Jens Wendel-Hansen

1864 – the source of the Danish Kosovo Myth

Jens Lei Wendel-Hansen, ph.d., edition philologist, The Grundtvig Study Centre, Aarhus University, jwh@au.dk

The Danish historian Tom Buk-Swienty has argued that Denmark in its reflection on the 1864 defeat made Denmark a navel-gazing and self-satisfied nation.[1]

A certain self-complacency can indeed be localized in the Danish political rhetoric. Thus, when Folketinget passed Danish approval of the UN Declaration on Minority Rights in 1996, a considerable amount of members drew forward the exemplary minority relations in the German-Danish border area as an argument that Denmark could easily sign the declaration.[2]

Also, the liberal politician and former minister Bertel Haarder in 1990’s criticized the self-satisfaction that led the Danes to believe that the only motivation for international cooperation was to draw up other countries to Danish level.[3]

In Buk-Swienty’s view, this self-perception is caused on the Danish embracing a victim narrative of the 1864 defeat, making 1864 a collective trauma of self-pity. Thereby the Danes in the self-righteousness over the 1864 injustice that the Prussian and Austrian armies attacked a far smaller country lives in resignation. 

This presentation delivers the argument that Danish politicians indeed around 1900 developed a sense of Denmark being a pioneer country, which other countries did well to follow. For instance the later minister of defense (1913-20) and foreign affairs (1929-40) P. Munch in 1907 argued that the longing for a Danish reunification with Northern Schleswig, which had been surrendered in 1864, was based on the hope that politicians would come to power in Germany with a higher sense of righteousness than the present government.[4]

Thus, the perception was firmly established that the Danish demand on a border revision along the lines of nationality were an expression of higher righteousness – a level, which the Germans had not reached. This view was repeated in 1920, when the border revision was accomplished (almost) in accordance with the division lines of nationality. Thereby, the Danish government had done, what the German had not.

However, this perception was not based on a victim narrative, but instead on a narrative of the defeat being of Denmark’s own making. This narrative developed into the perception that Denmark in 1864 had learned what other European nations learned only after World War One that the state boundaries should follow the division lines of nationality and that small states gained little by warmongering and should instead seek peace and international cooperation.

With the introduction of the activist foreign policy in the wake of the end of the Cold War, this view was continuously expressed. In the event of the NATO Kosovo offensive in 1999, the movie director Nils Malmros in an opinion piece argued that Denmark should explain the 1864 case to the Serbs: That Denmark from the victory in the First Schleswig War 1848-50 tried to force a German minority into the state, which caused the war in 1864, in which defeat Denmark recognized the blessing it is to be a nation state.[5]

Although this approach was initially connected to the idea of international cooperation and pacifism, the Kosovo engagement in 1999, led even by a minister of foreign affairs from Munch’s own party, Det Radikale Venstre, was military. Thereby, this initially pacifist approach of international cooperation had made the Danish government dismiss the the notion that Denmark should keep away from military engagement.  

Thus, out of the Danish 1864 defeat Denmark in time developed a secular Kosovo Myth – an elevated purpose to make the world a better place. This idea became leading in the Danish political self-perception as a nation seeking international cooperation and righteousness, which for the following hundred years has been continuously present in the political presentation of Danish minority policy in the Danish-German border area and Danish international involvement in general.