Easter Crisis
Danish constitutional crisis
The Easter Crisis (Danish: Påskekrisen) was a constitutional crisis in Denmark around Easter in 1920. It was a significant event in the development of constitutional monarchy in Denmark. It began with the dismissal of the elected government by the reigning monarch, King Christian X, a reserve power which was granted to him by the Danish constitution, because he thought that the government did not try to reclaim enough land from Germany in Schleswig. After protests, the King agreed to install a caretaker government who could hold a general election, and no Danish monarch has since interfered in politics.
Long-running Schleswig-Holstein question
The immediate cause was a conflict between the king and the cabinet over the reunification with Denmark of Schleswig, a former Danish fiefdom which had been lost to Prussia during the Second War of Schleswig. Danish claims to the region persisted to the end of World War I, at which time the defeat of the Germans made it possible to resolve the dispute. According to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the disposition of Schleswig was to be determined by two Schleswig Plebiscites: one in Northern Schleswig (today Denmark's South Jutland County), the other in Central Schleswig (today part of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein). No plebiscite was planned for Southern Schleswig, as it was dominated by an ethnic German majority and, in accordance with prevailing sentiment of the times in favour of the nation state, remained part of the post-war German state.
In Northern Schleswig, 75% voted for reunification with Denmark and 25% for remaining with Germany. In Central Schleswig, the situation was reversed with 80% voting for Germany and 20% for Denmark.
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This entry incorporates text from “Easter Crisis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.