The region of German Lorraine (german: Deutsch-Lothringen or ''Deutschlothringen'') was the German-speaking part of

Lorraine Lorraine , also , , ; Lorrain: ''Louréne''; Lorraine Franconian: ''Lottringe''; german: Lothringen ; lb, Loutrengen; nl, Lotharingen is a cultural and historical region in Northeastern France, now located in the administrative region of G ...

, now in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan ar ...

, that existed for centuries until into the 20th century. The name is also used more specifically in to refer to ''

Bezirk Lothringen Bezirk Lothringen (today's french: link=no, Présidence de la Lorraine, at the time translated into french: link=no, Département de la Lorraine i.e. Department of Lorraine), also called German Lorraine (''Deutsch Lothringen''), was a governme ...

'', that part of Lorraine that belonged to the German Empire from 1871 to 1918.

Former German-speaking Lorraine

The Germanic-Romance (German-French)

language boundary A language border or language boundary is the line separating two language areas. The term is generally meant to imply a lack of mutual intelligibility between the two languages. If two adjacent languages or dialects are mutually intelligible, no ...

in Lorraine roughly followed the line from

Sarrebourg Sarrebourg (; also , ; Lorraine Franconian: ; older la, Pons Saravi) is a commune of northeastern France. In 1895 a Mithraeum was discovered at Sarrebourg at the mouth of the pass leading from the Vosges Mountains. Geography Sarrebourg is ...

(Saarburg) to

Hayange Hayange (; german: Hayingen; Lorraine Franconian: ''Héngen''/''Haiéngen'') is a commune in the Moselle department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. Outlying villages include Marspich and Saint-Nicolas-en-Forêt, Konacker and Ranguevaux. ...

(Hayingen) until well into the 20th century. A detailed map of the boundary is given in the article on the

Lorraine Franconian Lorraine Franconian (Lorraine Franconian: ''Plàtt'' or ''lottrìnger Plàtt''; french: francique lorrain or ''platt lorrain''; german: Lothringisch) is an ambiguous designation for dialects of West Central German (german: Westmitteldeutsch), ...

dialect. The Lorraine region northeast of this

linguistic boundary Language geography is the branch of human geography that studies the geographic distribution of language(s) or its constituent elements. Linguistic geography can also refer to studies of how people talk about the landscape. For example, toponymy i ...

in the present-day départements of

Moselle The Moselle ( , ; german: Mosel ; lb, Musel ) is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a bank (geography), left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it jo ...

and

Bas-Rhin Bas-Rhin (; Alsatian: ''Unterelsàss'', ' or '; traditional german: links=no, Niederrhein; en, Lower Rhine) is a department in Alsace which is a part of the Grand Est super-region of France. The name means 'Lower Rhine', referring to its low ...

(the Alsace bossue) and in the present-day federal state of

Saarland The Saarland (, ; french: Sarre ) is a state of Germany in the south west of the country. With an area of and population of 990,509 in 2018, it is the smallest German state in area apart from the city-states of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg, and t ...

was called German Lorraine (''Deutsch-Lothringen''). Nancy, the historic capital of Lorraine, and

Metz Metz ( , , lat, Divodurum Mediomatricorum, then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers. Metz is the prefecture of the Moselle department and the seat of the parliament of the Grand Est ...

, the present capital of the region of Lorraine, both lie on the French side of the boundary. There are clues to the historic boundary in the names of settlements like Audun-le-Tiche (''Deutsch-Oth'' or German Audun) and Audun-le-Roman (''Welsch-Oth'' or Romance Audun) or the names of the two headstreams of the

Nied The Nied (; ) is a river in Lorraine, France, and Saarland, Germany. It is a left tributary of the Saar. It is formed where two streams converge: the ''Nied allemande'' ("German Nied") and the ''Nied française'' ("French Nied"), which join ...

, the Nied Allemande (''Deutsche Nied'' or German Nied) and the Nied Française (''Französische Nied'' or French Nied), which lie on either side of the language boundary and merge almost exactly on the line itself. The linguistic boundary was also reflected early on in the administration of the region. In the 13th century, the

Duchy of Lorraine The Duchy of Lorraine (french: Lorraine ; german: Lothringen ), originally Upper Lorraine, was a duchy now included in the larger present-day region of Lorraine in northeastern France. Its capital was Nancy. It was founded in 959 following t ...

was divided into three

bailiwick A bailiwick () is usually the area of jurisdiction of a bailiff, and once also applied to territories in which a privately appointed bailiff exercised the sheriff's functions under a royal or imperial writ. The bailiwick is probably modelled on t ...

s (administrative and juridical districts. German: ''Ballei'', French: ''Bailliage''): the Bailiwick of Nancy (''Bailliage de Nancy''), the Bailiwick of Vosges (''Bailliage des Vosges'') and the German Bailiwick (''Bailliage d'Allemagne''); the last-named periodically had its administrative seat in the town of

Wallerfangen Wallerfangen is a municipality of Saarlouis district, Saarland, Germany. Located west of Saarlouis and along the French border, it is the seat of the villages of Ittersdorf, Ihn, Leidingen, St. Barbara, Kerlingen, Gisingen, Rammelfangen, Oberlim ...

in present-day Saarland. The Duchy of Lorraine went to France in 1766. In 1790, during the time of the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are conside ...

, the old administrative structures were radically changed. The request by German Lorraine members of parliament to establish a German Lorraine département did not gain majority support in the French National Assembly.Jean-Louis Masson: ''Histoire administrative de la Lorraine: des provinces aux départements et à la région'', Fernand Lanore / Sorlot, Collection: Reflets de l'Histoire (1982), transcript of the petition on p. 193
Online
/ref> So in 1790, German Lorraine was incorporated into the newly created départements of

and Meurthe. Other German-speaking parts of historic Lorraine lay in the département of

Forêts Forêts was a department of the French First Republic, and later the First French Empire, in present-day Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. Its name, meaning 'forests', comes from the Ardennes forests. It was formed on 24 October 1795, after t ...

formed in 1795 and the Département de la Sarre created in 1798. In the Second Treaty of Paris in 1815 the largest part of German Lorraine remained with France. From then on the name referred to this region.

Bezirk Lothringen as part of the German Reich 1871-1918

250 px, Historical development of the language border in Lorraine (red Line actual border; yellow line border around the year 1500) After the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, part of Lorraine was annexed by the newly founded German Empire and, together with

Alsace Alsace (, ; ; Low Alemannic German/ gsw-FR, Elsàss ; german: Elsass ; la, Alsatia) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland. In 2020, it ha ...

formed the Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine (''Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen'') until 1918. The newly formed

, which was created from parts of the former French départements of Meurthe and Moselle, covered not just the majority of historical German Lorraine but also the French-speaking regions west of the Franco-German language boundary around Metz and

Château-Salins Château-Salins (; , from 1941–44 ''Salzburgen'') is a commune in the Moselle department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. Until 2015, Château-Salins was a subprefecture of the Moselle department. History The town is relatively recent. T ...

. Bezirk Lothringen, with Metz as its capital, remained unchanged in its territorial composition after the return of the region to France in 1919 and formed the present département of Moselle. During the German occupation of 1940–1944 it became the CdZ-Gebiet Lothringen ("Territory of the Chief of Civil Administration of Lorraine").

References

External links

Petition about bilingual teaching in primary schools, French and German, Strasbourg, 1869, pdf, 4.2 MB

Project Deuframat: German-French material for the teaching of history and geography
{{Lorraine topics Lorraine-German people Central German languages Geography of Grand Est History of Lorraine