1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Flensburg

FLENSBURG (Danish, Flensborg), a seaport of Germany, in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, at the head of the Flensburg Fjord, 20 m. N.W. from Schleswig, at the junction of the main line Altona-Vamdrup (Denmark), with branches to Kiel and Glücksburg. Pop. (1905) 48,922. The principal public buildings are the Nikolai Kirche (built 1390, restored 1894), with a spire 295 ft. high; the Marienkirche, also a medieval church, with a lofty tower; the law courts; the theatre and the exchange. There are two gymnasia, schools of marine engineering, navigation, wood-carving and agriculture. The cemetery contains the remains of the Danish soldiers who fell at the battle of Idstedt (25th of July 1850), but the colossal Lion monument, erected by the Danes to commemorate their victory, was removed to Berlin in 1864. Flensburg is a busy centre of trade and industry, and is the most important town in what was formerly the duchy of Schleswig. It possesses excellent wharves, does a large import trade in coal, and has shipbuilding yards, breweries, distilleries, cloth and paper factories, glass-works, copper-works, soap-works and rice mills. Its former extensive trade with the West Indies has lately suffered owing to the enormous development of the North Sea ports, but it is still largely engaged in the Greenland whale and the oyster fisheries.

Flensburg was probably founded in the 12th century. It attained municipal privileges in 1284, was frequently pillaged by the Swedes after 1643, and in 1848 became the capital, under Danish rule, of Schleswig.

See Holdt, Flensburg früher und jetzt (1884).