118-774: The Swiss peasant war of 1653 ( German : Schweizer Bauernkrieg ) was a popular revolt in the Old Swiss Confederacy at the time of the Ancien Régime . A devaluation of Bernese money caused a tax revolt that spread from the Entlebuch valley in the Canton of Lucerne to the Emmental valley in the Canton of Bern and then to the cantons of Solothurn and Basel and also to the Aargau . The population of
236-465: A de facto official language of Namibia after the end of German colonial rule alongside English and Afrikaans , and had de jure co-official status from 1984 until its independence from South Africa in 1990. However, the Namibian government perceived Afrikaans and German as symbols of apartheid and colonialism, and decided English would be the sole official language upon independence, stating that it
354-402: A second language , and 75–100 million as a foreign language . This would imply the existence of approximately 175–220 million German speakers worldwide. German sociolinguist Ulrich Ammon estimated a number of 289 million German foreign language speakers without clarifying the criteria by which he classified a speaker. As of 2012 , about 90 million people, or 16% of
472-612: A "commonly used" language and the Pan South African Language Board is obligated to promote and ensure respect for it. Cameroon was also a colony of the German Empire from the same period (1884 to 1916). However, German was replaced by French and English, the languages of the two successor colonial powers, after its loss in World War I . Nevertheless, since the 21st century, German has become
590-412: A far less pompous and less authoritarian attitude to minimize the conflict potential. The city council even opened legal procedures against a few of its district sheriffs against whom there were many complaints from the rural population, accusing them of corruption, incompetence, and unjustified enrichment. The district sheriff of Trachselwald , the same Samuel Tribolet who had captured Niklaus Leuenberger,
708-559: A greater need for regularity in written conventions. While the major changes of the MHG period were socio-cultural, High German was still undergoing significant linguistic changes in syntax, phonetics, and morphology as well (e.g. diphthongization of certain vowel sounds: hus (OHG & MHG "house") → haus (regionally in later MHG)→ Haus (NHG), and weakening of unstressed short vowels to schwa [ə]: taga (OHG "days")→ tage (MHG)). A great wealth of texts survives from
826-458: A native tongue today, mostly descendants of German colonial settlers . The period of German colonialism in Namibia also led to the evolution of a Standard German-based pidgin language called " Namibian Black German ", which became a second language for parts of the indigenous population. Although it is nearly extinct today, some older Namibians still have some knowledge of it. German remained
944-696: A popular foreign language among pupils and students, with 300,000 people learning or speaking German in Cameroon in 2010 and over 230,000 in 2020. Today Cameroon is one of the African countries outside Namibia with the highest number of people learning German. In the United States, German is the fifth most spoken language in terms of native and second language speakers after English, Spanish , French , and Chinese (with figures for Cantonese and Mandarin combined), with over 1 million total speakers. In
1062-413: A resolution that fulfilled most of the peasants' demands, especially the fiscal ones. In Bern, a similar compromise was proposed by a Protestant delegation from Zürich under the direction of the mayor of Zürich, Johann Heinrich Waser , on April 4, 1653. The Bernese Emmental and most of the districts of the canton of Lucerne accepted these resolutions and their representatives swore new oaths of fealty . But
1180-483: A result, the surviving texts are written in highly disparate regional dialects and exhibit significant Latin influence, particularly in vocabulary. At this point monasteries, where most written works were produced, were dominated by Latin, and German saw only occasional use in official and ecclesiastical writing. While there is no complete agreement over the dates of the Middle High German (MHG) period, it
1298-421: A statue in honor of Leuenberger was erected the same year, and at Liestal an obelisk honoring the peasant victims of the war was inaugurated on September 25, 1904. More statues and plaques were installed in various other places at the tricentennial of the war in 1953, for instance a relief showing Schybi in a chapel at Sursee , where the peasant leader had been incarcerated. Ideological instrumentalizations of
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#17327795562391416-601: Is a recognized minority language in the following countries: In France, the High German varieties of Alsatian and Moselle Franconian are identified as " regional languages ", but the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1998 has not yet been ratified by the government. Namibia also was a colony of the German Empire, from 1884 to 1915. About 30,000 people still speak German as
1534-612: Is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects , with many varieties existing in Europe and other parts of the world. Some of these non-standard varieties have become recognized and protected by regional or national governments. Since 2004, heads of state of the German-speaking countries have met every year, and the Council for German Orthography has been the main international body regulating German orthography . German
1652-558: Is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . The Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic , East Germanic , and West Germanic . The first of these branches survives in modern Danish , Swedish , Norwegian , Faroese , and Icelandic , all of which are descended from Old Norse . The East Germanic languages are now extinct, and Gothic
1770-478: Is called the "German Sprachraum ". German is the official language of the following countries: German is a co-official language of the following countries: Although expulsions and (forced) assimilation after the two World wars greatly diminished them, minority communities of mostly bilingual German native speakers exist in areas both adjacent to and detached from the Sprachraum. Within Europe, German
1888-430: Is complicated by the existence of several varieties whose status as separate "languages" or "dialects" is disputed for political and linguistic reasons, including quantitatively strong varieties like certain forms of Alemannic and Low German . With the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties, it is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language , 10–25 million speak it as
2006-535: Is generally seen as ending when the 1346–53 Black Death decimated Europe's population. Modern High German begins with the Early New High German (ENHG) period, which Wilhelm Scherer dates 1350–1650, terminating with the end of the Thirty Years' War . This period saw the further displacement of Latin by German as the primary language of courtly proceedings and, increasingly, of literature in
2124-611: Is generally seen as lasting from 1050 to 1350. This was a period of significant expansion of the geographical territory occupied by Germanic tribes, and consequently of the number of German speakers. Whereas during the Old High German period the Germanic tribes extended only as far east as the Elbe and Saale rivers, the MHG period saw a number of these tribes expanding beyond this eastern boundary into Slavic territory (known as
2242-565: Is less closely related to languages based on Low Franconian dialects (e.g., Dutch and Afrikaans), Low German or Low Saxon dialects (spoken in northern Germany and southern Denmark ), neither of which underwent the High German consonant shift. As has been noted, the former of these dialect types is Istvaeonic and the latter Ingvaeonic, whereas the High German dialects are all Irminonic; the differences between these languages and standard German are therefore considerable. Also related to German are
2360-435: Is one of the major languages of the world . German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic language , after English, both as a first and as a second language . German is also widely taught as a foreign language , especially in continental Europe (where it is the third most taught foreign language after English and French), and in the United States. Overall, German is the fourth most commonly learned second language, and
2478-597: Is one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa. An estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa, mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German concentrated in and around Wartburg . The South African constitution identifies German as
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#17327795562392596-401: Is partly derived from Latin and Greek , along with fewer words borrowed from French and Modern English . English, however, is the main source of more recent loanwords . German is a pluricentric language ; the three standardized variants are German , Austrian , and Swiss Standard German . Standard German is sometimes called High German , which refers to its regional origin. German
2714-523: Is recorded in English since 1718, from Modern Latin , apparently coined in Germany c. 1700 from Latin con- 'together' + dominium 'right of ownership' (compare domain ). A condominium of three sovereign powers is sometimes called a tripartite condominium or tridominium . Under French law , Andorra was once considered to be a French–Spanish condominium, although it is more commonly classed as
2832-525: Is the Sachsenspiegel , the first book of laws written in Middle Low German ( c. 1220 ). The abundance and especially the secular character of the literature of the MHG period demonstrate the beginnings of a standardized written form of German, as well as the desire of poets and authors to be understood by individuals on supra-dialectal terms. The Middle High German period
2950-776: Is the most spoken native language within the European Union . It is the most widely spoken and official (or co-official) language in Germany , Austria , Switzerland , Liechtenstein , and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol . It is also an official language of Luxembourg , Belgium and the Italian autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia , as well as a recognized national language in Namibia . There are also notable German-speaking communities in France ( Alsace ),
3068-578: Is the only language in this branch which survives in written texts. The West Germanic languages, however, have undergone extensive dialectal subdivision and are now represented in modern languages such as English, German, Dutch , Yiddish , Afrikaans , and others. Within the West Germanic language dialect continuum, the Benrath and Uerdingen lines (running through Düsseldorf - Benrath and Krefeld - Uerdingen , respectively) serve to distinguish
3186-485: Is understood in all areas where German is spoken. Approximate distribution of native German speakers (assuming a rounded total of 95 million) worldwide: As a result of the German diaspora , as well as the popularity of German taught as a foreign language , the geographical distribution of German speakers (or "Germanophones") spans all inhabited continents. However, an exact, global number of native German speakers
3304-689: The Ostsiedlung ). With the increasing wealth and geographic spread of the Germanic groups came greater use of German in the courts of nobles as the standard language of official proceedings and literature. A clear example of this is the mittelhochdeutsche Dichtersprache employed in the Hohenstaufen court in Swabia as a standardized supra-dialectal written language. While these efforts were still regionally bound, German began to be used in place of Latin for certain official purposes, leading to
3422-639: The Alamanni , Bavarian, and Thuringian groups, all belonging to the Elbe Germanic group ( Irminones ), which had settled in what is now southern-central Germany and Austria between the second and sixth centuries, during the great migration. In general, the surviving texts of Old High German (OHG) show a wide range of dialectal diversity with very little written uniformity. The early written tradition of OHG survived mostly through monasteries and scriptoria as local translations of Latin originals; as
3540-568: The Czech Republic ( North Bohemia ), Poland ( Upper Silesia ), Slovakia ( Košice Region , Spiš , and Hauerland ), Denmark ( North Schleswig ), Romania and Hungary ( Sopron ). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in Brazil ( Blumenau and Pomerode ), South Africa ( Kroondal ), Namibia , among others, some communities have decidedly Austrian German or Swiss German characters (e.g. Pozuzo , Peru). German
3658-537: The Early Middle Ages . German is an inflected language , with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative); three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular, plural). It has strong and weak verbs . The majority of its vocabulary derives from the ancient Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, while a smaller share
Swiss peasant war of 1653 - Misplaced Pages Continue
3776-417: The European Union 's population, spoke German as their mother tongue, making it the second most widely spoken language on the continent after Russian and the second biggest language in terms of overall speakers (after English), as well as the most spoken native language. The area in central Europe where the majority of the population speaks German as a first language and has German as a (co-)official language
3894-522: The German states . While these states were still part of the Holy Roman Empire , and far from any form of unification, the desire for a cohesive written language that would be understandable across the many German-speaking principalities and kingdoms was stronger than ever. As a spoken language German remained highly fractured throughout this period, with a vast number of often mutually incomprehensible regional dialects being spoken throughout
4012-746: The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I , and the other being Meißner Deutsch , used in the Electorate of Saxony in the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg . Alongside these courtly written standards, the invention of the printing press led to the development of a number of printers' languages ( Druckersprachen ) aimed at making printed material readable and understandable across as many diverse dialects of German as possible. The greater ease of production and increased availability of written texts brought about increased standardisation in
4130-724: The Napoleonic Wars , when the Confederacy had been a French satellite state. The episode of the Helvetic Republic , short-lived as it had been, had instilled democratic ideals in the population. The restauration of the Ancien Régime after the end of the Napoleonic era proved to be only temporary, until Switzerland became a federal state in 1848 when its first democratic constitution was passed. During
4248-666: The Old High German language in several Elder Futhark inscriptions from as early as the sixth century AD (such as the Pforzen buckle ), the Old High German period is generally seen as beginning with the Abrogans (written c. 765–775 ), a Latin-German glossary supplying over 3,000 Old High German words with their Latin equivalents. After the Abrogans , the first coherent works written in Old High German appear in
4366-545: The Peace of Westphalia , the southern German economy recovered quickly, the Swiss exports dwindled, and the prices for agrarian products dropped. Many Swiss peasants, who had raised mortgages during the boom at wartime, suddenly faced financial problems. At the same time the war had since the 1620s caused significant expenses for the cities, e.g. for building better defenses such as new bastions . A significant source of income for
4484-676: The Sprachraum in Europe. German is used in a wide variety of spheres throughout the country, especially in business, tourism, and public signage, as well as in education, churches (most notably the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (GELK) ), other cultural spheres such as music, and media (such as German language radio programs by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation ). The Allgemeine Zeitung
4602-550: The Standard German language in its written form, and the Duden Handbook was declared its standard definition. Punctuation and compound spelling (joined or isolated compounds) were not standardized in the process. The Deutsche Bühnensprache ( lit. ' German stage language ' ) by Theodor Siebs had established conventions for German pronunciation in theatres , three years earlier; however, this
4720-513: The Upper German dialects spoken in the southern German-speaking countries , such as Swiss German ( Alemannic dialects ) and the various Germanic dialects spoken in the French region of Grand Est , such as Alsatian (mainly Alemannic, but also Central–and Upper Franconian dialects) and Lorraine Franconian (Central Franconian). After these High German dialects, standard German
4838-583: The Vaud and the Bernese Oberland , two regions unaffected by the uprising. The authorities of Bern and Lucerne were supported by the other cantons at the Tagsatzung . In a dispatch from Zürich, the uprising was termed for the first time a "revolution". On May 18, 1653, the peasants delivered ultimatums to Bern and Lucerne and raised 16,000 troops. When the city of Bern replied with a protest note,
Swiss peasant war of 1653 - Misplaced Pages Continue
4956-579: The de facto devaluation. At the end of the war, the population thus faced both a postwar depression and a high inflation, combined with high taxes. This financial crisis led to a series of tax revolts in several cantons of the Confederacy, for instance 1629–36 in Lucerne, 1641 in Bern, or 1645/46 in Zürich. The uprising in 1653 continued this series, but would take the conflict to an unprecedented level. Since
5074-469: The pagan Germanic tradition. Of particular interest to scholars, however, has been the Hildebrandslied , a secular epic poem telling the tale of an estranged father and son unknowingly meeting each other in battle. Linguistically, this text is highly interesting due to the mixed use of Old Saxon and Old High German dialects in its composition. The written works of this period stem mainly from
5192-468: The 15th century, the political power in the city cantons had become more and more concentrated in the hands of a few urban families, who increasingly saw their public offices as hereditary positions and who developed aristocratic and absolutist attitudes. Slowly, an urban oligarchy of magistrates had formed. This concentration of power in the city cantons in a small urban élite caused a veritable "participatory crisis" (Suter). The rural population increasingly
5310-619: The Aargau. Already three days later, Werdmüller's army controlled the important crossing of the river Reuss at Mellingen . In the hills around the nearby villages Wohlenschwil and Othmarsingen a peasant army of some 24,000 men assembled, led by Leuenberger and Schybi. A peasant delegation tried to negotiate with Werdmüller, showing him the peace treaty concluded on the Murifeld. Werdmüller, who had been until then unaware of this treaty that had been signed only days before, refused to acknowledge
5428-527: The Emmental and from Basel. The treaty of Huttwil explicitly recognized this biconfessionalism. The cities remained in all their manoeuvring and negotiations for military support within their respective confessional spheres: Catholic Lucerne had requested mediation and then military help from the Catholic central Swiss cantons, while Protestant Bern had turned to Protestant Zürich for help. The distrust between
5546-723: The Empire. Its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Prague (German: Prag ) and Budapest ( Buda , German: Ofen ), to name two examples, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain; others, like Pressburg ( Pozsony , now Bratislava), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and cities like Zagreb (German: Agram ) or Ljubljana (German: Laibach ), contained significant German minorities. In
5664-748: The Frisian languages— North Frisian (spoken in Nordfriesland ), Saterland Frisian (spoken in Saterland ), and West Frisian (spoken in Friesland )—as well as the Anglic languages of English and Scots. These Anglo-Frisian dialects did not take part in the High German consonant shift, and the Anglic languages also adopted much vocabulary from both Old Norse and the Norman language . The history of
5782-536: The German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the Migration Period , which separated Old High German dialects from Old Saxon . This sound shift involved a drastic change in the pronunciation of both voiced and voiceless stop consonants ( b , d , g , and p , t , k , respectively). The primary effects of the shift were the following below. While there is written evidence of
5900-451: The German states; the invention of the printing press c. 1440 and the publication of Luther's vernacular translation of the Bible in 1534, however, had an immense effect on standardizing German as a supra-dialectal written language. The ENHG period saw the rise of several important cross-regional forms of chancery German, one being gemeine tiutsch , used in the court of
6018-681: The Germanic dialects that were affected by the High German consonant shift (south of Benrath) from those that were not (north of Uerdingen). The various regional dialects spoken south of these lines are grouped as High German dialects, while those spoken to the north comprise the Low German and Low Franconian dialects. As members of the West Germanic language family, High German, Low German, and Low Franconian have been proposed to be further distinguished historically as Irminonic , Ingvaeonic , and Istvaeonic , respectively. This classification indicates their historical descent from dialects spoken by
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#17327795562396136-509: The Huttwil League to encompass the countryside of Zürich, the outcome of the conflict might have been different. The city authorities were well aware of their essentially lucky escape, and their actions in the following years reflect it. While they took steps to disempower the rural population politically, they also fulfilled many of the peasants original fiscal demands, alleviating the economic pressure on them. Tax reforms were passed, to
6254-399: The Huttwil League. On May 30, 1653, following an earlier resolution of the Tagsatzung and earlier Bernese demands, Zürich assembled an army with recruits from its own territories, from the Thurgau , and from Schaffhausen under the command of Conrad Werdmüller with the task to break any armed resistance once and for all times. Some 8,000 men with 800 horses and 18 cannons marched towards
6372-547: The Irminones (also known as the Elbe group), Ingvaeones (or North Sea Germanic group), and Istvaeones (or Weser–Rhine group). Standard German is based on a combination of Thuringian - Upper Saxon and Upper Franconian dialects, which are Central German and Upper German dialects belonging to the High German dialect group. German is therefore closely related to the other languages based on High German dialects, such as Luxembourgish (based on Central Franconian dialects ) and Yiddish . Also closely related to Standard German are
6490-408: The MHG period. Significantly, these texts include a number of impressive secular works, such as the Nibelungenlied , an epic poem telling the story of the dragon -slayer Siegfried ( c. thirteenth century ), and the Iwein , an Arthurian verse poem by Hartmann von Aue ( c. 1203 ), lyric poems , and courtly romances such as Parzival and Tristan . Also noteworthy
6608-419: The Murifeld were declared null and void by the city council of Bern. Many leaders of the insurrection were captured, tortured, and finally received heavy sentences. Niklaus Leuenberger was beheaded and quartered in Bern on September 6, 1653. Although the military victory of the absolutist city authorities was complete, the war had also shown them that they depended very much on their rural subjects. Soon after
6726-404: The authorities had won a total military victory, they refrained from inflicting further draconian measures on the general population. The whole affair had clearly demonstrated that the cities depended on the support of their rural subjects. Putting down the insurrection had been achieved only with difficulties, and only with the help of troops from Zürich and Uri. Had the peasants succeeded to extend
6844-435: The authorities of the Catholic and Protestant cantons was so deep that none would allow troops of the other confession to operate on their territories. Both sides began to prepare openly for an armed conflict. The cities faced the problem that their armies were militias, recruited from the rural population of their subject territories, but that precisely this rural population had turned against them. Bern began raising troops in
6962-501: The authorities' laws of the time denied the freedom of assembly . The assembly, which took place after the mass on February 10, 1653, decided to suspend all tax payments until the authorities in Lucerne fulfilled their demands by reducing taxes and abolishing some of them altogether, such as the taxes on salt, cattle, and horse trades. The authorities of Lucerne were not willing to grant the population's demands, but neither did they manage to subdue this insurrection. The large majority of
7080-423: The cantons ran dry: their financial means exhausted by the war, France and Spain no longer paid the Pensions , the agreed sums in return for the cantons providing them with mercenary regiments. The city authorities tried to compensate for this and to cover their expenses on the one hand by increasing the taxes or inventing new ones and on the other hand by minting less valuable copper coins called Batzen that had
7198-460: The cantons. The Aargau had been annexed in 1415. The western part belonged to Bern, while the eastern part comprised the two condominiums of the former County of Baden in the north and the Freie Ämter ("Free Districts") in the south. The Free Districts had been forcibly recatholized after the Reformation in Switzerland , and the Catholic cantons, especially Lucerne, Zug , and Uri considered these districts part of their sphere of influence and
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#17327795562397316-467: The city authorities and the peasants were not continued. While the authorities debated at the Tagsatzung how to deal with the insurrection, the peasants worked to gain support for their cause amongst the rural population of other regions and lobbied for a formal alliance. A peasant delegation sent to Zürich was turned back promptly: the city authorities, who had put down local unrests in their territory already in 1645 and again in 1646, had already recognized
7434-420: The city of St. Gallen had become Protestant. The Tagsatzung was often paralysed by disagreements between the equally strong factions of the Catholic and Protestant sides. Territories that had been conquered since the early 15th century were governed as condominiums by the cantons. Reeves for these territories were assigned by the Tagsatzung for a period of two years; the posts changed bi-annually between
7552-407: The conflict, but at the same time, the Tagsatzung , the diet of the cantons' governments, also began to prepare for a military resolution. Troops from Schaffhausen and Basel were sent towards the Aargau, but this immediately solicited an armed resistance amongst the population such that the troops had to withdraw. On March 18, 1653, the mediating Catholic central Swiss cantons proposed in Lucerne
7670-403: The countryside by political and military means at the cost of the previously ruling liege lords . The cities just took over the preexisting administrative structures. In these city cantons, the city councils ruled the countryside; they held the judicial rights and also appointed the district sheriffs ( Landvögte ). Rural and urban cantons had the same standing in the federation. Each canton
7788-434: The countryside demanded fiscal relief from their ruling authorities, the city councils of these cantons' capitals. When their demands were dismissed by the cities, the peasants organized themselves and threatened to blockade the cities. After initial compromises mediated by other cantons had failed, the peasants united under the treaty of Huttwil , forming the "League of Huttwil". Their movement became more radical, going beyond
7906-402: The danger of the agitation. On April 23, 1653, representatives of the people of the countryside of Lucerne, Bern, Basel, and Solothurn met at Sumiswald and concluded an alliance to help each other to achieve their goals. A week later, they met again at Huttwil , where they renewed that alliance and elected Niklaus Leuenberger from Rüderswil in the Emmental as their leader. On May 14, 1653,
8024-459: The defenses of the small town of Wiedlisbach , which lost its town privileges and was declared a village again. On June 7, 1653, the Bernese army met with a troop of about 2,000 men of Leuenberger's army who were on their way back from Wohlenschwil. The peasants retreated to Herzogenbuchsee , where they were defeated by von Erlach's troops; the little town went up in flames in the course of the battle. Niklaus Leuenberger fled and went hiding, but he
8142-430: The development of non-local forms of language and exposed all speakers to forms of German from outside their own area. With Luther's rendering of the Bible in the vernacular, German asserted itself against the dominance of Latin as a legitimate language for courtly, literary, and now ecclesiastical subject-matter. His Bible was ubiquitous in the German states: nearly every household possessed a copy. Nevertheless, even with
8260-404: The dialect so as to make the work as natural and accessible to German speakers as possible. Copies of Luther's Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region, translating words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Luther said the following concerning his translation method: One who would talk German does not ask the Latin how he shall do it; he must ask the mother in
8378-435: The eastern provinces of Banat , Bukovina , and Transylvania (German: Banat, Buchenland, Siebenbürgen ), German was the predominant language not only in the larger towns—like Temeschburg ( Timișoara ), Hermannstadt ( Sibiu ), and Kronstadt ( Brașov )—but also in many smaller localities in the surrounding areas. In 1901, the Second Orthographic Conference ended with a (nearly) complete standardization of
8496-489: The fear of rebellions. In the decades following the peasant war the city authorities tried to suppress the memory of this nearly successful revolt. Resistance symbols like the flags or the weapons used by the peasants, in particular their typical clubs with nails on the hitting end (called (Bauern-) Knüttel ), were outlawed, confiscated, and destroyed. Documents such as the Bundesbriefe of Huttwil were stashed away in
8614-592: The federal council of the Old Swiss Confederacy, then sent an army from Zürich to definitively end the rebellion, and after the Battle of Wohlenschwil , the Huttwil League was forcibly disbanded in the peace of Mellingen . The last resistance in the Entlebuch valley was broken by the end of June. After their victory, the city authorities took drastic punitive measures. The Huttwil League and the peace of
8732-427: The following weeks, Zwyer's troops slowly advanced through the valley, until they controlled it completely by June 20, 1653. Schybi was captured a few days later and incarcerated at Sursee . The city authorities proceeded to punish severely the leaders of the Huttwil League. Bern did not accept the terms of the peace of Melligen with its amnesty, claiming the treaty was invalid on its territory, and cracked down hard on
8850-435: The home, the children on the streets, the common man in the market-place and note carefully how they talk, then translate accordingly. They will then understand what is said to them because it is German. When Christ says ' ex abundantia cordis os loquitur ,' I would translate, if I followed the papists, aus dem Überflusz des Herzens redet der Mund . But tell me is this talking German? What German understands such stuff? No,
8968-481: The influence of Luther's Bible as an unofficial written standard, a widely accepted standard for written German did not appear until the middle of the eighteenth century. German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire , which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe . Until the mid-nineteenth century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of
9086-454: The initially purely fiscal demands. The Huttwil League considered itself a political entity equal to and independent from the city authorities, and it assumed full military and political sovereignty in its territories. The peasants laid siege to Bern and Lucerne , whereupon the cities negotiated a peace agreement with the peasant leader Niklaus Leuenberger , the so-called peace on the Murifeld. The peasant armies retreated. The Tagsatzung ,
9204-469: The jurisdiction of the city authorities and also had the military control over the area. The Huttwil League openly declared its intention to expand until it encompassed the rural population in the whole Confederacy. The majority of the rural population supported the rebellion; the dissenting minority was silenced by threats of violence and sometimes violence indeed. Communications between the cities were interrupted, official envoys were shaken down and ships on
9322-510: The largest concentrations of German speakers are in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch developed), Santa Catarina , and Espírito Santo . Condominium (international law) A condominium (plural either condominia , as in Latin, or condominiums ) in international law is a territory (such as a border area or a state) in or over which multiple sovereign powers formally agree to share equal dominium (in
9440-414: The mayor of Bern, Niklaus Dachselhofer , the city council of Bern promised on May 28, 1653, to fulfill the peasants' fiscal demands in return for the dissolution of the Huttwil League. In view of this development, the city of Lucerne and the besieging peasants agreed on a truce. Leuenberger's army lifted the siege of Bern and retreated, but the people refused to follow their leaders and objected to dissolving
9558-402: The mother in the home and the plain man would say, Wesz das Herz voll ist, des gehet der Mund über . Luther's translation of the Bible into High German was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to modern Standard German. The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany , and promoted
9676-653: The ninth century, chief among them being the Muspilli , Merseburg charms , and Hildebrandslied , and other religious texts (the Georgslied , Ludwigslied , Evangelienbuch , and translated hymns and prayers). The Muspilli is a Christian poem written in a Bavarian dialect offering an account of the soul after the Last Judgment , and the Merseburg charms are transcriptions of spells and charms from
9794-469: The official diction and mention the peasant war, if they do so at all, only briefly and in negative terms. Works with differing viewpoints were often prohibited. The censorship was not entirely successful; in private, the rural population kept the memories of 1653 alive, and various accounts of the events were printed in Germany. In the 19th century, the official view was increasingly questioned. The aristocratic Ancien Régime had been weakened severely during
9912-583: The peasant war occurred even in the 20th century. Hans Mühlestein, a Swiss Marxist historian, interpreted the events of 1653 in the 1940s and 1950s as an early bourgeois revolution of a progressive bourgeoisie, fitting the Marxist concept of " class struggle "; a view considered untenable by many later historians. Modern historians generally agree that the peasant war was an important event in Swiss history, and also in comparison to other popular revolts in late medieval Europe . Such revolts were rather common at
10030-406: The peasant war of 1653 in a theatre production for the Swiss sexacentennial celebrations in 1891, for instance, was cut on the demands of the organizers. The first statues to honor the peasants of 1653 and their leaders were erected in 1903 on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the peasant war. A monument honoring Schybi and Emmenegger was unveiled at Escholzmatt on July 26, 1903, at Rüderswil,
10148-596: The peasant war was reflected in the city only in a few newspaper articles, but it was widely celebrated in the countryside with speeches, colloquia, and an ambitious and very successful open-air theatre production at Eggiwil in the Emmental . German language German (German: Deutsch , pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe . It
10266-442: The peasants marched to Bern under the leadership of Leuenberger, arriving on May 22, 1653. A second army led by Emmenegger laid siege to Lucerne. The city authorities were unprepared for an armed conflict and immediately engaged in negotiations. Within days, peace agreements were concluded. In the peace on the Murifeld ( Murifeldfrieden , named after the field just outside Bern where the peasant army's camp lay) signed by Leuenberger and
10384-425: The peasants met again at a Landsgemeinde at Huttwil and formalized their alliance as the "League of Huttwil" by signing a written contract in the style of the old Bundesbriefe of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The treaty clearly established the league as a separate political entity that considered itself equal to and independent from the cities. The tax revolt had become an independence movement, based ideologically on
10502-483: The people in the Entlebuch valley did not accept the authorities' terms, as these—besides offering some tax reliefs—criminalized the insurrection and called for the punishment of the leaders. At a meeting at Signau on April 10, 1653, the delegates from the Entlebuch convinced their neighbours in the Emmental: the assembly decided not to honor the new oaths its representatives had sworn in Bern. The negotiations between
10620-707: The point that for instance in the canton of Lucerne the overall taxation of the population decreased in the second half of the 17th century. Suter even concludes that the peasant war of 1653 thwarted a further advancement of absolutist trends in Switzerland and prevented a development similar to that which occurred in France following the Fronde . The authorities of the Swiss cantons had to act much more carefully and were forced to respect their rural subjects. The Bernese for instance instructed their district sheriffs to employ
10738-401: The population. The peasants of the Entlebuch valley, led by Hans Emmenegger from Schüpfheim and Christian Schybi from Escholzmatt , sent a delegation to Lucerne to demand remedies, but the city council refused to even hear them. The enraged peasants organized a general assembly ( Landsgemeinde ) of the population of the valley at Heiligkreuz , in spite of such assemblies being illegal as
10856-462: The pronunciation of the ending -ig as [ɪk] instead of [ɪç]. In Northern Germany, High German was a foreign language to most inhabitants, whose native dialects were subsets of Low German. It was usually encountered only in writing or formal speech; in fact, most of High German was a written language, not identical to any spoken dialect, throughout the German-speaking area until well into the 19th century. However, wider standardization of pronunciation
10974-500: The reeves typically came from these cantons. The Thurgau , which had been annexed in 1460, was also a condominium of the Confederacy. At its root, the peasant war of 1653 was caused by the rapidly changing economic circumstances after the end of the Thirty Years' War . The Swiss Confederacy had been spared from all belligerent action; the Swiss peasants generally had profited from the wartime economy as they had been able to export their agrarian products at higher prices than before. After
11092-539: The restoration, democratic publishers instrumented and interpreted the history of the peasant war as an allegory on the then current struggle for democracy, seeing the peasant war of 1653 as an early precursor of their own efforts to overcome the authoritarian regime. Well-known examples are the illustrations by Martin Disteli from 1839/40, who used scenes from the peasant war in such allegoric ways. The official view remained ambivalent at best, though. A scene devoted to
11210-512: The rivers were captured. The peasants even sent a letter to the French ambassador at Solothurn assuring the French king Louis XIV of their good intentions. The confessional conflicts that dominated the relations between the ruling city authorities were only secondary to the peasants of the Huttwil league. The peasant alliance bridged the confessional divide, uniting Catholic people from the Entlebuch and from Solothurn with Protestant peasants from
11328-465: The rural districts of the canton of Lucerne sided with the peasants of the Entlebuch valley in an alliance concluded at Wolhusen on February 26, 1653. At the beginning of March, the people of the neighbouring Bernese Emmental valley joined their cause, addressing similar demands at the Bernese authorities. Both cantons called upon the other uninvolved members of the Old Swiss Confederacy to mediate in
11446-421: The rural population. The peasants were fined large sums and were made to cover the expenses for the military operations. The peace of the Murifeld was declared null and void by the Bernese city council, as was the Huttwil League. The rural population was disarmed. Many of the exponents of the movement were incarcerated, tortured, and finally sentenced to death or to hard labour on galleys, or exiled. Christian Schybi
11564-531: The rural population—half their fortunes just vanished. The other cantons soon followed suit and similarly devalued the Bernese copper money. The situation was most dire in the Lucerne Entlebuch valley, where the Bernese Batzen were in widespread usage. The financial situation of many a peasant became unsustainable. Insider deals of the ruling magistrates of Lucerne furthered the unrest among
11682-466: The same face value as the previously minted silver money. The population began hoarding the silver coins, and the cheap copper money that remained in circulation continually lost in purchasing power . Zürich, Basel, and the central Swiss cantons therefore began already in 1623 to mint more valuable coins again. Bern and also Solothurn and Fribourg set a compulsory fixed exchange rate between copper and silver money instead, but this measure did not break
11800-435: The sense of sovereignty) and exercise their rights jointly, without dividing it into "national" zones. Although a condominium has always been recognized as a theoretical possibility, condominia have been rare in practice. A major problem, and the reason so few have existed, is the difficulty of ensuring co-operation between the sovereign powers ; once the understanding fails, the status is likely to become untenable. The word
11918-546: The states of North Dakota and South Dakota , German is the most common language spoken at home after English. As a legacy of significant German immigration to the country , German geographical names can be found throughout the Midwest region , such as New Ulm and Bismarck (North Dakota's state capital), plus many other regions. A number of German varieties have developed in the country and are still spoken today, such as Pennsylvania Dutch and Texas German . In Brazil,
12036-500: The third most commonly learned second language in the United States in K-12 education. The language has been influential in the fields of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. It is the second most commonly used language in science and the third most widely used language on websites . The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) in
12154-539: The time and often were motivated by excessive taxation. The peasant war of 1653 stands out as a culminative end point in Switzerland for three reasons: In 2003, the city of Bern celebrated the 650th anniversary of its adherence to the Old Swiss Confederacy with many events, including a dedicated exposition at the Historical Museum that ran for several months and the publication of the history schoolbook Berns mutige Zeit . The simultaneous 350-year anniversary of
12272-476: The traditional Swiss founding legends, especially on the legend of William Tell . Legally, the peasants justified their assemblies and their union by the rights of old and in particular the Stanser Verkommnis of 1481, one of the important coalition treaties of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The peasants by then had assumed full sovereignty over the territory they controlled. They refused to acknowledge
12390-420: The validity of the contract and demanded the unconditional surrender of the peasants. Thus rebutted, the peasants attacked Werdmüller's troops on June 3, 1653, but being poorly equipped and lacking any artillery, they were defeated decisively in the Battle of Wohlenschwil . The peasants were forced to agree to the peace of Mellingen, which annulled the Huttwil League. The peasant troops returned home and an amnesty
12508-429: The vaults of the city archives. Any public remembrances or pilgrimages to the places where the leaders had been executed were forbidden and carried the death penalty, as did the singing of the peasants' war songs. Bern was particularly active in trying to censor the memories of the event and also tried to suppress images of the peasant leaders. Historic texts written during the Ancien Régime of Switzerland generally follow
12626-531: The war, the ruling aristocrats instituted a series of reforms and even lowered some taxes, thus fulfilling some of the peasants' original fiscal demands. In the long term, the peasant war of 1653 prevented Switzerland from an excessive implementation of absolutism as occurred in France during the reign of Louis XIV . The Old Swiss Confederacy in the 17th century was a federation of thirteen largely independent cantons . The federation comprised rural cantons as well as city states that had expanded their territories into
12744-555: The world being published in German. German is most closely related to other West Germanic languages, namely Afrikaans , Dutch , English , the Frisian languages , and Scots . It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic group , such as Danish , Norwegian , and Swedish . Modern German gradually developed from Old High German , which in turn developed from Proto-Germanic during
12862-600: The written form of German. One of the central events in the development of ENHG was the publication of Luther's translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534). Luther based his translation primarily on the Meißner Deutsch of Saxony , spending much time among the population of Saxony researching
12980-429: Was a "neutral" language as there were virtually no English native speakers in Namibia at that time. German, Afrikaans, and several indigenous languages thus became "national languages" by law, identifying them as elements of the cultural heritage of the nation and ensuring that the state acknowledged and supported their presence in the country. Today, Namibia is considered to be the only German-speaking country outside of
13098-547: Was an artificial standard that did not correspond to any traditional spoken dialect. Rather, it was based on the pronunciation of German in Northern Germany, although it was subsequently regarded often as a general prescriptive norm, despite differing pronunciation traditions especially in the Upper-German-speaking regions that still characterise the dialect of the area today – especially
13216-478: Was betrayed by a neighbour and was apprehended by the Bernese district sheriff Samuel Tribolet on June 9, 1653. The Entlebuch valley, where the revolt had begun, resisted a little longer. Peasant troops under the command of Schybi tried in vain on June 5, 1653, to gain the bridge at Gisikon , held by a joint army of the city of Lucerne and the central Swiss cantons commanded by Sebastian Peregrin Zwyer of Uri . In
13334-423: Was declared, except for the leaders of the movement. Bernese troops under the command of Sigmund von Erlach then advanced from Bern to the Aargau to meet the forces of Zürich. Under this double pressure, the peasants' resistance collapsed. Von Erlach's troops numbered about 6,000 men and 19 cannons. The operation was a veritable punitive expedition : the troops plundered the villages along their way and even razed
13452-422: Was dismissed, tried, and exiled in early 1654. Abraham Stanyan , who had been ambassador of England in Bern from 1705 to 1713, published in 1714 an extensive treatise entitled An account of Switzerland , in which he described the authorities' rule as particularly mild, mentioning explicitly the low taxation in comparison to other European states and giving as the reason for the comparatively soft-gloved government
13570-492: Was established on the basis of public speaking in theatres and the media during the 20th century and documented in pronouncing dictionaries. Official revisions of some of the rules from 1901 were not issued until the controversial German orthography reform of 1996 was made the official standard by governments of all German-speaking countries. Media and written works are now almost all produced in Standard German which
13688-568: Was executed at Sursee on July 9, 1653. Niklaus Leuenberger was beheaded and quartered at Bern on September 6, 1653; his head was nailed at the gallows together with one of the four copies of the Bundesbrief of the Huttwil League. Punishment was hardest in the canton of Bern, where 23 death sentences were handed down and numerous other prominent peasants were executed in courts-martial by von Erlach's army, compared to eight and seven death sentences in Lucerne and Basel, respectively. Although
13806-516: Was sovereign within its territory, pursuing its own foreign policy and also minting its own money. The diet and central council of the federation, the Tagsatzung , held no real power and served more as an instrument of coordination. The reformation in the early 16th century had led to a confessional division amongst the cantons: the central Swiss cantons including Lucerne had remained Catholic, while Zürich , Bern, Basel, Schaffhausen , and also
13924-512: Was subject to decrees issued without their consent that restricted their rights of old and also their social and cultural freedom. At the beginning of December 1652, Bern devalued its copper Batzen by 50% to adjust its face value to its intrinsic value to combat the inflation. The authorities set a term of only three days to exchange the copper coins at the old rate against more stable gold or silver money. Not many people could thus take advantage of this exchange offer, and for most—and in particular
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