Most famously remembered as the question that only Lord Palmerston understood (and he had forgotten the answer), Schleswig-Holstein has developed a model of how two competing national identities can coexist. Once two separate duchies, the isthmus linking Germany with Denmark had a history of disputed ownership, with all the consequential tensions between majority and minority cultures. But in 1945 Germany agreed to recognise the rights of the Danish minority. The famous question has given rise to an answer more sophisticated and yet more simple than Palmerston might ever have imagined. Its essence is that to feel Danish (relaxed, in favour of the welfare state and a reader of the Danish-language newspaper Flensborg-Avis) is to be Danish – entitled, for example, to be taught in Danish and to go to university in Denmark. This formula might just be a recipe for world peace.