Plebiscite and the Principle of Minority Rights

The Second War of Schleswig ends in defeat for the Danes. In a tit-for-tat move, from 1864 onwards, Schleswig sees a major undertaking in the Germanisation of the duchy, which is equally met with resistance by the Danes. The Danes in Schleswig were allowed, as part of the peace treaty, to

369 Even though this very solution to the Schleswig problem had already been suggested in in the 1866 Treaty of Prague’s Article 5. Something the Germans withdrew from as they realized that their support for annexation was lower than anticipated before the war. In: M. Qvortrup, Referendums and Ethnic Conflict (University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated, 2014). 91

370 Christensen and Adriansen, The Second Schleswig War 1864. Prelude, Events and Consequences. 43

opt for Danish citizenship of which 25,000 optants had done by 1881.³⁷¹ The optants in Schleswig were presented with new difficulties relating to their children. As part of the German retribution, Danish Schools in Schleswig had become monolingual with German as the language of education by 1888.³⁷² Furthermore, the children born after 1864 were de facto stateless; neither having Danish citizenship as they were not born there, nor being naturalized by Germany. The children would be without any rights as a minority and remain stateless until 1907, when bilateral relations between Denmark and Prussia improved so that they were able to be naturalized.³⁷³ Yet, in spite of improved relations, organizations formed for the betterment of relations between the ethnic communities (e.g. the ‘North Schleswig Pastors Association’ and a ‘Peace Association’), the general trend would be dominated by organizations dividing the peoples along ethnic lines.³⁷⁴ This furthermore exemplifies the need for a system of minority rights under which, what follows becomes moot and void: When meeting this ramped up pressure from the German majority, the Danish minority would go on to found cultural and educational associations to preserve their identity, a move that seemingly cemented their isolation within Schleswig. The period leading up to the First World War thus saw a rise in völkisch-nationalism (ethnic-nationalism) amongst the Germans. ³⁷⁵ The war, when it broke out in 1914, would become the prelude to the solution of the Schleswig-Holstein question.

By the end of the war, the issue of Schleswig presents itself primarily with the problem of irredentism: that is, people—a minority—belonging to one nation living on the wrong side of the border. The solution would be a referendum drawn along lingual and ethno-nationalistic lines. Languages are territorially

371 Peter Thaler, "A Tale of Three Communities: National Identification in the German–Danish Borderlands," Scandinavian Journal of History 32, no. 2 (2007).

372 Ibid.

373 Ibid.

374 Ibid.

375 Eric Kurlander, "The Rise of Völkisch-Nationalism and the Decline of German Liberalism: A Comparison of Liberal Political Cultures in Schleswig-Holstein and Silesia 1912-1924," European Review of History 9, no. 1 (2002).

bound markers for ethnicities within a regional complex;³⁷⁶ thus the linguistic component becomes one of the rudimentary ways in which to identify and define the principle of nationality in relation to an irredentist problem and furthermore to distinguish to which country or nation-state a minority wants to belong; or rather to extract the wishes of a people, as they make up the sovereign in a democratic system. The irredentist problem would be solved by plebiscite, a solution that all parties would accept. Denmark petitioned the allies at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to include a plebiscite for Schleswig; a petition the allied powers acquiesced. The plebiscite that was organized in Schleswig for dividing the duchy along ethnic and lingual lines and as such falls under a right-sizing referendum. Unlike the Norwegian secession referendum, a right-sizing referendum sees “votes dealing with the drawing of disputed borders between countries.”³⁷⁷ In the case of Schleswig, this right-sizing referendum of 1920 follows the principles of nationality, democracy, sovereignty, and sets the stage for minority rights.

The major innovation of that [Schleswig] referendum, the first to be held in conjunction with the Versailles treaty, consisted of the prereferendum division of the referendum area into two zones:

Zone 1 along the Danish border and Zone 2 located geographically below the first zone, thus not touching the prereferendum Danish border … Each zone voted separately, first the northern zone touching Denmark, then if, and only if, Zone 1 had voted to join Denmark, the second zone would vote in its turn a month later. If the electors of Zone 1 had favored Germany, no vote would have been held in the second zone to avoid national enclaves.³⁷⁸

The result, which saw North-Schleswig rejoin Denmark and South-Schleswig remain in Germany, also had to account for those German or Danish peoples

376 Jean A Laponce, "Do Languages Behave Like Animals?," International journal of the sociology of language 103, no. 1 (1993).

377 Qvortrup, Nationalism, Referendums and Democracy: Voting on Ethnic Issues and Independence. 134

378 Jean Laponce, "Language and Sovereignty Referendums: The Convergence Effect," Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 18, no. 1 (2012).

remaining on the wrong side of the border. The following solution for the remaining irredentists is presented with respecting the outcome of the referendum via supplementing protections of those still on the wrong side of the border with minority rights. These rights are enshrined in law in both Denmark and Germany, and importantly, protected independently of each other. The principles of the solution of Schleswig was not changed during the Second World War, even after Germany occupied Denmark and could easily have redrawn the border again during its annexation policies of Germanic areas outside Germany in reunifying the German volk (people) with little or no heed paid to the Danish majority in North-Schleswig. Hitler’s Germany even went to the lengths of respecting the Danish minority’s organizations of a cultural or linguistic nature.

The principle of minority rights is after 1955 unilaterally guaranteed for by both sides with the Bonn-Copenhagen Declarations.³⁷⁹ The guarantees given by Denmark are not conditional of those same guarantees given by Germany. It becomes a gesture of goodwill between the states, which in turn builds and fosters a trusting relationship in the other amongst the two peoples irrespective of inclinations based in language or nationality. By the minority-rights principle, the guarantee of the state not using overwhelming force has stood since the referendum, and furthermore, the state does not either register individuals of the minority as such. By giving cultural and political rights for societal organization, e.g. schools, voting rights, or having an exogenous media, the end result becomes advantageous to all and has eliminated the causes of tensions of the past. The border region of Schleswig has thus become an area within which multiculturalism has thrived, at the very least amongst Germans and Danes. Two peoples who were able to transcend the past experiences of history and go through a transformation to a mutually beneficial relationship built on of reciprocal respect and trust.

379 "Bonn-Copenhagen Declarations."