This, however, did not dispose of the question. In 1863 King Christian signed the new constitution which incorporated Schleswig in the Danish State and separated it from Holstein, contrary to the ancient charter of the two duchies. This action also conflicted with the London protocol and vitiated the treaty as well for those who signed it (Prussia and Austria) as for those who did not, the two duchies and the German Confederation, in so far as the recognition of King Christian as duke of Schleswig-Holstein was concerned. The duchies thereupon declared for the Prince of Augustenburg as their rightful ruler, who had been unjustly put aside in the London protocol, and appealed to the German Confederation for help.
In order to protect Holstein as part of the German Confederation, the latter sent 12,000 Saxons and Hanoverians into the duchy. The Danes fell back across the Eider river, and the Prince of Augustenburg, proclaimed the rightful ruler, took up his residence in Kiel. Prussia recognized King Christian, but with the distinct reservation that he adhere to the London protocol and surrender his claim to Schleswig. Under the belief that he would receive help from other sources, King Christian rejected the offer, and Prussia, in conjunction with Austria, decided to settle the Schleswig-Holstein question in conformity with the wishes of its people, and German national interests. This brought on the war of 1864, in which Denmark formally renounced her claims to the two duchies.
This brief summary goes to show that the popular notion that Schleswig-Holstein was wrested from poor little Denmark by brutal force against the will of the people is erroneous. McCarthy, in his “History of Our Own Times,” says: “Put into plain words, the disputewas between Denmark, which wanted to make the duchies Danish, and Germany, which wanted to make them German. The arrangement which bound them up with Denmark was purely diplomatic and artificial. Any one who would look realities in the face must have seen that some day or other the Germans would carry their point, and that the principle of nationalities would have its way in that case as in so many others.” This view was held by eminent English statesmen at that time. McCarthy tells us that Lord Russell “had never countenanced or encouraged any of the acts which tended to the enforced absorption of the German population into the Danish system.”
The people of the duchies fought for their own cause. When King Frederick VII, in March, 1848, called the leaders of the Eider-Dane party—the party which desired the Eider river to constitute the dividing line between Denmark and Germany, thus converting Schleswig into a Danish province and abandoning Holstein—to take the reins of government, the issue was clearly drawn, and the result was revolution. The troops joined the people; the revolution spread over the provinces and the struggle for the ending of the Danish rule began. A representative of the threatened duchies applied to the Bundesrath at Frankfort and was seated. Volunteers from all parts of Germany flocked to the northern border. Prussia was commissioned to defend the German duchies, and Emerson, in his “History of the Nineteenth Century Year by Year,” tells us that before Gen. Wrangel could arrive to take command, “the untrained volunteer army of Schleswig-Holsteiners suffered defeat at Bau, and a corps of students from the University of Kiel was all but annihilated.” When Jutland was occupied, the historian informs us, it was “in conjunction with the volunteers of Schleswig-Holstein.” Again he says: “On July 5 the Danes made a sortie from Fredericia and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Schleswig-Holsteiners, capturing 28 guns and 1,500 prisoners.” The loss was nearly 3,000 men in dead and wounded.
Heine, one of the ministers of the present German government, speaking at Tondern, Schleswig, during the fall of 1919, said:
Here is the cradle of the purest Germanism. From here the richest of German blood was transfused throughout our fatherland. Fan-like, its streams coursed from West to East. Here was laid the original foundation of the German people. Here were born the men who have wrought great deeds in German history.
Among the distinguished men born in Schleswig-Holstein may be noted von Weber, the great composer; Friedrich Hebbel, next to Goethe and Schiller, Germany’s most famous dramatist; several distinguished novelists and poets, such as Joachim Maehl, GustavFrensen and Emanuel Geibel, one of the most appealing of the German poets, who sang:
Wir wollen keine Danen sein;
Wir wollen Deutsche bleiben.
(We refuse to become Danes;