Tonder Stadium

Tonder (Danish pronunciation: [ˈtsʰonˀɐ]; German: Tondern [ˈtɔndɐn]) is a town in the Region of Southern Denmark. With a population of 7,491 (as of 1 January 2021), it is the main town and the administrative seat of the Tonder Municipality.

History

The first mention of Tonder might have been in the mid-12th century, when the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi mentioned the landmark Tu(r)ndira, which might have been a reference to either Tonder, or the nearby town of Mogeltonder.

Tonder was granted port privileges by the Hanseatic League in 1243, making it Denmark's oldest privileged market town. In 1532 it was hit by severe floods, with water levels reaching 1.8 m in St Laurent's church, 5.3 m above sea level. In the 1550s, Tonder's port lost direct access to the sea due to dykes being built to the west of town at the direction of Duke Hans the Elder of Schleswig-Holstein-Haderslev, the son of Frederick I of Denmark.

The town centre is dominated by houses from the late 17th and early 18th century, when the town experienced rapid growth as a result of its lace industry. Prior to 1864, Tonder was situated in the Duchy of Schleswig, so its history is intertwined with the contentious history of Schleswig-Holstein. In the 1920s, when the Schleswig Plebiscite incorporated Northern Schleswig into Denmark, 76.5% of Tonder's inhabitants voted to remain part of Germany and 23.5% voted to join Denmark.

During World War I, a Zeppelin base was operated in Tonder by the Imperial German Navy. The base was attacked by the British on 19 July 1918, in what is known as the Tondern raid. Seven Sopwith Camels from the aircraft carrier HMS Furious bombed the base, hitting two of the three airship hangars. The Zeppelins L.54 and L.60 inside one hangar were destroyed and a balloon inside the other was damaged. After this, Tonder was abandoned as an active airship base, and was used only as an emergency landing site. A wartime aircraft hangar survives, as do some of the anci