Between duty, right and compulsion – the Danish minority in the German army, 1914–1918

ABSTRACT

The following article explores the collective identifications (or self-perceptions) among members of the Danish-speaking minority in the Imperial German Army during the First World War, including views on German conscription and military service. Danish historians have traditionally portrayed the minority as soldiers who only served with reluctance, hoping for German defeat in the war and a ‘reunification’ between their home-region, North Schleswig, and the State of Denmark. However, the vast majority of Danish-speakers were well integrated in the German army and served as reliable soldiers throughout the course of the war. At first glance, this seems to constitute a contradiction, but this article will illustrate how members of the Danish minority, in order to serve as loyal soldiers, on the one hand reconciled ideas of both Danish and regional affiliation, as well as ancestral loyalty and civic rights, with feelings of coercion, discrimination and German enmity on the other. Furthermore, feelings of obligation, responsibility and civic duty was also connected with German military service. It will be argued that the key to understand the sometimes-contradictory self-perceptions of the Danish minority soldiers lays in how many-sided understandings of community encased or negotiated feelings of reluctance. If the war experiences of the Danish-speaking minority are viewed in a purely national perspective, it become difficult to explain the various forms of self-perception present in the source material: For instance, German military service could be justified as a way to secure Danish interests regionally within the German state, and a way to improve civic rights for the minority group. In this way, the self-perceptions of a minority soldiers could be Danish in terms of national affiliation, but to a high degree collective ‘identity’ also had the regional community at its centre.

KEYWORDS:

• German army
• Danish minority
• identity
• Military service
• War experience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For an overview of the war graves of North Schleswig soldiers, see the dissemination project ‘Den Store Krig 1914–1918ʹ run by the Danish Museum ‘Museum Sønderjylland. Accessed February 22^nd, 2021, https://denstorekrig1914-1918.dk/soenderjyder-paa-soldaterkirkegaarde/.

2. Adriansen, ”Sønderjyske soldatergrave,” 322–5.

3. Ulrich and Ziemann, German Soldiers in the Great War, 11.

4. Adriansen, ”Første Verdenskrig 1914–1918,” 127–9; Frandsen, Dänemark – der kleine Nachbar im Norden; and Christensen, ”Fighting for the Kaiser,” 274.

5. The article is based on the author’s PhD dissertation, which was successfully defended at Aarhus University in June 2020 and e-published in September 2020, see Christensen, ”Vi ved bedst selv, hvad vi er.”

6. Christensen, ”Fighting for the Kaiser,” 268; and Hansen, ”De nationale bevægelsers folkelige gennembrud,” 200–4. A similar development was seen in the Polish-speaking regions of West Prussia and Posen, see Watson, ”Fighting for another Fatherland,” 1140.

7. Christensen, Danskere på Vestfronten, 477; Adriansen and Hansen, Sønderjyderne og Den store Krig; and Christensen, ”Vi ved bedst selv, hvad vi er,” 99. For information about Danish-speakers on the Eastern Front, see Wolf, Sønderjyder på Østfronten i 1. Verdenskrig, 13; and Christensen, Nørregård and Poulsen, Fra Verdenskrig til Borgerkrig, 10.

8. Becker-Christensen, ”Da Sønderjylland blev delt,” 255.

9. Nørregård, ”Sønderjyder ved fronterne,” 95; Christensen, Danskere på Vestfronten, 11–13; Christensen, ”Fighting for the Kaiser,” 267.

10. Barth, Ethnic groups and boundaries; Brubaker and Cooper, Beyond ”Identity”, 1–47, Jenkins, Social Identity, 102–117. For an example of the negotiable nature of collective identification in a First World War context, see Esculies and Fiol, Spanish or Catalan?, 1–15.

11. Adriansen, Mindesmærker i Danmark for faldne Sønderjyder, 289–294; Sørensen, Den Store Krig, 11.

12. Adriansen, Ivan fra Odessa; Falkner, Faneflugt?; Marckmann, Ofrene fra den store krig; Adriansen and Hansen, Sønderjyderne og Den store Krig.

13. Christensen, Danskere på Vestfronten. For a critical analyses of collective identification among Danish-speaking soldiers, which emphasizes the presence of a distinct regional sense of self, see Christensen, Nordslesvigeren er nr. 1, 6–36; Christensen, ‘Vi ved bedst selv, hvem vi er’.

14. Christensen, Fighting for the Kaiser, 267–281; Christensen, National Identity and Veteran Culture, 57–80.

15. Watson, Fighting for another fatherland, 1137–1166; Kramer, Wackes at war, 105–121; Ziemann, Fahnenflucht im deutschen Heer, 124–129.

16. Watson, Fighting for another fatherland, 1137–1167. From 1915, soldiers from the Danish minority were also dispersed among regiments from all over Germany. This may have been deliberate, but was more likely caused by the high casualty rates at this time, see Christensen, Danskere på Vestfronten, 151–152.

17. Kramer, Wackes at war, 105–121.

18. Falkner, Faneflugt?, 17. From 1866, the Danish minority had centred its political work on Article 5 of the Austro-Prussian peace agreement, which stated that a plebiscite was to determine whether the northern districts of Schleswig should be ceded to Denmark. This policy of protest fell short when Prussia revoked the article in 1878, see Hansen, De nationale bevægelsers folkelige gennembrud, 200–204.

19. Christensen, Danskere på Vestfronten, 453–455; Christensen, Fighting for the Kaiser, 274; Histories of two hundred and fifty-one divisions of the German Army, 286–288.

20. Christensen, Danskere på Vestfronten, 135–139; Nørregård and Rasmussen, Den Sorte Dag ved Moulin.

21. Christensen, “Vi ved bedst selv, hvad vi er, 304–336; see also e.g. Rigsarkivet, Dau, Nicolai, RA0134, letter from Thorvald Dau, 12 February 1918.

22. Christensen, Danskere på Vestfronten, 281–282; Christensen, Fighting for the Kaiser, 267–281; Kramer, Wackes at war, 105–121.

23. Kreutzmann, Når retsind fører ordet, 119 (my translation from Danish).

24. For an example of this view see e.g. the educational website ‘Den Sønderjyske Historiekanon’ intended for the upper secondary school level. Accessed February 22^nd, 2021, http://historiekanon.dk/hoejdepunkter/foerste-verdenskrig/.

25. The most well-known is probably the soldier Kresten Andresen, who fell on the Somme in 1916 and whose letters and journals were published shortly after the war (Rørdam, Krestens Breve).

26. Adriansen, Mindesmærker i Danmark for faldne Sønderjyder, 294.

27. Ibid., 289–318.

28. On ‘Heimat’, see Applegate, A Nation of Provincials; Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor.

29. Rigsarkivet, H.V. Clausen, RA0112 (my translation from Danish).

30. Rigsarkivet, Nybøl, Peter Moos, RA0523, letter from Hans Lildholt Moos, 3 December 1915 (my translation from Danish).

31. Rørdam, Sønderjyden Mikael Steffensen, 84.

32. Ibid., 58, 69.

33. Rigsarkivet, Jensen, RA2099, letter from Mikael Steffensen, 8 September 1917.

34. See Henningsen and Hansen, Sønderjylland og Slesvig, 15–24; Christensen, National Identity and Veteran Culture in a Border Region, 66.

35. See Skar, To Faldne Brødre, 47.

36. See Henningsen, Sanitetssoldat på Østfronten.

37. Skar, To Faldne Brødre, 45 (my translation from Danish).

38. Cf. Brubaker and Cooper, Beyond ‘Identity’, 1–47; Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, 60–62; Barth, Ethnic groups and boundaries; Jenkins, Social Identity, 102–117.

39. Christensen, Danskere på Vestfronten, 277–282; Bergholt, Pligtens Vej, 14–15.

40. See for instance Kreutzmann, Når retsind fører ordet, 102; Rigsarkivet, Bill, RA0055/-4, 9 July 1915.

41. Christensen, National identity and veteran culture in a border region, 79.

42. See Henningsen, Sanitetssoldat på Østfronten, 28, 198.

43. Rigsarkivet, Nybøl, Peter Moos, RA0523, letter from Hans Lildholdt Moos, 21st of August 1914 (my translation from Danish).

44. On the performance and general reliability of German regiments raised in North Schleswig see Christensen, Danskere på Vestfronten, 453–455; Histories of two hundred and fifty-one divisions of the German Army, 286–288.

45. Christensen, Danskere på Vestfronten, 140–169, 264–291.

46. Ziemann, War Experience in Rural Germany.

47. Christensen, ‘Vi ved bedst selv, hvad vi er’, 113–169.

48. Christensen, Danskere på Vestfronten, 294–299, 58–71; Christensen, National identity and veteran culture in a border region, 70–73.

49. Henningsen, Sanitetssoldat på Østfronten, passim; Christensen, Nordslesvigeren er nr. 1, 6–36.