Palmerston puzzled over it. Prussia fought Denmark and Austria over it. And Count Otto von Bismarck manipulated it on his way to founding the Second Reich.
Now the Schleswig-Holstein question, the 19th century’s great diplomatic conundrum and torment of generations of history students, is once again begging an answer.
The reason lies in the murky margins of crucial elections this Sunday in a state which, in its modern incarnation, has formed a part of federal Germany since 1945.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats badly need to hold on to Schleswig-Holstein if their improbable national comeback is to be maintained in the approach to next year’s general election.
The opposition Christian Democrats also desperately want a win in Kiel. If coupled with a victory in May’s North-Rhine Westphalia polls, it would give them control of the Bundesrat, Germany’s upper house, thereby effectively paralyzing Schroeder’s government. Just as in Bismarck’s time, such an outcome would reverberate through the chancelleries of Europe. But with opinion polls indicating a close finish, a shadow from the past has fallen over the campaign.
It takes the form of the South-Schleswig Voters’ Association (SSW), created by the British military authorities in 1948 to represent ethnic Danes after Schleswig was divided between Germany and Denmark after plebiscites in 1920.
The SSW, dedicated to maintaining “the peculiarity of Danish life”, is hardly a major political force. Speaking for the 50,000 Danes and 40,000 Friesians among the state of 2.8 million people, it currently holds three seats in Kiel’s Landtag (Parliament).
Yet with the gap between the main left-right groupings standing at three percent, the SSW’s projected four percent of the vote on Sunday looks likely to make it the state’s political arbiter. In short, history has come full circle and Danish mastery of Schleswig-Holstein could be restored for the first time since King Christian IX’s soldiers were ignominiously turfed out in 1864.
The SSW spokesman Lars Erik Bethge is keeping a level head. “No, we don’t see this as revenge on Bismarck. We’re not seeking reunification with Denmark, nothing like that,” he said. But Bethge is certainly relishing the prospect of holding the balance of power in his windswept land of cows and coastlines straddling the Baltic and North Sea. “For us the crucial issue is schools — we want to adopt the Danish model. And we want equal treatment and equal rights for all cultures in south Schleswig,” he said.
The SSW’s future allegiance would depend on which major party was most prepared to further its aims.
“We won’t join the new state government. We haven’t said who we will support.”
Schroeder will just have to hope the Danes save his bacon. Buffeted by storms over welfare reforms, five million unemployed, immigration and rising far-right agitation, the chancellor is counting on a strong performance by the SPD state premier in Schleswig-Holstein, Heide Simonis.
Schroeder was in hot water again this week for presumptuously criticizing NATO before President George Bush’s visit to Mainz.
Yet victory would be the SPD’s first electoral success for three years and boost his chances of a third term.
