Rural

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Rural

Spoken in

Romania ( Neppendorf , Großau , Großpold ), Germany ( Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg ), Austria (individuals in Upper Austria )
speaker about 1,500
Linguistic
classification
Official status
Official language in -
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

-

ISO 639 -2

gem (other Germanic languages)

Maria-Theresien-Gasse, or "Hintere Reih", in Großpold, laid out after 1754 for the Austrian transmigrants

Rural is a southern Bavarian dialect that was spoken in Transylvania from the 18th to the end of the 20th century . It was the language of the ethnic group of the country dance until their mass emigration after the Romanian Revolution of 1989 . Since then, rural life has been considered threatened with extinction and is only spoken by around 200 mostly elderly people living in Romania , as well as by a few hundred emigrants in Germany . Landlerisch existed for more than two centuries in direct diglossia with Transylvanian-Saxon dialects, largely without mixing with them.

The Bavarian dialects of Deutsch-Mokra and Königsfeld in the Ukraine and Oberwischau in the Romanian Maramures are also sometimes referred to as rural, but they have a completely different history.

Emergence

Landlerisch emerged from those dialects brought by Austrian Protestants who were forcibly relocated to Transylvania from various regions of Austria in three waves from 1734 to 1776 in the course of the Counter Reformation . These people, known as transmigrants , were settled in and around Sibiu and later concentrated on three villages in the vicinity, namely Neppendorf , Großau and Großpold . These were formerly purely Transylvanian-Saxon villages that had been severely destroyed and partially depopulated by the plague , the Great Turkish War and the subsequent Kuruc uprisings under Emmerich Thököly (1690) and Franz II. Rákóczi (1703-1711). There were also individual families who settled in other Transylvanian-Saxon villages and towns in the area, such as Broos , Mühlbach , Großschänen , Heltau and Michelsberg .

These Austrian transmigrants now lived with their Lutheran co-religionists, but they spoke a dialect that was initially incomprehensible to them, Transylvanian-Saxon . Nor had the Saxons been asked by the Habsburg authorities in Vienna whether they wanted to accept Austrian Protestants, and they were therefore only accepted after a strict test of their faith in their midst. While the scattered rural folk assimilated into Transylvanian Saxons within one or two generations, they were so numerous in the three villages mentioned that they retained the dialect they had brought with them from Austria. This led to the unique situation that in one and the same village two German dialects, linguistically relatively far apart, existed side by side for generations, which naturally resulted in tensions. However, the situation was very different in the three villages:

Neppendorf

Neppendorf had been so badly destroyed by the Turkish wars that the Protestants, mainly from the Salzkammergut (1734) and Upper Austrian Landl (1754–54), made up three quarters of the population from the start, while the Saxons only made up a quarter. This made rural language the dominant language in the village and most of the Saxons also knew it. However, since Neppendorf is right next to Sibiu and the farmers sold their products there on the market, most of the country folk learned Saxon. The traditional language of preaching in the service was also Saxon and the pastors were also all Saxons, which is why there were repeated conflicts between the two groups in Neppendorf until the 20th century. However, since the pastors spoke no or only poorly Landlerisch, but the Landler made up the majority here, it was finally agreed on Standard German as the language of worship. In the family and in the neighborhoods, both groups continued to speak their own language and sat separately in church. Due to its history, the Neppendorfer rural dialect is very similar to the old dialects in southern Upper Austria. Due to the geographical isolation, however, many conservative forms have been preserved there, which in Upper Austria were replaced by High German or colloquial variants.

Großau

The Landler settled in Großau also came mainly from the first (Salzkammergut, 1734) and second wave of transmigration (Landl / Hausruckviertel and Carinthia 1752–54), but were later reinforced by individual Protestants who were deported from Styria (1776). Nevertheless, they never made up more than 45% of the population, while the Saxons formed the majority. In addition, Großau was a wealthy community with a lot of property (Hattert) and a fortified church steeped in history, which is why the Saxons were not prepared to forego their privileges. The linguistic balance of power was therefore exactly the opposite of that in Neppendorf. The country folks had to adapt and learn Saxon and could only cultivate their language within the family. Many of the Grossauer Saxons also refused to learn rural style, which is why Saxon is still spoken in mixed conversational situations. In mixed marriages, the bride had to adapt to the language of the family into which she married. Only when the groom was poor and moved to the bride's yard did the bride have to adapt, which almost exclusively happened with country folk who married a Saxon woman. In Großau there were Saxon families with family names that actually came from Austria, such as Huber, Fuchshuber, Holzinger and Wiserner. High German was only introduced as the preaching language in the church at the beginning of the 20th century and even after that the Saxons insisted on holding Saxon baptisms, weddings and funerals in Saxon. Also only Saxon was spoken in the neighborhood meetings. Overall, the conflicts between the two language groups were most intense in Großau and lasted until the time of Ceaușescu . The Großau rural style kept numerous ancient forms and is generally considered to be the most conservative. Only a few lexical elements were taken from Saxon, later also from Romanian .

Großpold

Großpold is the smallest of the three rural villages and also the furthest away from Sibiu. The rural residents who settled here come mainly from the second (1752–54) and third (1776) wave of transmigration and therefore came mainly from Carinthia ( Himmelberg , Paternion , Spittal an der Drau etc.) and Styria ( Murau , Stadl an der Mur ). This can still be seen today in the Großpolder rural dialect, which is clearly more similar to Carinthian and thus differs somewhat from the dialect of the other two villages. The diglossia between Landlerisch and Saxon was roughly balanced here, with the Landler slightly in the majority. Over time, however, both groups learned the language or dialect of the other. In Großpold there were also conflicts between the two groups in the beginning, but these were less linguistic and more religious in nature. The Landler were the far more pious group who accused the Saxons of moral decay (Großpold is a wine-growing region) and insisted on separate youth associations (brotherhood and sisterhood). However, there were soon numerous mixed marriages, in which, however, the Landler tended to assimilate the Saxons, which can be determined from numerous actually Saxon surnames in Landler families, such as Pitter, Bottesch, Kirr, Nietsch, Theil and Glatz. Nevertheless, all of the country folks were fluent in Saxon, as the village maintained close contacts with the neighboring Saxon Urwege . The Großpoldner Landlerisch is due to the work of Johanna and Martin Bottesch Wilfried Schabus, as well as the Austrian sociologist Roland Girtler , the best documented today.

Number of speakers

The ethnic group of the rural population and with it the number of speakers of their language reached their peak in the 1930s due to population growth. Due to the well-known population of the three villages and the relatively constant distribution of Saxons and Landlers over time, one can assume a number of speakers of around 6,000 for this time (Neppendorf 3,000, Großau 2,000, Großpold 1,000). Already in the Austro-Hungarian period an emigration to the cities and an associated assimilation to Transylvanian Saxons had already begun, but this was offset by high birth rates in the three villages. Even when Transylvania became part of the Kingdom of Romania in 1919/1920 , the number of speakers remained constant, only the Romanian language now replaced Hungarian as the official language. Only during and after the Second World War did the number of speakers begin to decline. On the one hand, this was due to the number of men who were killed, as many male rural soldiers were drafted into the Romanian army as soldiers, but the majority switched to the Germans after the Hitler- Antonescu Agreement of May 12, 1943 and were deployed on the Eastern Front. On the other hand, numerous rural soldiers serving in the German army withdrew with their troops to Austria and Bavaria in 1945, where they were taken prisoner by the Americans. Many of them did not return to their homeland after the Communists came to power in December 1947, but settled, like many other ethnic Germans , primarily in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. The Landlerdörfer itself, on the other hand, was captured by the Red Army in August 1944 and the working population, especially women and girls, were deported to the Soviet Union in January 1945 for five years of forced labor, mostly to the Donbas region.

Around 80% of the deportees had returned from the Soviet Union by 1950, but many families were torn apart. As a result of the communist expropriations and forced collectivization , many peasants gave up their rural livelihoods and worked in the Romanian People's Republic as artisans and industrial workers. But even under communist rule, the peasants were able to maintain their small community. In the villages, over time, people came to terms with the collective farm and the craftsmen who worked abroad often stayed together in joint work teams (echipă) , as they were also valued by the communist rulers as good carpenters and bricklayers. After the earthquake in Vrancea in 1977, rural workers even worked on the reconstruction of Bucharest and the construction of Casa Poporului . Nevertheless, there was a growing desire to emigrate to the west, where numerous countrymen already had relatives due to the war. In the Ceaușescu period, some used the exit program negotiated between the FRG and Romania (" Free purchase of Romanian Germans "). In 1984 there were still around 5,000 Landler in Romania (2,800 in Neppendorf, 1,200 in Großau and 1,000 in Großpold). At the end of the 1980s, however, there was also an increase in illegal emigration and flight via Yugoslavia or Turkey . When the communist regime was overthrown in December 1989, a large wave of German minorities emigrated to Romania and there was also a mass exodus from the rural villages to Germany. Of the 4,000 remaining rural residents in 1989, around 90% left the country by 1991.

Today most of the country people live in Upper Bavaria , in the Munich area and in Rosenheim , there especially in the Großkarolinenfeld district , as well as in and around Stuttgart . Only a small part has settled in their old home country Austria, there mainly in Goisern , Vöcklabruck and Traun . This is mainly due to the fact that the Federal Republic of Germany recognized the rural residents as ethnic Germans , immediately granted them citizenship and was generous in the crediting of pension years paid in Romania, while in the Republic of Austria they initially only receive the status of asylum seekers for constitutional reasons to have. Only a small part of the emigrants still use the language, which is why Landlerisch is slowly disappearing as a separate idiom in the second generation in Germany. In Bavaria there is usually a language change to the closely related local Bavarian dialect, while Landler in other areas usually switch to Standard German.

In Romania today there are still around 70 Landler living in Neppendorf, 20 in Großau, 30 in Großpold, some in Hermannstadt and others in the rest of the country. Overall, the number of rural speakers in the country should not exceed 200 (as of 2010).

Linguistic peculiarities

The majority of the Protestants expelled from Austria came from the Salzkammergut and the eponymous Landl in Upper Austria. Therefore, the dialects of Neppendorf and Großau are often referred to as Central Bavarian. However, all variants of the country style lack the typical Middle Bavarian L-vocalization. Words like money , world , field and help , neck , forest , are pronounced in all three villages as Göld , Wöld , Föld and Hülf , Håls , Wåld . The Central Bavarian lenization of p , t and k does not exist in rural areas either. Overall, the dialects of all three villages therefore have a more southern Bavarian sound, with Großpold being the most intensely. In addition, in the area of lexicons and phraseology, the rural elements preserve a language level of the 18th century, which is why there are sometimes considerable differences to modern Austrian dialects. In addition, through centuries of language contact, rural lore has taken over some lexical and structural forms from Transylvanian-Saxon. This influence is smallest in Neppendorf, while it is most pronounced in Großpold. This makes the Neppendorfer Landlerisch the easiest to understand for Austrian dialect speakers, while the Großpoldnerisch is the most difficult. These differences were also perceived within the small ethnic group of the rural population, while a mutual intelligibility (reciprocal intelligibility) was always maintained. Interestingly enough, the Großpoldner rural style always counted more than the " imperious ", although it was furthest away from the city. This is because Großpold was the last of the three villages to be settled, especially with transmigrants from Carinthia and Styria, and the most intensive exchange with the Saxon took place there, making it closer to the " German " in the perception of the other Landler , So was the standard German.

All three villages have received the old diphthongization of the ai sound, which is always "oa" in rural lore, for example in " Gmoanschåft " (community), " Kroas " (district), " oagentli " (actually) and " dahoam " (at home , At home). Only in Großpold is the long o diphthongized, for example in " groas " (large) and " roat " (red), and the long e, for example in " greaßa " (larger) and " Schnea " (snow), a phenomenon that can still be heard in South Tyrol today. In addition to archaic Austrian forms, the Großpoldner Landlerisch has also adopted Saxon words and idioms, a barn in Neppendorf and Großau is called " Schopfen ", while in Großpold " Schaian " is used ( Rum .: Șura ). In the lexical area, Neppendorf and Großau are closer to the old Upper Austrian dialects and also have all Bavarian passwords : A shirt is called the " Pfoat " there, Tuesday is the " Earitog " and Thursday is the " Pfinstog ". Mainly in Neppendorf and Großau the old Middle Bavarian sprout vowels occur, for example in the words " schtårik " (strong), " Heribst " (autumn), " Mili " (milk), " Kåli " (lime) and " Gebirig " (mountains ). The polite forms of address " es " and " enk " are typically Bavarian in all three villages . The contact with Romanian has also left its mark, for example in the word " Krotzawetz " ( Rum . : castraveți , cucumber), " Druschba " (chainsaw) or " Remork " (trailer). The word for potatoes comes from the Hungarian German, namely " Krumpirn " ("Krume-" or "Grundbirne", Hungarian : krumpli ). In the phonetic conservative Großau the prefix " ge " is always pronounced as " d- ", for example with " dschaud " (looked), " dsok " (said) and " Dsicht " (face), a phenomenon that occurs in Bavaria and Austria is almost extinct today.

Other typical rural words are:

  • Bushn -flowers
  • Zöltn - flat cake, in Saxon: Hanklich
  • Pamschtritzl - Kürtőskalács
  • Kukruz - corn
  • Fruit - wheat
  • Paradais - tomatoes
  • terisch - deaf
  • neama - no more
  • nit - not
  • fertn - last year
  • Pouwn - oven
  • Saupliamel - dandelion
  • Kou - Kaiserschmarrn
  • Edl - grandfather
  • Andl - grandmother
  • Eadl - ear
  • Fraid / Fraingt - relative
  • Kamarod - friend
  • Wai - wife, wife
  • Moam - older woman
  • Cousin - older man
  • Käid - godfather
  • Heavenly voter - Heavenly Father, Lord God
  • Kaiwl - calf
  • Pletsch - slap in the face
  • Lanzing - spring
  • Most - grape juice
  • Tiendl - dirndl, girls
  • Puamer - boys, boys
  • Kaaspaluks - polenta with cheese (from Saxon: Palukes)

The forms of certain given names, which differed particularly from the Saxon pronunciation in the three villages, are also typical of the country:

  • Andl (Anna, Saxon: Iane )
  • Lis (Elisabeth, Saxon: Els, Elsen, Lise )
  • Katl (Katharina, Saxon: Trein )
  • Miarl (Maria, in Saxon: May )
  • Res (Theresia)
  • Andrä (Andreas, Saxon: Ointzn )
  • Bartl (Bartholomäus, Saxon: Bartesch )
  • Frånz (Franz, Saxon: Frintz, Fruntz )
  • Hans (Johann, Saxon: Junesch )
  • Hias (Mathias, Saxon: Mathes )
  • Iaring (Georg, Saxon: Getz )
  • Me (Michael, Saxon: mixed )
  • Sepp (Joseph, Saxon: Jupp )

So it can be seen from the nickname which person is considered a country man or Saxon. The female diminutive domain name are grammatically throughout Neutra , making it "s'Katl", "s'Miarl" means etc.. The village pastor is always referred to as "da Pfoara", while the moon is called "Mr. Moon".

The locals refer to their neighbors and their languages, who live in multicultural Transylvania, as follows:

Multilingualism

All country folk in Transylvania speak Transylvanian-Saxon in addition to country lore, as there was not a single village in which only country folk lived. In school and in church, on the other hand, standard German was spoken, which the rural folk call it Daitsch . In contrast to the current usage in Bavaria or Austria, there was no continuum of varieties between rural, Saxon and standard German. Depending on the conversation situation, you either spoke one or the other. The Transylvanian Standard German, however, has very antiquated forms based on the language used by the Lutheran regional church . It is also spoken and taught with a Saxon accent, which is why it differs significantly from modern standard German.

In addition, all rural residents in Transylvania speak Romanian, the official language of the country, which is used not only in dealing with the authorities, but also for communication with Romanian neighbors and, above all, with the Roma employed as agricultural workers. Before the Second World War, however, the knowledge of Romanian was mostly very limited, but after 1945 nobody could do without the Romanian language. German schools continued to exist, but Romanian became a compulsory subject. Men learned it in the military at the latest. In addition, many country workers worked abroad, which would not have been possible without language skills. Only women who only worked on their own farm sometimes had limited knowledge of Romanian.

Since dialect and written language are very different from each other, many Landler therefore perceive themselves as four languages, with:

  • Rural
  • Saxon
  • German
  • Romanian

Hungarian is little known among the peasants, as there are almost no Hungarians or Szeklers living in the extreme south of Transylvania. Nevertheless, all three rural villages also have a Hungarian name, as it was the official language before the First World War.

writer

One of the few writers who wrote literature not only about rural, but also rural and whose works were also printed, is Otto Piringer , a rural from Broos . Apart from that, mostly only handwritten texts have survived in rural lore, especially song texts and poems , also because the publication of non-Romanian-language texts was severely restricted during the communist regime. The pastor Hellmut Klima from Neppendorf has made a special contribution to the publication of the history of the rural folk, whose writings also contain individual text examples of rural rural life. However, this was only published posthumously after the end of communist rule.

literature

  • Bernhard Capesius: The country folk in Transylvania. History and dialect. Publishing house of the Academy of the Romanian People's Republic, Bucharest 1962.
  • Alfred Obernberger: The dialect of the Transylvanian country folk. A Bavarian settler dialect of the 18th century (= German dialect geography. Volume 67, ZDB -ID 504227-6 ). NG Elwert Verlag, Marburg 1964. (= At the same time: Innsbruck, University, dissertation, 1963: A Bavarian settler dialect of the 18th century. )
  • Wilfried Schabus: The Landler. Language and cultural contact in an old Austrian enclave in Transylvania (Romania) (= contributions to language island research. Volume 13). Edition Praesens, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-901126-81-3 .
  • Johanna Bottesch: The phraseological vocabulary of Großpold's rural lore from a structural, semantic and pragmatic point of view. Editura Universității "Lucian Blaga" din Sibiu, Sibiu (Hermannstadt) 2002, ISBN 973-651-524-9 .
  • Johanna Bottesch: Phraseological dictionary of the rural from Großpold. Editura Universității "Lucian Blaga" din Sibiu, Sibiu (Hermannstadt) 2006, ISBN 973-651-525-7 .

Web links

Audio documents

Wenker sets

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ landler.com: On the history of the Landler. ( Memento of the original from August 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (by Alfred Obernberger: The dialect of the Transylvanian country folk. 1964). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.landler.com
  2. ↑ Dieter Knall : Forced out of the home - last forced resettlement of Styrian Protestants to Transylvania under Maria Theresa (= research on the historical regional studies of Styria. Volume 45). 2nd, unchanged edition. Self-published by the Historical Commission for Styria, Graz 2002, ISBN 3-901251-25-1 .
  3. ↑ landler.com: Directory of Landler surnames , after Bernhard Capesius: Die Landler in Siebenbürgen. 1962.
  4. ↑ Ernst Martin Weingärtner: A home book about the community Grossau in Transylvania, Romania. Self-published, Memmingen 1988.
  5. ^ Johanna Bottesch, Martin Bottesch : The Bavarian-Austrian dialect of the Landler von Grosspold (Apoldu de Sus) in Transylvania (Romania) (= contributions to language island research. Volume 10). 2 volumes. VWGÖ, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-85369-892-1 .
  6. ^ Martin Bottesch, Franz Grieshofer , Wilfried Schabus (eds.): The Transylvanian Landler. A forensics. 2 parts. Böhlau, Vienna et al. 2002, ISBN 3-205-99415-9 .
  7. ↑ Wilfried Schabus: The Landler von Großpold. Carinthian displaced persons in Romania. In: Carinthia. Journal for historical regional studies of Carinthia. Volume 182, 1992, ISSN  0008-6606 , pp. 417-440.
  8. ↑ Wilfried Schabus: Observations on language contact, variety balancing, language loyalty and language change in Pozuzo (Peru) and among the "country folk" in Transylvania. In: Nina Berend, Klaus J. Mattheirer (Ed.): Language island research. A memorial for Hugo Jedig. Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1994, pp. 221-262.
  9. ↑ Roland Girtler : Banished and forgotten. A sinking German-speaking culture in Romania . Linz, 1992.
  10. ↑ Roland Girtler: Summer grain. On the fall of rural culture. Böhlau, Vienna et al. 1996, ISBN 3-205-98560-5 .
  11. ^ Roland Girtler: The last song before Sibiu. The fading away of a German peasant culture in Romania. Böhlau, Vienna et al. 2007, ISBN 978-3-205-77662-8 .
  12. ^ Martin Bottesch: Landler booklet. 2nd Edition. Honterus-Verlag, Sibiu-Hermannstadt 2007, ISBN 978-973-1725-15-4 .
  13. ↑ landler.com: The Landler settlement in Transylvania