Schleswig-Holstein is the northernmost of the 16 states of Germany, comprising most of the historical Duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Schleswig. Its capital city is Kiel; other notable cities are Lübeck and Flensburg. It covers an area of 15,763 km2 (6,086 sq mi), making it the 5th smallest German federal state by area. Historically, the name can also refer to a larger region, containing both present-day Schleswig-Holstein and the former South Jutland County in Denmark.
Southern Schleswig is the southern half of the former Duchy of Schleswig in Germany on the Jutland Peninsula. The geographical area today covers the large area between the Eider river in the south and the Flensburg Fjord in the north, where it borders Denmark. Northern Schleswig, congruent with the former South Jutland County, forms the southernmost part of Denmark. The area belonged to the Crown of Denmark until Prussia and Austria declared war on Denmark in 1864. Denmark wanted to give away the German-speaking Holsten and set the new border at the small river Ejderen. Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck concluded that this justified a war, and even proclaimed it a "holy war". He also turned to the Emperor of Austria, Franz Joseph I of Austria for help. A similar war in 1848 had gone poorly for the Prussians. With Prussia's modern weapons and the help from both the Austrians and General Moltke, the Danish army was destroyed and forced to make a disorderly retreat. The Prussian-Danish border was then moved from the Elbe up in Jutland to the Kongeåen creek.
Valdemar II Valdemarsen, later remembered as Valdemar the Victorious, was King of Denmark from 1202 until his death in 1241.
The history of Schleswig-Holstein consists of the corpus of facts since the pre-history times until the modern establishing of the Schleswig-Holstein state.
Jutlandic, or Jutish, is the western variety of Danish, spoken on the peninsula of Jutland in Denmark.
The Treaty of Ribe was a proclamation at Ribe made in 1460 by King Christian I of Denmark to a number of Holsatian nobles enabling himself to become Count of Holstein and gain control of the Duchy of Schleswig. The most famous line of the proclamation was that the Danish Duchy of Schleswig and the County of Holstein within the Holy Roman Empire, should now be, in the original Middle Low German language, Up Ewig Ungedeelt, or "Forever Undivided".
The history of rail transport in Denmark began in 1847 with the opening of a railway line between Copenhagen and Roskilde. The Kiel-Altona line in Holstein was completed three years earlier, but the region was later lost to the German Confederation in the Second War of Schleswig.
The Constitutional Act of the Realm of Denmark, also known as the Constitutional Act of the Kingdom of Denmark, or simply the Constitution, is the constitution of the Kingdom of Denmark, applying equally in the Realm of Denmark: Denmark proper, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The first democratic constitution was adopted in 1849, replacing the 1665 absolutist constitution. The current constitution is from 1953. The Constitutional Act has been changed a few times. The wording is general enough to still apply today.
Gerhard III of Holstein-Rendsburg, sometimes called Gerhard the Great, and in Denmark also known as Count Gert or den kullede greve, was a German prince from the Schauenburg family who ruled Holstein-Rendsburg and a large part of Denmark during the interregnum of 1332–40.
The Danish Artillery Regiment is an artillery unit of the Royal Danish Army, which was founded on 1 November 2005 when the two artillery regiments in Denmark, King's Artillery Regiment and Queen's Artillery Regiment were merged. The unit was disbanded in 2014 and revived in 2019.
Medieval Scandinavian law, also called North Germanic law, was a subset of Germanic law practiced by North Germanic peoples. It was originally memorized by lawspeakers, but after the end of the Viking Age they were committed to writing, mostly by Christian monks after the Christianization of Scandinavia. Initially, they were geographically limited to minor jurisdictions (lögsögur), and the Bjarkey laws concerned various merchant towns, but later there were laws that applied to entire Scandinavian kingdoms. Each jurisdiction was governed by an assembly of free men, called a þing.
Scanian law is the oldest Danish provincial law and one of the first Nordic provincial laws to be written down. It was used in the geographic region of Danish Skåneland, which at the time included Scania, Halland, Blekinge and the island of Bornholm. It was also used for a short period on the island of Zealand. According to some scholars, the Scanian Law was first set down between 1202 and 1216, around the same time it was translated into Latin by the Danish Archbishop Anders Sunesøn.
Danske Lov is the title of a Danish statute book from 1683 that previously formed the basis for the Danish legislation. Even though it was mainly a compilation of older, regional laws, it took seven different commissions over several decades under two different monarchs to put the Code together. In 1687, Norway received its Norwegian Code, which in form and content is about identical to the Danish Code. The Danish Code has been translated into English, Latin, German and Russian.
The election of Christian III as king of Denmark on 4 July 1534 was a landmark event for all of Denmark and also Norway. It took place in St. Søren's Church in the town of Rye in eastern Jutland, where the Jutlandic nobility elected Prince Christian, son of King Frederick I and Duke of Schleswig and Holsten, as king. This brought about the Count's Feud and later also led to the implementation of the Protestant Reformation in Denmark and Norway.
Jutland is a peninsula of Northern Europe that forms the continental portion of Denmark and part of northern Germany (Schleswig-Holstein). It stretches from the Grenen spit in the north to the confluence of the Elbe and the Sude in the southeast. The historic southern border river of Jutland as a cultural-geographical region, which historically also included Southern Schleswig, is the Eider. The peninsula, on the other hand, also comprises areas south of the Eider: Holstein, the former duchy of Lauenburg, and most of Hamburg and Lübeck.
The Potato Germans (Kartoffeltyskere) were a group of German families who settled in the heathlands of central Jutland in Denmark during the mid-1700s. The term is sometimes also extended to their descendants.
The Kingdom of Denmark has existed with its current territory since 1920, although the last territorial dispute with Canada was only settled on 14 June 2022. The only land border of Denmark (proper) is that with Germany, with a length of 68 km (42 mi). Greenland, an autonomous country of the Danish Realm, also shares a border with Canada splitting Hans Island in half in which the border is 1.28 km long. The border along the territorial waters with Sweden runs along the Øresund for a length of about 115 km (71 mi).
During the First World War (1914–1918), Denmark maintained its neutrality. The position of neutrality was agreed to by all the major political parties.
Gesta Danorum, called Gesta Danorum på danskæ to distinguish it from the better known Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus, is a Danish historical chronicle written in Old Danish in Lund around the year 1300.
