Bosener Group
The Bosener Group is a loose association of writers who write literary dialect texts. The group is based in the north of Saarland in the Bosener Mühle .
The Bosener Group focuses its commitment on literary texts in the Moselle Franconian and Rhenish Franconian dialects. The group includes writers from Lorraine and Alsace , as well as from Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate .
The group was founded on November 26th, 2000 during a dialect symposium of the Saarland Broadcasting Corporation . The group's founding members were Relinde Dutch, Gisela Bell, Peter Eckert, Georg Fox , Heinrich Kraus and Johannes Kühn .
In contrast to the usual associations, you cannot join the group at your own request; rather, the group members select candidates with a majority. The Bosen Group currently has 30 members. The first speaker of the group was the author Georg Fox. He gave up the position after a few years in order to be able to devote more time to his writing work. The group is represented externally today by Karin Klee and Peter Eckert (as of July 2008).
In its “Bosen Manifesto” in 2000, the group set the following goals:
- Maintaining and promoting one's own dialect as an important anchor of identity in the country
- Clarification of references and special features in the Moselle-Franconian and Rhenish Franconian dialects
- Representation of the regional dialects in their value and linguistic beauty
- Presentation of the dialect language as a possibility of a sophisticated literary design
- Discussion of new trends in the regional linguistic landscape
- Promotion and encouragement of up-and-coming generations of dialects
The Bosener Group awards the “Dialect Text of the Month” prize every month. It is about the award for literary texts that reflect contemporary observations in dialect. Members of the group have already performed several times in the Saarland representation in Berlin, so u. a. Georg Fox, Peter Eckert, Relinde Dutch, Manfred Pohlmann, Karin Klee, Ute Zimmermann, Gisela Bell u. a. In August 2008, the group presented a double CD entitled Language Colors . The Prime Minister of the Saarland took over the patronage for this project.
In 2017, the Bosen group appeared with a new event format: "Blue Hour" presented songwriters and writers from the Bosen group in a joint event. Performed in Tholey: Manfred Pohlmann, Gisela Bell, Alfons Klein, Georg Fox. Hans-Walter Lorang, Richard Bauer, Relinde Dutch, Karin Klee, and Gérard Carau performed at the Bosener Mühle.
In 2020 the group started to produce small YouTube films that present selected dialect contributors from their members. It started with the dialect author Peter Eckert, who presented his dialect texts on YouTube in April 2020.