Minority problems in the German-Danish border region

[minionofmidas]

Few people south of the Eider are even aware that such a thing as a German minority in Denmark exists.
The SSW's successes in the late 40s/early 50s were due to Schleswig-Holstein being utterly swamped with eastern refugees, almost enabling it (for a fleeting moment) to become the party of the authochthonous population of Schleswig regardless of language. IIRC they once actually demanded restricting the franchise in state elections to people born in the state.
The state CDU, in its founder generation, was completely dominated by refugees. And yeah, hence the traditional bad blood between the two parties, making an unexpected comeback once or twice per generation. (And, really, the SSW's survival. That and the excemption from the threshold, obviously. The last CDU hissy fit was over the introduction of ticket splitting in the state, which enabled people in Holstein to vote for the SSW - previous to that they were only on the ballot where they had a direct candidate.)

[minionofmidas]

Although really, that perspective is "Danish" only in the sense that Danes know more detail about the issue because Danes have more reason to care. Denmark being such a small country that the Danish minority in Germany makes up a much larger proportion of the Danish-speaking world than it does of the population of Germany.
Yours is not a slanted presentation or anything of the kind, it's just that virtually nobody in German (outside Schleswig) knows much about it or even knows how much there is to know.

I ought to do a study of the national (where SSW don't run) preferences of SSW voters some time... I guess they split reasonably evenly between the camps, that's certainly what's implied by looking at constituencies or districts, but maybe a look at a municipal level would be more telling and give a somewhat different picture.

[minionofmidas]

http://ssw-landtag.de/de/presse/pressemitteilungen/show/article/die-kuerzung-bei-den-daenischen-schulen-ist-und-bleibt-diskriminierend.html

I like this bitten smilie: