Personal Union of States: A General Term of International Law or a Concept for a German Schleswig-Holstein?

Abstract

Real union and personal union are terms to describe the affiliation of two more or less independent countries. Historians use them for phenomena throughout the time. But they were formed around 1800, particularly by the Viennese Congress in 1815, in order to propagate special ideas such as national unities. One of the first examples for their use was the Schleswig-Holstein-crises in the mid 19th century. The description of the original invention of the terms, their objectives and biases, invites modern historians to ponder over the question, to which extent these historical terms can be used for other epochs.