Keywords

1 Introduction: Minority Education, Autonomy and Liberal Multiculturalism

Education is a central tool to help individuals develop identities and opportunities to contribute to society, especially for minorities to maintain and develop their language and culture (Wisthaler, 2011, p. 25). Education is also a central element in national mobilisation. Nationalism studies document the effect of state pressure combined with the literary development of the vernacular on the development of a conscious national community (Anderson & American Council of Learned Societies, 2006, ch. 3; Hastings, 1997, p. 11). These studies also examine the effect of modernisation and industrialisation on language homogenisation along with national identity construction (Gellner, 1983). They look at the central role of universal, obligatory schooling in creating and consolidating the nation as the bearer of the state, strengthening national identity, a feeling of belonging, of sharing a joint heritage as well as of national and linguistic homogenisation (Hobsbawm, 1992, p. 62; Hroch, 2005, especially pp. 99–102; at regional level Jahnke, 2005, 2011). Overall, modernisation, industrialisation and democratisation encouraged national and especially linguistic homogenisation as instruments of successful democratic governance and popular participation and control at the expense of linguistic and cultural diversity. This poses a challenge for all minority groups, which, with the increasing empowerment of the nation-state and its institutions, face both open, state-induced and more disguised, economically and socially induced pressure towards linguistic assimilation. Kymlicka advocates a theory of liberal multiculturalism to describe state–minority relations countering this pressure and designing states that ensure minority groups’ cultural and linguistic survival (Kymlicka, 2008, 2015, 2018). Liberal multiculturalism builds on ‘the belief that individuals have legitimate interests in their culture, language and identity and that public institutions must fairly consider those interests’ (Kymlicka, 2018, p. 81). The state’s responsibility is to ensure the institutional conditions relating to the public recognition of language and culture while individuals make free choices based on that background (Kymlicka, 2018, p. 81). Liberal multiculturalism is thus a reaction against nation-building processes that seek to undermine the viability of minorities’ cultural survival (Maciel, 2014, p. 385).

Therefore, non-territorial autonomy (NTA) maintains the need to establish cultural self-administration to realise minorities’ linguistic, cultural and educational rights. The implementation of NTA poses different challenges, as illustrated in the contributions to this anthology. This paper will concentrate on the dilemma of responsibility in a setting often considered a model of how to reconcile a national conflict and accommodate national minorities: the Danish–German border region of Schleswig (Kühl, 2005; Kühl & Bohn, 2005; Kühl & Weller, 2005). The Danish–German minority settlement is characterised by respective recognition by the state of residence and generous kin-state financial support to operate minority educational and cultural institutions, primarily organised as member-driven private associations. In principle, it ensures the possibility of living as a Dane in South Schleswig or as a German in North Schleswig from birth to death. As will be demonstrated below, it is prone to narratives of privileged minorities where generous kin-state funding has established an educational system that is superior to public schools. This system is perceived to attract the majority population, or more specifically, parents, who choose minority schooling for their children for perceived material benefits. Such narratives raise issues about recognition and fairness in minority and majority treatment and education. Fairness has usually been treated from a minority perspective: in a discourse on affirmative action policies of the 1990s (Neas, 1995), of equal opportunities (among others, Sardoc, 2016) and more recently in discussing the creation of institutions that ensure fair treatment of minority members (Dierckx et al., 2021; Salmi & Bassett, 2014; Valcke et al., 2020). In Schleswig, the discourse of fairness is reflected in the narratives of a majority perspective. This has also been the case in affirmative action discourses, but rarely when scrutinising the accommodation of national minorities’ cultural, linguistic and educational rights.

2 Minority Schools

Minority schools and their funding were already referred to in the minority treaties of the League of Nations, concluded as a part of the WWI peace settlements (Wisthaler, 2011, p. 25). The UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960) refers to minorities’ rights to operate their educational activities (Wisthaler, 2011, p. 25). The European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages (Language Charter, Council of Europe, 1992) and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM, Council of Europe, 1995) have introduced legal standards to secure these rights (Kymlicka, 2008). However, implementing these rights still depends on the states’ decisions as to which groups should be granted minority status. Spiliopoulou Åkermark considers affirmation of minority languages and cultures to be primarily instrumental, mainly seeking the social integration and assimilation of minority groups rather than promoting the importance of minority cultures for members of the minorities and for the societies in which they live (Spiliopoulou Åkermark, 2012), implying that there is room for improvement.

In principle, the FCNM and the Language Charter imply the state of residence’s responsibility to provide the necessary resources for its implementation. The logic behind this is that minority members, according to the FCNM, are citizens of the state in which they live. Thus, the two charters do not apply to migrants and their descendants but to autochthonous minorities only. In practice, the decisive role of the kin-state and its cross-border minority policy within an understanding of shared nationhood is evident in many minority-kin-state constellations. Here, the kin-state’s support may be pivotal to the operationality of institutional settings to implement minorities’ linguistic, cultural and educational rights. As Waterbury has stated, ‘kin-state support for minority language acquisition, maintenance and everyday usage can give members of the minority the option to become bi- or multi-lingual, thereby expanding their economic, educational and overall life opportunities’ (Waterbury, 2021, p. 44). Thus, kin-state embeddedness offers attractive opportunities for minorities and the kin-state. This is illustrated by the example of Hungary’s key policies targeted at the country’s kin-minorities abroad, which have facilitated migration to Hungary when its population has declined (Waterbury, 2021, p. 41).

Therefore, the question I raise in this paper is whether kin-state support for minority cultural and educational institutions raises a dilemma, as it primarily relieves the state of residence from its obligations towards its minorities and, secondarily, even threatens the minority’s continuous existence by encouraging migration to the kin-state. The latter especially applies in minority-kin-state settings where socio-economic differences could be a pull factor for kin-state-directed migration.

3 Background: Schleswig as a Case of Border Delineation in Line with National Self-Determination and Minority NTA

I will illustrate this dilemma with a case study of the reciprocal minorities in the Danish–German border region of Schleswig (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
A map of Schleswig in the nineteenth century depicts the Danish-German border territories.

The Danish–German border region

Full size image

Today’s Danish–German border is a product of the post-WWI peace order. It divided the former Duchy of Schleswig, a territory that caused a national conflict between Danish and German nation-state projects in the nineteenth century (Bregnsbo, 2016). Although the region’s ethnic composition has been blurred since mediaeval times, top-down acculturation into German culture has proceeded slowly, especially since the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. In effect, a clear national boundary did not exist. Linguistically, the local Danish dialect remained strong in the rather wealthy northern rural areas and the rather poor midlands, while German replaced it in the south (seventeenth century) and the wealthy Mideast (nineteenth century). Furthermore, Germans dominated the urban elite. Proto-national and national identities have not necessarily been tied to language but remain volatile and multiple, oscillating during crises (Klatt, 2012, 2019). The exact location of the border was negotiated between Denmark and the Allies at a peace conference, where Denmark insisted on implementation by plebiscite. The terms of this plebiscite, applied to two zones voting on 10 February and 12 March 1920, followed a design outlined by the North Schleswig Danes’ leading political figure, H. P. Hanssen, confirming the previously drawn line of separation (Fink, 1979, 1995). The dissenters of the plebiscite (about 25% in North Schleswig had voted for Germany, about 20% in South Schleswig had voted for Denmark) were promised minority rights and cultural autonomy, guaranteed by the Weimar constitution in Germany and specific educational laws in Denmark (Becker-Christensen, 1984; Noack, 1989). When the so-called reunification of Northern Schleswig with Denmark was celebrated in the summer of 1920, the Danish Prime Minister promised the Danish-oriented Schleswigians left behind in Germany that they would not be forgotten (De skal ikke blive glemt).Footnote 1 These words laid the ground for the motivation for Danish kin-state support and are still its moral base today.

Nevertheless, the interwar years were troublesome: Germany and the German minority did not accept the new border. The terms of the plebiscite were considered unjust, as North Schleswig’s vote was counted en-bloc, ignoring local German majorities in the towns of Tønder, Aabenraa and Sønderborg (Becker-Christensen, 1990). Politically, the minority’s representatives in the Danish parliament reiterated their claim for the ‘reunification’ of North Schleswig with Germany (Klatt, 2015). In addition, the Danish minority struggled, being numerically small and facing the challenge that many of its members, especially their children, did not know the Danish language (Noack, 1989). Furthermore, there was considerable opposition to the border within nationalist circles in Denmark, manifesting itself in supporting missionary efforts to convince South Schleswigians of their Danish heritage, roots and souls (Johnsen, 2005). The German minority’s collaboration with the Nazi occupation of Denmark from 1940 to 1945 put a severe strain on Denmark’s relation to the minority after liberation (Hansen & Kristensen, 2005), while demands for a border revision to the south raised anxiety in post-WWII Germany (Noack, 1991).

However, post-WWII geopolitics required Danish–West German détente. Following West Germany’s accession to NATO in 1955, the Danish and West German governments declared the two reciprocal minorities’ rights to cultural autonomy, kin-state connections and kin-state support, with minority membership being based on personal decisions and not subject to state scrutiny or verification (Kühl, 2005). The Bonn-Copenhagen declarations of 1955 laid the ground for building coexistence and cooperation between minorities and majorities, ‘moving from negative to positive peace’ (Hughes et al., 2020, p. 2). The German minority declared that collaboration with Nazi Germany had been a terrible mistake and declared their loyalty to the Danish state and the 1920 border. They redefined their identity as Europeans and their mission as building bridges between the Danish people and the continent to further European integration (Klatt, 2006; Lubowitz, 2005). In South Schleswig, the suspicion that the Danish minority and Danish nationalist circles harboured the long-term aim of border revision continued well into the 1960s. However, Denmark’s accession to the European Community in 1973 changed the discourse into de-bordering and cooperation (Klatt, 2006). Afterwards, the Schleswig approach to conflict resolution and minority accommodation has been widely considered a ‘model’ (Klatt, 2014).

The principal model of reciprocal, functional minority NTA in Schleswig is based on separate cultural and educational institutions, church congregations, nursing homes, social services, sports clubs and other associations. The Danish–German model of financing minority institutions is characterised by the important role of material and idealistic kin-state support. Central to both minorities are their kindergarten and school systems. Experiments with public minority schools during the interwar years (especially for the German minority in North Schleswig) and shortly after WWII in Danish-friendly municipalities in South Schleswig were dropped in favour of private educational institutions operated by member-driven minority school associations. Presently, minority educational institutions in North and South Schleswig operate as private institutions, following the state of residence’s law on private educational institutions. Nevertheless, they are self-perceived as minorities’ public schools, especially in political discourses equalising them with other private educational institutions.

All minority institutions and associations are thus co-funded by the state of residence and the kin-state. This model of responsibility sharing is universally accepted. However, resource conflicts have been present, usually grounded in the argument of a lack of equalisation. This means that state-of-residence public funding for minority institutions and associations, usually at the municipal level, does not match funding for similar majority institutions and associations. The usual majority narrative when denying equalisation in such resource conflicts is that Danish minority institutions and associations are generously supported by the kin-state, thus already maintaining higher quality standards than comparable majority institutions and associations.

4 The 2010 School Conflict

While most of these resource conflicts pass unnoticed among the wider public and media, a one-sided reduction of state-of-residence financing of minority schools in South Schleswig seriously disturbed the minority peace in 2010–2012, creating a local crisis and affecting Danish–German bilateral relations (the following is based on Klatt, 2014; Kühl, 2012). The conflict materialised from negotiations for a post-financial crisis austerity budget in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, where the ruling government decided to reduce the state funding of minority schools from 100% equivalence of the state’s public school funding to just 85%. The background of this measure demonstrates how global developments such as the global financial crisis impact the local: German pressures on EU financial stability and public debt limitations, particularly the Greek bailout, induced similar domestic measures such as the constitutionalised ‘debt brake’ for German federal and state budgets—which locally resulted in a severe resource conflict over the financial responsibility towards minority educational institutions.

The proposed reduction caught stakeholders by surprise. It was communicated rather unexpectedly after the Pentecostal retreat of the Schleswig-Holstein government to discuss budget issues. Timed just before the minority’s årsmøde, its annual three-day get together, the minority’s daily newspaper Flensborg Avis ran the headline ‘Direct attack on the minority’, heralding the start of a belligerent årsmøde-weekend marked by resolute defiance (27 May 2010, read the vivid, onsite description of the emotions evolving in the minority in Hughes et al., 2020, pp. 11–12). This mobilisation of the minority continued in the coming weeks. Clearly perceiving these unilateral cuts to minority school funding as discriminatory, parents, pupils and kin-state politicians continued to fight for a revision of the cuts, using the slogan ‘our kids are worth 100%, too’. Furthermore, many German politicians sympathised with the minority: state politicians of the opposition social democrats and Greens, but also members of the governing parties, the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) at the federal level (a coalition of CDU and FDP ruled both in Kiel and Berlin at the time).

5 Discourse: The ‘Wealthy Minority Schools’

It should seem obvious that a financing mechanism that allocates 85% of the average per-pupil public school costs discriminates against minority schools and is not acceptable for a majority–minority model considered best practice. When confronted with this, two leading representatives of the Schleswig-Holstein government (prime minister Peter Harry Carstensen) and the ruling party (chairman of the CDU parliamentary group Christian von Boetticher) attempted to frame a discourse of ‘wealthy minority schools’, referring to kin-state support. This discourse was not new in the Danish–German context. During the post-war crises following the German military defeat in 1918 and 1945, sympathy with Denmark was disparaged as materially motivated, using the term Speckdänen—‘bacon Danes’ (Jebsen & Klatt, 2014; Noack, 1991).

The basis of the argument of ‘wealthy minority schools’ was a report of the state audit institution (Landesrechnungshof) from 2006 (Schleswig-Holstein, 2006). This report claimed that the Danish minority school association had plenty of potential to make savings. The auditors reprimanded the many small minority schools, resulting in high per-pupil costs, higher teacher-per-pupil ratios compared to public schools and comparatively high net salaries for teachers compared to Danish public schools (which would be the alternative workplace for most minority schoolteachers). Furthermore, another factor contributing to the narrative of the ‘wealthy minority’ was the opening of a new Danish high school, AP Møller Skolen, in Schleswig in 2008. Prior to this, the only minority secondary high school was Duborg-Skolen in Flensburg, founded in the 1920s. Geographically located in the north-east of South Schleswig, this has long involved logistical challenges and commutes for students living in the southern and western areas of South Schleswig. Thus, when the Danish AP Møller Foundation offered to construct a secondary high school in Schleswig, they received a warm welcome from the minority. A. P. Møller (1976–1965), one of the founders of the Danish logistics giant Mærsk, strongly supported ‘reunifying’ South Schleswig with Denmark in 1945. He had supported Danish activities in the very south of South Schleswig in the 1950s when the Danish government only funded Danish activities north of the Dannevirke-Schlei line, the linguistic border between Danish and German in the early nineteenth century.

The foundation’s support was presented as a gift to the minority, resulting in a school building designed by C. F. Møller, ‘one of Scandinavia’s largest and oldest architectural societies’ (http://www.apmoellerskolen.org/om-skolen/skolens-historie.aspx, accessed 11 March 2022). The school was praised for its high standards, causing some envy among majority-school stakeholders who also feared competition in student recruitment (disclosed to the author by AP Møller Skolen’s first principal, Jørgen Kühl). While the school building surpasses the standard of German public schools, this does not indicate a generally higher standard of the minority’s educational infrastructure compared to similar German or Danish public schools.

Oral comments revealed that Prime Minister Carstensen and his parliamentary lieutenant von Boetticher still held the ‘bacon Danes’ view. When confronted by minority members at the state’s annual Schleswig-Holstein Tag in June 2010, Carstensen advised minority members to send their children to a (majority) public school if they wanted 100% (Kühl, 2012, p. 25). At a political meeting with the chairman of the Danish Regions of South Denmark, a political friend of Peter Harry Carstensen, the latter reiterated his perception of minority schools’ privileged financial situation (Kühl, 2012, pp. 25–26). The perceived privileging of minority schools was confirmed by state parliament representative Heike Franzen on behalf of the whole CDU parliamentary group (Kühl, 2012, p. 36).

Christian von Boetticher argued on his Facebook page:

Please explain to me why we should finance the Danish schools’ bank savings with money which we need to borrow from the bank at the expense of our children and grandchildren! Why should we hereby finance staff and facilities that no German school can afford? And why are there children attending these – at least for German children – private schools, where neither parents nor children profess to be Danish, but openly admit that they only attend Danish schools because they have better facilities? In light of these indisputable facts, it is almost cynical towards pupils in German schools to talk about discrimination and disadvantaging! There is, in consequence, no need to reconsider the decision [of the cuts], especially as the state cuts are compensated with federal funds. (Kühl, 2012, p. 37)

In an interview with the daily newspaper of the German minority in Denmark, Der Nordschleswiger, von Boetticher reiterated his perception of discrimination against majority pupils:

It must be ensured that the German that attends a German school does not end up feeling stupid. There should be no misconception that the person who chose Danish-ness and a Danish education when entering elementary school is the smart one, while the person that stayed with German and had to attend German school, is the loser. That must not happen. (Kühl, 2012, p. 48)

It is a fundamental principle of the Schleswig minority settlement that minority membership is a personal choice not to be questioned by state authorities. Therefore, such statements indicating that material motives decide parents’ choice of minority school for their children are a challenge to the settlement.

6 Bilateral Action: The National Governments Take Charge

The German and Danish national governments’ involvement illustrates the conflict’s gravity. In the 1950s, the two national governments applied much pressure, especially on the state government of Schleswig-Holstein, to achieve a settlement (Kühl, 2005; Noack, 1997). Thereafter, however, the implementation of the NTA was left to regional and local authorities in cooperation with the minorities’ association. The renewed involvement of the national government indicated a serious problem. Particularly, the compensation for state cuts by federal funds was revolutionary, as the German federal system allocates education as a responsibility of the states. Furthermore, the thorough investigation of the mixed kin-state and state-of-residence financing of minority school systems revealed an imbalance in Germany’s favour. According to Danish calculations, implementing the financial cuts would have resulted in Denmark financing 63% of the reciprocal Danish–German minorities’ institutions, with Germany financing the remaining 37% (Danish Minister of the Interior Bertel Haarder, cited by Kühl, 2012, p. 29).

The minority contemplated taking legal action but eventually decided to punt on a political solution after the 2012 state elections. These induced a new coalition government of the social democrats and the Green Party, joined by the minority party South Schleswigian Voters’ Association (Südschleswigscher Wählerverband, SSW), which quickly returned to 100% equivalence. The crisis was solved, but it also led to questions over whether the Schleswig model could be considered a European best practice (Hughes et al., 2020; Klatt, 2014; Kühl, 2012). Since then, the 100% principle has remained a political consensus. When the CDU was back in government in 2017, leading a so-called Jamaica coalition (with the liberal FDP and the Green Party), new Prime Minister Daniel Günther clarified that their government had no intention of deviating from the 100% principle and that they aimed at strengthening cooperation with Denmark and the Danish minority. This also applies to the recently (May 2022) elected government of the CDU and the Green Party.

The conflict of 2010–2012 illustrates the dilemma of responsibility. While all parties agree that Danish–German and minority–majority relations are excellent, kin-state support can become a sensitive issue. This applies especially to the Danish minority in South Schleswig, where kin-state support is about 50% of the actual costs of minority institutions. In the school associations’ budget for 2018, for example, 47% of the costs were covered by funds from the kin-state.Footnote 2 The German minority schools in Denmark receive about 70% of their funds from the state of residence,Footnote 3 illustrating a lack of equivalence in kin-state support vs state-of-residence funding and illustrating that both minority school systems depend on kin-state support to fulfil their tasks within minority education.

7 Consequences

The case of Schleswig, especially the evolving discourse around Schleswig-Holstein’s unilateral funding cuts in 2010, demonstrates the sensitivity of formal non-territorial autonomy arrangements to overarching political developments, which, at first sight, do not correlate to minority–majority relations. The global financial crisis, German-inspired EU austerity, the Greek bailout and German measures to secure sustainable public budgets challenged a well-established norm: the combined kin-state and state of residency financing of minority educational institutions. It was unbalanced from an equivalence of 85% in relation to majority public institutions, based on the argument that minority institutions had been privileged by their ‘additional’ kin-state funding. This norm had not been legally formalised or internalised by all relevant stakeholders. While the German federal government, formed by the same parties as the state government of Schleswig-Holstein, realised the important dimension of these cuts for Danish–German relations and the perception of Germany’s minority policies, the decision-makers in Kiel and their local political hinterland remained stubborn. Here, stakeholders insisted on the privileged situation of Danish minority institutions because of their supplementary access to perceived enormous financial resources from Denmark.

This raises more general issues of a state’s responsibility towards its minorities. Germany and Denmark perceive themselves as liberal democracies that adhere to European conventions, including minority rights. Both countries recognise borderland minorities as belonging and have adopted minority policies in line with liberal multiculturalism, respecting and protecting borderland minorities’ cultural structures. However, the implementation of this cultural, non-territorial autonomy depends on kin-state financial support. It could be argued that relying on kin-state funding is, in principle, contrary to the spirit of European minority rights conventions, especially on recognition. Kin-state dependency challenges Kymlicka’s claim of state responsibility of ‘ensuring fair background conditions, including institutional conditions relating to the public recognition of language and culture’ (Kymlicka, 2018, p. 81). As revealed here, it also raises questions about privileging minorities when there is a considerable perception at the highest political level that the added value of kin-state financing, in effect, creates preferences in the majority population to choose the minority school system. Therefore, NTA settings should be sensitive to navigating between kin-state and state-of-residence frameworks. Legislation implementing minorities’ linguistic, cultural and educational rights should emphasise the state of residence’s responsibility to ensure diversity, incorporate minority associations and institutions and create a basis for a universally accepted, equal-quality framework of minority educational institutions.