Flensburg (; Danish and ; ; ) is a town in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. After Kiel and Lübeck, it is the third-largest urban area in Schleswig-Holstein. Flensburg's city centre lies about from the Danish border.
Flensburg was founded around the 12th century and developed rapidly during the Middle Ages as a major port for trade between the Kingdom of Denmark and the Hanseatic League. In the 16th century, it became part of the Danish Kingdom and remained under Danish rule until the early 19th century. Following the Danish-Prussian War of 1864, Flensburg became part of the Kingdom of Prussia. During the 20th century, the town transformed into a centre for both commerce and industry. It served as the seat of the Flensburg Government, the final administrative (and abortive) form of Nazi Germany, from 2 May 1945 until its dissolution in early June 1945.
Today, Flensburg is known for its maritime heritage, its role as a border town with Denmark, and its well-preserved historic architecture. It is the cultural and organisational centre of the Danish minority of Southern Schleswig.
Geography
Flensburg is in the north of the German state Schleswig-Holstein, very close to the German-Danish border. After Glücksburg and Westerland, it is Germany's northernmost town. Flensburg lies at the innermost tip of the Flensburg Firth, an inlet of the Baltic Sea. Flensburg's eastern shore is part of the Angeln peninsula.
Neighbouring municipalities Clockwise from the northeast, beginning at the German shore of the Flensburg Firth, the following communities in Schleswig-Flensburg district and Denmark's Southern Denmark Region all border Flensburg:
Glücksburg (Amt-free town), Wees (Amt Langballig), Maasbüll, Hürup, Tastrup and Freienwill (all in Amt Hürup), Jarplund-Weding, Handewitt (Amt Handewitt), Harrislee (Amt-free community) and Aabenraa Municipality on the Danish shore of the Flensburg Firth.
Constituent communities The town of Flensburg is divided into 13 communities, which are further divided into 38 statistical areas. Constituent communities have a two-digit number and the statistical areas a three-digit number.
The communities with their statistical areas:
01 Altstadt (Old Town) Lies somewhat down towards the sea rather than right downtown. 011 St. Nikolai (Danish: Skt. Nikolaj) 012 St. Marien 013 Nordertor (Danish: Nørreport) 02 Neustadt (Danish: Nystaden) 021 Duburg (Danish: Duborg) 022 Neustadt Nord 03 Nordstadt (Danish: Nordstaden) 031 Kreuz (Danish: Kors) 032 Galwik (Danish: Galvig) 033 Klues (Danish: Klus) 04 Westliche Höhe 041 Stadtpark (Danish: Byparken) 042 Marienhölzung (Danish: Frueskov) 043 St. Gertrud 044 Friedhof 05 Friesischer Berg (Danish: Friserbjerg) 051 Exe (Danish: Exe or Eksercerløkke) 052 Museumsberg 053 Friedenshügel (Danish: Fredshøj) 06 Weiche (Danish: Sporskifte) 061 Sophienhof (Danish: Sophiegård) 062 Schäferhaus (Danish: Skæferhus) 07 Südstadt 071 Martinsberg (Danish: Martinsbjerg) 072 Rude (Danish: Ryde) 073 Peelwatt (Danish: Pælevad) 08 Sandberg (Danish: Sandbjerg) 081 Achter de Möhl (Danish: Fiskergaarden) 082 Adelbylund 083 Sünderup (Danish: Synderup) 09 Jürgensby (Danish: Jørgensby) 091 St. Johannis (Danish: Sankt Hans) 092 St. Jürgen (Danish: Sankt Jørgen) 093 Jürgensgaard (Danish: Jørgensgaard) 094 Sender Flensburg-Jürgensby 10 Fruerlund 101 Blasberg (Danish: Blæsbjerg) 102 Bohlberg (Danish: Bolsbjerg) 103 Fruerlund Hof 11 Mürwik (Danish: Mørvig) 111 Stützpunkt 112 Osbek (Danish: Osbæk) 113 Wasserloos (Danish: Vandløs) 114 Friedheim 115 Solitüde (Danish: Solitude) 12 Engelsby 121 Engelsby Süd 122 Vogelsang (Danish: Fuglsang) 13 Tarup 130 Tarup
Climate
History
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 became one of the most important in the Duchy of Schleswig. Unlike Holstein, Schleswig did not belong to the German Holy Roman Empire. Therefore, Flensburg was not a member of the Hanseatic League, but did maintain contacts with it.
Historians presume that there were several reasons this spot was chosen for settlement: Shelter from heavy winds A trade route between Holstein and North Jutland (namely the Hærvejen or Ochsenweg, a series of roads between Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland, possibly dating from the Bronze Age) The Angelnway: a trade route between North Frisia and Angeln A good herring fishery
Herrings, especially kippered, 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 much of Flensburg's population. Lepers were strictly isolated at the St.-Jürgen-Hospital (Helligåndshospital, built before 1290), far outside the town's gates, where St. Jürgen Church is now. 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, citizens made 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. But the Thirty Years' War put an end to this boom time. The town was becoming Protestant and 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 was then reintegrated 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 now only one active rum distillery in Flensburg, "A. H. Johannsen".
Prussian and German rule Between 1460 and 1864, Flensburg was, after Copenhagen, the Kingdom of Denmark's second-biggest port, but it passed to the Kingdom of Prussia after the Second Schleswig War in 1864. The Battle of Flensburg was fought on February 6, 1864: near the city a small Hungarian mounted regiment chased a Danish infantry and Dragoon regiment. At the election for the North German Reichstag in 1867, there had still been a Danish majority in Flensburg, and it continued until around 1880. However, thereafter, the majority shifted partly due to immigration of workers from other parts of Germany and because the bureaucracy was largely replaced with Germans from the south. Today, a sizable Danish community remains in the town. Some estimates put the percentage of Flensburgers who belong to it as high as 25%; other estimates put it much lower. The SSW political party representing the minority usually gains 20–25% of the votes in local elections, but not all its voters are Danes. Before 1864, Danes consisted of the vast majority, which belonged to what is now the minority; even today there are many Danish surnames in the Flensburg telephone directory (Asmussen, Claussen, Jacobsen, Jensen, Petersen, etc.). However, the upper classes at that time, comprising merchants, bureaucrats, academics, and the clergy, were predominantly German.
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 by a large margin to stay in Germany.
In return for this pro-German vote, Flensburg was given a large hall, the "Deutsches Haus", which the government endowed as "thanks for German loyalty".
World War II During the Second World War, the town was left almost unscathed by the air raids that devastated other German cities. But in 1943, 20 children died when a nursery school was bombed, and shortly after the war ended, an explosion at a local munitions storage site claimed many victims. Four prisoners of war (two Norwegians, one Australian, and one New Zealander) who took part in the Great Escape from the Stalag Luft III POW camp were captured by the Germans in the city, and later murdered in another location.
In 1945, Admiral Karl Dönitz, who was briefly President (Reichspräsident) of Nazi Germany after Adolf Hitler 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 Dönitz, 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 them in the Navy School in Mürwik (). The Berlin Declaration promulgated on 5 June formalized the dissolution. 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, making Flensburg a city (Großstadt) under one traditional definition. The population later sank below that mark.
In the years after the Second World War, South Schleswig, and particularly Flensburg, had 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 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 remained an independent (district-free) town.
Amalgamations