Editing Flensburg (section)

===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>