Hadersleben declaration
The Hadersleben Declaration is the result of a gathering of Hadersleben citizens who belonged to the German minority in North Schleswig / Denmark, but who opposed National Socialism . They met during the time of the occupation of Denmark by German troops on November 11, 1943 in the house of tobacco manufacturer Matthias Hansen . Friedrich Prahl, German pastor in Hadersleben, wrote down the principles of border policy established by the Hadersleben Circle, the content of which was to form the basis of the statutes of the Federation of German North Schleswig , the umbrella organization of the German minority in North Schleswig after the end of the war in 1945 .
Members of the "Hadersleben Circle"
- Lawyer Sophus Erichsen
- Wholesale merchant Peter Frees
- Pastor Friedrich Imanuel Prahl
- Bank director Christian Danielsen
- Manufacturer Matthias Hansen
Wording of the Hadersleben Declaration
“November 11, 1943.
As German men who hold fast to their nationality and culture under all circumstances, we are committed to the democratic form of government. We have proven this through our personal stance, insofar as we have been able to do so with the political situation of recent years.
We strive for a good relationship with our Danish fellow citizens, which can only be built on mutual trust and must be based on absolute loyalty.
We believe that this goal can be achieved with the high cultural level of the North Schleswig population of Danish and German character, because we are 1. of the same race and religion, 2. find each other in the same love for our home North Schleswig, 3. our two cultures have many mutually beneficial interactions.
Absolute loyalty is to be understood in the following way:
As a principle of our attitude we send in advance: The right to life is stronger than postulates and dogmas of history. Before the postulates of history, therefore, the right to life must be recognized by both sides as absolutely binding. This has to have two effects:
1. The old border dispute, the old 'up ewich ungedeelt', which has repeatedly troubled and torn our northern Schleswig homeland, ends once and for all, because we have the right to life and determination of the Danish people (85 percent Danes and 15 percent Germans) in the area between the old Königsaugrize and the current border. The current limit rightly exists. There is no longer a limit problem. We will represent this publicly in due course.
2. The right to life must also apply to the German minority. The historical development has now gone to the point that there are 15 percent Germans in the area of what is now North Schleswig, who for the most part are down to earth here, have roots in their homeland and love them. This is an organic development that cannot be reacted by any violent experiments. So we do not believe that a so-called pure limit can be reached by mutual evacuation. No border problem at all can be solved by violent measures.
We believe that wherever two peoples meet, there must be a lively enrichment of the two ethnic groups. That is the right and the duty of life. Where this happens in mutual trust and mutual respect and chivalry, life in the borderland - fertilized by both cultures - is not an inhibition of life, but an enrichment of life. Loyalty to us must therefore consist in the fact that the minority in North Schleswig is recognized as having grown organically, and that this is also taken into account in the future through appropriate legislation. That means freedom in our cultural life in church and school, freedom of assembly and political freedom within the framework of the basic attitude outlined above.
We strive for cultural autonomy in the sense that we shape our cultural life on our own initiative and with the aid granted to us by law by the hostel state.
Given the good opportunities in our border region, we believe that with good will on both sides, all German-Danish border tensions will be resolved, and that our example here in the north for the solution of all border problems that will show up in the European area through the coming peace will be groundbreaking can be."
swell
- Original of the Hadersleben declaration in the archive of the German ethnic group in Aabenraa
literature
- Ernst Siegfried Hansen : Courier of the homeland. The game for Schleswig between surrender and Northern program. Deutscher Heimatverlag, Bielefeld 1955.
- Flensburg working group for urban and regional research: Sources on the history of Schleswig-Holstein. Part III, Schmidt & Klauning, Kiel 1982, ISBN 3-88312-216-5 , p. 157.
- Kurt Seifert: 35 years of the “Hadersleben Declaration”. In: Jahrbuch Nordschleswig '79 , Apenrade 1979.
- Arthur Lessow: The Hadersleben Circle and its significance for the new beginning of German work in North Schleswig in 1945. In: Writings of the local history working group for North Schleswig issue 70, 1995, Apenrade 1995.