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Schleswig-Holstein: Districtless town Flensburg

Area: 56.36 km²
Population: 86,900

It was in about the 12th century a knight with the name Fleno built a towercastle just inside of the harbour of Flensburg. In the place, where this castle is said to have been, there is now the oldest church of the town: Sankt Johannis. (look at the shield of Flensburg, in which you can see beside the towercastle also the symbols of both dukedoms Schleswig and Holstein!). It is also said that all traders, who wanted to pass through at the castle, had to pay money to Fleno. But this is probably a legend, because there is no proof to be found in the history.

In 1284 Flensburg got the right to be a city. In this year (1284) the citizens started to build St. Marien (a church) and 100 years later they began building the church St. Nicolai at the Südermarkt (southern market). Between this two centers - in the meantime connected by a pedestrian mall - the life of the city takes place, also today.

In Flensburg two nationalities and cultures fought since centuries to get a dominant influence: Those were the german and the danish, the middle-european and the scandinavian culture.

In 1411 the danish Queen Margarete I. began building the Duburg (Ducastle). She hoped to get the Flensburg for the danish kingdom. - One year later she died by the pest on her ship in the harbour of Flensburg.

Since the middle of the 15th century the people in the city spoke the german language (really the old lower german language) but politically the danish influence was decisive. The king of Danmark was in his characteristic as the duke of Schleswig also the ruler over Flensburg. He made the town for the heir of the Hanse (the trader federation from Luebeck in the middelage) in Danmark and Norway for a short time.

In the 16th century - this time was the real heydays of Flensburg - the town had 5000 inhabititents and 200 ships. With this it was the biggest trading harbour city of the danish crown, even bigger than Kopenhagen was. 200 years later, after the 30-year-war in the middel Europe (1618 - 1648) and some fires and plundering, only 9 ships subsided in the harbour, which was flatening due to sand deposits.

The commerce with West India (islands in the Carribean sea) and the import of sugar cane brought the town a new uplift. In the year 1794 there where 150 independent distilleries in the town, which produced the masterly achievement of the spirit industry of Flensburg: Rum.

Like Margarete (Queen Margarete I.) in the past, the prussian State tried to bind the town to Prussia with generous buildings and spending money for the town after 1866. In 1910 the german emperor personally opend the navy school in Mürwik. The buildings of this school were build in an architectural style like the Marienburg (near Danzig, now a polish town), meant to show the forward urge of the wilhelminisch time (the time of the emperor in Germany in the 19. century). The similar style of building showed the connection to the former "Deutschen Ritterorden".

(This "Ritterorden" had after ending the crusades to Palestine lost its task. They found a new task in the east and spread out the german spirit and culture during the german cultivation of east: East- and Westprussia and other regions. The Marienburg, near Danzig, was build by this "Ritterorden"!)

It was surely a furious irony of history, that in this navy school buildings, which should become the foundation stone of the expected world wide international standing of the german Empire, on May 7th 1945 the successor of Hitler, Großadmiral Dönitz, had to accept the unconditionally capitulation documents after WWII.

This way the hope to get world wide international standing which changed in the meantime to a barbarous state in Germany, hat finally to be abandoned in the navy school of Flensburg-Mürvik. Inspite of this deep disillusionment and a short time of danish euphoria, the people of Flensburg wanted to be germans. Even in the referendum in 1920, after WWI, the inhabitients of Flenburg had decide this way and so they kept on also after WWII.

As a result of this, the town has - also today - a very strong minority of danish people. The relationship between Dans and Germans in Flensburg is today without exeption, mostly relaxed and without trouble.

Sharon D. Hagler