The flag of Schleswig-Holstein is a cross striped Trikolore with the colors
blue-white-red.
This was shown the first time in 1844 in the town Schleswig. In that time
in Schleswig a meeting
of the Staende" of the Dukedom Schleswig. (Like a Parliament, but
nearly without power
against the Danish crown!). The flag was made out of the colors of the
old shield of
Schleswig-Holstein.
During the meetings of the "Staende" of the Dukedom Schleswig the German
members did
ask for the first time for some rights from the Danish crown. The two important
demands were:
1) To unite the "Staende" of Schleswig and Holstein (the
Staende from Holstein had her
meeting in Itzehoe.) to have in the future only one Staende deputizing.
2) The "Staende did want to get the right from the Danish
Crown, to manage her own
states budget.
This was the start of the revolution against the Danish crown!
The Germans tried for the next 4 years to get this from the Danish Administation.
In these 4 years the flag, the Schleswig-Holstein song, which was sung
also in 1844 for
the first time in Schleswig and the old shield got a important sense pride
from roundabout
80 % of Germans in Schleswig- Holstein. After the revolution in 1848, the
Danish
Governement did forbid to show the flag and to sing the song!
Legend or wifes tail:
On the half island Eiderstedt 3 families did paint her houses. The first
painted there
house blue, the second white and the third red. Of course the Danish administation
in
Kopenhagen did notice this one day, and ordered the people to paint the
houses
in other colors.
This information was gathered from the Book : "Bundesland Schleswig-Holstein,
Grundgesetz und Landessatzung".
On the state-shield of Schleswig-Holstein are united the shields of both
former Dukedoms
side by side. The split shield shows on the right side (in a herladic way)
two blue lions, in
which both, look and walk toward the middle of the shield, with red claws
and tongues upon a
golden background. The lions are the middle age (1245), the shield animals
of
Schleswig (but at that time they did look to the other side like the three
lions of the Danish
kingshouse do also today!!!). To show the subordinated role, the shield
of Schleswig is
one lion less than the Danish kings shield.
The other side of the shield is shown upon a red background a silver nettle
leaf. It is not a leaf
of a plant! It is a shield decoration. This shield did incorporate
the Schauenburger
(Dukes of Schauenburg!) - since the beginning of the 11th century the Dukes
from Holstein, instead of the original lionsl. They did demonstrate
with this (the nettle leaf) the hard boundary from the lions shield of
the Danish kingshouse,
which did also demand part of Holstein.
In the year 1866, Prussia did annex Schleswig-Holstein (after a war against
Denmark in 1864).
As the state-shield they did keep the split shield.
This information was gathered from the Book : "Bundesland Schleswig-Holstein,
Grundgesetz und Landessatzung".
In Germany the Enlightenment, known there as the Aufklärung, was adapted
from the English and
French philosophers when the influence of the French Revolution of 1789
and began to awaken a sense
of German unity. Enlightenment ideals in turn gave rise to Romanticism
which nurtured the beginnings
of the most powerful movement of the nineteenth century—Nationalism. Today
the idea of nationalism
is equated with patriotism and willingness to die in defense of the state,
but its nineteenth century tone
was different, especially in Germany. Nationalism meant national consciousness
and the idea that an
ethnic group has common traditions and interests. This idea was particularly
popular in the
German Confederation, the ineffectual successor to the Holy Roman Empire,
even though its member
states shared mainly a common language rather than any overall common customs
or politics.
It is fascinating that Nationalism became such a strong influence in Schleswig-Holstein,
two duchies
which had been a part of the Danish monarchy until 1864 and which historically
shared in the cultural
and economic benefits of the Danish Helstat1 and the Holy Roman Empire.
The duchies were inhabited
by multi-lingual cultures for hundreds of years. Indeed the nationalistic
feelings for Germany were so
strong that, even though many of the other German states supported their
cause in the name of German
cultural unity and worked for its inclusion in the German Confederation,
the Schleswig-Holsteiners
decided to revolt in 1848.
Yet for hundreds of thousands of Schleswig-Holsteiners, those of German
ethnicity above all others,
disappointment in the outcome of events in the homeland was strong and
many chose to emigrate to a
young United States of America, Australia and Canada. For other Germans
the primary reasons
to emigrate were socio-economic. Such was the case for 20 000 southwest
Germans who left for
the New Worlds in 1816-17 because of crop failures which provided sound
economic reasons
for emigration. Exceptions had been religious motivations like the Mennonites
of the Palatinate
in 1683 and the Old Lutherans of Prussia in 1839: in these cases, freedom
from religious
persecution provided the impetus to emigrate.
In Schleswig-Holstein, however, with the exception of the political refugees
known as "48ers," a name
denoting their involvement in the 1848 revolution, the influences upon
a decision to emigrate are both
interesting and historically complex. In fact, when the English Prime Minister
Lord Palmerston spoke of
Schleswig-Holstein after the Revolution of 1848, he said that the history
of the region was so
complicated, that only three people were well versed in it. The first was
Prince Albert, the consort of
Queen Victoria, who was already dead, the second a German professor who
went insane because of
the history, and the third was Palmerston himself who had luckily forgotten
the Schleswig-Holstein
history, else he would have become insane as well.
Schleswig-Holstein today is a small Bundesland2 in the Federal Republic
of Germany situated on the
southern end of the Jutland peninsula between Denmark and the German city
of Hamburg. The land
itself was built above sea-level by the deposition of glacial debris during
the numerous glacial periods
prior to human habitation affording the area with abundant, fertile farmland.
The east coast, which lies
on the Baltic Sea, is hilly and has numerous fjords and a stable coast
line practical for shipping. In
contrast the coast line on the west running along the North Sea is flat,
often protected from the sea by
dikes, and composed, as are many of the islands, of mud flats and marsh.
To the southwest
the land is separated from Niedersachsen3 by the Elbe estuary until it
becomes a river at Hamburg,
creating a natural boundary which has traditionally been the southern border
of the Duchy of Holstein.
To the north, the area of Holstein stretches to the Eider River which runs
more or less east to west
beginning near the city of Kiel, now the capital of the Schleswig-Holstein
Bundesland, across
Rendsburg and ending at Tönning in the North Sea. On the other side
of the Eider is the area known as
the Duchy of Schleswig which traditionally spanned northward to the Kongeaa
River4, which likewise
runs east to west beginning north of Christiansfeld and enters the sea
north of Ribe. The northern third
part of the duchy, known as North Schleswig, is now in present-day Denmark
since the plebiscite of
1920 initiated by the U. S. President Woodrow Wilson.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the duchies of Schleswig and
Holstein had a unique cultural
makeup differing both from the Germanic states to the south and the Danish
kingdom of which it was a
part. The islands on the west as well as large parts of the west coast,
known as Nordfriesland5, were
partially inhabited by the Frisians. Linguistically the Frisians differed
from the Danes and Germans
because of their language which stems from a Low German dialect closely
associated with
Old English. The small farm holders throughout the rest of Schleswig
and Holstein,
the majority of whom were ethnic Germans, owned three-quarters of the land
in the duchies and also
had their own form of self-government which allowed them to elect minor
parish officials, as well as
assessors of the lower courts. Most of these farmers worked for the gentry,
since their farming
plots were too small to support even subsistence living. The area inhabited
by speakers of the
Low Danish dialect in the Duchy of Schleswig coincides with that portion
of Schleswig
which is part of Denmark today, except for isolated pockets of Low and
High German found in the
areas around the towns of Christiansfeld, Haderslev, Åbenraa, and
Tønder. The present political border
also marks the southern end of that area of known as North Schleswig in
which Danish was used in
church and schools.
The southern half of Schleswig, known as Central Schleswig, had a stronger
linguistic mix with Danish
predominating in central part and Low German, or more correctly Plattdeutsch,
along the east coast
north of the town Schleswig, and of course the Frisians in the West. In
the rest of Central Schleswig
and the in the whole of Holstein, the dominant language in the church,
the schools, and the courts was
Plattdeutsch. It was an important cultural distinction separating Schleswig
and Holstein Germans from
the Germans in the Holy Roman Empire. Plattdeutsch remained prominent as
the language of the
Church and the people, as well as the legal and administrative language
well through the mid-eighteenth
century, and did not begin to lose ground until long after the introduction
of High German with the
founding of the Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel in 1665. High
German slowly became a
part of the peoples' life with the founding of schools and basic education
which became compulsory
for children between the ages of 7 and 14 in 1814.
During the first half of the nineteenth century the people of Schleswig-Holstein
experienced a rapid
change in the status quo of the society. By 1830 the population of the
duchies increased by nearly thirty
percent, and the population in the cities increased at enormous rates.
Altona saw an almost fifteen
percent increase, and Kiel's population grew by more than sixty percent.
Such rapid growth caused
wages to fall, rents to increase, and a staggering joblessness rate. The
population change in the country
was somewhat gentler and the poverty rate was lower. Still it was estimated
that nearly a quarter of the
population in the farm country was in danger of falling into poverty. Estate
owners and farmers began to
buy out the smaller farms in an attempt to ensure their own economic security.
These small farmers
often became destitute and were forced to move to the cities, which caused
an inflated growth of the
poor.
Culturally and politically the duchies remained separated and isolated
until medieval times. In the year
1111 the Duke of Saxony and future king and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire
created the Earldom
of Holstein and named Adolf von Schauenburg as the first Earl of Holstein.
Then the Danish king
created the new Duchy of Schleswig in the year 1115, which he gave to the
Danish crown prince.
Throughout medieval times, the town Schleswig in Schleswig and Lübeck
in Holstein, (which later
became a free Hanseatic city-state,) were important cultural and economic
centers of the duchies. Most
importantly Lübeck was a central radiation point for German culture,
which had a profound influence on
the development of the Duchy of Schleswig's German identity. The economic
interests of the Holstein
nobility became deeply entrenched in Schleswig, and as a result, Schleswig's
culture and legal system
developed notably German characteristics.
This strong German cultural and economic influence was demonstrated when
the Schauenburg line died
out and the Holstein nobility elected to remain tied to Schleswig. Since
Schleswig was a part of
Denmark by hereditary right, the Holstein nobility gave the title to King
Christian I in 1460, which he
saw enfeoffed to him and raised to the status of a duchy and member of
the Holy Roman Empire by the
emperor in Rothenburg ob der Taube in 1474. But the most important medieval
events for the
duchies, which would not become an issue for another four-hundred years,
were the Ripen Deed6 of
1460 and the lex regia, or the Danish royal law of 1665. Both deeds gave
the duchies certain privileges,
most notably to the nobility, but also bound the duchies together with
each other in a Realunion7,
so-called because the Ripen Deed stated the duchies would remain ewich
tosamende ungedelt8, and
also in personal union with the king of Denmark through the male line of
descent. The Personalunion9
was an important part of the duchies' German cultural make-up, since the
lex regia provided for the
succession of the Danish crown through the female line, and with respect
to the duchies' German
culture, this aspect of the lex regia was not applied to them. To further
strengthen the
ties of the duchies, the Danish king used the opportunity of Napoleon's
dissolution of the Holy Roman
Empire in 1806, (which also ended Holstein's membership in the Holy Roman
Empire), to decree that
the Duchy of Holstein was totally united with the Danish monarchy "als
ein in jeder Beziehung völlig
ungetrennter Teil derselben10".
As the Napoleonic era drew to a close, the residents of the duchies had
gained a semblance of
autonomy not seen anywhere else in the Helstat, or in most of the rest
of Europe for that matter.
As their cultures merged, the duchies prospered and earned a very respectable
position in the
Helstat, especially during the period of peace between the end of the Thirty
Year's War in 1648
and the beginning of the Napoleonic era in 1796. They enjoyed a number
of reforms such as
the abolition of serfdom and the slave trade, changes in the land tenure
system, civil
rights for farmers, a few teachers' colleges and new schools, a meagre
system of relief for the poor,
and a more modern police, all of which Sievers discusses in detail in his
monograph Volkskultur und
Aufklärung im Spiegel der Schleswig-Holsteinischen Provinzialberichte.
In the end it was the polarising issues of cultural politics in Schleswig-Holstein
during the first half of the
nineteenth century, allowing the people to develop the new sense of Nationalbewußtsein.
The defeat
of Napoleon in Russia by the European allied powers in 1813 brought about
the occupation of the
Helstat by Sweden, Prussia, and Russia. Immediately the larger German kingdoms
set about the
creation of a revised Holy Roman Empire, which was called the German Confederation,
enacted in
1815 essentially as a defensive compact rather than as a means to German
cultural unity. Intended
to encompass the whole of the Germanic peoples, the Confederation included
non-Germanic
minorities such as the Czechs in Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovenes in
the Steiermark,
yet excluded the ethnic Germans in West and East Prussia, Posen, and Schleswig
because
they had not been a part of the former Holy Roman Empire. Thus Holstein,
which had been a
member since the fifteenth century although ruled by the Danish king, was
included in the
new Confederation.
It is important to remember that nationalism in Schleswig-Holstein at this
point in time was confined to
intellectuals, and then mainly to those who were led by the Mecklenburg
born Friedrich Dahlmann, a
famous history professor at the university in Kiel. A Holsteiner through
his mother, whose family held
important positions in the Helstat government, Dahlmann became an important
advocate, both in the
duchies and in the Confederation for the inclusion of Schleswig in the
Confederation. Trained as a
philologist and historian and determined to preserve the German culture
of Schleswig, Dahlmann
maintained that Schleswig and Holstein were integrally bound together,
and supported this with historical
and legal evidence from the Ripen Deed of 1460 which said that Schleswig
and Holstein.
Dahlmann gave impassioned speeches to the Congress of Vienna and at the
Waterloo festival in 1815 in
Kiel celebrating the defeat of Napoleon. He claimed for all Schleswig-Holsteiners
that their only wish
was to be German, and that "nur die unnatürlichste Trennung scheidet
sie von ihren Brüdern, die
sie mit alter Liebe zu umfassen wünschen20." Dahlmann's claims certainly
agreed with the opinions of
his intellectual colleagues, but the Schleswiger students at the Kiel university
laughed at Dahlmann's
idea of the brotherhood of Schleswigers with Holsteiners, not to mention
Germans, and called his speech
"too German, too free." The sentiments of the Schleswiger students shows
that the national and liberal
spirit of the time so prevalent in the southern German lands had not yet
made its way to the north,
except with those intellectuals like Dahlmann who had studied in greater
Germany.
Dahlmann continued to lead the way with nationalistic ideals for the people,
even though he really did
not have their support. He pressed the king often for a single constitution
for Schleswig and Holstein,
referring again to his motto "up ewig ungedeelt." The king, though, forbade
in 1818 all debate
concerning a constitution for Schleswig, but still had to allow for the
possibility of a constitution for
Holstein in accordance with the terms of Holstein's membership in the German
Confederation. By this
time in the Duchies, unrest and indignation among the people began were
rising again, mainly because
they suffered under the high tax levies, like the compulsory six-percent
mortgage. The nobility,
for whom Dahlmann was secretary, began to consider a tax strike, since
they had the
right according to the Ripen Deed to not pay the taxes if they so chose.
For Dahlmann this was an opportunity to use the old right of petition,
also provided for in the medieval
Ripen Deed, to start a movement in Schleswig for a single constitution
with Holstein. Most of the
Schleswig towns joined the petition movement, as did the Frisians, who
wanted to be a part of the
constitution decision in order to have equality with the Germans, to prevent
themselves from becoming a
lower class, and because they knew from experience that the monarchy showed
them only distant
concern. The king again forbade discussion of a constitution, but was saved
from having to make any
threatening actions by the 1825 decision of the Federal Diet, the governing
body of the German
Confederation. The Diet decided that the medieval Ripen Deed of 1460 was
no longer in effect, and
therefore Dahlmann's premise for the entry of Schleswig into the Confederation
and its right to a
constitution with Holstein was no longer relevant.
Dahlmann's constitutional movement came to life again in 1830 when Uwe
Jens Lornsen took up the
cause, but Lornsen led the movement from a democratic rather than an historical
point of view. That is,
Lornsen believed that the people should vote. Because of more revolutions
in France,
Poland, Belgium, and parts of the German states, as well as crop-devastating
storms and a cholera
epidemic providing further unrest in other parts of Europe, he felt the
time was right to petition the king,
who might take the idea more seriously this time specifically in light
of the unrest throughout the rest of
Europe. Indeed the uprisings of 1830 alarmed the Federal Diet enough to
encourage its member states
to speed up work on constitutions to help pacify potential unrest in other
areas. So Lornsen
wrote a pamphlet concerning the need for a constitution entitled "Ueber
das
Verfassungswerk in Schleswigholstein21" and had 9000 copies printed, and
distributed them to the
leading citizens of Schleswig.
Lornsen's idea was to have each town individually petition the king for
a single constitution, rather than
to send one petition drafted by delegates. In this manner the petitions
would show a more unified
movement, and many petitions would speak more loudly to the king than would
one petition which is
easier to ignore. But the movement was effectively killed by the actions
of the king and the nobility. The
king issued a statement warning his subjects to beware of potential trouble
makers, clearly indicating,
although not naming Lornsen, and promised constitutional change at a later,
and more appropriate time.
Shortly thereafter, the nobility issued a statement of support and loyalty
to the king.
Historically the nobility had always either openly opposed the king, or
had distinctly different opinions,
which makes an open statement of loyalty and support seem contradictory.
However, the nobility was
very likely more concerned with the loss of power a new constitution might
cause, than in showing any
type of solidarity with the king. Still the effect of the king's and the
nobility's statements on the people
and constitutional supporters effectively quieted the movement, and in
the end only Lornsen's home
island Sylt voted for petitioning. Even though Lornsen's movement
failed, it served to establish him as the founder of the Schleswig-Holstein
movement among
the people. That Lornsen rather than Dahlmann was able to capture the national
spirit of the people was the result of Lornsen's methods. He was not interested
in the historical rights of
Schleswig thus giving his ideas a clarity to the people which Dahlmann's
ideas could never have had,
based as they were in medieval history and legality. Lornsen's aim was
a reform of the duchies'
bureaucracy and its separation from the Helstat bureaucracy, so that the
duchies would go forward as
an entity autonomous from Denmark and the rest of the Helstat, but with
the king at the head of the
government. Lornsen's idea did not die, and in fact, his activities,
which had promoted the king to make the promise of a constitution, caused
the king's advisors to urge
compliance with his promise.
The Danish king at the time was known to be indecisive, and many of his
policies more often than not
reflected the agenda of his advisors. Even though he was in favour of allowing
the duchies to become
one estate and exist under the monarchy and within the Helstat as a single
entity, his advisors felt it
would invite disruption in the future, as well as trouble from the nobility.
Therefore the constitution of
1834 made each duchy a separate estate of the Helstat, and representative
power was weighted on the
urban middle class and small farm holders, specifically because they were
hostile to the nobility and
easily amenable to the pastors and local officials, who in turn were easily
influenced by the Helstat
government. In this manner the king and his advisors hoped to preserve
the monarch's absolutism and at
the same time pacify the people. On the contrary, the bureaucratic division
of the duchies, combined
with the new power held by the farmers and middle class representatives
proved to nurture the political
consciousness of the people.
This then was the setting of Schleswig-Holstein prior to the revolution.
An educated, politically, and
culturally aware people were now ready to follow in the wake of the intellectuals.
Tensions and a strong
sense of Nationalbewußtsein among the people now only needed one
intense stimulus to power the
revolution, and it came in the form of Danish nationalism. Danish nationalism
began belatedly but
noticeably with the 1834 constitution, when the question of language for
Schleswig once again came up.
The sparsely populated Northern Schleswig was inhabited mainly by small
farm holders who spoke an
old dialect of Low Danish. As a group they had no political significance,
they did not share
in German or Danish culture, the Helstat barely knew of their existence,
and they were probably the one
group in all of Schleswig-Holstein least affected by the political newspapers.
Their attitude toward
nationalism was certainly ambivalent, since they hardly knew what to call
themselves, but when pressed
claimed to be Holsteiners or Danish Holsteiners. This of course was a feather
in the cap of the
Holsteiners in their movement to bring Schleswig into the German Confederation
under a single
constitution with Holstein. By 1835 the Flensburger Christian Paulsen's
crusade to stimulate Danish cultural consciousness had begun to take effect
after meeting with little
success when he began in the early 1830s. The strife between "German" and
"Dane" was now in full
bloom. Delegates at the constitutional assembly argued successfully for
making Danish the language of
the courts in North Schleswig as well as providing instruction in German
in the schools for those people
who wanted it, since German was the necessary language of the duchies.
Theodore
Olshausen, one of the leading eventual "48ers", began publishing his Kieler
Korrespondenz Blatt
in 1830, a new political newspaper widely read in the duchies because it
was the
only paper to discuss politics from an opposing viewpoint, for which it
suffered strong censorship. In
1838 it gained competition and opposition in the form of the new Danish
language newspaper
Dannevirke, which appeared in Schleswig and was geared toward Danish culture.
Danish nationalism soon became more prevalent, although not very strong,
since it was nurtured from
Copenhagen, rather than in Schleswig, by Orla Lehmann, who in 1842 created
the new motto
"Dänemark bis zur Eider," which gave rise to the movement known as
"Eiderdanism." Rather than
campaigning for a Denmark as far as the Danish tongue was spoken, Lehmann
and the Eiderdanes,
who gained the king's sympathy, wanted to establish a new Denmark with
its ancient border along the
Eider River, and throw Holstein out of the Helstat. In turn the Holsteiners
clung to their motto "up ewig
ungedeelt," splitting the Eiderdanes and the Holsteiners in the assembly.
Rather than being known as
conservatives and liberals, they were now Danes and Germans.
Nationalistic sentiments began to sweep through the land, and in 1844 for
the first time the people of
Schleswig and Holstein added their voice to what had previously been the
realm of the intellectuals. In
June of that year 6000 Frisians gathered in Bredstedt for a folk fest to
declare their loyalty to
Schleswig-Holstein and Germany and to tout their very old motto lever duad
üs Slav22. Then in the
beginning of July another folk fest was organised, this time on Skamlingsbanke,
a hill near the duchy's
border with Denmark by the Kolding fjord. Nearly 8000 Schleswigers attended,
as well as 4000 Danes
from across the border, and an additional 120 brought from Copenhagen by
Lehmann, all to support a
Schleswig under the Danebrog23. But by far the biggest folk fest was held
a few weeks later on the
23rd and 24th of July in Schleswig town. Fourteen thousand Schleswigers
and Holsteiners came from
every town between Haderslev and Altona to fly the new blue-white-red Schleswig-Holstein
flag and to
sing the new Schleswig-Holstein song, replete with nationalistic verses
such as Deutscher Sitte hohe
Wacht! and Schleswig-Holstein stammverwand.
In response to this most blatant of nationalistic displays, the king forbade
the use of the flag, as well as
singing of the Schleswig-Holstein song. Then in 1846 the king wrote the
famous "open letter" in which
he clearly establishes the unity of the Helstat and Schleswig-Holstein's
part in it, thus allowing for him to
apply the lex regia, the medieval Danish law allowing for the succession
of the crown through a
daughter to her son, to his very real problem, which was the possibility
of having no male heir. The king
again forbade further discussion of the legal rights of the duchies, yet
the Schleswig-Holsteiners
promptly began to sing a new song in response to the king's open letter
ending with the words "Wir
wollen keine Dänen sein / Wir wollen Deutsche bleiben24." So to pacify
both the liberal Germans
and the conservative Danes, the king let a new, liberal constitution be
drafted in 1847, allowing for
decisive power by representation of the people, and a distancing from the
traditional absolutism of the
monarch.
In January 1848 the king died and was succeeded by his untalented son.
Shortly thereafter came the
February revolution in France which stirred the embers of freedom, national
unity, and social justice
especially among the Germans in Germany for whom Schleswig-Holstein was
at the very center of their
nationalistic sympathies. In fact when the news of the revolution in Paris
reached Kiel, it inspired the
Kiel students to greet the news with festivities. They felt the time had
come for Schleswig-Holstein to
free itself from its Danish overlord and began military training.
On the 11th of March Orla Lehmann gained the ear of the king in Copenhagen
with his slogan
"Dänemark bis zur Eider". Fearful of the king's sympathies for the
Eiderdanes, seventy
representatives of both estate assemblies met on the 18th of March to petition
for a single constitution
and the entry of Schleswig into the German Confederation. They were supported
by a large turn out of
citizens. On the 22nd the king decided to pursue the Eiderdane policy and
when news reached of this
decision reached the ears of the assembly in Kiel on the 24th, they announced
the decision to revolt and
formed a provisional government.
The first incident of the Schleswig-Holstein revolution occurred northwest
of Flensburg near Bau on 9
April where the Danes overpowered the small group of Kiel students and
Turnverein members.
Although defeated, volunteers began to arrive in support of the students
to join the revolutionary forces.
Further support came a few days later on the 12th when the Federal Diet
granted formal recognition to
the provisional government in Kiel and sent 9000 soldiers to Schleswig-Holstein's
aid. The Prussian king
added an additional 12 000 soldiers to that number under pressure from
the Diet, although reluctantly
because of recent revolutions in his own lands.
In the following months the Schleswig-Holsteiners led by the Prussians
were able to push the Danish
forces back into Denmark. By July an armistice was drawn up and signed
in Malmö, Sweden in August.
In accordance with the terms of the armistice, the provisional government
in Kiel was dissolved and a
new government took effect which was administrated jointly by a Prussian
and a Danish representative.
Negotiations on a peace settlement were, however, ineffective in the eyes
of the Schleswig-Holsteiners,
because they did not gain entrance into the German Confederation and were
still a part of the Danish
Helstat. Their revolution had failed and unrest and hostilities continued
in the duchies until
1864. The story of the duchies' eventual entry into the German union is
not, however, related to
nationalism, rather with the Realpolitik25 of the Prussian minister-president
Otto von Bismarck.
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