in 1261, Holstein was split up into several count ships by his sons
and grandsons: the lines of Kiel, Plon, Schauenburg-Pinneberg and
Rendsburg.
In 1232 King Valdemar II., who had retained the former German Mark north of the Eider, erected South Iutland (Schleswig) into a gc":;-Lg: latter's descendant, Duke Eric, in 1319, Christopher II. or south' of Denmark attempted to seize the duchy, the heir of which, Valdemar V., was a minor; but Valdemar's guardian and uncle, Gerhard III. of Holstein-Rendsburg (1304-1340), sumamed “the Great" and a notable warrior, drove back the Danes and, Christopher having been expelled, succeeded in procuring the election of Valdemar to the Danish throne. His reward was the duchy of Schleswig and the famous charter, known as the Constitutio Valdemariana, which laid down the principle that the duchy of South Jutland was never to be incorJutland. 7:t;3°"' porated in the kingdom of Denmark or ruled by the same 1, 'I de? sovereign (7Hlune 1326). Thus Schleswig and Holstein mad". were for the rst time united. The union was, indeed, as 326 ' yet precarious. In 1330 Christopher II. was restored to his throne and Valdemar V. to his duchy, Gerhard having to be content with the reversion in the case oil the dukebdying) withoué issue. Gerhard, however, was assassinate in 1340 y a ane, an it was not till 1375, when the male lines both in the kingdom and the duchy}J<icame eicfinct byhthe deaths Ioif lKing Valdéemar FIV. and Duke a demar ., that the counts o o stein seize on t eir inheritance, assuming at the same time the style of “lords of llutland." 1386 Quféen Margarg: agoiived their cliailm in xgtiarn or the usua omage an promiseo eu a service, an irecte t at U 1 I one of their number should be elected duke of Schleswig. S;';';° The choice fell on Gerhard VI., grandson of Gerhard III. md mg of Rendsburg, who after the extinction of the line of Kiel Hamm, " (1390) obtained in 1403 the whole of the count ship of h b ° Holstein, excsgpt the smallfiigsuenburgéegigories. With t is egins the history o the union o eswig an o stein. Gerhard VI. died in 1404, and soon afterwards war broke out bgtweenfhg sons alrld Egic tif Porgeganiag g/!a1{ga3et's successor in the t rone o enmar, w o caime out ut an as an integra part gf the Daéiish monarch ff, a claim forppally recognized by thelemprgog igismun in 1424.1 t was not ti 14 0 that the strugge en e with the investiture of Count Adolf Vllil., Gerhard's son, with the d Ch h III f D k O
here itaryduchy of Schleswig by ristop er .o enmar . n the death of Christopher eight years later, Adolf's influence secured the election of his nephew Count Christian of Oldenburg to the vacant throne.
On the death of Adolf in 1459 without issue, King Christian I., though he had been forced to swear to the Constitulio Valdemariana, K1 succeeded in asserting his claim to Schleswig in right of dull; f his mother, Ad0lf's sister. Instead of incorporating the;"?en South Iutland with the Danish kingdom, however, he preferred to take advantage of the feeling of the estates b'"¥u"°° in Schleswig and Holstein in favour of union to secure both countries. On Schleswig the Schauenburg- gounts had no claim; their election in Holstein would have separate the countries; and it was easy therefore for Christian to secure his election both as duke of Schleswig and count of Holstein (5 March 1460). ggénjxg The price he paid was a charter of privileges, issued firsé rhe§ , m ' at Ribe and afterwards at Kiel, ni which he promise" dissoluble to preserve the countries for ever as one and indivisible, "Blom" and conceded to the estates the right to refuse to elect as count and duke any Danish prince who should not undertake, on becoming king, to confirm their privileges. By these privileges the union between South Jutland and Holstein, established under the Schauenburg line, was officially recognized. For external affairs the two countries were to be re arded as one, the bishop of Lübeck and five “ good men " elected Ty the estates of each country forming an advisory and executive council under the duke-count. For internal affairs duchy and county were to retain their separate estates and peculiar customs and laws. Above all, Holstein remained a German, Schleswig a Danish fief. The claims of the Schauenburg counts were surrendered for a money payment; Duck of it was not till 1640, however, that the extinction of their "vigil" line brought Schauenburg itself to the Danish crown. H72 ' Finally, in 1472 the emperor Frederick III. confirmed Christian I.'s over lordship over Dithmarschen, and gepted Dithmarschen, Holstein and Stormarn into the duchy of 0 stein.
On the death of King Frederick I. (1523-1533), under whom the Reformation had been introduced into the duchies, ' occurred the SuMM first of several partitions of the inheritance of the house “M Dime of Qldenburg; the elder son, Christian III., succeeding d”d", " as king of Denmark, the ounger, Adolphus (Adolf) I., founding the line of the dlukes of Gottorp. In 1581 a further partition was made, by a compact signed at Flensburg, between King Frederick II. and his uncle Duke Adolphus I., under 1 Question du Slesvig, p. 78.
- The Church (Lutheran) was organized under a Probst (provost)
and consistory, the king himself assuming the jurisdiction of summus episcopus.duchy
for his second son, Abel. On the death of the which the rights of over lordship in the various towns and territories of Schleswig were divided between them; the estates, however, remained undivided. and the king and duke ruled the country alternately. To make confusion worse confounded, Frederick II. in 1582 ceded certain lands in Hardersleben to his brother John, who founded the line of'Schleswig-Sonderburg, and John's grandsons again partitioned this appanage, Ernest Gunther (1609-1689), founding the line of -Schleswig-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, and Augustus Philip (1612-1675) that of Schleswig-Beck-Gliicksburg (known since 1825 as Holstein-Sonderburg-Gliicksburg), Meanwhile the Gottorp dukes were making themselves a great position in Europe. Frederick III., duke from 1616 to 1659, established the principle of primogeniture for his line, Th and the full sovereignty of his Schleswig dominions was d If 1, secured to him by his son-in-law Charles X. of Sweden by G" rf' ° the convention of Copenhagen (12 May 1658)3 and to 0 “mf his son Christian Albert (d. 1694) by the treaty of Oliva, though it was not till after years of warfare that Denmark admitted the claim by the convention of Altona (30 June 168Q). Christian Albert's son Frederick IV. (d. 1702) was again attacked by Denmark, but had a powerful champion in Charles XII. of Sweden, who secured his rights by the treaty of Travendal in 1700. Frederick was killed at the battle of Klissow in 1702, and his brother Christian Augustus acted as regent for his son Charles Frederick until 1718. In 1713 the regent broke the stipulated neutrality of the duchy in favour of Sweden and Frederick IV. of Denmark seized the excuse to expel the duke by force of arms., Holstein was restored to him by the peace of Frederiksborg in 1720, but in the following year Frederick V. was recognized as sovereign of Schleswig by the estates and by the princes of the Augustenburg and Gliicksburg lines. T e situation was ultimately simplified by the marriage of Duke Charles Frederick with the tsarevna Anna Pavlovna, and the recognition in 1742 of their son Charles Peter Ulrich as R cesarevitch by the empress Elizabeth of Russia. For "ssls Peter as duke of Gottorp, Adolphus Frederick, bishop 'xjffshu of Lflbeck, son of Christian Augustus, acted as regent in meg until 1745; in 1751 he became king of Sweden! But the ducmes rulers of Russia had no interest in maintaining their part 1767 of Holstein and their confused and disputed common 177; rights in jutland, and in 1767 the empress Catherine II. resigned them, by the treaty of Copenhagen, in the name of her son Paul, who confirmed this action on coming of age in 1773. Oldenburg and Delmenhorst, surrendered by the Danish king) in compensation, were handed over to Frederick Augustus, ishop of ilbeck, the second son of Christian Augustus, who thus founded the younger line* of the house of Gottorp. Schleswig and Holstein were thus once more united under the Danish king. On the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire in ISO6, Holstein was practically, though not formally, incorporated in Denmark. Under the administration of the Danish rime minister Count Bernstorff, himself from Schleswig, many reibrms were carried out in the duchies, e.g. abolition of torture and of serfdom; at the same time Danish laws and coinage were introduced, and Danish was made the official language for communication with Copenhagen. Since, however, the Danish court itself at the time was largely German in language and feeling, this produced no serious expressions of resentment.
The Congress of Vienna, instead of settling the questions involved in the relations of the duchies of Denmark once for all, ” sought to stereotype the old divisions in the interests of Germany. The settlement of 1806 was reversed, and while Schleswig 523321 remained as before, Holstein and Lauenbur were in- 1815 eluded in the new German Confederation. The opening up of the Schleswig-Holstein question thus became sooner or later inevitable. The Germans of Holstein, influenced by the new national enthusiasm evoked by the War of Liberation, resented more than ever the attempts of the government of Copenhagen to treat them as part of the Danish monarchy and, encouraged by the sympathy of the Germans in Schleswig, early tried to reassert in the interests of Germanism the old principle of the unity of the duchies. The political atmosphere, however, had changed at Copenhagen also; and their demands were met by the Danes with a nationalist temper as intractable as their own. Affairs were ripe for a crisis, which the threatened failure of the common male heirs to the kingdom and the duchies precipitated.
“The king by a convention of the same date secured the full sovereignty for his own particular appanage in Schleswig. The attempt ofy the dukes of Gottorp to partition the actual government of the duchy broke on the opposition of the estates. Adolphus Frederick had renounced his rights in Schleswig by an agreement with the Danish king signed on the 25th of pril 1 0.
7§ The best solution, which afterwards had the support of Napoleon III., would have been to partition Schleswig on the lines of nationality, assigning the Danish part to Denmark, the German to Holstein. This idea, which subsequently had supporters both among Danes and Germans, proved impracticable later owing to the intractable ternper of the majority on both sides. See La Question de Slesvzg, p. 135 seq.. “ Historique de l'idée d'un partage du Slesvig."
