The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe. Leon Dominian
departed for a time from the self-appointed task of attracting French-speaking provinces to itself. Between 1792 and 1814 almost all of the territory of Belgium and Holland was annexed and the eastern frontier extended to the Rhine. Teutonic peoples in Holland, Flanders, Rhenish Prussia and the western sections of Hesse and Baden passed under French control. But their subjection to Napoleon’s artificial empire was of relatively short duration. The German-speaking people in 1813 united in a great effort to drive the French across the Rhine. They were merely repeating the feat of their ancestors who, at an interval of eighteen centuries, had defeated the Latin-speaking invaders of their country led by Varus. Success in both movements was largely the result of the feeling of kinship based on language. In 9 A.D. the Romans were forced back to the Rhine from the line they occupied on the Weser. The treaty of Vienna restored French boundaries to the lines existing in 1790. French territory was once more confined to the normal boundaries which inclose members of the French-speaking family. A natural frontier thus became determined for the country. The union of Frenchmen into a compact political body was shattered, however, by the treaty of Frankfort in 1871, when France was obliged to cede the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany.
The part to be played by the province of Lorraine in the history of Franco-German relations was laid out by nature itself. The province had always been a wide pathway connecting highly attractive regions of settlement. It lies midway between the fertile plains of the Rhine and the hospitable Paris basin. It is also placed squarely in the center of the natural route leading from Flanders to Burgundy. Physically the region was part of France; its inhabitants have therefore always been Frenchmen, but the lack of a natural barrier on the east provided a constantly open door for Teutonic invasion. In particular, the Moselle valley has always facilitated access into Lorraine. The province was thus a borderland disputed first by two adjoining peoples and, subsequently, by two neighboring nations.
As a duchy, Lorraine had attained a state of semi-independence in the tenth century. It then included the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun. From the eleventh to the eighteenth century, the house of Lorraine furthermore exerted sovereign power over Nancy and Lunéville. The loosening of the ties of vassalage which united it to the German Empire grew as centuries passed.
This long period of conflict was necessarily accompanied by modifications of linguistic boundaries. Glancing back to the end of the Middle Ages, a slight westerly advance of the area of German speech may be ascertained for the period between the tenth and sixteenth centuries.[24] From that time on, however, the regional gain of French has been in excess of previous German advances. Toponymic data afford valuable clues to early distribution of languages in the region. Occurrences of the suffix “ange” which is the Frenchified form of the German “ingen,” in names lying west of the present line, show the extent of territory reclaimed by the French language.[25]
The linguistic boundary in Lorraine assumes a general northwest-southeast direction as it winds onward according to the predominance of German and French. About 65 per cent of the area of Lorraine, at present under German rule, contains a French-speaking majority.[26] From Deutsche-Oth, the line crosses the Moselle south of Diedenhofen and extends towards Bolchen and Morhange. The entire lake district farther south is in French-speaking territory. About two miles southwest of Sarrebourg the line traverses the Saar. The Lorraine boundary is attained close to the headwaters of the same river. A German enclave occurring at Metz is the only break in the unity of the area of the French language. A large frontier garrison and a host of civilian officials account for the numerical superiority of German in this provincial capital.
The fluctuations of French in Lorraine since the eleventh century have been studied with great minuteness by Witte.[27] Basing himself on the text of documents examined in the archives of Strassburg, Metz, Nancy and Bar-le-Duc this scholar succeeded in plotting the linguistic divide for the years 1000 and 1500. To these two lines he added the present language boundary as determined from his own field observations. His method consisted in traveling from village to village, usually on foot, and ascertaining personally the predominance of French and German in each locality he visited.
Between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries changes along this linguistic boundary appear to have been unimportant. The five intervening centuries are characterized by a slight westerly advance of German. From the sixteenth century to our time, however, the easterly spread of French has been considerable. This change is particularly noticeable in southern Lorraine, as if to show that the gap between the heights of the Moselle and the northern Middle Vosges had provided an outlet for the overflow of the language on German soil.
Compared with Lorraine, Alsace has the advantage of greater definiteness as a geographical unit. It is the region of the valley of the Ill which ends at the wall of the Vosges Mountains on the west. Its easterly extension attains the banks of the Rhine. This elongated plain appears throughout history as a corridor through which races of men marched and countermarched. The Alpine race provided it with early inhabitants. Barbarians of northern lineage also swarmed into its fields. Romans subjugated the land in the course of imperial colonization. The province subsequently passed under Germanic and Frankish sway.
The entry of Alsace into linguistic history may be reckoned from the year 842, when the celebrated oaths of Strassburg were exchanged in Romance and Teutonic languages by Louis the German and Charles the Bald, respectively. This solemn function was a precautionary measure taken by the two brothers to safeguard their territory against the coveting of their senior, Lothaire, to whom Charlemagne had bequeathed the area which, for a time, was known as Lotharii Regnum, and which comprised modern Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, Provence and a portion of Italy. The main point of interest in the territorial division which marked the passing of Charlemagne, lies in the fact that the future division of central Europe into nations of French, German and Italian speech was outlined at this period. Strassburg, the chief city of the borderland between areas of French and German speech, was a bilingual center at this early date. The versions of the oaths taken on February 18, 842, by the royal brothers, as handed down by Nithard, Charlemagne’s grandson and a contemporary historian, show a formative stage in French and German. The document has been aptly called the birth certificate of French. Louis the German spoke the following words in the lingua romana, which was then the speech of Romanized Gaul:
Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, dist di in avant, in duant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai io cist meon fradre Karlo, et in adjudha, et in cadhuna cosa, si cum on, per dreit, son fradre salvar dist, in o quid il mi altresi fazet; et ab Ludher nul plaid numquam prindrai qui, meon vol, cist meon fradre Karlo in damno sit.[28]
Charles the Bald used the lingua teudisca as follows:
In Godes minna ind in thes christianes folches ind unser bedhero gealtnissi, fon thesemo dage frammordes, so fram so mir Got gewizci indi madh furgibit, so haldih tesan minan bruodher, soso man mit rehtu sinan bruodher scal, in thiu, thaz er mig sosoma duo; indi mit Ludheren in non-heiniu thing ne gegango the minan willon imo ce scadhen werhen.
Ever since this event Alsace has occupied the European historical stage as a bone of contention between German-speaking peoples and their rivals of French speech. A year had hardly elapsed after this exchange of pledges, when the division of the Frankish Empire between the grandsons of Charles the Great was formally settled by the treaty of Verdun. Lothaire, the eldest brother, was awarded Alsace and Lorraine. From this time on, Alsace became a part of the lands of German speech which form a compact block in central Europe. In 1469, however, Sigismund of Austria mortgaged his land holdings in Upper Alsace to Charles of Burgundy who thereby assumed jurisdiction over the districts affected by the mortgage. The treaty of St. Omer which contains the terms of this transaction paved the way for subsequent French intervention in both Alsace and Lorraine. Accordingly, a few years later, by the treaty of Nancy (1473), Charles