Flensburg, Danish: Flensborg, is located in the north of
Schleswig-Holstein, not far from the border with Denmark and is the
northernmost independent city in Germany. Flensburg is the economic,
cultural and tourist center of the region. As a “gateway to the
north”, the city also has an important bridging function in the
German/Scandinavian region.
Flensburg is idyllically located
on the Flensburg Fjord directly on the German-Danish border. To the
east, the hilly landscape of the Fishing Peninsula adjoins. The city
is framed by the Flensburg Fjord, which means water plays a major
role in the city. You can feel the rustic maritime atmosphere when
you walk through the idyllic but lively backdrop of the historic
harbor. Flensburg was once the center of rum processing. Flensburg
merchants traveled from here to the Danish West Indies. The liquid
gold of the Caribbean once made Flensburg rich. The Rum Museum in
the Flensburg Maritime Museum tells a lot about it. On the Rum &
Sugar Mile route through the rustic alleys and corners of the rum
town of Flensburg, you can delve even further into rum history.
Today the city is the center of the northern part of South
Schleswig and a university town. Hardly any other place in Germany
is as well known to drivers as Flensburg. Every adult is probably
familiar with the Flensburg points system and the Flensburg traffic
offender index. They have become synonymous with the Federal Motor
Transport Authority (KBA).
Flensburg today and Flensburg's
history are closely linked to its neighboring country Denmark and
the Danish culture, which is still very present today. This makes
Flensburg a unique city of two cultures. Flensburg is one of the few
cities that remained undestroyed in World War II. The inventory of
historical buildings from all eras is correspondingly large. The
absolute highlights in Flensburg include the maritime events.
Flensburg's district and street names often contain word
components that are rather unusual in the rest of the
German-speaking world. Some settlement areas in the city and the
surrounding area end in -by, which generally indicates a larger
settlement, for example Adelby (Danish by≈locality, village). These
names can therefore also be found in street names, for example
Adelbyer Kirchenweg. Others end with the suffix -toft, which can
usually be translated as “field”. Toft is a name for an enclosed
field (or parcel) located away from a village or settlement on which
a farm stands. The word gap (Danish løkke), which refers to a
paddock, an enclosed field, has a similar meaning in the Flensburg
street names. “Lund”, as in Adelbylund, always means a grove or
forest. The ending -holz also refers to a wood and -dam often refers
to a pond or reservoir (Danish dam = pond, pond). Other street names
end with -stieg (Danish sti), which means a path.
1 Church of St. Marien - Sorrowful Mother (Catholic), Nordergraben
36, 24937 Flensburg. Tel.: +49 (0)461 144 09 10, email:
buero@pfarrei-stella-maris.de . The Catholic Church of St. Mary's
Sorrowful Mother was built between 1898 and 1900 in the neo-Gothic style
as a brick hall church. The tower was not completed until 1909. The
church functions as the parish church of a large parish with
approximately 12,000 members. Today the church also includes the small
St. Joseph's Chapel, which can be reached from the courtyard entrance.
2 Saint Nikolai Church (Evangelical Lutheran),
Nikolaikirchhof/Südermarkt, 24937 Flensburg. Tel.: +49 (0)461 840 04 00,
Fax: +49 (0)461 84 00 40 29, Email:
kirchenbuero@nikolaikirche-flensburg.de . The St. Nikolai Church is the
largest main church in Flensburg. The Gothic hall church is dedicated to
St. Nicholas. Initially without a tower, it was completed in 1480,
damaged in the city fire of 1485 and rebuilt in 1490. With a ridge
height of 40m and a 90m high tower, St. Nikolai is the largest church in
the city. St. Nikolai sees itself as an open church for the city; it is
open to all visitors daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
3 Sankt Johannis
Church (Evangelical Lutheran), Johanniskirchhof 22, 24937 Flensburg.
Tel.: +49 (0)461 127 71, Fax: +49 (0)461 127 19, Email:
stjohannis@foni.net . St. John's Church is the smallest and oldest of
the city's three remaining main churches. According to legend,
construction of the stone church began in 1128. The core of the hall
church is Romanesque, but in the Gothic period it received larger
windows and a choir extension made of bricks. The tower of the church
dates from the Baroque period.
4 Saint Mary's Church (Evangelical
Lutheran), Große Straße 58, 24937 Flensburg. Tel.: +49 (0)461 293 13,
Fax: +49 (0)461 18 17 88, Email: kirchenbuero@marien-flensburg.de . The
Evangelical Lutheran St. Marien Church is one of the two largest and
most important churches in Flensburg. The St. Mary's Church was first
mentioned in a document in 1284. In 1878-80 the old tower was replaced
by a neo-Gothic one. The portal porch on the south side of the tower
yoke dates from 1958 and today serves as the main entrance. Larger
remains of late medieval painting have been preserved in various parts
of the vault. When the two small hourly bells have died down at 6 p.m.,
the Marienglocke ("The Fat Mary") rings from Monday to Friday for the
so-called Angelus ringing.
5 Holy Spirit Church (Helligåndskirken,
Evangelical Lutheran), Große Straße 43, 24937 Flensburg. Tel.: +49
(0)461 529 25, email: kirken@kirken.de . Danish minority church. The
Church of the Holy Spirit is the oldest Danish church in southern
Schleswig. It was built in 1386 and was located next to what was then
the Holy Spirit Hospital in the Middle Ages.
6 Johanniskirche (Adelby
Church), Richard-Wagner-Straße 51 - 55, 24943 Flensburg, OT-Adelby.
Tel.: +49 (0)461 62231, Fax: +49 (0)461 679079, Email:
buero@kirche-adelby.de . The Johanniskirche (often also called the
Adelby Church) is the oldest church in the city of Flensburg and is
located in the Adelby district, probably the actual nucleus of
Flensburg. It should not be confused with the St. John's Church in the
city center. The village church was probably built around 1080. The
Romanesque stone church, which is visible from afar on a hill within the
churchyard, has a west tower, thick, white-painted walls and a red roof
on top, as well as a weathercock on the tower, and is therefore older
than the church of the same name in the city center of Flensburg. In
1726 the wooden tower was demolished and replaced by today's baroque
tower with studded ashlar stones.
7 St. Jürgen Church (Evangelical
Lutheran), Jürgensgaarder Str. 2, 24943 Flensburg. Tel.: +49 (0)461
1506850, Fax: +49 (0)461 1506853, Email: st.juergen@foni.net . The St.
Jürgen Church was built between 1904 and 1907 as a neo-Gothic brick
building. The mighty church forms a memorable silhouette for the town
located in the valley on the fjord, which determines the image of the
eastern slope of the fjord. It is one of Jürgensby's cultural monuments.
In 2014/15, the church's vault, which was damaged by cracks, had to be
extensively renovated.
The city of Flensburg has neither a castle nor a palace to offer.
Nevertheless, there is no shortage of such buildings in the surrounding
area:
1 Glücksburg Castle, Castle, 24960 Glücksburg. Email:
info@schloss-gluecksburg.de . The moated castle in Glücksburg, 10km
away, is one of the most important Renaissance castles in Northern
Europe and is one of the most famous sights in Schleswig-Holstein. more
details.
2 Sønderborg Castle (Sønderborg Slot), Sønderbro 1, 6400
Sønderborg. Tel.: +45 65 37 08 07, email: sonderborg@msj.dk . The
castle, located on the banks of the Flensburg Fjord in Sønderborg, 45km
away, was originally built as a fortress in the 12th century and was
later converted into a Renaissance residence.
Various traces of human life and work from prehistory and early history have been discovered in the urban area. Sites that testify to these times include the grave mounds Friedenshügel, Nonnenberg and Weinberg.
The origin of the city name Flensburg, first
mentioned in 1248, has not yet been clarified. According to a
legend, Duke Knud Lavard commissioned a knight Fleno to build a
castle at the end of the fjord. This Fleno castle is said to have
given the city its name. A more recent theory suggests that the name
derives from a small tower fortress, the foundations of which were
found near St. Mary's Church, and which lay on something like some
sort of small island, peninsula, or headland.
In addition to
the founding myth about the knight Fleno, Flensburg has an
apocalyptic myth about his downfall, the starting point of which is
said to be at the oat market and in which the black pig plays a
decisive role.
By the middle
of the 12th century at the latest, a trading and fishing settlement
with the St. Johannis Church was built on the inner part, where the
Flensburg Fjord began. The St. Johannis settlement with its location
was a younger part of the Husbyharde in fishing. In 1170 the parish
of Sankt Marien was established, around 1200 the parish of Sankt
Nikolai and finally in 1290 Sankt Gertrud. These churches of Sankt
Nikolai, Sankt Marien and Sankt Gertrud, located west of the fjord
and the Scherrebek brook flowing into it, were in the Wiesharde. The
entire area then belonged to the Kingdom of Denmark. Historians
believe that there were several reasons for choosing this location.
After the destruction of the Wendish land and sea rule by the Danes
under Waldemar I and the Saxons under Henry the Lion, life on the
waterfront had become safer. The place was considered a safe haven
on the fjord with protection from strong winds. In addition, two
important trade routes cross in Flensburg: the Ochsenweg leading
through Jutland and the trade route between North Friesland and
fishing (Angelbowege). Another reason was the large number of
herrings.
In the course of time, the small trading
establishments gained in importance and grew closer and closer
together. At that time, the Knudsgilde already existed, a
determining power in Flensburg, which consisted of wealthy merchants
and was given privileges even then. With her influence on the city
regiment could be exercised. After fighting between the Danish King
Erik Plovpenning and his brother and successor Abel, the burgeoning
town center in the Dammhof area was destroyed in 1248. Abel promoted
the reconstruction of the place. The Minorite monastery was probably
built in 1263 or earlier. In 1284 the Danish King Erik Glipping
granted the new town town charter, the content of which suggests a
very lively trade. Duke Waldemar IV of Schleswig confirmed the town
charter. Flensburg quickly became the most important city in the
Duchy of Schleswig, a Danish fiefdom with the Danish king as feudal
lord, which, in contrast to Holstein bordering to the south, did not
belong to the Holy Roman Empire. Like other Schleswig cities,
Flensburg was not a member of the Hanseatic League. Nevertheless,
there were close trade contacts with German and European Hanseatic
cities. An important commodity at that time were herring pickled in
salt, which were sent across Europe.
From 1409 the clashes
between Holsteiners and Danes for supremacy in Schleswig began (see
also Sønderjylland). In 1411 Queen Margaret I achieved the cession
of large parts of the Duchy of Schleswig to Denmark in the Treaty of
Kolding. In the same year the Duburg was built on the Marienberg.
Margarethe I died of the plague on October 28, 1412 on board a
ship in the port of Flensburg. The plague and other infectious
diseases were a major problem for medieval cities. At certain
intervals, smallpox, the bubonic plague caused by the rat flea
(Xenopsylla cheopis), the red dysentery or other epidemics ravaged
large parts of the Flensburg population. Leprosy sufferers were
isolated in the St. Jürgen Hospital (built before 1290), which was
outside the city gates (today: St. Jürgen Church). Syphilis was
introduced around 1500. The church hospital Zum Heiligen Geist
(today: Heiliggeistkirche) is located in Grosse Strasse (today
Flensburg's pedestrian zone).
The everyday life of the people of Flensburg was tough, the roads
were bad. The main streets were unpaved and unlit. In some cases,
the citizens were obliged to make the paths soaked with cattle dung
passable with wooden walkways. Only a few patrician houses had
windows. Every participatory budget kept cattle in the house and
yard. Citizens also had their own cowherd and swineherd who looked
after the cattle outside the city during the day.
During
Denmark's war against the Hanseatic League and Holstein, in 1426
first Danish mercenaries conquered and plundered the city, then in
1431 Holstein and Hanseatic mercenaries. In 1485 there was a major
fire in Flensburg. The city was also not spared from storm surges.
The water levels of earlier storm surges can still be read at the
Kompagnietor.
From 1526 Lutheran teaching took hold in
Flensburg. At that time the Husum reformer Hermann Tast preached in
the city. Supported by the young Duke Christian, the former
Dominican Gerd Slewert pushed the Reformation forward. On April 8,
1529, the Flensburg Disputation took place, a religious discussion
that took place in the St. Catherine's Monastery in Flensburg
between Melchior Hofmann and representatives of the Lutheran clergy.
As a result of the disputation, the Lutheran Reformation was
introduced in Denmark and the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein.
After the decline of the Hanseatic League in the 16th century,
Flensburg was one of the most important trading cities in the
Scandinavian region. The trade relations of the Flensburg merchants
even reached into the Mediterranean, Greenland and the Caribbean. In
addition to herring, the most important trade goods were initially
sugar and oil, which was obtained by whaling on the so-called
Greenland voyage. The heyday only ended with the Thirty Years' War.
The incursion of the imperial under Wallenstein in 1627 and 1628 as
well as the Danish-Swedish Wars 1643–1645 and 1657–1660 inflicted
considerable wounds on the city's prosperity.
In the 18th
century, Flensburg experienced a second boom thanks to the rum
trade. The cane sugar was imported from the Danish West Indies and
refined in Flensburg, probably as part of the triangular trade. In
the 19th century, in the course of industrialization, the Flensburg
sugar refineries could no longer hold their own against the
competition from the neighboring cities of Copenhagen and Hamburg.
The rum blended in Flensburg was an alternative business in the
West India trade, from where it was imported and sold as a rum blend
throughout Europe. After the German-Danish War in 1864, sugar cane
was obtained from Jamaica, a British country at the time, instead of
from the Danish West Indies. Once more than 20 rum houses (including
Hansen, Pott, Sonnberg, Asmussen and Detleffsen) that shaped the
city, the A. H. Johannsen rum house on Marienstraße still exists
today.
The city also began to grow beyond the city wall in
the 18th century. The Neustadt district was created and, with the
oat market, another market square near St. Johannis was created.
Between 1460 and 1864 Flensburg was the second largest port in the
entire Danish state after Copenhagen and even the largest outside
the Kingdom of Denmark. In 1848 fighting broke out in the Flensburg
Neustadt in the course of the Battle of Bau. After the German-Danish
War (1864), the city became part of Prussia, and the High German
language, which had gained a foothold in the Flensburg bourgeoisie
since the Reformation, increasingly shaped the life of the city.
Nevertheless, to this day, a considerable minority of the
Flensburgers belong to the Danish ethnic group.
The doctor
Peter Henningsen founded the Ostseebadgesellschaft together with
merchants in 1875 and tried to establish an outdoor swimming pool
with a spa on the Flensburg Fjord. The Ostseebad lido remained from
the plans.
On April 1, 1889, Flensburg formed an independent
urban district (urban district) within the province of
Schleswig-Holstein, but remained the seat of the district of
Flensburg.
In 1920, following a decision by the League of Nations, a vote
was taken on the border in Schleswig (South Jutland). In Northern
Schleswig, voting took place en bloc. There, 75% of the entire
population decided for Denmark, whereas the numerically inferior
population of the southern cities in this area voted for Germany and
was thus outvoted by the northern rural population. So went the
cities of Tønder (with 76% votes for Germany), Hoyer (with 73% votes
for Germany), Tingleff (with 64% votes for Germany), Sonderburg to
the east (with 55% votes for Germany) and that was something
Aabenraa located further north (with 54% votes for Germany) as well
as the southern areas of the voting area, in which around 40–59%, in
some cases even more, of the respondents voted for Germany, to
Denmark. South Schleswig, together with Flensburg, voting on a
community basis, voted with a large majority to remain with Germany.
The hope of the Danish side to win one or the other municipality due
to the smaller size in this area was therefore not fulfilled. There
was only a weak Danish majority in three municipalities on the
islands of Sylt and Föhr, which otherwise had a majority in favor of
Germany. As a result of the voting zones and voting modalities
defined in the Versailles Treaty, large parts of the surrounding
area, especially the district of Flensburg, fell to Denmark;
Flensburg became a border town.
The city of Flensburg
received the German House from the German government as thanks for
the pro-German voting behavior. Borgerforeningen and Flensborghus
developed into centers for the Danish Flensburg residents.
When the National Socialists
came to power in 1933, the city administration in Flensburg was also
brought into line and Wilhelm Sievers, a long-standing NSDAP member,
was appointed mayor. After an internal intrigue at the end of 1935,
he was replaced by Ernst Kracht, who had the Bismarck fountain
removed for ideological reasons in 1937. During the National
Socialist era, people with a Jewish background were persecuted. On
November 9, 1938, the Jägerslust farm was attacked by the police and
the SS, after which almost the entire Jewish Wolff family who lived
there were transferred to a concentration camp and murdered there
(see Hof Jägerslust). Today 23 stumbling blocks in Flensburg testify
to these persecutions. In the course of the armament, Flensburg grew
in importance as a naval base and army garrison. In 1938, the
customs school in Flensburg was set up in the old secondary school
and agricultural school, the predecessor of the Goethe school.
During the Second World War, the city suffered only sporadic war
damage from 41 bombs, which claimed a total of 176 deaths and
destroyed 4.7% of the city. On May 19, 1943, 15 children and 2
employees of a Danish kindergarten died when the air raid shelter on
the Batteriestraße near the shipyard and power station was hit
directly. Around 1000 apartments were completely destroyed by the 41
air raids on Flensburg. From 1943 onwards, some resistance groups
formed in the city, to which the tenant of the Borgerforeningen,
Hanni Matthiesen, belonged. In 1944 the internment camp Frøslev was
established, which was not very far across the border. On November
30, 1944, Jens Jessen, who grew up in Flensburg, was executed as
part of the resistance in Berlin-Plötzensee.
Shortly after
the war, on June 14, 1945, an explosion at an ammunition depot in
Kielseng claimed numerous victims in Flensburg. 60 people died
instantly as a result of the explosion, with a total of 88 dead and
at least 200 injured.
After Adolf Hitler's suicide on April 30, 1945 and the conquest of Berlin in the same year, Mürwik was the seat of the last Reich government for a few weeks in May 1945, headed by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz. Its staff took up quarters in the military area of the aforementioned Flensburg district. At the same time, a large number of important Nazi functionaries came to Flensburg via the so-called Rattenlinie Nord - with the aim of becoming involved in the government or avoiding prosecution by the Allies and going into hiding. In this way, thousands of doctors, officers and NSDAP functionaries who had been incriminated were given new papers. The still functioning bureaucracy of the last Reich government, which managed to turn many high-ranking Nazi criminals into simple Wehrmacht soldiers, was very useful for this. They received the papers and uniforms at the Mürwik Naval School.
Many of these fugitives were captured by the British on the way
south and, on the basis of their (new) papers, released after a few
months as "simple Wehrmacht soldiers", including the "Marinemaat
Franz Lang", in reality Rudolf Höß, the camp commandant of the
extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was only arrested by
British troops on March 11, 1946, after he had hidden under a false
name at the Hansen farm in Gottrupel. Other criminals were found,
unscathed by the occupation, later in high offices in what would
later become the Federal Republic of Germany, including high
positions in medicine, politics and economics in the Federal
Republic of Germany. The city of Flensburg thus played a central and
far-reaching role in the last days of the war and beyond.
The
Provisional Government was on the edge of the Mürwik Naval School in
the Naval Sports School. There its members were deposed and arrested
by British troops on May 23, 1945.
After
the end of the Second World War, Flensburg belonged to the British
zone of occupation. The British military administration set up two
DP camps in Flensburg to accommodate so-called displaced persons.
The majority of them were former slave laborers from Poland,
Ukraine, the Baltic States and Yugoslavia.
In the period
after the war, many displaced people came to the city, so that the
population exceeded 100,000 and Flensburg was a major city for
several years. During this time the DRK tracing service was
established in Flensburg. As in the rest of Schleswig, a relatively
strong pro-Danish movement developed in Flensburg after 1945, which
was based on the ideas of the Eider Danes. The aim of many
supporters was to join the city with Denmark. For a few years after
1945, Flensburg still had mayors from the Danish minority (cf.
Social Democratic Party of Flensburg).
In 1956 the Flensburg
Customs School, which was last housed in the Mürwik Naval School,
was relocated from Flensburg. The inner-German border had gained in
importance. The Cold War had started and the navy needed the
building on the fjord again and moved into it that same year.
After the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany,
Flensburg increasingly benefited from the settlement of military
facilities that were supposed to compensate for the economic
disadvantages of the city's peripheral location. The decision to
locate the Federal Motor Transport Authority in Flensburg also
belonged to the context of structural funding. Since German
reunification in 1990, however, the number of soldiers has fallen
again by over 8,000, as military installations have been dismantled
or relocated to the eastern federal states. In particular, the
larger floating units were relocated to Mecklenburg-Western
Pomerania together with the land-based supply facilities. The
time-consuming march of the fleet units through the Flensburg Fjord
to their areas of operation in the Baltic Sea was no longer
necessary. Today the former port facilities of the German Navy are
used for civilian purposes by pleasure craft (Marina Sonwik). The
withdrawal of so many soldiers after 1990 contributed significantly
to Flensburg's economic crisis and high unemployment.
The
German-Danish border trade still plays a major role today. Some
Danish companies such as Danfoss settled directly south of the
border in Flensburg and its neighboring communities for tax reasons.
In 1970 the district of Flensburg-Land was expanded to include
the municipalities of the Medelby office in the district of
Südtondern, and in 1974 it was merged with the district of Schleswig
to form the new district of Schleswig-Flensburg, whose district seat
became the city of Schleswig. With this, Flensburg lost its function
as a district town, but remained an independent city itself.
During the snow catastrophe in northern Germany at the end of 1978,
Flensburg was cut off from the outside world. Even rescue tanks of
the Bundeswehr did not succeed in clearing Autobahn 7 and train
traffic to Kiel was paralyzed. The disaster was accompanied by a
flood that was 1.60 m above sea level. NHN flooded the port streets.
From 2004 to 2008, a project by the Flensburger Baukultur association attracted nationwide attention, in which Flensburg city thinkers viewed the city from an impartial perspective and contributed new ideas to urban planning development.
In April 2010, the Hells Angels MC Chapter Flensburg, a chapter
of the Hells Angels Germany, hit the headlines nationwide when the
then Interior Minister Klaus Schlie (CDU) pronounced a club ban on
both the Flensburg Hells Angels and the Neumünster Bandidos because
“innkeepers ask for protection money blackmailed, a hostile bandido
attacked on a motorway and weapons “hoarded”. The Higher
Administrative Court of Schleswig confirmed the ban in June 2012.
Despite the ban, the rockers remained active. Therefore, two years
later in June 2014, the public prosecutor's office in Flensburg and
the state criminal investigation office in Schleswig-Holstein
initiated a large-scale raid in which 13 apartments in Flensburg and
the surrounding area, the clubhouse in Batteriestrasse (with the Red
Devils sign, later Red and White) and a restaurant were searched at
the ship bridge.
Today Flensburg is the largest city in the
Schleswig region and the center of the German-Danish border region.
The city is the seat of a university and college and is still
characterized by the navy, border trade and its history as a rum
city. Due to the poor financial situation of the city, the council
decided in 2006 to sell the Kollunder forest to a private person.
The municipality of the city of Flensburg is located at the inner end of the Flensburg Fjord in the northwest of the fishing peninsula on the German-Danish border in the Schleswig-Holstein hill country. The nearest border crossing to Denmark is in the neighboring municipality of Harrislee in the Schleswig-Flensburg district. After the neighboring city of Glücksburg, Flensburg is the second northernmost city in the Federal Republic of Germany. The urban area extends on the western and southern banks of the Flensburg Fjord over various hills such as the Frisian Mountain or the Marienberg. The eastern bank of the city is already counted as part of the fishing peninsula. The highest point in the urban area with at least 64 m above sea level. is located in the Marienhölzung area near the Duburg junction of the federal highway 200. The inner city area is at the ZOB at a height of only 3 m above sea level.
The city of Flensburg is divided into 13 districts, which in turn are divided into a total of 38 statistical districts. The boundaries of today's city districts and districts only approximately follow the historical boundary lines of the earlier rural communities or the historical parish boundaries on the old city field. The districts of Flensburg are old town (or Flensburg city center), Engelsby, Friesischer Berg, Fruerlund, Jürgensby, Mürwik, Neustadt, Nordstadt, Sandberg, Südstadt, Tarup, Weiche and Westliche Höhe.
The following municipalities in the
Schleswig-Flensburg district and the Syddanmark region border the
city of Flensburg - starting clockwise in the northeast: Glücksburg
(official city), Wees (Langballig office), Maasbüll, Hürup, Tastrup
and Freienwill (all Hürup office), Handewitt ( Official
municipality), Harrislee (official municipality) and the
municipality of Aabenraa (German Aabenraa) on the Danish side of the
Flensburg Fjord.
Above all, Harrislee with the associated
districts Wassersleben and Kupfermühle, as well as Wees and Tastrup,
are suburbs of Flensburg. Structurally, they are more or less
closely integrated with the city. The community of Harrislee, in
particular, has repeatedly insisted on its independence since the
1970s - despite repeated proposals from the City of Flensburg to
incorporate it.
Tastrup, in turn, is a remnant of the former
municipality of Adelby, which was gradually incorporated. Due to the
constant expansion of the Sünderup district, Flensburg is growing
closer and closer to Tastrup. The situation is similar with Wees,
where development areas are being developed in the Flensburg
districts of Wasserloos and Kauslund on Nordstrasse (Bundesstrasse
199). Another settlement that has grown seamlessly with Flensburg
for many years is Meierwik, which nevertheless belongs to the city
of Glücksburg. Handewitt, which borders the Schäferhaus airfield and
is not far from the Weiche district of Flensburg, has also grown
quite a lot. The togetherness is reinforced by the
Flensburg-Handewitt gambling community, which has existed since
1990. Furthermore, Maasbüll is sometimes considered a rural suburb
of Flensburg, although the village has not grown into Flensburg. The
Maasbüll, characterized by local recreation and agriculture, is
located near the barely built-up area Vogelsang.