ABSTRACT
A number of reasons - of a personal as well as of a societal nature - have enticed me to deal with the present subject on this as well as on other occasions. I myself have been raised in a culturally mixed region in the border-zone between Germany and Poland. Today, I am actively interested in the situation of the Danish minority in the province of Schleswig-Holstein and its development of cultural autonomy and identity. And I have also observed elsewhere in the Federal Republic the activities of ethnic minorities who have over a longer period of time realized their integration such as the Polish groups in the Ruhr area.
