High Prussian

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High Prussian

Spoken in

Diaspora in Germany and north-east Poland
Linguistic
classification
Official status
Official language in -
German and Dutch dialects 1910. In the northeast of the map the demarcation of High Prussian and the Upper German language island around Culmsee can be clearly seen

High Prussian is the name given to the Central German dialects in East Prussia , which, according to popular belief , were brought to the country by Thuringian and Silesian immigrants from the 13th century . They belong to the group of East Central German dialects and were spoken mainly in Warmia , the Catholic center of East Prussia, and in the East Prussian Oberland .

The term "Hochpreußisch" is purely academic; the speakers themselves described their respective dialects as "Oberland" or "Breslau [i] sch".

High Prussian was divided into the dialect areas of Oberland in the west and Wroclaw in the east, which differed significantly from one another in terms of language, with Oberland being much closer to standard German .

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The vocabulary of the High Prussian dialects is recorded and described in the Prussian dictionary .

Geographical demarcation

The isogloss wor -woa marked, among other features within the High Prussian dialect, the border between the sub-dialects Oberländisch (left, rolled "-r" ) and Breslausch (right, vocalized "-r" )

High Prussian was spoken in the part of East Prussia that lay south of the Benrath line . Before 1945, this language border between High and Low Prussian was one of the most clearly perceptible language borders in Germany. The areas of West Prussia east of the Vistula lowland also belonged to the High Prussian dialect continuum . The total area of ​​High Prussia was surrounded in the west, north and east by Low Prussian and in the south by an area in which dialect- colored High German colloquial language and Masurian were spoken.

The border between the two varieties Breslausch and Oberländisch was formed almost exclusively by the Passarge river . B. with the woa / wor -Isoglosse (for New High German was) was identical.

Origin of the dialect

After the Braunsberg senior teacher JA Lilienthal first recorded the term “Breslauisch” for High Prussian in Warmia in 1842, it was considered obvious that the Warmia was populated by Silesians who brought their dialect with them. On the basis of place name equations, Thuringia was also considered as the home of at least the Oberländer. (Like Ziesemer around 1926.) The prevailing assumption was that the upper class immigrating to Prussia, most of which can be shown to have come from Thuringia, had brought their farmers with them from their own homeland. Walther Mitzka denied this consistency and wanted only linguistic criteria to apply. In 1937, for example, he was able to establish that High Prussian differed according to law from the "all-Silesian characteristics" recognized in research, so that High Prussian could not possibly be called Silesian. Instead, he found the greatest linguistic relationship within the East Central German dialects with an area of Lower Lusatia , the core of which lay between Lübben in the west and Guben in the east. ( Peter Wiesinger, for example, does not count this dialect area among the Lausitz dialects , but is the core area of ​​the southern Mark dialect ). From this Mitzka developed the thesis that the Central German settlers, whose arrival can be precisely timed by numerous hand-held festivals , who left Mark Lausitz between 1290 and 1330, made settling in Prussia more attractive as politically turbulent times.

Erhard Riemann checked Mitzka's thesis on the basis of further word-geographical material and came to the skeptical conclusion that the material was insufficient to allow a reliable derivation from a limited space. The spread of brüh = "hot" and Mache = "girl" could lead to such a conclusion, but other word cards showed a completely different picture, in that they corresponded to word spaces in Central and Eastern Germany that were completely different the case is said to have very extensive word spaces extending from Silesia via Lusatia to Saxony-Thuringia or even much further west to Hesse or into Moselle Franconia . According to Riemann, we therefore have to reckon with a stronger mix of settlers of origin and should be content with the determination of the Wroclaw region, too, with the observation that very wide East-Central German areas come into question as the starting landscape, within which Lower Silesia and Lower Lusatia may have formed focal points.

Linguistic features

The High Prussian language island was south of the Benrath line and north of the Speyer line , so it belonged to the area of ​​the Central German dialects . Furthermore, it was east of the Germersheimer line and thus belonged to the East Central German dialects. From the other East Central German dialects (especially from Silesian , with which it was often rashly equated), High Prussian differs primarily through many similarities in phonology, grammar and vocabulary with Low Prussian.

The most important "Borussozisms" are:

Breslausch

Breslausch (also: Breslauisch, Ermländisch) was mainly spoken in central Warmia in the square Wormditt - Heilsberg - Bischofsburg - Allenstein . This dialect area is almost completely congruent with the episcopal part of the Principality of Warmia , which the Bishop of Warmia colonized with Central German farmers. The bulk of the villages arose in the 1320s and 1330s. The Warmia region to the north of the Breslaus dialect area was settled by the Warmia Cathedral Chapter with farmers from the Low German-speaking area.

Phonology

Linguistic features in consonantism are:

  • The prefix ER usually appears as a prefix dəř- (dəřfrīze for standard German freeze).
  • b appears initially as b, less often than p (pauəř, potəř, puš for standard German farmer, butter, bush; similar to Lusatian and Silesian). Intervowels and after l and r, b is usually w (raiwə, īwə, ferwə, kelwəř for standard German rub, practice, color, calves); before consonance, b is usually f (ārfs, hōfk for standard German pea, hawk).
  • g is added to j in the prefix ge and in the internal and young final after l, r (jəhālə, morjə held for standard German, tomorrow). Otherwise usually g or k (gāršt, jənuk for standard German barley, enough). Palatal, formed at the front palate g, stands in initial position before Palatalvokal and, r, l (gestərə, grisə for standard German yesterday, regards). The initial g appears as k in: ken, endəkain (for standard German against, against).
  • k occurs both as a palatal k (kaine, kiŋt for standard German germinate, child) as well as velares k (kalp, kop for standard German calf, head).
  • -nd, -nt are mostly gutturalized (biŋə, štuiŋ for standard German to bind, hour).
  • West Germanic p has become f, the sound pf is missing in the dialect (fefəř, fārt, faif for standard German pepper, horse, pipe); after nasal and in the gemination there is p (damp, zomp, top, klopə for standard German steam, sump, pot, knock).
  • Standard German r is mostly vocalized ř, especially in the əř position.
  • After old r, s becomes sch (Borscht for standard German brush).

Dialect samples

  • "Da ermlängsch Baua on da Taiwel" (folk tale)
  • "In the poor country, the mouth seems so gray." (derisive expression in East Prussia)
  • Och schloo da foat mött omm carchleffel omm de ears, you monkey! ( Wenker's sentence no.11 )

Oberland

Oberland was mainly spoken in the districts of Prussian Holland and Mohrungen , as well as in the moraine areas adjoining to the west up to the Vistula lowlands. According to popular opinion, the area of ​​the Oberland was settled by Central German- speaking settlers from Thuringia in the 13th and 14th centuries . The place names Mohrungen, Mühlhausen and Saalfeld are reminiscent of the areas of origin of the settlers ( Morungen , Mühlhausen , Saalfeld ). According to Mitzka, the place names are at least reminiscent of the areas of origin of the upper class. Many local foundations went back to the Komtur von Christburg Sieghard von Schwarzburg , who came from Thuringia. The bulk of the German villages in the Oberland originated between 1290 and 1330.

In the area of ​​the Christburg Commandery, which covered large parts of the Oberland, Prussians made up about half of the population, so that the Prussian language also left its mark on the German dialect of the Oberland (e.g. Plintze : pancake, Margell : girl)

Further subdivisions

While the Breslausche formed a relatively homogeneous dialect area, the Oberland area was criss-crossed by numerous isoglosses according to Georg Wenker's surveys around 1880. They revealed a dialect continuum that moved between two poles: the local dialects in the southwest (in the Rosenberg district ) were very close to standard German, the dialects in the northeast (in the Prussian Holland district) were close to Wroclaw. The dialect of the Lauck area (in the far north-east of the Prussian Holland district) was almost identical to that of Breslau. The local dialects of the Mohrungen district formed a smooth transition between the poles described.

The last two Wenker sentences (Nos. 39 and 40) should illustrate this:

39 Go ahead, the brown dog won't hurt you. 40. I drove into the grain with the people over there across the meadow.
Vogtenthal, Rosenberg district You go, dry brown dog titt dör nuscht. Öch bön met dön Leut do behind over the Wös ens grain.
Barten (district of Mohrungen) Go 'ma, the brown dog titt dry nuscht. Ech sei met de Leit dao would hang eb'r de Wees en's Korn.
Borchertsdorf, Prussian Holland district You go, there brown dog titt dea nuzes. Let me know the people do something like the essence of Koren.
For comparison: Breslausch
Queetz, Heilsberg district Go on top, da brown Hungd tit da nuscht. Let me be my people.

After Stuhrmann, Mitzka, Ziesemer and Teßmann, Oberland was a unified sub-dialect that stretched as far as the Benrath line on the Vistula valley. After Kuck and finally Szulc, a special subdialect of High Prussian could be identified in the area of ​​the former Rosenberg district, which they called Rosenbergisch .

Phonology

The above-mentioned linguistic features of Wroclaw also largely apply to Oberland and are therefore generally High Prussian features. The following features are among the most striking shibboleths in the Oberland:

  • The Oberland retains the b as the plosive sound in all cases.
  • The r is always rolled in Oberland.
  • The gutturalization is only partially carried out. ("Child": Oberländisch singular "Kint", plural "Kinger").

Teßmann lists the following features as less noticeable:

  • When ending adjectives and numerals, the Oberland has -ik and the Breslausche -ich.
  • The Oberland preserves Middle High German -er-, while the Breslausche -ar- has.
  • The same applies to Middle High German open e (long and short), which becomes a (long and short) in Wroclaw.

Dialect samples

  • Ech Schlao dör fohrts met d'm Kochleffel om de Ohre, you aff! (Wenker's sentence no.11)

The town dialect of Elbing was also part of the Oberland . August Schemionek published the following anecdote in 1881, in which the Elbingen dialect played a role:

“An Elbinger comes to Dresden and has breakfast in his room in the hotel, and the bowl of cream falls over him. He rushes to the hallway, where he joined the Schleußerin calls out: "Trautstes Margellche, Oech HOAB Mallöhr gehatt, the sour cream top it mer umgekäkelt on Salwiött on carpet eene Gloms Bring se urschend e Seelader rauffert.." The sluice hurries to the head waiter: "At number 77 there is a foreigner whom she cannot understand a word."

“Dear Fraulein [literally: girl], an accident happened to me, the cream pot fell over and the napkin and carpet are full of cream [literally: (is) a quark]. Bring [or: bring her (third person salutation)] urgently up a mop. "

- August Schemionek : Expressions and idioms in the Elbing dialect, page 51f.

Fate of the dialect after 1945

Since almost all High Prussian speakers were expelled after 1945 and the expellees settled scattered in the west (exception, for example, the Warmian settlements on a former military training area in Heckenbach / Eifel), the dialects have now practically died out. Other High Prussian speakers moved to West Germany as so-called Spätaussiedler in the 1970s and 1980s . Today the dialect is largely extinct and is spoken in Germany, except in the family environment of the "experience generation", only at home meetings for nostalgic reasons, but has practically no meaning as an everyday language. In Poland, the language of the few who were not displaced was subjected to severe repression after 1945, which means that active use of the language was even less than in Germany. The German minority in Poland , recognized since 1991, uses standard German .

References

See also

literature

  • Walther Kuck: Dialect geographical forays into the High Prussian of the Oberland. In: Teuthonista 4, 1928, issue 3/4, p. 266 ff.
  • Lehmann: The vernacular types in the province of Prussia. In: Preußische Provinzialblätter 1842, pp. 5-63. Digitized
  • JA Lilienthal: A contribution to the treatise "The vernacular types in the province of Prussia" in the January issue d. J. In: Preußische Provinzialblätter 1842, pp. 193-209. Digitized.
  • Walther Mitzka : Basic features of northeast German language history. Halle (Saale): Niemeyer 1937. Digitized.
  • Victor Röhrich: The settlement of the Warmia with special consideration of the origin of the settlers. Braunsberg 1925.
  • August Schemionek: Expressions and idioms of the Elbing dialect with an appendix of anecdotes retold to the people. Danzig: Bertling 1881.
  • Aleksander Szulc: Subsequent additions to the history of research and phonology of High Prussian. In: Peter Ernst and Franz Patocka (eds.): German language in space and time. Vienna: Edition Praesens 1998.
  • Wilhelm Teßmann: High Prussian and Silesian-Bohemian-Moravian with the language islands of the southeast. Self-published, 1968. Entry in the catalog of the German National Library.
  • Wilhelm Teßmann. Brief theory of phonetics and forms in High Prussian (Oberland and Wroclaw). Würzburg: Holzner 1969 (yearbook of the Albertus University in Königsberg / Prussia. Vol. 19, 1969, pp. 115–171). Entry in the catalog of the German National Library.
  • Peter Wiesinger : Phonetic-phonological research on vowel development in German dialects. Volumes 1 and 2. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1970 (Studia Linguistica Germanica 2).
  • Ewa Żebrowska: The utterance sequence in High Prussian. Olsztyn: Wydawn. Uniwersytetu Warmińsko-Mazurskiego 2004. ISBN 83-7299-377-7 .
  • Walther Ziesemer : The East Prussian dialects. Rehearsals and representation. Breslau: Shepherd 1924. Digitized.
  • Walther Ziesemer: The East Prussian dialects. In: East Prussia. Country and people in words and pictures. Third expanded edition. Königsberg (Prussia): Gräfe and Unzer n.d. [around 1926], pp. 78–81.

Web links

Commons : High Prussian  - collection of images, videos, and audio files
Wiktionary: High Prussian  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b J. A. Lilienthal: A contribution to the treatise "The vernacular types in the province of Prussia" in the January issue d. J. , in: Fatherland Archives for Science, Art, Industry and Agriculture, or Prussian Provincial Papers. Published with the participation of many scholars, officials, artists, merchants, farmers and the like. s. w., on OWL Richter. Twenty-seventh volume. Königsberg, 1842, pp. 193-209. P. 195: "They [= the inhabitants of Warmia] call their languages Breslauisch and Käslauisch , with the one denoting the Upper German, with the other the Low German dialect, [...] The naming Breslauisch [...]"
  2. ↑ cf. Ziesemer around 1926, page 79: "Even today the residents in the area of ​​Wormditt, Guttstadt, Heilsberg, Seeburg call their dialect 'Breslauisch'"
  3. ^ Johann Stuhrmann: The Middle German in East Prussia (1st part) , in the Royal High School for German Crown. School year 1894 | 95. Fortieth annual report presented by the director of the grammar school Dr. Stuhrmann. Printed by F. Garms, Deutsch-Krone, 1895. p. 15: “In Warmia, the Central German dialect spoken there is called breslausch , the Low German dialect spoken there käselausch (also probably käs'lausch)” and, in a footnote, “Die Forms: Breslau, Käslau with Lilienthal, Hipler u. s. w. are adapted to the written language. The expression is only written in high German: the Breslau dialect. "
  4. ↑ South of the Benrath line there was also an Upper German language island around Culmsee , the so-called Swabian colony.
  5. ↑ Ziesemer around 1926, page 80: “The linguistic boundary between High Prussian and Low Prussian is particularly sharp between central Warmia and Natangen, for example in the Heilsberg-Bartenstein area. [...] There are only a few language divisions in all of Germany that are as sharp as the one just mentioned. "
  6. ↑ http://www.diwa.info/DiWA/Katalog.aspx - When searching for: enter "war" and after displaying the results click on "Show map"
  7. ↑ Mitzka, pp. 62–65.
  8. ↑ http://www.diwa.info/titel.aspx - Search for the tab "Dialect divisions according to Wiesinger" (plug-in required)
  9. ↑ Mitzka, pp. 65–67.
  10. ^ Erhard Riemann, Word Geography and Settlement History of Old Prussia. In: Yearbook of the Association for Low German Language Research, Volume 88, year 1965, pp. 72-106.
  11. ↑ According to Ziesemer around 1926, p. 79.
  12. ↑ http://www.diwa.info/DiWA/atlas.aspx - cf. the single sheets of the digital Wenker atlas on this area
  13. ↑ Mitzka, pp. 66–69.
  14. ↑ Illustration based on Ziesemer 1924, pages 121–124. The vowels are omitted here because Ziesemer does not represent the distance from standard German, but from earlier language levels.
  15. ^ Place of collection: Sternberg (Heilsberg district, now Stryjkowo), roughly in the geographical center of the Wroclaw dialect area.
  16. ↑ Mitzka, page 69.
  17. ↑ The naming of the districts is only intended as a rough guide. The circle boundaries practically never coincided with isoglosses.
  18. ↑ http://3.diwa.info/Wenkerbogen/Bogen.aspx?id=29528
  19. ↑ http://3.diwa.info/Wenkerbogen/Bogen.aspx?id=29590
  20. ↑ http://3.diwa.info/Wenkerbogen/Bogen.aspx?id=29213
  21. ↑ http://www.3.diwa.info/Wenkerbogen/Bogen.aspx?ID=29690
  22. ^ Compare Teßmann 1969, page 141.
  23. ↑ In the north of the Oberland gutturalizations in the style of Wroclaw sometimes occurred.
  24. ↑ Place of collection: Groß Arnsdorf (Mohrungen district), roughly in the geographical center of the Oberland dialect area.