ABSTRACT
The crisis over Schleswig-Holstein, which came to a head in the late autumn of 1863, became the turning point in Bismarck’s fortunes. Even after he had successfully emerged from it in the following summer he was sometimes, as he put it later in life, still closer to the gallows than to the throne. But after the Danish war neither friend nor foe could delude themselves that Bismarck was only a footnote in history. The case of Schleswig-Holstein was notoriously complicated and a full exploration of its antecedents is not necessary for the appreciation of Bismarck’s place in it. It was one of the many instances in nineteenth-century Europe where the rise of rival nationalisms, German and Danish, created conflict. The king of Denmark was also duke of Schleswig and of Holstein and of the small territory of Lauenburg. The latter two duchies were part of the German Confederation and by virtue of his sovereignty over them the Danish king was represented in Frankfurt, just as the king of Holland was through Luxemburg and the king of England, until 1837, through Hanover. The population of Holstein was entirely German-speaking, but particularly in North Schleswig there were many Danish speakers and the language problem had begun to cause tension by the 1840s. It had to be the aim of the Danish kings to keep the whole of their kingdom, the Helstat, together. Danish liberal nationalists wished to maintain the Danish language and culture in Schleswig. They were Eiderdanes, the river Eider being the dividing line between Schleswig and Holstein. German nationalists wanted the incorporation of both duchies in Germany and
frequently invoked the long tradition, going back to the seventeenth century, that the tie between the two duchies was indissoluble, ‘for ever undivided’ (up ewig Ungedeelten, in the north German patois).
