Beyond the Border

Young Minority Identities in the Danish-German Borderlands, 1955-1971

Tobias Haimin Wung-Sung

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781789201758
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

In the nineteenth century, the hotly disputed border region between Denmark and Germany was the focus of an intricate conflict that complicates questions of ethnic and national identity even today. Beyond the Border reconstructs the experiences of both Danish and German minority youths living in the area from the 1950s to the 1970s, a period in which relations remained tense amid the broader developments of Cold War geopolitics. Drawing on a remarkable variety of archival and oral sources, the author provides a rich and fine-grained analysis that encompasses political issues from the NATO alliance and European integration to everyday life and popular culture.

1

STRONG SPIRITS AND HEALING WOUNDS

The Minorities during Conflicts and Aftermath, pre-1955

Schleswig was one of the regions where a new border was drawn in the aftermath of the Great War. Germany’s defeat, and the subsequent Versailles Treaty, resulted in a reorganisation of Europe; nations were to have their own states, and the borders to be drawn on the principles of democracy and national self-determination. In the former duchy of Schleswig, as in the other contested border regions, two plebiscites determined the new border between Denmark and Germany. On 15 June 1920, the new border, a separation of the two states with no historical precedence, was a reality. It stretched some 65 kilometres from Flensburg Bay, the town of Flensburg located just south of it, across the Jutland peninsular to the North Sea. Despite the unequivocal results of the plebiscites, a German majority south of the new border and a Danish one north of it, minorities on both sides were unavoidable. The new border created the Danish minority in Germany and the German minority in Denmark. Furthermore, the new border created two new regions: North Schleswig and South Schleswig. The concepts of a northern, middle and a part of southern Schleswig existed before 1920, but they were all vaguely defined. In the Danish tradition, all of Schleswig was Sønderjylland (Southern Jutland). In the German tradition, Schleswig was tied to the neighbouring region of Holstein.

The positions of the two new minorities in the two new regions differed from each other. Until 1920, the Danish minority in all of Schleswig had been one large group in the northernmost part of the Second German Empire. As the plebiscite in North Schleswig clearly showed, Danish-minded Schleswigers constituted the absolute majority in the area that was annexed by Denmark. The part of the minority that remained south of the border was small and did not constitute the majority in any location of the new region of South Schleswig. The German-minded in North Schleswig made up a much stronger and larger group. Three of the four large towns in North Schleswig had German majorities and, in many villages in the rural area just north of the new border, the number of German-minded equalled or outnumbered the Danish-minded. Only after the Second World War did the balance shift again. The positions of the Danish and German minorities after the Second World War are best understood as inversions of the two groups’ positions in the preceding decades. After the war, the strong and separatist German minority in North Schleswig was stripped of its resources and threatened by internal divisions and outside pressure. The Danish minority in South Schleswig experienced the opposite development. It exploded in size and defined new, separatist aspirations.

Figure 1.1 Pro-German plebiscite poster, 1920. Courtesy Arkivet ved Dansk Centralbibliotek for Sydslesvig (ADCB).

Figure 1.2 Pro-Danish plebiscite poster, 1920. Courtesy Arkivet ved Dansk Centralbibliotek for Sydslesvig (ADCB).

Map 1.1. Map of 1920 Plebiscites. Courtesy Arkivet ved Dansk Centralbibliotek for Sydslesvig (ADCB).

Minority-youth experiences were embedded in this context: In North Schleswig before 1945, young people were a crucial part of the national mobilisation of the minority. After 1945, all German-minority educational institutions as well as youth and student associations were closed down. In South Schleswig, only a few Danish institutions for youths existed before 1945, whereas after the end of the war, schools, youth clubs and other leisure activities for youths boomed in South Schleswig. Whereas the circumstances for both minorities changed substantially, some overarching characteristics of minority identity in the border region remained the same. Even though the positions of the two groups inverted, their loyalty to the kin-state remained strong and unquestioned. Furthermore, the legitimacy of the border was still challenged, and the sentiment of being arbitrarily separated from the nation on the other side of the border continued.

The Unexpected Danish Invigoration and Danish-Minority Youth before 1955

Before 1945, the Danish minority comprised only a small group in South Schleswig, concentrated mostly in and around the town of Flensburg. Despite the town’s close historical ties to Denmark, Flensburg voted overwhelmingly in favour of remaining part of Germany in the plebiscites of 1920. The actual number of Danish-minded people in South Schleswig in 1920 could be contested but, on the day of voting, 8,944 votes were cast in favour of Denmark.¹ This figure amounted to roughly 25 percent of Flensburg’s population. Outside Flensburg, the number of Danish votes was limited: in the entire second zone, not including Flensburg, around 3,000 votes were cast in favour of Denmark. The overall result in the second zone was 51,724 German votes against 12,800 Danish ones. A plebiscite in the rest of South Schleswig was planned but cancelled as a German majority proved inevitable. Taking into consideration that also some non-residents of both nationalities were eligible to vote in the plebiscite, a realistic estimate of the Danish minority’s size in all of South Schleswig in 1920 would be between 12,000 and 15,000.

Although Flensburg remaining German was a disappointment for Denmark, the more realistic Danish positions regarded the plebiscites as a success;² few would have thought it realistic to hope for a future change of the border in Denmark’s favour. The minority of 1920 lost ground rather quickly. In his study of the Danish minority, 1920–45, Johan Peter Noack argues that ‘even in locations where the Danish movement was strongest, it was in fact weak’.³ Noack has analysed Danish associations in Flensburg, and he shows that the number of memberships of Danish associations decreased gradually from 1920 to 1945. He estimates that Danish associations in Flensburg had roughly 4,500 members in total in 1920; by 1944/45, this number had dropped to 1,500.⁴ Examining membership figures of young people under the age of 25, Noack shows that these remained relatively stable throughout the period, at 700 members;⁵ however, whereas minority youths retained stable figures, the minority in general was a group in decline.

The largest pre-1945 Danish youth association in Flensburg was Flensborg Ungdomsforening (FUF), founded in 1919. Despite its long history, the FUF archive contains only two documents from the period before 1945: two annual reports documenting activities in 1935 and 1936/7. The two reports reveal little about Danish-minority youth; they offer only glimpses of membership figures and superficial indications of the nature of activities. It seems, however, that with memberships of the association at around 200, FUF would have been large enough to offer a sense of Danish community for young people in Flensburg. The report from 1935 states that FUF had 217 active members; that 29 new members had joined the association that year; and 44 members had left it.⁶ The association appears to have focused on leisure activities: the report states that activities in FUF included lecture nights, gymnastics, sporting activities, folk dancing and study groups.⁷ According to the report from 1936/7, only one new member joined FUF that year, whereas 37 members left and the total number of members dropped from the previous year to 189.⁸ It seems, however, that this was a development to be expected. Despite the decline of membership figures, the chairman expressed satisfaction with the association in 1936/7. The second report includes no mention of the activities of FUF, but the chairman has added that ‘work [was] carried out in a satisfactory manner’.⁹

The Danish secondary school in Flensburg, Duborg-Skolen, was another main institution for Danish-minded youths. Founded in 1920, the school was located in the northern and most Danish part of town, on the location of the former royal Danish caste of Duborg, after which the school was named.¹⁰ Upon the completion of the new school building in 1922, the headmaster, Andreas Hansen, was quoted in the Danish-minority daily newspaper, Flensborg Avis:

We hope that Danish children will study here – year after year – and that after their time here, they will go out in life to assume a purpose that serves their breed and spirit. We have no aversions against the German language – on the contrary – and we will seek to also nourish the German language. But this school is Danish – it is built by the Danish people and its language is Danish. Therefore, it is also self-evident that in this school the Danish language and a Danish spirit stand above everything.¹¹

Headmaster Hansen’s statement communicated that Duborg-Skolen was rooted in the Danish community and that it sought to promote the Danish language and a particular Danish spirit. At the same time, the school did not appear to seek isolation from the German majority. The fact that Hansen stated the school would ‘nourish German language’ also suggests that the minority was aware that their community was too small to function independently, and that good relations with the German majority were essential.

Duborg-Skolen depended on connections with Denmark too. Not only did some students come from North Schleswig, travelling daily across the border to Flensburg,¹² the teachers, too, were overwhelmingly Danes from Denmark, often from North Schleswig. Henrik Mink has analysed lists of early employees at Duborg-Skolen and concluded that ‘the typical teacher was young, a recent graduate and Danish’.¹³ According to Mink, finding enough qualified teachers in South Schleswig was simply impossible, considering the minority’s limited size.¹⁴ Furthermore, according to Mink, the Danish teachers offered, ‘a welcome blow of Danish culture in a challenged daily life marked by social isolation from the surrounding German-minded community’.¹⁵

Apart from its regular education activities, Duborg-Skolen also became a place where the Danish community in Flensburg gathered, often to attend lectures given by guests brought to Flensburg from Denmark.¹⁶ In fact, the Danish minority in Flensburg more generally had strong ties to Danes in North Schleswig and among the members of Danish associations in Flensburg, the largest and most stable subgroup consisted of those who originated from North Schleswig and had moved to Flensburg, often for employment reasons.¹⁷ Throughout the period 1920–45, according to Noack’s estimates, North-Schleswig-born Danes in Flensburg constituted between 14 and 22 percent of the Danish minority.¹⁸

The Danish minority in South Schleswig could not realistically hope for a border revision before 1945, and the consequence of that appeared to be a pragmatist stance towards the German majority. Even after the National Socialists came to power in 1933, the Danish minority’s position towards the new regime provides a final example of the ways in which the pre-1945 Danish-minded youth in North Schleswig navigated between loyalties to the nation and to the host state. The Danish minority managed to negotiate that minority youths were exempted from being members of the Hitler Jugend and Bund Deutscher Mädel, compulsory for all other young people in Germany.¹⁹ The experience of war, however, was just as much a part of Danish minority life, as it was for any other German citizen; the Danish minority did not seek exemption from military service on behalf of young Danish-minded men, and it did not encourage young men to desert.²⁰

Following Germany’s defeat in 1945, the position of the Danish movement in South Schleswig changed fundamentally. The end of the Second World War also became the end of the Danish minority’s decline and confinement to Flensburg. Immediately after capitulation, thousands of South Schleswigers joined the Danish movement, its numbers reaching over 70,000 in 1947, only two years after the end of the war. The change was colossal and somewhat unexpected.

The underlying causes for this change of national identities in Schleswig have been interpreted differently. Many contemporaries assigned the...