Treaty of Ribe

The Treaty of Ribe (Danish: Ribe-brevet meaning The Ribe letter; German: Vertrag von Ripen) was a proclamation at Ribe made by King Christian I of Denmark to a number of Holsatian nobles enabling himself to become Count of Holstein and regain control of Denmark's lost Duchy of Schleswig (Danish: Sønderjylland, i.e. South Jutland). The most famous line of the proclamation was that the Danish Duchy of Schleswig and the County of Holstein within the Holy Roman Empire, should now be, in the original Middle Low German language, Up Ewig Ungedeelt, or "Forever Undivided". This was to assume great importance as the slogan of German nationalists in the struggles of the 19th century, under completely different circumstances.

The proclamation was issued in 1460 and established that the King of Denmark should also be Duke of Schleswig and Count of Holstein. Another clause gave the nobility the right to revolt should the king break the agreement (a feature of several medieval coronation charters). The agreement was most straightforward regarding the future of the Holstein, since King Christian I merely added the title as count to his existing title. He was forbidden from annexing Holstein to Denmark and Holstein retained its independence and its position as a subfief of Saxony and subsequently Saxe-Lauenburg, indirectly under the Holy Roman Emperor.

Regarding the future of Schleswig, the agreement at first seems to be contradictionary in itself; the Danish king became Duke of Schleswig, a Danish fief, in effect becoming his own vassal. This arrangement should be seen as a guarantee against too strong Danish domination in the new union, and a safeguard against e.g. a partitioning of Holstein among Danish nobles.

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