Sønderborg

Sønderborg Castle

The town of Sønderborg is home to Sønderborg Castle (Sønderborg Slot), the Royal Danish Army's Sergeant School (until 2013) and Sandbjerg Estate (Sandbjerg Gods). Sønderborg castle is in the centre of the town, and houses a museum focusing on the history and culture of the area. The museum is open all year. Sandbjerg Estate, which had belonged for many years to the Dukes of Sønderborg, and then to the Reventlow family, was donated to Aarhus University in 1954. In addition, Sønderborg has a castle-like barracks built by the German military in 1906, placed centrally by Als Fjord, opposite Alsion (see picture below).

The old part of Sønderborg is on the island of Als, but some of its western suburbs have spread onto the mainland of Jutland into what had been the interior of the fort of Dybbøl.

Prior to the Second Schleswig War of 1864, Sønderborg was situated in the Duchy of Schleswig, a Danish fief, so its history is properly included in the contentious history of Schleswig-Holstein. In the 1920 Schleswig Plebiscite that returned Northern Schleswig to Denmark, 43.8% of the city of Sønderborg's inhabitants voted for the cession to Denmark and 56.2% voted for remaining part of Germany.[3]

Sønderborg

Copenhagen

Aarhus

Odense

Aalborg

Esbjerg

Sønderborg (lower left) is on the Als Strait in Denmark, southwest of Copenhagen, north of the German border.

The town of Sønderborg lies on both sides of Alssund; the narrow strait between these two sides is called Als Strait (Alssund). Two road bridges connect the city across the strait: the 682-meter-long (2,238 ft) Als Strait Bridge (Alssundbro), built in 1978–1981; and the 331-meter (1,086 ft) King Christian X's Bridge (Kong Christian Xs Bro), built in 1925–1930.

Sønderborg is an economic hub in the region of Southern Denmark, with industries within electronics, manufacturing, food processing, Information Technology and telecommunications among others, with several companies headquartered in and around the town.

The high-tech industry includes the manufacturing and development of electronics, machines, industrial equipment, and software. Companies of major importance in the high-tech sector headquartered in the region include Danfoss who employs around 1000 people in Sønderborg, and 40,000 people globally.[6] Linak, headquartered in Nordborg 25 km from Sønderborg, produces linear actuators for a variety of different applications, from agriculture to healthcare, and employs around 1,100 people in the region.[7] Maersk container industries(MCI), a part of the Maersk group, manufactures refrigerated and refrigeration machines shipping containers, has its headquarters in Sønderborg.

Danfoss headquarters

The food processing and meat packing group, Danish Crown has a slaughterhouse located in the town of Blans, outside of Sønderborg. The slaughterhouse produces pork and meat products for consumption, and employs around 940 people.[8] BHJ is a leading supplier of animal proteins for the international food and pet food industries, with headquarters in Gråsten, outside of Sønderborg and more than 900 employees worldwide.[9]

In telecommunications, TDC A/S operates a callcenter employing roughly 370 employees. In August 2014, TDC planned to outsource around 700 full-time positions to American company Sitel, by 2015.[10]

Skyways technics, an aircraft service and repair company is headquartered at Sønderborg Airport and has 150 employees in Sønderborg and Billund.[11] Saab AB also has offices in the town, mainly focused on sales and engineering.

In Chapter 4 of Erskine Childers’ 1903 novel The Riddle of the Sands, the protagonists, two English yachtsmen, visit Sonderburg, then under German rule: "Fascinating Sonderburg, with its broad-eaved houses of carved woodwork, each fresh with cleansing, yet reverend with age; its fair-haired Viking-like men and rosy, plain-faced women, with their bullet foreheads and large mouths; Sonderburg still Danish to the core under its Teuton veneer. Crossing the bridge I climbed the Dybbol – dotted with memorials of that heroic defence – and thence could see the wee form and gossamer rigging of our yacht on the silver ribbon of the Sound. (...) In the old quarter I bargained over eggs and bread with a dear old lady, pink as a debutante, who made a patriotic pretence of not understanding German."

• Media related to Sønderborg at Wikimedia Commons
• "Sonderburg" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.