How a contested region became a model for multilingual coexistence

DIFFERING NAMES for a historical event can be an ominous sign of competing, zero-sum national memories. Not so in the case of what Germans refer to as “the plebiscite of 1920”. That round of votes, which cost Germany the territory of north Schleswig, led to what Danes call the “reunification” of their country, the centenary of which they recently celebrated. It also began a process that has turned a bloody European frontier into one of the world’s most successfully integrated and multilingual border regions.