SCHLESWIG HOLSTEIN QUESTION the name given to the whole complex of diplomatic and other issues arising in the 19th century out of the relations of the two "Elbe duchies," Schleswig and Holstein, to the Danish Crown on the one hand and the German Confederation on the other, which came to a crisis with the extinction of the male line of the reigning house of Denmark by the death of King Frederick VII. on Nov. 15, 1863. The central question was whether the two duchies did or did not constitute an integral part of the dominions of the Danish Crown, with which they had been more or less intimately asso ciated for centuries. This involved the purely legal question, raised by the death of the last common male heir to both Den mark and the duchies, as to the proper succession in the latter, and the constitutional questions arising out of the relations of the duchies to the Danish crown, to each other, and of Holstein to the German Confederation. There was also the national ques tion : the ancient racial antagonism between German and Dane, intensified by the tendency, characteristic of the i9th century, to the consolidation of nationalities. Lastly, there was the inter national question : the rival ambitions of the German powers in volved, and beyond them the interests of other European States, notably that of Great Britain, in preventing the rise of a German sea-power in the north.
Early History.—From time immemorial the country north of the Elbe had been the battle-ground of Danes and Germans. Danish scholars. point to the prevalence of Danish place-names far southward into the German-speaking districts as evidence that at least the whole of Schleswig was at one time Danish, i.e., place-names according to popular usage, not the official names given in German maps (e.g., Haderslev for Hadersleben. See La Question du Slesvig, p. 61 seq., "Moms de lieux"). German scholars claim it, on the other hand, as essentially German. That the duchy of Schleswig, or South Jutland (Sonderjylland), had been from time immemorial a Danish fief was, indeed, not in dispute, nor was the fact that Holstein had been from the first a fief of the Germano-Roman empire. The controversy in the
19th century raged round the "indissoluble" union of the two duchies, the principle of which had been secured by the Charter of Ribe, signed by the Danish King Christian I., in 146o, after his election by the respective estates as count of Holstein and duke of Schleswig. The "Eider Danes" (i.e., the party at Copen hagen which aimed at making the Eider, the southern boundary of Schleswig, the frontier of the Danish kingdom proper) claimed Schleswig as an integral part of the Danish monarchy, which, on the principle of the union, involved the retention of Holstein also ; the Germans claimed Holstein as a part of Germany and, there fore, on the same historic principle, Schleswig also.
The Congress of Vienna, instead of settling the questions in volved in the relations of the duchies of Denmark once for all, sought to stereotype the old divisions in the interests of Germany. In 1806, of ter the dissolution of the Holy Roman empire, the duchies had been virtually incorporated in Denmark. This settle ment was reversed by the Congress, and while Schleswig re mained as before, Holstein and Lauenburg were included in the new German Confederation. The opening up of the Schleswig Holstein question thus became sooner or later inevitable. The Germans of Holstein, influenced by the new national enthusiasm evoked by the War of Liberation, resented more than ever at tempts to treat them as part of the Danish monarchy and, en couraged by the sympathy of the Germans in Schleswig, tried to reassert in the interests of Germanism the old principle of the unity of the duchies. The political atmosphere, however, had changed at Copenhagen also ; and their demands were met by the Danes with a nationalist temper as intractable as their own. Affairs were ripe for a crisis, which the threatened failure of the common male heirs to the kingdom and the duchies precipitated.