Middle Ages , a town gate, in winter 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 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 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. , at the
Naval Academy Mürwik, where the seat of the Flensburg Government was located in 1945 (photo 2014) 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 Until the middle of the 19th century, Flensburg's municipal area comprised an area of 2 639 ha. Beginning in 1874, 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 ==Danish minority==