Low German movement

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Low and High German dialects in their historical distribution and the various options for dividing them into the three main groups (animation; for individual excerpts just click and press "Esc")

The Low German or Low German movement contoured after the German Empire in 1871 as part of a broad search and collective movement whose ideological commonality was in their nationalist and anti-Semitic beliefs. In this way it is seen today as a regional pioneer of National Socialism.

history

The Low German Movement, a linguistically and culturally active network of associations, theaters and publishing houses as well as author circles, teacher groups and opinion leaders with a political self-image, was constituted around the middle of the 19th century. The starting point and later spatial focus was, of course, northern Germany , even if there were branches across the empire. The decision of writers such as Klaus Groth , Fritz Reuter and John Brinckman to write their Low German dialect variety had an impact on the identity, namely in the sense of a retrospective regional countermovement to modernity, since the second half of the 19th century . Groth was also influential as a language theorist. He sees the ethnic and linguistic community as a unity, and Low German as an organic natural body is the ideal expression of the “people's spirit”. Language and speaker community were naturalized with this figure of thought. Groth's goal was to use the spelling of Low German to transform its dialectal status into something special. As an organic natural body, the dialect is at least equal to the standard German language. This notion, determined by historicism , became established in the last third of the 19th century in both philology and ethnology. "Low German" was not seen as a communication medium. For pioneers and actors of the Low German movement such as Julius Langbehn , Adolf Bartels , Hans Friedrich Blunck and Moritz Jahn , Low German marked a popular, exemplary "Nordic" way of existence, which was further developed as a race-based concept of both homogenization and exclusion according to the respective time layers. The term Low German consisted of three symbolic features as a racial classification element: the Aryan descent of the speakers, the idealization of the dialect as an old Germanic language and its stylization as an expression of a special cultural form. With these ideological principles, the Low German Movement positioned itself in the first half of the 20th century as a segment of the völkisch movement, a “broad-based search and collecting movement whose ideological axis was a völkisch-national anti-Semitism.” With the First World War it was völkisch- national thinking has become common property. Although the movement gave itself "an apolitical look", it appeared in the 1920s with a political self-image that was directed against the young democratic form of government. During the Weimar Republic, the movement became decisively ideological and politicized, and it reached its apex towards the end of the 1920s. An example of this is the “boom in the Low German-Dutch-Flemish rapprochement”. The Low German Movement maintained a particularly close relationship with the Flemish Movement ("Vlaamse Bewegungsing") in Belgium . Since the First World War , the Low German Movement had been in contact with the “Dietsche Movement”, which it regarded as a national sister organization. You saw the Dutch as a language variant of Low German . Flemings, Dutch and Low Germans formed a unified “tribe” for the actors in the movement. The aim is to reanimate the common “Germanic people's spirit” and “reunite” the politically separated, as the Dutch activist Constant Hansen had proclaimed a few decades earlier.

Beyond 1945, the Low German movement stuck to the "myth of the unity of ... Low German", while the local and regional varieties were increasingly characterized by "dialect decline and loss of dialect". The most important axis of action of the Low German movement in the present consists in the implementation of the language-political ascription that the Low German varieties are, according to their status, an identity-productive regional language . This means that a key element of the movement's value system has continued to this day, the idea that there is a unified cultural area in Northern Germany that is characterized by Low German.

Today's reception

Historians such as Uwe Puschner and Jenni Boie attribute the Low German Movement to the Volkish Movement .

Claus Schuppenhauer , managing director of the Institute for Low German in Bremen from 1974 to 2003 , sees her as a pioneer of National Socialism . It developed “before and after 1900 in a permanent, often personal connection with the ideological-political camp that was working towards a nationalist-conservative revolution in Germany, with the Heimatkunst movement , the Heimatschutz- or Heimat movement , the anti-modernist cultural critics and writers who wanted a 'provincial uprising' against Berlin, etc. ”In this way she“ contributed to the historical currents on which the National Socialists were later based. ”

Ulf-Thomas Lesle also long-time managing director of the Institute of Low German in Bremen, turns the role of the educated middle class as a social support of the Low German movement. The Low German dialect in northern Germany was “discovered 'by the middle-class educated bourgeoisie at the very moment,“ when it was preparing to counter an alleged threat from the proletariat with' folk 'concepts , but at the same time also endeavored to defend itself ardently Desired world power position of the German Reich to secure its own status. ”In this ideological mixture, the allegedly apolitical, educated bourgeois enthusiasm for the“ vernacular ”reveals itself as a deliberate attempt to“ want to make a contribution to the 'folkish' creation of meaning. ”The role in National Socialism sums up he put it together as follows: “Low German dialect literature was not misused under National Socialism - as some people still or again want to believe today - it was simply brought to its precise definition.” It was a central goal, journalistic and media one as "human-original I ”viewed“ cultural space ”as a place of anti-modern ways of life and at the same time as an“ exclusive symbol of the Aryan national community ”.

An important institutional sponsor of the Low German movement was the Fehrs-Gilde , which in its recent history, in a distance to its earlier self-image, sees itself only as an association for Low German language cultivation, literature and language politics and no longer as a supporter of a political movement.

European regional policy has changed significantly since the 1990s: As part of the Council of Europe's language charter , the Low German varieties have been protected by this collective right as a regional language since 1999 . As a result, origin and home culture have been ethnicized in the sense of ethnic group law. From this process the Low German Movement, whose opinion leaders today reject this term because of its connotation as a self-labeling, emerged stronger as a politically active network that aggressively represents the interests of a particular regional culture. The actors communicate their language and identity policy goals primarily in the new media. Lesle, who has described the thought and behavioral structures of the historical Low German movement several times, points out that measures promoted by politics, such as B. Standardization, language acquisition and development of the varieties "often resemble those linguistic ideological positions" which the folk "actors of the Low German movement have repeatedly represented over the past hundred years".

literature

  • Kay Dohnke, Norbert Hopster, Jan Wirrer (eds.): Low German in National Socialism. Studies on the role of regional culture in fascism. Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim u. a. 1994, ISBN 3-487-09809-1 .
  • Ulf-Thomas Lesle : Identity Project Low German. The definition of language as a political issue. In: R. Langhanke (Ed.): Language, Literature, Space. Fs. For W. Diercks. Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 978-3-89534-867-9 , pp. 693-741.
  • Robert Peters: Regional Language Low German? In: Augustin Wibbelt-Jb. 20, 2004, ISBN 3-89534-580-6 , pp. 102-107.
  • Ulf-Thomas Lesle : Low German Movement . In: Michael Fahlbusch , Ingo Haar , Alexander Pinwinkler (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Völkischen Wissenschaften . 2. completely revised and exp. Edition Berlin 2017, pp. 1532–1542.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Birte Arendt: Language settings in the context of laypeople, print media and politics. Berlin 2010, p. 92 f.
  2. ↑ Volker Georg: The relationship of the Low German movement to the Flemish and Dutch language and culture in the Quickborn. P. 12, see: oops.uni-oldenburg.de (PDF).
  3. ↑ Ulf-Thomas Lesle: Identity Project Low German. The definition of language as a political issue. In: R. Langhanke (Ed.): Language, Literature, Space. Fs. For Willy Diercks. Bielefeld 2015, p. 706.
  4. ↑ Volker Georg: The relationship of the Low German movement to the Flemish and Dutch language and culture in the Quickborn. P. 13, see: oops.uni-oldenburg.de (PDF).
  5. ↑ Volker Georg: The relationship of the Low German movement to the Flemish and Dutch language and culture in the Quickborn. P. 16, see: oops.uni-oldenburg.de (PDF).
  6. ^ Hubert Roland, Marnix Beyen, Greet Draye: Pictures of Germany in Belgium 1830-1940. Münster 2011, p. 92.
  7. ↑ Robert Peters: Regional Language Low German? In: Augustin Wibbelt Society. Jb. 20, 2004, p. 107.
  8. ↑ Jenni Boie: Volkstumsarbeit and border region. Folklore knowledge as a resource of ethnic identity politics in Schleswig-Holstein 1920–1930 (= Kiel studies on folklore and cultural history. Volume 9). 2013, p. 117.
  9. ↑ Claus Schuppenhauer: The Doberaner Dichtertage - once a place for "Low German appeals to the Reich". Another chapter on belief in the political 'mission' of Low German. In: Monika Schürmann, Reinhard Rösler (Hrsg.): Literature and literary politics in the Third Reich. Doberan Poets Day 1936–1943. Rostock 2003, p. 121.
  10. ↑ ins-bremen.de , accessed September 15, 2014.
  11. ↑ a b Ulf-Thomas Lesle: Hamburg as "center and source of strength". The "Low German Movement" - its requirements and connections. In: Inge Stephan, Hans-Gerd Winter (ed.): "Love that throws anchor in the abyss". Authors and the literary field in Hamburg in the 20th century. Argument Verlag, Berlin u. a. 1990, pp. 70 f., 81.
  12. ↑ Ulf-Thomas Lesle: Identity Project Low German. The definition of language as a political issue. In: R. Langhanke (Ed.): Language, Literature, Space. Fs. For Willy Diercks. Bielefeld 2015, p. 706 f.
  13. ↑ See: Leaves of the Fehrs Guild. New episode: fehrsgilde.de , fehrsgilde.de .
  14. ↑ See Samuel Salzborn: Ethnicization of Politics. Theory and history of ethnic group law in Europe. Frankfurt am Main. 2005.
  15. ↑ Ulf-Thomas Lesle: Identity Project Low German. The definition of language as a political issue. In: R. Langhanke (Ed.): Language, Literature, Space. Fs. For Willy Diercks. Bielefeld 2015, p. 706.