German has the official status as a minority language in Denmark.
It is taught from around 4th grade or so all the way into upper secondary education.
While the older generations e.g. those born before and after WW2 are more proficient than the newer generations, Danes are one of the largest non-native German speaking populations in the world outside of Germany/Austria/Switzerland.
I personally don't speak German but understand a lot of it. My dad and uncles are almost fluent.
In Denmark, there live between 15,000 and 20,000 native German-speakers in South Jutland, which was part of Germany until the the end of WWI, and it's there an official minority language. That's probably the reason the majority of Danes pick German instead of French as a third language in middle school. About 47% of Danes report being able to speak conversational German.
Although Swedish and Norwegian middle school students have the same choices, there seems to be less cultural interest in picking German, or learning to speak it fluently.
Historically and economically. Denmark and Germany have a lot of commonality and "exposure" to each other. Irrespective of the annexation of parts of the "indivisible" lands of Schleswig after WWI by Denmark, relations between the two countries were basically friendly. This resulted that even Hitler gave Denmark special status until shortly before the end of WWII.
Many Danes are proficient in German. Danish is also an official language in the Northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, a German state.
When I went to elementary school - we learned English, German and French. Nowadays I think that only English is mandatory and that German and French can be replaced with other languages - like Spanish,Italian
I don't thinks, because During World War the Danes resented the German Nazis and did not want to learn German.
English on the other hand is popular and much more useful
Hope this helps
I speak a bit of German, and I must say that Danish sounds remarkably similar. So it's probably not that hard for them to learn it, or at least to understand each other if they're a bit savvy about it.
