Crooked Alsace
The Crooked Alsace ( French l'Alsace bossue "the hunchbacked Alsace", Alsatian ’s Gromme Alsace ) is a hilly area in the north-west of Alsace that belongs to the Bas-Rhin department in the Grand Est region. The arrondissement of Saverne , in which the crooked Alsace is located, extends far to the west. The crooked Alsace therefore borders on three sides - in the south, west and north - on the Moselle department (until 2015 the Lorraine region ).
In popular parlance, especially among older people, the opinion is that the name “Crooked Alsace” comes from the crooked-humped border between Catholic Lorraine and (in this part of the country) predominantly Protestant Alsace. After the Reformation , the border was drawn around the villages according to religion. The crooked Alsace therefore roughly coincides with the historical County of Saar Werden , which was an exclave of the Protestant Principality of Nassau-Saarbrücken for centuries , and the County of Lützelstein , in which the Palatinate Wittelsbachers also introduced the Reformation in the middle of the 16th century. Although the region belongs neither geographically nor historically to Alsace, after the final annexation by revolutionary France in 1794, the inhabitants of Crooked Alsace asked their communities to join Alsace with its strong Protestant element instead of the strongly Catholic Lorraine.
Larger places in the crooked Alsace are Sarre-Union , Diemeringen , Drulingen and La Petite-Pierre , which were also the main towns of the cantons of the same name . The Saar flows through the crooked Alsace to the west and the northern Vosges to the east.
Most of the following municipalities in Crooked Alsace are members of the Communauté de communes de l'Alsace Bossue (German association of local authorities in Crooked Alsace). All are in the canton of Ingwiller , a subdivision of the Arrondissement Saverne. These places are: