they got really bad, the citizens had to make the dung-filled streets passable with wooden pathways. Only the few upper-class houses had windows. In 1485, a great fire struck Flensburg. Even storm tides beset the town at times. Every household in the town kept livestock in the house and the yard. Townsfolk furthermore had their own cowherds and a swineherd.
After the Hanse fell in the 16th century, Flensburg was said to be one of the most important trading towns in the Scandinavian area. Even as far away as the Mediterranean, Greenland and the Caribbean, Flensburg merchants were active. The most important commodities, after herring, were sugar and whale oil, the latter from whaling off Greenland. Only the Thirty Years' War put an end to this boom time as the town was becoming Protestant and thereby ever more German culturally and linguistically, while the neighbouring countryside remained decidedly Danish.
In the 18th century, thanks to the rum trade, Flensburg had yet another boom. Cane sugar was imported from the Danish West Indies (now the US Virgin Islands) and refined in Flensburg. Only in the 19th century, as a result of industrialization, was the town at last outdone by competition from nearby cities such as Copenhagen and Hamburg.
The rum blended in Flensburg then became a secondary industry in West Indian trade, and as of 1864 no longer with the Danish West Indies, but rather with Jamaica, then ruled by the British. It was imported from there, blended, and sold all over Europe. There is nowadays only one active rum distillery in Flensburg, "A. H. Johannsen".
Between 1460 and 1864, Flensburg was, after Copenhagen, the second biggest port in the Kingdom of Denmark, but passed to the Kingdom of Prussia after the Second Schleswig War in 1864. There is still, however, a considerable Danish community in the town today. Some estimates put the percentage of Flensburgers who belong to it as high as 25%; other estimates put that
