Low German communities
The Low German communities , Altbelgien-Nord , Montzener Land or Platdietse Streek are a region in the northeast of Belgium that officially belongs to the French-speaking area , but in which Germanic dialects have also been spoken since ancient times . The area is about 5 to 20 kilometers southwest of Aachen between the Flemish municipality of Voeren and the north of the German-speaking community .
Demarcation
In a narrower sense, Altbelgien-Nord has consisted of three municipalities since the Belgian territorial reform in 1977 :
- Baelen including the village of Membach
- Plombières (Bleyberg) including the villages of Gemmenich , Homburg , Montzen , Moresnet , Moresnet-Chapelle (Eikschen) and Sippenaeken
- Welkenraedt including the village of Henri-Chapelle (Heinrichskapelle)
In total, these three communities have around 24,000 inhabitants. In part, the community of Aubel was also counted among the Low German communities, even though it has been almost completely French for many decades.
Population and language
The traditional dialect of the autochthonous population is one of the East Limburg - Ripuarian transition dialects. The residents call their dialect Low German . (This is not to be confused with Low German in the sense of North German / Low German , but corresponds to the designation of the local dialectal popular language, which is also common in the Cologne-Aachen and Eifler area, as Low or Low German.) The same dialect is also used in the communities of Lontzen directly to the east , Eupen and Kelmis , which are in the official German-speaking area of Belgium ( German-speaking Community ).
Since the opening of the border and the associated freedom of movement for citizens of the member states of the European Union, many German and Dutch-speaking citizens have moved to the Low German communities. Of the 9,781 residents of Bleyberg in 2008, over 23 percent were foreigners. The largest group were the 1303 German citizens, followed by 720 Dutch citizens. This brought about an appreciation of standard German in linguistic usage , but to a certain extent also of the local dialect. A large part of the immigrants come from the Aachen and Vaals area, where related dialects are spoken. German speakers who moved from neighboring Eupen also contributed to the stabilization of the autochthonous dialect.
Thus, today some of the residents of the region are exclusively French as their mother tongue, another part speaks French as the language of public life and the “Low German” dialect as their mother tongue. In addition to the French school and administrative language, some of the dialect speakers also have a command of Standard German and / or Dutch, which are taught as a school subject and are present in the media. The resident population who immigrated from Germany or the DG speaks not only their mother tongue, German, but also the French, which is predominant in public life, as a foreign language. Walloon dialects are also present among the francophone Belgian population.
history
The Low German communities have belonged to Belgium since 1830. They were therefore - unlike the Neubelgien said area of the German-speaking community around Eupen and St. Vith , which came to Belgium in 1919 - as Old Belgium North called. The other German-speaking areas of Belgium, Bocholz (part of the otherwise French-speaking municipality of Gouvy ) and the Areler Land , were designated as Altbelgien-Mitte and Altbelgien-Süd .
Around 1910, the vast majority of the long-established population still spoke German. The colloquial language in the private sphere was Low German, while High German served as the church and cultural language. As a result of the invasion of German troops in World War I , strong anti-German sentiments arose in the communities, and as a sign of Belgian patriotism, German was largely replaced by French in public areas after the war. In the private sphere, however, the traditional dialect was retained. During the Second World War , the Greater German Reich forcibly joined the Low German communities to the German Reich. After the end of the occupation, the Germans were pushed back even more strongly. Many citizens of the area also switched to French in their private lives.
While in the urban community of Welkenraedt the Frenchization is much more advanced, the Platt was able to hold up better in the smaller villages. In particular, in the towns of Gemmenich, Moresnet, Membach and Sippenaeken, which are directly adjacent to the German-speaking Community, Germany and the Netherlands, the Platt has retained a strong position to this day. There are numerous German place names and field names throughout the area (e.g. Brandweg, Bienenheide, Völkerich, Droegweide in Gemmenich or Hockelbach, Auweg, Kinkenweg, Vogelsang in Welkenraedt).
The Plattdeutsch municipalities were 1963 by the definition of the language boundaries assigned to the French-speaking language area whose outermost northeastern corner form. For Baelen, Plombières and Welkenraedt, however, the possibility was created by law to set up facilities for administrative matters for Dutch and / or German speakers (dormant facilities) . Officially, no use was made of this language facility in the administrations of these municipalities, but it was decided to introduce facilities on a voluntary basis. In the area of school instruction, language facilitations apply to non-Francophone residents of the municipalities of Baelen, Plombières and Welkenraedt. On the other hand, Aubel is not one of the municipalities with voluntary facilities.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Gottfried Eisermann, Jürgen Zeh: The German language community in Ostbelgien: results of an empirical study . (= Bonn contributions to sociology. Volume 17). Enke, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-432-90461-4 .
- ↑ a b Jörg Horn: Place Name Conflicts: Solutions for Multilingual Areas. 2004. ( google preview )
- ↑ Michael Elmentaler, Peter Lang: German and his neighbors. 2009. ( google preview )
- ↑ José Cajot, Hartmut Beckers: On the diatopy of the German dialects in Belgium. 1979.
- ↑ Directorate-General for Statistics and Business Information ( Memento of the original from April 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : Population on January 1, 2008 by nationality. ( Memento of the original from July 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Excel file)
- ^ Hans Goebl, Peter H. Nelde, Zdenek Stary, Wolfgang Wölck: Kontaktlinguistik / Contact Linguistics / Linguistique de contact. 1997. ( google preview )
- ↑ Johannes Kramer: Bilingualism in the Benelux countries. 1984. ( google preview )
Coordinates: 50 ° 41 ′ N , 5 ° 56 ′ E