With a newspaper appeal by Otto Mensing and his co-initiators in Schleswig-Holstein newspapers in 1902, in which the population of the state was asked to collect source material about Low German (Plattdeutsch) in Schleswig-Holstein and to send it to the initiators, preparatory work for the production of the Schleswig-Holstein Dictionary began.
[1][a] Mensing attached particular importance to working out the linguistic peculiarities in the individual regions of the country; at that time he headed the so-called Niederdeutsche Sozietät at the University of Kiel, was appointed professor there in 1917, but only in 1928 for his extensive research of the Plattdeutsch language freed from teaching.
[2] By 1906 the first book with the title Schleswig-Holsteinisches Wörterbuch was published by C. Donath, which only contained instructions for gathering information.
[3] Between 1925[b] and 1935 the comprehensive People's Edition (Volksausgabe) of the Schleswig-Holsteinisches Wörterbuch in five volumes was published by Wachholtz Verlag.
Among Mensing's employees were Gustav Friedrich Meyer and Peter Willers Jessen.