Anna Lena Sandberg

In this short video, Anna Sandberg, Associate Professor in the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies at Copenhagen University, gives an historical overview of the political and cultural relationship between Denmark and Germany over the last 200 years. Their relationship is an important one not least because it is the southern-most border of the Nordics - one of the 'gateways to Scandinavia'. Focus is specifically given to the events in 1864, when Prussia and Austria won a war against Denmark leading to the smaller state losing a great deal of its territory in Southern Jutland/Northern Schleswig. Another focus is 1920, when there was a plebiscite in this same borderland region to find out whether the people who lived there wanted to be Danish or German. This process of self-determination occurred without conflict, unlike other disputed regions after the first world war.