During most of her history, Flensburg belonged to the Danish monarchy. During the 19th century, Flensburg was promoted as the Danish capital of Schleswig, but this did not prevent the inhabitants from embracing a German identity. In 1864, it was annexed by Prussia, and since the plebiscite of 1920, the Danish-German border runs just north of the town.
For centuries, Flensburg was situated in an in-between-region of mixed influences and orientations, but both national movements rejected the unambiguousness of the regional center. Competing narratives and descriptions deal with places and sites of memory attributed to two national cultures. Here we find a "Danish" Flensburg constructed in the discourse of tourist guides and the national minority side by side with a German narrative about the glorious tradition of (colonial) trade and ships that was definitely a part of the Danish tradition.
We can identify two cities with different meanings presented to different national communities. Flensburg is also the center of a Danish minority, but minority and majority live parallel lives and have their own infrastructures. Both of them cling to their national interpretation of a town that was fundamentally a regional center.
