Cimbri

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The Cimbri (own name Zimbarn or Tzimbar ) are a Bavarian language minority who live in some (mostly former) language islands in the northern Italian regions of the Autonomous Province of Trento and the Veneto region . Their traditional dialect, Cimbrian , developed into a written language in the seven communities since the 17th century, is still spoken by a few hundred people today. All residents of these linguistic islands also speak Italian , and many also speak standard German . Only in the Trentino municipality of Lusern is Cimbrian still an everyday language.

Language and settlement area

Historical (yellow) and current (orange) spread of the Cimbrian language.

The Cimbri live in three historical regions, some of which are far apart, so the local variants of Cimbrian differ very clearly:

Seven parishes

The seven municipalities, Cimbrian Siben Komoin , Italian Sette Comuni, are located on the high plateau northwest of Vicenza in the Veneto region. The individual places are called:

  • Asiago , Cimbrian Sleghe / Schlège, German blows
  • Gallio , Cimbrian Gell (e) / Ghel, German Gelle
  • Roana , Cimbrian Robàan, German Rovan or Rain
  • Foza , Cimbrian Vüsche / Vütsche / Fütze
  • Enego , Cimbrian Ghenebe / Jenève, German Jeneve
  • Rotzo , Cimbrian snot, German horse
  • Lusiana , Cimbrian Lusaan, German Lusian

In Mittebald / Toballe ( Mezzaselva ), a district of Robàan (Roana), there are still a few speakers who use Cimbrian primarily in memory contexts, according to a study from 2012.

Until a few decades ago, Cansiglio , Veneto region , also spoke Cimbrian in three communities:

The settlers came here from Roana (Seven Parishes ) from 1707 . Presumably a maximum of 500 inhabitants was reached; In 1877 there were 280 inhabitants. The linguistic island no longer exists, only (hall) names are reminiscent of the Cimbrian past. However, the inhabitants of the Cansiglio have recently been very intensively concerned with their Cimbrian history.

Thirteen parishes

The Thirteen Communities, Italian Tredici Comuni, also Lessinia or Italy. Called Lessinia , they are far southwest of the Seven Municipalities and Lusians and belong to the province of Verona (Veneto region). They are also located on a secluded and isolated plateau surrounded by mountains, which is difficult to access from the valley side.

Locations are:

  1. Velo Veronese , Cimbrian Vellje, German field
  2. Roverè Veronese , German Rovereid
  3. Erbezzo , German for meadows
  4. Selva di Progno , Cimbrian Brunghe, German Prugne, with Giazza, Cimbrian Ljetzan , German Gletzen or Gliesen
  5. Bosco Chiesanuova , Cimbrian Nuagankirchen, German Neuenkirchen
  6. Badia Calavena , Cimbrian Kalfàain, Màbado or Kam'Abato, German Kalwein or Kalfein
  7. Cerro Veronese , Cimbrian Tschirre or Sèr, "German" Silva Hermanorum
  8. San Mauro di Saline , German Sankt Moritz
  9. Azzarino , Cimbrian / German Asarin, today part of the municipality of Velo Veronese
  10. San Bortolo , in Cimbrian Bòrtolom, incorporated into Selva di Progno
  11. Val di Porro , German Porrental , incorporated into Bosco Chiesanuova
  12. Tavernole , today the place of San Mauro di Saline
  13. Camposilvano , German Kampsilvan, incorporated into Velo Veronese

In Ljetzan (Giazza), a village in the municipality of Selva di Progno, there are still a few speakers who use Cimbrian primarily in memory contexts, according to a 2012 study.

Trentino

Bavarian dialects in Trentino:
 Cimbrian and heel-like

On the same plateau as the Seven Churches, however, about 30 km north-west of the upper, south Valsugana and Caldonazzo lake in the province of Trento , region Trentino-Alto Adige are

In Lusern, due to its particularly isolated location, Cimbrian has survived best and is spoken by almost all residents in everyday life.

In the places closest to Luserna, Lavarone / Lafraun and Folgaria / Vielgereuth, Cimbrian was spoken well into the 20th century. The language has been considered to be extinct there since the fascist era (1922–1943); today only family and field names remind of the Cimbrian past of the places. In the Terragnolo, the Vallarsa and the Trambileno, the Cimbrian language died out in the 19th century. In Terragnolo, Bruno Schweizer has documented the remnants of Cimbrian for his Cimbrian and Heel Language Atlas, in the Vallarsa Hugo-Daniel Stoffella.

Other South Bavarian language islands in northeast Italy

Not to be confused with Cimbrian are a number of other Upper German language islands in the Alpine region.

Also in Trentino, but north of the upper Valsugana, in the province of Trento , Region Trentino-South Tyrol, is the Fersental , whose dialect, the Fersentaleric , is closer to the Tyrolean dialects than the Cimbrian. The heel talers are called "Mòcheni" by the Italians (allegedly because they often use the word mòchen "make"):

  • Palù del Fersina , heel. Palae en Bersntol, German Palai im Fersental
  • Fierozzo , heels. Vlarötz, German Florutz
  • Frassilongo-Roveda , heels. Garait, German Gereut with the Roveda faction, fersent. Oachlait, German Eichleit

Upper German language islands are further to the east ( Carnic Alps )

In these eastern linguistic islands, Bavarian dialects are spoken with clear East Tyrolean elements. The language of Sappada goes back mainly to the East Tyrolean, as the settlement - probably around the year 1270 - took place directly from the Pustertal and the Vilgratental.

The Canal Valley (ital. Val Canale) with the main town Tarvis (ital. Tarvisio) does not belong to the German language islands, but is part of the Carinthian language area, which has belonged to Italy since 1918.

There are other Upper German language islands in north-western Italy (regions of Piedmont and Aosta Valley ). The speakers there are Walser and speak highly Alemannic dialects.

history

In an addendum of around 1050 to Cod. Lat. 4547 of the Bavarian State Library of Benediktbeuern it is mentioned that farmers from the west of the tribal duchy of Baiern emigrated to Verona during the famine ; it is likely to be the first historical evidence of immigration. In the course of the 11th and 12th centuries they settled here, coming from Bavaria and Tyrol .

One theory suggests that these German settlers may have been called to Italy because they were good wood carvers and carpenters and / or because they could make charcoal so that high temperatures could be reached for metal melting. According to one version, in 1287 Bartolomeo I della Scala , Lord of Verona, called some families of wood carvers, Tzimberer (Middle High German for "carpenter"), to work in the vast forests of Lessinia ( thirteen parishes ). A much more plausible theory assumes that the Cimbrian language islands were created by immigration of entire clans who moved to these consistently remote, isolated and often climatically and agriculturally unattractive areas due to considerable supply problems due to the strong increase in population in the 11th and 12th centuries in the tribal duchy of Baiern . The Longobard theory of Cimbrian , which was developed by Bruno Schweizer in 1948 and regards the Cimbri as the last descendants of the Longobards, is rejected by most linguists.

Over the centuries the Cimbri became a firmly established minority in the Venetian Alps. They maintained trade relations with the sea power Venice , to which they supplied timber in particular . In return, the Doge granted them extensive rights of autonomy and cultural sovereignty. These “freedoms” were lost in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and the associated transfer of ownership of Venice to the House of Austria .

In 1866 Veneto became part of the emerging kingdom of Italy . After 1915, while the Italians and Austrians faced each other in the war, the Italians generally viewed the Cimbri as the “ fifth column ” of Vienna. The German language, which was already in retreat in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period for various reasons both in the Austrian Tyrol and in Veneto and was increasingly limited to the mountain villages, came under complete pressure in the 19th century. Between 1820 and 1900 alone, the number of German-speaking towns decreased by around 90 percent.

Murderous battles raged during the First World War, especially in the area of ​​the Seven Municipalities and around Lusern, which were directly at the front on the Italian (Seven Municipalities) and Austro-Hungarian side (Lusern) during the Dolomite War . The inhabitants of the seven parishes were deported to the Po Valley during this time.

After the takeover of the Italian Fascists (1922) by reaching Benito Mussolini and especially Ettore Tolomei carried Italianisation the non-Italian-speaking parts of the country to new heights. Now the Cimbrian was not only forbidden in the public, but also in the private and family sphere with severe threats of punishment. As part of the " option " worked out by Adolf Hitler and Mussolini in 1939 to move to the German Reich, the inhabitants of Lusern and of the Fersental chose to emigrate almost entirely and were resettled to Bohemia in 1942 , from where they returned to their villages in 1945. According to an Italian law of 1949, the returned Luserner and Fersentaler received Italian citizenship and their property, which had been sequestered after the resettlement, back.

Although the South Tyroleans now have a far-reaching model of autonomy (see Autonomy of South Tyrol ), initially nobody spoke up for the Zimbri. The small linguistic islands have found it difficult to assert themselves over the past few decades and have often been subject to Italian pressure to assimilate. In the 1990s, the then Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock (visiting Lusern for the peace meeting in August 1993) campaigned for the Cimbrian-language islands with the EU and other international organizations.

The use of the language is still on the decline today, mainly because of the emigration of young people to the economic centers, but recently it has been increasing in Lusern, but also in the Fersental and in the seven municipalities (Robaan, Italian Roana) and the Thirteen communities Dialect and Tradition also supported by the regions of Trentino-South Tyrol and Veneto and the EU. In addition, many of the Cimbrian communities (especially Lusern and Sappada) have good economic prospects due to the expansion of tourism (among other things, they are now advertising their Cimbrian language and tradition), so that the emigration of young people can be stopped. The inhabitants of the Cimbrian towns - including those who do not speak Cimbrian - are now proud of their tradition and are committed to preserving it. To this day, the Cimbrian language is used by a few thousand people in everyday life.

There is now a television program in the Cimbrian language. The weekly program Zimbar Earde is broadcast on the Eutelsat Sky630 satellite on the Trentino TV channel. Some of the articles are also available online. The newspaper l'Adige has articles in Cimbrian twice a month.

Designation of the language minority

The Cimbri call themselves Tzimbar or Cimbarn . Other names for the Zimbern are Cymbr, Cimbri, Tzimber, Tauch (from "German"). The Mocheno be against it by the Italians Mocheni named because the Mocheno very often the word Mochen (dt. "Make") use.

When the German-speaking islands in northern Italy were discovered by science in the 14th century, Italian humanists put forward the theory, which is no longer tenable today, that the Cimbri were the descendants of the ancient Cimbres of the 2nd century BC. The self-designation as Zimbern could possibly also be derived from the Old High German Zimbar “Bauholz” (compare the related forms New High German “Zimmer (man)”, English timber “Bauholz”). Indeed, many Cimbri were carpenters and were well known for their manual skills. However, it is unclear since when the Zimbri started to call themselves such. Since the Cimbrian linguistic islands are very isolated and used to have practically no contact with each other, so that an early uniform self-designation is rather unlikely, there are some indications that the Cimbri the nomenclature of the humanists of the 14th / 15th centuries. Century have taken over for themselves. So is z. B. in Lusern the term di zimbar zung for the Cimbrian language is of a more recent origin. The learners simply call their language Ren az be biar (translation: “talk like us”).

Language and tradition

In 1602, Bishop Marco Corner of Padua had the Catechism Christlike unt korze Dottrina, a translation of the Italian Dottrina christiana breve by Cardinal Robert Bellarmin , printed as the oldest book in Cimbrian in Vicenza . Around 1685/86 the universal scholar Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz also dealt with the Cimbrian language. In the 6th edition of the 2nd part of his "Description of the Earth", the German cosmographer Anton Friedrich Büsching made the Cimbri known in the German-speaking area in 1769. In 1813 and 1842, the then Italian catechism Piccolo Catechismo ad uso del Regno d'Italia was again translated into Cimbrian and printed.

In the middle of the 19th century, the Bavarian philologist and linguist Johann Andreas Schmeller traveled several times to the Cimbrian linguistic islands and recognized that Cimbrian is a Middle High German, Bavarian - Tyrolean , which has been spoken since the High Middle Ages. In 1855 Schmeller published a Cimbrian dictionary .

Cimbrian is a dialect with local variants, which, similar to Walser German , is still based on Old and Early Middle High German dialects. It has changed less than other German dialects in a millennium. Each of the language islands speaks (or was originally) its own dialects with ancient features that are very difficult to understand for other German speakers . The Cimbrian dialects can therefore be understood as a separate language due to the differences to standard German , to the Bavarian dialects as well as to heel- dialect in grammar , vocabulary and pronunciation .

However, one should not confuse the Cimbri with the German-speaking South Tyroleans who speak a modern South Bavarian dialect and who settle much further north. In earlier times there was hardly any cultural contact between the Cimbri - in contrast to the Fersentalers because of their special economic activity - and the South Tyroleans, whose dialects separate entire ages.

In the 20th century, primarily Bruno Schweizer and the Bavarian researcher Hugo Resch from Landshut dealt with the dialect of the Cimbri, contributions to research and documentation also come from Anthony Rowley . The Munich linguist Hans Tyroller studied primarily the Luserner dialect and in 1997 presented a comprehensive grammar.

One of the best preserved and most active language islands of the Cimbri is the alpine village of Lusern, which has around 300 inhabitants and has been isolated for centuries . Even today, most of the residents there speak the Cimbrian dialect in everyday life. There is an extensive documentation center that publishes its own publications and organizes regular exhibitions, as well as a well-known Cimbrian choir ( Coro Polifonico Cimbro, since 1992). At the beginning of 2005 the "Lusern Cultural Institute" was founded. At the entrance to the village, visitors are greeted with a sign in Italian , Cimbrian and Standard German .

The Cimbrian and Bavarian language islands in the provinces of Trento ( Lusern and Fersental ), Verona ( thirteen municipalities ), Vicenza ( seven municipalities ), Belluno ( Sappada ) and Udine (Tischlwang, Italian Timau and Zahre, Italian Sauris ) maintain today for consolidation close contacts with each other due to their special traditions.

There are also efforts in Germany , Austria and South Tyrol not only to fully research and document the dialect and history of the Cimbri, but also to provide lasting support to the Cimbres in maintaining their language and tradition.

See also

literature

  • Josef Bacher: The German language island Lusern. Wagner'sche Universitäts-Buchhandlung, Innsbruck, 1905.
  • Wilhelm Baum: History of the Zimbern. Storia dei Cimbri. Curatorium Cimbricum Bavarense, Landshut 1983.
  • Ermenegildo Bidese (Ed.): The Cimbrian between Germanic and Romanic. Brockmeyer, Bochum 2005. ISBN 3-8196-0670-X
  • Karl-Markus Gauß: The happy losers from Roana . Paul Zsolnay, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-552-05454-7
  • Herbert Hopfgartner: The Cimbrian language island. Insights into the oldest peripheral German culture in Central Europe. In: Lech Kolago (Ed.): Studien zur Deutschkunde XXXVIII, University of Warsaw 2008, ISSN  0208-4597 .
  • Bernhard Wurzer: The German language islands in Northern Italy. Athesia, Bozen 1983, ISBN 88-7014-269-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Stefan Rabanus: Language contact on the “Brenner Line”. Pre-articles, partitive pronouns and subject pronouns in Romance and Germanic-German varieties. In: Michael Elmentaler, Markus Hundt, Jürgen Erich Schmidt: German dialects. Concepts, problems, fields of action. Files of the 4th Congress of the International Society for the Dialectology of German (IGDD) (=  Journal for Dialectology and Linguistics. Supplements. Volume 158). Steiner, Stuttgart 2015, pp. 415-433.
  2. ^ Bernhard Wurzer: The German language islands in Northern Italy. Bolzano 1983, pp. 72, 74.
  3. ↑ Southernmost Bavarian costume and language in the Laimbach valleys. In: Traunsteiner Tagblatt, March 3, 2018 (accessed on September 22, 2019).
  4. ^ Bernhard Wurzer: The German language islands in Northern Italy. Athesia, Bozen 1983, pp. 149-182.
  5. ^ Bernhard Wurzer: The German language islands in Northern Italy. Athesia, Bozen 1983, p. 151 (map) and p. 169–179 (various inventories from the 19th century).
  6. ^ Bernhard Wurzer: The German language islands in Northern Italy. Athesia, Bozen 1983, pp. 65 and 83 f.
  7. ↑ Lusern.it: [1] , Homepage Documentation Center Lusern
  8. ↑ Zimbar Earde: Archived copy ( Memento of the original from May 26, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.istitutocimbro.it 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. , Homepage with some contributions from the Zimbar Earde series
  9. ↑ ladige.it: [2] , Homepage l'Adige
  10. ↑ We are the last, but not a museum, in FAZ of May 22, 2014, p. R6.

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