settled by a vote. As a result of the plebiscite, and the way the voting zones were laid out, some of Flensburg's northern neighbourhoods were ceded to Denmark, whereas Flensburg as a whole voted with a great majority to stay in Germany.

In return for this great pro-German majority, the town of Flensburg was given a large hall, the "Deutsches Haus", which was endowed by the government as "thanks for German loyalty".

During the Second World War, the town was left almost unscathed by the air raids that devastated other German cities. However, in 1943, 20 children died when their nursery school was bombed, and shortly after the war ended, an explosion at a local munitions storage site claimed many victims.

In 1945, Admiral Karl Dönitz, who was briefly President (Reichspräsident) of Nazi Germany once Adolf Hitler had appointed him his successor and then killed himself, fled to Flensburg with what was left of his government. The so-called Flensburg government led by Karl Dönitz, which was in power from 1 May, the announcement of Hitler's death, for one week, until German troops surrendered and the town was occupied by Allied troops. The regime was effectively dissolved on 23 May when the British Army arrested Dönitz and his ministers in Mürwik and detained in the Navy School in Mürwik. The dissolution was formalized by the Berlin Declaration which was promulgated on 5 June. Flensburg was therefore, for a few weeks, the seat of the last Third Reich government.

Since the Second World War

After the Second World War, the town's population broke the 100,000 mark for a short time, thereby making Flensburg a city (Großstadt) under one traditional definition. The population later sank below that mark, however.

In the years after the Second World War, there was in South Schleswig, particularly in Flensburg, a strong pro-Danish movement connected with the idea of the "Eider Politics". Its goal was for the town and all or most of Schleswig, the whole area north of the Eider River, to be united with Denmark. After 1945, Flensburg's town council was for years dominated by Danish parties, and the town had a Danish mayor.

The town profited from the planned location of military installations. Since the German Reunification, the number of soldiers has dropped to about 8,000. Since Denmark's entry into the European Economic Community (now the European Union), border trade has played an important role in Flensburg's economic life. Some Danish businesses, such as Danfoss, have set up shop just south of the border for tax reasons.

In 1970, the Flensburg district was expanded to include the municipalities in the Amt of Medelby, formerly in the Südtondern district, and in 1974 it was united with the Schleswig district to form the district of Schleswig-Flensburg, whose district seat was the town of Schleswig. Flensburg thereby lost its function as a district seat, but it remained an independent (district-free) town.

Amalgamations

Until the middle of the 19th century Flensburg's municipal area comprised a total area of 2 639 ha. Beginning in 1874, however, the following communities or rural areas (Gemarkungen) were annexed to the town of Flensburg:

Population development

Population figures are for respective municipal areas through time. Until 1870, figures are mostly estimates, and thereafter census results (¹) or official projections from either statistical offices or the town administration itself.

¹ Census results

Research Tips

Alternate Names

The Daily Dispatch: February 29, 1864

The Schleswig Holstein war. The latest accounts state that the Danes had evacuated Schleswig and the Dannework, and fallen back on Flemburg, the Germans pursuing. A Hamburg dispatch of the morning of the 6th, says:

‘ No news from the Theatre of war had been received. It was believed that the Prussians prevent its transmission. Siwere fighting is supposed to be going on, as numbers of wounded are constantly being taken to Hendsburg.

A Hamburg dispatch, of the afternoon of the 6th, gives a report that the town of Schleswig had been evacuated by the Danes and occupied by the Allies. Another dispatch says that this statement may be considered authentic. There is nothing known as to the capture of Missunde.

’ The Daily Dispatch: February 29, 1864. Richmond Dispatch. 2 pages. by Cowardin & Hammersley. Richmond. February 29, 1864. microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mi : Proquest. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm.

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