Editing Flensburg (section)

==History==

===Middle Ages===
[[File:Stadtrechtsurkunde Flensburgs von 1284 (The Town Charter of Flensburg).JPG|thumb|The town charter of Flensburg (1284)]]
[[File:Nordertor im Schnee (Flensburg, Januar 2014).JPG|thumb|The [[Nordertor]], a town gate, in winter]]
Flensburg was founded at the latest by 1200 at the innermost end of the [[Flensburg Firth]] by [[Denmark|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 [[kipper]]ed, brought about the blossoming of the town's trade in the [[Middle Ages]]. They were sent inland and to almost every [[Europe]]an country.

On 28 October 1412, Queen [[Margaret I of Denmark]] died of the [[Bubonic plague|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 rat]]s), "red" [[dysentery]] and other scourges killed much of Flensburg's population. [[Leprosy|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 tide]]s 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 [[Scandinavia]]n area. Flensburg merchants were active as far away as the [[Mediterranean Sea|Mediterranean]], [[Greenland]], and the [[Caribbean Sea|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 [[Protestantism|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 [[United States Virgin Islands|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]].<ref>{{cite news | url=https://taz.de/!5974769/| title=The Call of Rum | author=FRANK KEIL | newspaper=Die Tageszeitung: Taz | publisher=[[Die Tageszeitung]]| date=2023-11-25 | page=51 | access-date=2024-02-16|language=de}}</ref>

The rum produced in Flensburg was then reintegrated into [[West Indies|West Indian]] trade routes, which as of 1864 moved away from the Danish West Indies to the [[Colony of Jamaica|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".
[[File:Flensburg_Braun-Hogenberg.jpg|thumb|250px|Flensburg, early 17th century]]

===History as a German town===
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 on February 6, 1864: near the city a small [[Hungarians|Hungarian]] mounted regiment chased a [[Denmark|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 [[South Schleswig Voter Federation|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 [[1920 Schleswig plebiscites|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".

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.

[[File:Die Sportschule Flensburg-Mürwik (Mai 2014), Bild 002.JPG|thumb|The Sportschool in [[Mürwik]], 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 of Germany (1919–1945)|President]] (''Reichspräsident'') of [[Nazi Germany]] after [[Adolf Hitler]] appointed him his successor and then killed himself, fled to Flensburg with what was left of [[Flensburg government|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 [[Naval Academy at Mürwik|Navy School in Mürwik]] ({{langx|de|Marineschule 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.forces.net/news/wwii/remnants-nazi-power-75-years-flensburg-government|publisher=forces.net|access-date=2024-03-30|title=Remnants Of Nazi Power: 75 Years Since 'The Flensburg Government'|date=2020-05-22|author =Rob Olver}}</ref>

===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 (city)|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&nbsp;639&nbsp;ha. Beginning in 1874, the following communities or rural areas (''Gemarkungen'') were annexed to the town of Flensburg:

{| class="wikitable"
|- style="background:#efefef;"
! Year !! Place(s) !! Area added in ha
|-
| 1874 || Süder- and Norder-St. Jürgen || style="text-align:right;"| 36
|-
| 1874 || Fischerhof || style="text-align:right;"| 3
|-
| 27 July 1875 || Duburg || style="text-align:right;"| 10.5
|-
| 1877 || Hohlwege and Bredeberg || style="text-align:right;"| 5.5
|-
| 1 December 1900 || Jürgensgaarde || style="text-align:right;"| 205
|-
| 1 April 1909 || Klues || style="text-align:right;"| 19
|-
| 1 April 1910 || Twedt, Twedterholz/Fruerlund and Engelsby || style="text-align:right;"| 1458
|-
| 1916 || part of [[Klues Forest]] (incl. open waters) || style="text-align:right;"| 146.5
|-
| 26 April 1970 || Adelbylund || style="text-align:right;"| 132
|-
| 10 February 1971 || demerger of Wassersleben Beach || style="text-align:right;"| -147.5
|-
| 22 March 1974 || Sünderup and Tarup || style="text-align:right;"| ?
|}

===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.
<div>
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" style="float:right;margin-left:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em"
|-
|[[File:Flensburg Bevoelkerungsentwicklung 01 KMJ.png|400px|Population development]]
|}
</div>
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! style="background:#efefef;" | Year
! style="background:#efefef;" | Population figure
|-
| 1436 || style="text-align:right;"| 3000
|-
| 1600 || style="text-align:right;"| 6000
|-
| 1760 || style="text-align:right;"| 6842
|-
| 1835 || style="text-align:right;"| 12,483
|-
| 1 December 1875 ¹ || style="text-align:right;"| 26,474
|-
| 1 December 1890 ¹ || style="text-align:right;"| 36,894
|-
| 1 December 1900 ¹ || style="text-align:right;"| 48,937
|-
| 1 December 1910 ¹ || style="text-align:right;"| 60,922
|-
| 16 June 1925 ¹ || style="text-align:right;"| 63,139
|-
| 16 June 1933 ¹ || style="text-align:right;"| 66,580
|-
| 17 May 1939 ¹ || style="text-align:right;"| 70,871
|-
| 13 September 1950 ¹ || style="text-align:right;"| 102,832
|-
| 6 June 1961 ¹ || style="text-align:right;"| 98,464
|-
| 27 May 1970 ¹ || style="text-align:right;"| 95,400
|-
| 30 June 1975 || style="text-align:right;"| 93,900
|-
| 30 June 1980 || style="text-align:right;"| 88,200
|-
| 30 June 1985 || style="text-align:right;"| 86,900
|-
| 27 May 1987 ¹ || style="text-align:right;"| 86,554
|-
| 30 June 1997 || style="text-align:right;"| 86,100
|-
| 31 December 2003 || style="text-align:right;"| 85,300
|-
| 31 December 2012 || style="text-align:right;"| 89,375

|}
¹ Census results