Khaled Idris Bahray was an Eritrean refugee and asylum seeker in Germany, who was stabbed to death on January 12, 2015, in Dresden . Although it was widely speculated and claimed in the media and on social media that the murder had racist motives, some days later an Eritrean roommate of Bahray confessed to the murder.
104-551: Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West ( German : Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes ), abbreviated Pegida ( German: [peˈɡiːda] , stylised in its logo as PEGIDA ), is a pan-European , anti-Islam , far-right extremist political movement. German Pegida believes that Germany is being increasingly Islamicised. Pegida wants to curb immigration into Germany and it accuses
208-722: A Deutsche Welle report from December 2014, Pegida considers Islamism a misogynist and violent ideology. In January 2015 The Guardian described Pegida as a far-right movement, The New York Times labelled Pegida as anti-immigrant , and Angela Merkel has repeatedly questioned the motives underlying its anti-immigrant message. The State Authority for the Protection of the Constitution ( German : Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz ) of Thuringia considers Sügida (the regional Pegida branch of South Thuringia) to be steered by right-wing nationalists. In February 2015
312-465: 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
416-650: A resurrection of the Nazi regime . Schuster described Pegida as being "highly dangerous": "It starts with verbal assault and leads to actual attacks like the one on a planned refugee hostel in Bavaria". He referred to an arson attack on a home for asylum-seekers that was ready for occupation. After the attack, swastika graffiti was found at the scene. Schuster said that Pegida is a combination of "neo-Nazis, far-right parties and citizens who think they are finally allowed to show their racism and xenophobia openly". He condemned
520-402: 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
624-545: A survey by the Emnid institute conducted in December 2014, 53% of East Germans and 48% of West Germans showed understanding for Pegida demonstrations. Differentiated by political parties, supporters consisted of 86% of all surveyed AfD members, 54% of all CDU members, 46% of all SPD members and 19% of all questioned supporters of The Left and Alliance '90/The Greens respectively. 43% of all Germans participating in
728-612: 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
832-496: A 19 October 2015 rally in Dresden. At the same time, observers perceived a further radicalisation of the crowd. On 28 September, two journalists were injured when Pegida participants kicked a local newspaper reporter and punched another TV reporter in the face. On 12 October, Pegida demonstrators carried a mock gallows showing nooses reserved for Chancellor Angela Merkel and her deputy Sigmar Gabriel . Bachmann derided
936-516: A Pegida march, the floodlights of the Catholic Cologne Cathedral were switched off on the evening of 5 January 2015. Dresden's Volkswagen plant used the same method of protest. German tabloid newspaper Bild launched a petition against Pegida, including former Chancellors Helmut Schmidt and Gerhard Schröder , as well as actress Karoline Herfurth and former footballer Oliver Bierhoff . According to
1040-696: A cousin to Europe. They made their way over land to Libya and over the Mediterranean Sea via refugee boat. He arrived in Sicily , his cousin perished along the boat journey. In August 2014 he arrived in a refugee camp in Munich , from where he was brought to Chemnitz , then housed in Schneeberg and finally in Dresden . In September 2014, he was assigned to a Dresden apartment with other refugees, in
1144-437: A demonstration" by " Hooligans Against Salafists ". Bachmann mentioned these events in a release for his first demonstration. The first demonstration, or "evening stroll" (according to Pegida), took place on 20 October 2014, and attracted only a handful of people. During the following days, the movement began gaining wider public attention, and, subsequently, the weekly Monday demonstrations drew larger numbers of people. Among
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#17327722548381248-484: A dialogue, considering the press to be a politically correct conspiracy. Demonstrators have been observed chanting Lügenpresse (lying press), a term that has a long history in German politics. Alongside the German national flag, supporters of the movement have often been seen with a variant of the " Wirmer flag ", a flag proposed by resistance member Josef Wirmer in 1944 for use after World War II. According to
1352-559: 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
1456-544: A movement of right-wing extremists, pensioners or the unemployed, but stated that the rallies served as a way to express feelings and resentments against a political and opinion-making elite which have not been publicly articulated before. A group of social scientists led by Dieter Rucht from the Social Science Research Centre of Berlin ( Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung , WZB ) collected data both by flyer and online survey. Despite
1560-458: 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
1664-633: A new political party, the Freiheitlich Direktdemokratische Volkspartei ("Liberal Direct Democratic People's Party", or FDDV ). The FDDV was established on 13 June 2016. Tommy Robinson founded a branch of Pegida in the United Kingdom . At the beginning of December 2014, Pegida published an undated and anonymous one-page manifesto of 19 bulleted position statements. Pegida's specific demands were initially unclear, largely because Pegida has refused
1768-653: A participation rate of only 18 percent in the online survey, it largely had similar results to the survey in Dresden. According to data from the WZB, Pegida was a male-dominated group, participants were mostly employees with a relatively high level of education, they had no confidence in institutions and they sympathised with AfD . In some cases the participants demonstrated far-right and right-wing extremist attitudes. The conclusion emphasised that Pegida supporters cannot be viewed as 'ordinary citizens', since they articulate group-focused enmity and racism. As of January 2016 on Facebook,
1872-452: A photo of a man wearing the uniform of the US white supremacist organisation Ku Klux Klan accompanied by the slogan: "Three Ks a day keeps the minorities away". The Dresden state prosecutors opened an investigation for suspected Volksverhetzung (incitement to hatred), and Deputy Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said the real face of Pegida had been exposed: "Anyone who puts on a Hitler disguise
1976-696: 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
2080-584: A post on its Facebook page that there was an explicit threat against a leadership member, and "his execution had been ordered by ISIS terrorists". On 21 January 2015, Bachmann resigned from his position in Pegida after coming under fire for a number of Facebook posts. Excerpts from a closed Facebook conversation incriminated Bachmann as having referred to immigrants with the insults "animals", "scumbags" and "trash", which are classified as hate speech in Germany. He
2184-598: A rally of some 25,000 participants. Pegida's main organizer, Bachmann , declared the six central political objectives of Pegida, which include calls for selective immigration and the expulsion of religious extremists, the right and duty to integrate, and tighter internal security. On 15 January 2015, a young Eritrean immigrant, Khaled Idris Bahray , was found stabbed to death in his Dresden high-rise apartment. International media correspondents portrayed an "atmosphere of hatred and resentment" and published social media comments of Pegida sympathizers, who had expressed disdain for
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#17327722548382288-483: 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
2392-544: A sizable number of ordinary citizens". Werner Schiffauer , director of the Migration Council, has pointed out that the movement is strongest where people have hardly any experience with foreigners, and among "easterners who never really arrived in the Federal Republic and who now feel they have no voice". In December, Gordian Meyer-Plath , president of Saxony's State Authority for the Protection of
2496-717: Is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe . It 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
2600-670: Is a grassroots part of the counter-jihad movement . Pegida was founded in October 2014 by Lutz Bachmann , who runs a public relations agency in Dresden . Bachmann 's impetus for starting Pegida was witnessing a rally by alleged supporters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) against the siege of Kobani by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on 10 October 2014 in Dresden, which he posted on YouTube on
2704-601: 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
2808-612: 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
2912-558: 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
3016-478: 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
3120-430: 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
3224-603: Is either an idiot or a Nazi. People should think carefully about running after a pied piper like this". Der Spiegel reported that Pegida's media spokeswoman, Kathrin Oertel , turned to the Alternative for Germany ( German : Alternative für Deutschland, AfD ) for advice, and that the Sächsische Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung both confirmed there was a phone conversation between
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3328-535: 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
3432-611: 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
3536-565: 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
3640-435: 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
3744-597: 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
3848-401: 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
3952-525: 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
4056-578: 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
4160-485: 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
4264-689: 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
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4368-618: The Charlie Hebdo shooting on 7 January 2015 in Paris, politicians (including ministers Thomas de Maizière and Heiko Maas ) warned Pegida against misusing the attack on Charlie Hebdo for its own political agenda. On Saturday 10 January 2015 some 35,000 anti-Pegida protesters gathered to mourn the victims of Paris, observing a minute's silence in front of the Frauenkirche . On 12 January 2015, Pegida organizers organised
4472-639: 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
4576-648: The Bertelsmann Foundation , complemented by a TNS Emnid survey from November 2014, showed that a majority of German citizens considered Islam dangerous. Consequently, there seemed to be a "strong sympathy" for "Pegida slogans". In absolute numbers, 57% of all surveyed thought of Islam as a danger. 40% felt like "foreigners in their own country", while 24% stated that they would like to prevent further Muslim immigration. These opinions were not exclusive to any political camps or social classes . Former chancellor Angela Merkel criticised Pegida, saying that
4680-532: The Bishop of Hamburg Kirsten Fehrs . Bachmann 's credibility as a leader has been criticised because he has numerous criminal convictions, including "16 burglaries, drink-driving or driving without a licence and even dealing in cocaine ". In 1998 he fled to South Africa to avoid German justice, but was finally extradited and served his two-year jail sentence. German language German (German: Deutsch , pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] )
4784-537: 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
4888-417: 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
4992-539: The Forsa Institute conducted a survey which showed that 67% of all surveyed Germans considered the danger of Islamisation exaggerated. 29%, consisting of 71% of all surveyed AfD supporters, felt too strong an Islamic influence in Germany and deemed respective demonstrations justified. 13% said they would participate in protests near their residence. 10%, consisting of 57% of all surveyed AfD followers, would even vote for an anti-Islamic party. A special report by
5096-592: The German Defence League or the European Identitarian movement . In a Tagesspiegel interview on 19 January, Meyer-Plath reaffirmed that the participant spectrum was very diverse and that there was no evidence of radicalisation. Dresden University of Technology (TU) interviewed 400 Pegida demonstrators on 22 December 2014 and 12 January 2015. According to the poll, the main reasons of their participation were dissatisfaction with
5200-522: 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
5304-746: 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
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#17327722548385408-666: 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
5512-676: 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
5616-550: 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
5720-513: 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
5824-469: 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
5928-457: The 19 positions were revised and broken down to the ten "Theses of Dresden". On 10 September 2015, Pegida demanded ten changes to the German refugee policy. They called for an immediate stop for asylum seekers and for a German 'asylum-emergency law'. According to Frank Richter, director of Saxony's Federal Agency for Civic Education , Pegida is "a mixed group—known figures from the National Democratic Party of Germany , soccer hooligans, but also
6032-466: The 7,500 participants on 1 December 2014, the police identified 80 to 120 hooligans . The demonstration grew to 10,000 people on 8 December 2014. During the weekly demonstrations on Monday evenings, Pegida supporters carried banners with slogans such as "For the preservation of our culture", "Against religious fanaticism, against any kind of radicalism, together without violence" and "Against religious wars on German soil". On 19 December 2014, PEGIDA e.V.
6136-613: The AfD's Frauke Petry and Oertel . Petry said to Oertel that Bachmann should no longer be supported (" Ich habe ihr gesagt, dass Bachmann nicht mehr zu halten ist "). On that same day Oertel announced Bachmann 's resignation. On 28 January, Oertel resigned as well, citing "the massive hostility, threats and career disadvantages" as the reason. At the same time four other leading figures of Pegida stepped back. On 2 February 2015 Oertel and six other former Pegida members founded Direkte Demokratie für Europa ('Direct Democracy for Europe') to distance themselves from
6240-439: The Constitution , said that initial suspicion that Pegida might tie in with the riots staged by Hogesa earlier in Cologne were not substantiated, so the movement was not put under official surveillance. He said there were no indications that the organizers were embracing right-wingers. This assessment was contested by the weekly Die Zeit who researched the ideological proximity of Pegida organizer Siegfried Däbritz to
6344-614: 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
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#17327722548386448-414: 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
6552-417: 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
6656-399: 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
6760-623: 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
6864-547: 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
6968-644: 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 ), 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
7072-408: 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
7176-458: The Pegida fan page had about 200,000 supporters. According to political consultant Martin Fuchs , the fanpage allows the users there to present and more easily spread their ideas, which are not represented in the mainstream media. In December 2014, representatives of the NPD encouraged people to participate in Pegida rallies, as did the German Defence League and the internet blog Politically Incorrect in an uploaded 'propaganda clip'. According to
7280-467: The authorities of failure to enforce related laws. Pegida has held many demonstrations, often accompanied by counter-demonstrations. In 2015, Lutz Bachmann , the founder of Pegida, resigned from the movement after a doctored photographed appeared where he appeared to be posing as Adolf Hitler and making racist statements on Facebook. He was later reinstated. Though nationalism is a central feature, Pegida offshoots have formed in various countries. It
7384-722: The country. Addressing the crowd shouting "Resistance!", he claimed that the majority of Germans were held in contempt by the political class and that politicians wished that there were "other alternatives [to fight Pegida supporters] – but the concentration camps are unfortunately out of order at the moment". The crowd applauded and laughed, and let him continue his speech for another 20 minutes before calling upon him to finish. When 1,500 to 2,000 people celebrated Pegida in Leipzig 's first anniversary, dozens of hooligans protested, vandalizing foreign-owned shops. Over 100 people were arrested. Mayor Burkhard Jung called it "open street terror". The founder of Pegida, Lutz Bachmann , has set up
7488-476: The dead Eritrean. Pegida's organizers rejected any possible connection. One week later, the police investigation led to the arrest and eventual conviction of one of the victim's Eritrean housemates. Dresden police did not permit the demonstration planned for 19 January 2015, due to a definite threat against one of Pegida's leadership members in form of an Arabic-language tweet labelling Pegida an "enemy of Islam". Pegida cancelled its 13th demonstration and stated in
7592-617: The demonstrators who made it, calling it a "laughable piece of work with spelling errors" (" lächerliche Bastelarbeit mit Schreibfehlern "), a reference to the fact that the name Sigmar had been written with an "ie" ( Siegmar ). At Pegida's anniversary event on 19 October 2015, keynote speaker Akif Pirinçci named the Muslim refugees as invaders, with Germany becoming a "Muslim garbage dump". Pirinçci said that politicians were acting like " Gauleiter against their own people", as they wanted critics of Germany's refugee policy to leave
7696-482: 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
7800-456: 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
7904-415: The district of Leubnitz-Neuostra. His friends and flatmates described him as a peace-loving and kindly man. On the night of January 12, 2015, Bahray left his apartment around 8 pm to buy cigarettes in a supermarket 100 meters from his apartment. He did not return. The next morning at 7:40 am, his body was found, covered with blood, in the courtyard of his apartment complex. Police did not initially realize
8008-519: 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
8112-519: The extent of his injuries and reported “no indications of foul play” – though the death certificate registered a suspicion of unnatural death. The autopsy – still the morning of January 13 – revealed that Bahray had died due to multiple knife wounds in the neck and upper body. On January 14, Bahray’s seven flatmates, together with 16 others who had gathered at the flat when his body was found, were questioned by police and gave DNA samples. The murder investigation officially commenced on January 15. Evidence
8216-544: The far-right tendencies of Pegida. In February 2015, Pegida confirmed on its Facebook page that Lutz Bachmann had been re-elected as chairman by the six other members of the organisation's leadership committee, after the Sächsische Zeitung published a report that the Hitler moustache on the now infamous photo had been added after the photo was taken. In June 2015, following the resignation of CDU incumbent Helma Orosz on health grounds, Tatjana Festerling , who
8320-435: 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,
8424-481: 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
8528-567: The largest concentrations of German speakers are in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch developed), Santa Catarina , and Espírito Santo . Murder of Khaled Idris Bahray Khaled Idris Bahray was born in Keren , and was a Muslim. At the age of five, he fled with his mother and sister to Wadi Halfa in Sudan. As a refugee, he was able to receive neither an education nor employment. In 2014 he decided to flee with
8632-474: The leaders of Pegida "have prejudice, coldness, even hatred in their hearts". The Federal Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière said that among the participants of the mass rallies were many ordinary people who expressed their concerns about the challenges of today's society. Bernd Lucke , the leader of the political party Alliance for Progress and Renewal , has said he considers most of
8736-402: 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
8840-514: The movement, stating that the fear of Islamist terror was being exploited to disparage an entire religion. Aiman Mazyek from the Central Council of Muslims in Germany stated that again and again right-wing extremists gave the public the false impression of a racist Germany. The slogans of the protesters showed that xenophobia and anti-Semitic racism had become socially acceptable. Pegida has been criticised by Lutheran clergy, including
8944-653: 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
9048-786: The opposite. 26% approved at least partially of the demonstrations, while 10% showed little sympathy and a further 13% no understanding at all. A survey by TNS Infratest conducted in December 2014 on behalf of German magazine Der Spiegel showed that 65% of all surveyed German citizens felt that the government did not respond appropriately to their concerns about asylum policy and immigration. 28% disagreed, while 34% observed an increasing Islamisation in Germany. A representative survey by Emnid conducted from 17 to 18 December 2014 showed that 85% of all 1006 surveyed were not willing to participate in demonstrations for Pegida policy. Only 9%, more than half of all surveyed AfD followers, said they were in fact willing to demonstrate. On 18 December 2014,
9152-534: The police, a few hundred "violent hooligans" have been participating in the Dresden rallies since December 2014. The journalist Felix Menzel supports Pegida with his new right youth magazine Blaue Narzisse . Numerous protests against Pegida and affiliated movements in cities across Germany have drawn up to 35,000 demonstrators in Dresden and up to 100,000 nationwide in January 2015, considerably more than Pegida's own concurrent demonstrations. In protest against
9256-444: The political situation (54 percent), "Islam, Islamism and Islamisation" (23 percent), criticism of the media and the public (20 percent), and reservations regarding asylum seekers and migrants (15 percent). In all, 42 percent had reservations regarding Muslims or Islam, 20 percent were concerned about a 'high rate of crimes' committed by asylum seekers, or feared socio-economic disadvantages. The author, Vorländer , did not see Pegida as
9360-472: The positions of Pegida to be legitimate. According to Lucke , the people taking part in these demonstrations did not feel that their concerns were being understood by politicians. Similarly, the Dresden city council's AfD faction welcomed Pegida's weekly demonstrations. Josef Schuster , chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany , voiced his opposition to the group, saying that the possibility of an Islamic conquest of Germany would be as "absurd" as
9464-462: 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
9568-507: The same day. The next day he founded a Facebook group called Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes ('Patriotic Europeans against Islamisation of the Occident '). On 7 October, Yazidis and Muslim Chechens had violently clashed in Celle . On 26 October, out of 5,000 protesters, "at least 400 right-wing extremists went on a rampage in downtown Cologne during
9672-546: 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,
9776-430: The survey thought that Pegida protesters are mainly concerned about the "spread of Islam". 33% believed that mainly right wing extremists attend their demonstrations. On behalf of German newspaper Die Zeit , YouGov conducted a survey from 12 to 15 December 2014. The survey showed that 30% of all 1107 surveyed felt sympathetic with regards to the demonstrations. Another 19% said they were understanding rather than
9880-500: 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
9984-555: 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
10088-600: 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
10192-429: 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
10296-474: Was also quoted as commenting that extra security was needed at the welfare office "to protect employees from the animals". A self-portrait of Bachmann allegedly posing as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler , titled "He's back!" (which the Sächsische Zeitung later discovered to be a forgery, reporting that the moustache was added after the photo was taken), went viral on social media and was printed on front pages worldwide. On another occasion, Bachmann had posted
10400-547: 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
10504-468: Was dismissed from Pegida's leadership circle in June 2016, ran for the mayoral office of Dresden, polling 9.6% in the first round with support from the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). On 7 July 2015, Bachmann announced that Pegida would participate in all future federal elections in Germany. The European migrant crisis revived the movement, which drew as many as 20,000 supporters to
10608-492: 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
10712-510: Was gathered in the victim's home and witnesses were interviewed. On January 22, the prosecuting office stated that a 26-year-old Eritrean roommate of Bahray's had confessed the stabbing and had been taken under arrest. As the investigation was delayed for so long after finding the body, member of the Bundestag Volker Beck ( Alliance '90/The Greens ) filed criminal charges of obstruction of justice. The Dresden police chief
10816-412: Was legally registered in Dresden under the registration ID VR 7750 , with Bachmann as chairman, Rene Jahn as vice-chairman and Kathrin Oertel as treasurer. Pegida also formally applied for the status of a nonprofit organization . While the demonstration on 29 December 2014 was cancelled by the organizers, the movement continued to draw large numbers of participants in early January 2015. After
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