The negotiation of national and regional identity during the Schleswig-plebiscite following the First World War

Abstract

After the First World War, five plebiscites were held to delineate the borders of Germany, Denmark, reestablished Poland, Austria, Hungary and newly established Yugoslavia. The territories subjugated for the plebiscites were border territories, where national identification had not been clear during the nineteenth century. Here, we analyse the German and Danish plebiscite campaign in the Schleswig region on the basis of visual material used of both sides. The focus lies on the iconic use of national and regional symbols to create a certain type of national identification. In the Schleswig case, it is evident that both sides used concepts of Heimat and region and tried to apply them to their national projects. There was a stronger focus on regional identity in the German campaign, though. It used the regional, Schleswig–Holstein heritage and symbols of the region's 1848 revolt against the Danish kingdom, but clearly tied it to a national, German identification in contrast to the factual historic context of the plebiscite area being a cultural and linguistic border zone between the evolving Danish and German national sphere. Thus, the plebiscite functioned as the final nationalizing measure in a hitherto transnational and transcultural border zone.

Keywords::

• plebiscites
• self-determination
• First World War peace settlements
• Schleswig
• Heimat
• regional identity
• national identity
• nationalization

Notes

^1. Email: [email protected]

^2.Judson, Introduction, 4.

^3.Wolff, ‘Traveller's View of Central Europe’.

^4. , Ethnic Origin of Nations and National Identity.

^5.Anderson, Imagined Communities; Gellner, Nations and Nationalism and Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition.

^6.Wolff, ‘Revising Eastern Europe’ and Gellner, Nations and Nationalism.

^7. See especially Judson, Guardians of the Nation.

^8. , ‘Die Rückkehr der Russophilen in die Ukrainische Geschichte’, ‘Grenzgänge und Grenzgänger in der Geschichte der Ukraine’.

^9.Steiner, The Lights That Failed, 256–313.

^10. See, for example, Applegate, ‘A Europe of Regions’.

^11.Zahra, ‘Imagined Non-Communities’.

^12. Wolff, ‘Revising Eastern Europe’, 115.

^13.Pohl, ‘Demokratisches Schleswig–Holstein’.

^14.Klatt, ‘Nationale Volksabstimmungen und politische Kultur’.

^15. Cf. Schwensen and Adriansen, Von der deutschen Niederlage zur Teilung Schleswigs, 32.

^16.Adriansen and Doege, Deutsch oder Dänisch, 13.

^17. Cf. Kummer, Nicht mit Gewehren, sondern mit Plakaten wurde der Feind geschlagen; Meyer, ‘Visuelle Kommunikation und Politische Öffentlichkeit’ and Borsò, Liermann, and Merziger, Transfigurationen des Politischen.

^18. On the conflict on the historically correct naming of the territory, see Henningsen and Hansen, ‘Sønderjylland” og “Schleswig’.

^19. Judson, Guardians of the Nation, 34.

^20.Frandsen, Holsten ihelstaten and Hansen, Hjemmetyskheden i Nordslesvig.

^21.Jahnke, ‘Die Borussifizierung des Schleswig–Holsteinischen Geschichtsbewusstseins’.

^22.Hoffmann et al., Der Nationale Gegensatz, 41.

^23. This is evident by continuous publications of memories, diaries and letters in local historical journals ‘SønderjyskeÅrbøger’, ‘SønderjyskMånedsskrift’, ‘Fra Als og Sundeved’ as well as activities by local historical associations.

^24.Hanssen, Fra Krigstiden, 63.

^25.Fink, Da Sønderjylland blev delt, 12–13.

^26. Ibid., 55–7.

^27.Kaarsted, Påskekrisen 1920.

^28.Fink, ‘Den første streg på kortet’.

^29.Lassen, Valg mellem tysk og dansk, 166–8.

^30. For the exact local results see the map in Adriansen and Doege, Deutsch oder Dänisch? 12.

^31.Klatt, ‘Fliessende Grenzen in einer Grenzstadt’.

^32. Cf. Wambaugh, Plebiscites Since the World War, 91.

^33.http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/478875/propaganda, accessed 16 August 2012.

^34.Messinger, British Propaganda, 1.

^35. On WW I-propaganda, see a.o. Eisermann, Pressephotographie und informationskontrolleim ‘ersten Weltkrieg’; Gallagher, Great War and the Female Gaze; Ginzburg, ‘Your Country Needs You’; Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in World War I; Messinger, British Propaganda; Nelson, German Soldier Newspapers of the First World War, and Rudolph, Männerikonographie.

^36. Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in World War I, 77–9.

^37. Ginzburg, ‘Your Country Needs You’.

^38. Gallagher, Great War and the Female Gaze.

^39. This was later argued again in the folk-etymologic studies of Claus Eskildsen, cf. Eskildsen, Dansk Grænselære, and also played a role in the border conflict after 1945, cf. Klatt, Flygtningene og Sydslesvigs danske bevægelse.

^40. The two almost identical Golden Horns were probably forged in the fifth century C.E. Both were discovered on a field in Schleswig, one in 1634 and the other in 1734. As old archeological findings, they played an important role in the Danish national romanticism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Cf. Adriansen, Nationale Symboler i Det Danske Rige 1830–2000, 142–4.

^41. The phrase ‘up ewigungedeelt’ stems from the capitulation of Ribe in 1460, where the Schleswig–Holstein nobility elected Danish king Christian II as Duke of Schleswig and Count of Holstein. It became the core slogan of the Schleswig–Holstein movement in the nineteenth century, claiming the duchies' eternal unity against Danish aims to (re-)integrate Schleswig into the Danish kingdom. It is still highly controversial among historians, whether the claim to territorial indivisibility really was inherent in the original document. Cf. Jahnke, ‘Dat se bliven ewich tosamende ungedelt’.

^42. Pohl, Demokratisches Schleswig–Holstein.

^43. Frandsen, Holsten ihelstaten.

^44.Klatt, ‘Mobile Regions’.

^45.Brandt, Frevert, and Grone, ‘Deutschlands Söhne und Töchter’.

^46.Adriansen and Doege, Dansk eller tysk, 48.

^47. The Danish poster was sent to the Polish propaganda committee by the Danish side as a draft. The Poles changed the language and they hung an amulet about the neck of the child on their poster. Cf. Wambaugh, Plebiscites since the World War, 79.

^48.Confino, ‘Nation as a Local Metaphor’ and Larkey, ‘New Places, New Identities’.

^49. Applegate, ‘Europe of Regions’, 1177.

^50.Confino and Skaria, ‘Local Life of Nationhood’, 9.

^51. Klatt, ‘Mobile Regions’.

^52. See Klatt, ‘Die Sozialdemokratie in Nordschleswig und die nationale Frage’ and Klatt, ‘Internationalisten zwischen deutsch und dänisch’.

^53. Wambaugh, Plebiscites Since the World War, 78.