Danish minority of Southern Schleswig
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The Danish minority in Southern Schleswig, Germany has existed by this name since 1920, when the Schleswig Plebiscite split the German-ruled Schleswig into Northern Schleswig, with a clear Danish majority which became part of Denmark, and Southern Schleswig which remained a part of Germany, leaving a small number of Danes in Germany.
Denmark has continued to support the minority financially. Danish schools and clubs have been run in the region, until 1926 in Flensburg only , and thereafter throughout the region.
Membership in the Danish minority has always been fluid, as there are no objective criteria to distinguish a German Schleswigian from a Danish. While over 12,000 of the population of South Schleswig voted for Denmark in the 1920-plebiscite, only about 3,000 were organised in the Danish cultural association by the end of the Nazi dictatorship.
After World War II, many people chose to join the Danish minority in hopes of joining the much more prosperous Denmark. This was partly caused by a wish to live in a free and democratic country and a rediscovery of Danish family roots, as most Schleswigians are of Danish extraction. Social hardships in the aftermath of the war probably played another distinctive role, as a high proportion of the 'new Danes' had a lower class background, while only very few of the old elite changed nationality. (As the Danish government provided food aid to the minority from 1945–49 this contingent became derogatively known as "Speckdänen", ie. "ham Danes"). At the end of 1946, the minority had thus reached a membership of 62,000.
However, the Danish government did not allow South Schleswig to join the kingdom, and in 1953 the so-called Programm Nord (Northern Programme) was set up by the Schleswig-Holstein state government to help the area economically. This caused the Danish minority to decline until the 1970s. Since then, the minority has slowly been gaining size, and these days numbers around 50,000.
