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119-605: The Wannsee Conference ( German : Wannseekonferenz , German pronunciation: [ˈvanzeːkɔnfeˌʁɛnt͡s] ) was a meeting of senior government officials of Nazi Germany and Schutzstaffel (SS) leaders, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference, called by the director of the Reich Security Main Office SS- Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich ,

238-465: 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

357-402: 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

476-612: 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

595-819: A 1933 law (the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service ), many Jews , artists, political opponents, and others were prohibited by the National Socialist government in Germany from engaging in certain professions. After 1945, the allied authorities in West Germany issued Berufsverbot orders against certain political filmmakers, such as Leni Riefenstahl , who got a lifelong Berufsverbot . On 28 January 1972

714-608: A Jew". Persons in these latter categories would be killed even if married to non-Jews. In the case of mixed marriages , Heydrich recommended that each case should be evaluated individually, and the impact on any German relatives assessed. If such a marriage had produced children who were being raised as Germans, the Jewish partner would not be killed. If they were being raised as Jews, they might be killed or sent to an old-age ghetto. These exemptions applied only to German and Austrian Jews, and were not always observed even for them. In most of

833-484: A document outlining the purpose of the meeting and the intentions of the regime. He stated at his trial that it was personally edited by Heydrich, and thus reflected the message he intended the participants to take away from the meeting. Copies of the minutes (known by the German word for "minutes" as the "Wannsee Protocol") were sent by Eichmann to all the participants after the meeting. Most of these copies were destroyed at

952-559: 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

1071-594: A meeting to be held on 20 January. The venue for the rescheduled conference was a villa at Am Großen Wannsee 56–58 , overlooking the Großer Wannsee . The villa had been purchased from Friedrich Minoux in 1940 by the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Force; SD) for use as a conference centre and guest house. The attendees from the Reich civilian ministries were high level administrators. Most were either

1190-458: 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

1309-510: A new solution would take its place: "evacuating" Jews to the east. This would be a temporary solution, a step towards the "final solution of the Jewish question". Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in

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1428-520: A plan for a "total solution of the Jewish question" in territories under German control and to coordinate the participation of all involved government organisations. At the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich emphasised that once the deportation process was complete, the fate of the deportees would become an internal matter under the purview of the SS. A secondary goal was to arrive at a definition of who

1547-696: 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

1666-483: 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

1785-479: A specific meaning for members of the regime were common, especially when people were being ordered to carry out criminal activities. Leaders were given briefings about the need to be "severe" and "firm"; all Jews were to be viewed as potential enemies that had to be dealt with ruthlessly. The wording of the Wannsee Protocol—the distributed minutes of the meeting—made it clear to participants that evacuation east

1904-717: 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

2023-601: 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

2142-612: 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

2261-558: 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

2380-478: 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

2499-430: 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

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2618-535: 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

2737-611: 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

2856-565: 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

2975-666: Is listed as Judenfrei (free of Jews), since the 4,500 Jews who remained in Estonia after the German occupation had been killed by the end of 1941. Occupied Poland was not on the list because by 1939 the country was split three ways among Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany in the west, the territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union in the east, and the General Government where many Polish and Jewish expellees had already been resettled. Heydrich opened

3094-435: 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

3213-597: 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

3332-401: 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

3451-525: 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

3570-578: 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

3689-485: 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

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3808-689: 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

3927-639: 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

4046-537: 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

4165-417: 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

4284-522: 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

4403-703: The Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz (House of the Wannsee Conference). The museum also hosts permanent exhibits of texts and photographs that document events of the Holocaust and its planning. The Joseph Wulf Bibliothek / Mediothek on the second floor houses a large collection of books on the Nazi era, plus other materials such as microfilms and original Nazi documents. German language German (German: Deutsch , pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] )

4522-746: 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

4641-562: The Jews and Slavs living there, who were viewed as being inferior to the Aryan master race . Discrimination against Jews, long-standing but extra-legal throughout much of Europe at the time, was codified in Germany immediately after the Nazi seizure of power on 30 January 1933. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service , passed on 7 April of that year, excluded most Jews from

4760-485: The Nazi seizure of power in January 1933. The ideology of Nazism brought together elements of antisemitism, racial hygiene , and eugenics and combined them with pan-Germanism and territorial expansionism with the goal of obtaining more Lebensraum (living space) for the Germanic people. Nazi Germany attempted to obtain this new territory by invading Poland and the Soviet Union, intending to deport or exterminate

4879-677: The Nuremberg Laws were enacted, prohibiting marriages between Jews and people of Germanic extraction, extramarital sexual relations between Jews and Germans, and the employment of German women under the age of 45 as domestic servants in Jewish households. The Citizenship Law stated that only those of German or related blood were defined as citizens; thus, Jews and other minority groups were stripped of their German citizenship. A supplementary decree issued in November defined as Jewish anyone with three Jewish grandparents, or two grandparents if

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4998-666: 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

5117-531: The Red Army Faction . Berufsverbot is the common name for the decree by people who opposed it, because they claim it contradicts the freedom of occupational choice guaranteed by the Basic Law of Germany . Law experts do not use the term for these cases as the decree does not forbid the occupation by itself. The law was applied unevenly after 1979, and many of the states of Germany repealed

5236-834: The Slavic civilian populations under German occupation by directing all food supplies to the German home population and the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front . According to the historian Timothy Snyder , "4.2 million Soviet citizens (largely Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians) were starved" by the Nazis (and the Nazi-controlled Wehrmacht ) in 1941–1944 as a result of Backe's plan. Harvests were poor in Germany in 1940 and 1941 and food supplies were short, as large numbers of forced labourers had been brought into

5355-676: 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

5474-550: 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

5593-513: 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

5712-646: The extermination camps , primarily Auschwitz . Heydrich spoke for nearly an hour. Then followed about thirty minutes of questions and comments, followed by some less formal conversation. Otto Hofmann (head of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office ; RuSHA) and Wilhelm Stuckart (State Secretary of the Interior Ministry ) pointed out the legalistic and administrative difficulties over mixed marriages, and suggested compulsory dissolution of mixed marriages or

5831-408: 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

5950-614: 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

6069-414: 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

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6188-417: 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

6307-399: 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

6426-623: 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

6545-423: The Hungarian government". The Hungarian regime of Miklós Horthy continued to resist German interference in its Jewish policy until the spring of 1944, when the Wehrmacht invaded Hungary . Very soon, Eichmann – with the collaboration of Hungarian authorities – would send 600,000 Jews of Hungary (and parts of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia occupied by Hungary) to be murdered in

6664-547: 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

6783-644: 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

6902-516: The Jewish faith was followed. By the start of World War II in Europe in 1939, around 250,000 of Germany's 437,000 Jews had emigrated to the United States, British Mandatory Palestine , Great Britain, and other countries. After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, Hitler ordered that the Polish leadership and intelligentsia be destroyed . The Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen (Special Ledger of Wanted Persons–Poland)—lists of people to be located so they could be interned or killed—had been drawn up by

7021-485: The Jews of Europe were to be exterminated immediately, rather than after the war, which now had no end in sight. At the Reich Chancellery meeting of 12 December 1941 he met with top party officials and made his intentions plain. On 18 December, Hitler discussed the fate of the Jews with Himmler in the Wolfsschanze . Following the meeting, Himmler made a note on his service calendar, which simply stated: "Jewish question/to be destroyed as partisans". The original intention

7140-424: The Jews to be removed from their areas to allow accommodation for Germans made homeless by Allied bombing, as well as to make space for laborers being imported from occupied countries. The "evacuated" Jews, he said, would first be sent to "transit ghettos" in the General Government, from which they would be transported eastward. Heydrich said that to avoid legal and political difficulties, it was important to define who

7259-408: 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

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7378-417: The Nazi regime to encourage Jews to voluntarily leave the country . After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the extermination of European Jews began, first through mobile death squads like the Einsatzgruppen , and the killings continued and accelerated after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. On 31 July 1941, Hermann Göring gave written authorization to Heydrich to prepare and submit

7497-430: The Nazis also planned to reduce the population of the conquered territories by 30 million people through starvation in an action called the Hunger Plan devised by Herbert Backe . Food supplies would be diverted to the German army and German civilians. Cities would be razed and the land allowed to return to forest or resettled by German colonists. The objective of the Hunger Plan was to inflict deliberate mass starvation on

7616-432: The Party and State". Such persons would be sterilised or deported if they refused sterilisation. A " Mischling of the second degree" (a person with one Jewish grandparent) would be treated as German, unless he or she was married to a Jew or a Mischling of the first degree, had a "racially especially undesirable appearance that marks him outwardly as a Jew", or had a "political record that shows that he feels and behaves like

7735-458: The SS as early as May 1939. The Einsatzgruppen (special task forces) performed these murders with the support of the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz (Germanic Self-Protection Group), a paramilitary group consisting of ethnic Germans living in Poland. Members of the SS, the Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces), and the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police; Orpo) also shot civilians during the Polish campaign. Approximately 65,000 civilians were killed by

7854-428: The West German government was not interested at that time. The building was in use as a school, and funding was not available. Despondent at the failure of the project, and at the West German government's failure to pursue and convict Nazi war criminals, Wulf committed suicide in 1974. On 20 January 1992, on the fiftieth anniversary of the conference, the site was finally opened as a Holocaust memorial and museum known as

7973-433: The annihilation campaign. "The simplest, most decisive way that Heydrich could ensure the smooth flow of deportations", he writes, "was by asserting his total control over the fate of the Jews in the Reich and the east, and [by] cow[ing] other interested parties into toeing the line of the RSHA". In 1965, historian Joseph Wulf proposed that the Wannsee House should be made into a Holocaust memorial and document centre, but

8092-411: The conference by post-war writers was not evident to most of its participants at the time. Heydrich did not call the meeting to make fundamental new decisions on the Jewish question; massive killings of Jews in the conquered territories in the Soviet Union and Poland were ongoing. A new extermination camp was under construction at Belzec at the time of the conference, and other extermination camps were in

8211-546: The conference with an account of the anti-Jewish measures taken in Germany since the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. He said that between 1933 and October 1941, 537,000 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews had emigrated. This information was taken from a briefing paper prepared for him the previous week by Eichmann. Heydrich reported that there were approximately eleven million Jews in the whole of Europe, of whom half were in countries not under German control. He explained that since further Jewish emigration had been prohibited by Himmler,

8330-461: The conference, Eichmann drafted a list of the total numbers of Jews in the various European countries. Countries were listed in two groups, "A" and "B". "A" countries were those under direct German control or occupation (or partially occupied and quiescent, in the case of Vichy France ); "B" countries were allied or client states, neutral, or at war with Germany. The numbers reflect the estimated Jewish population within each country; for example, Estonia

8449-431: The country to work in the armaments industry. If these workers—as well as the German people—were to be adequately fed, there must be a sharp reduction in the number of "useless mouths", of whom the millions of Jews under German rule were, in the light of Nazi ideology, the most obvious example. At the time of the Wannsee Conference, the killing of Jews in the Soviet Union had already been underway for some months. Right from

8568-425: The course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes. The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival. German historian Peter Longerich notes that vague orders couched in terminology that had

8687-482: 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

8806-456: 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

8925-519: 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

9044-520: The end of 1939. In addition to leaders of Polish society, they killed Jews, prostitutes, Romani people , and the mentally ill. On 31 July 1941, Hermann Göring gave written authorization to SS- Obergruppenführer (Senior Group Leader) Reinhard Heydrich , Chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), to prepare and submit a plan for a "total solution of the Jewish question" in territories under German control and to coordinate

9163-598: The end of the war as participants and other officials sought to cover their tracks. It was not until 1947 that Luther's copy (number 16 out of 30 copies prepared) was found by Robert Kempner , a U.S. prosecutor in the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg , in files that had been seized from the German Foreign Office. The Wannsee Conference lasted only about ninety minutes. The enormous importance which has been attached to

9282-408: The federal government and the premiers of the states instituted the so-called Radikalenerlass ("Radicals Decree"). Under this decree, people who were considered to be a member or aligned to an extremist organization, were banned from work as civil servants ( Beamter ), which includes a variety of public sector occupations such as teaching. The decree was declared as response to terrorism by

9401-435: 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,

9520-481: 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

9639-410: The invited guests, Heydrich instructed several SS officials from his RSHA component to attend. In all, 15 officials attended the conference. Half the attendees were under forty years of age and only two were over fifty. They were well educated, with ten having a university education (of whom eight held academic doctorates ), and eight were lawyers. Deputy Reichsführer-SS Presiding In preparation for

9758-504: The justice, interior, and state ministries, and representatives from the SS. In the course of the meeting, Heydrich outlined how European Jews would be rounded up and sent to extermination camps in the General Government (the occupied part of Poland), where they would be killed . Discrimination against Jews began immediately after the Nazi seizure of power on 30 January 1933. Violence and economic pressure were used by

9877-542: The killings would commence as soon as possible. Towards the end of the meeting cognac was served, and after that the conversation became less restrained. Eichmann said: "The gentlemen were standing together, or sitting together and were discussing the subject quite bluntly, quite differently from the language which I had to use later in the record. During the conversation they minced no words about it at all ... they spoke about methods of killing, about liquidation, about extermination." Eichmann recorded that Heydrich

9996-411: The largest concentrations of German speakers are in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch developed), Santa Catarina , and Espírito Santo . Berufsverbot A Berufsverbot disqualifies the recipient from engaging in certain professions or activities on the grounds of their criminal record, political convictions or membership in a particular group. Pursuant to

10115-471: The legal profession and the civil service. Similar legislation soon deprived other Jews of the right to practise their professions . Violence and economic pressure were used by the regime to force Jews to leave the country. Jewish businesses were denied access to markets, forbidden to advertise in newspapers, and deprived of access to government contracts. Citizens were harassed and subjected to violent attacks and boycotts of their businesses. In September 1935,

10234-860: The meeting. He enclosed a copy of a letter from Göring dated 31 July that authorised him to plan a so-called Final Solution to the Jewish Question . The ministries to be represented were those responsible for Jewish issues, including the Reich Chancellery , the Foreign Office, Interior, Justice, Propaganda , the Four Year Plan , and the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories . Representatives from Party and SS components with special interests in

10353-453: The minutes were written by Eichmann in consultation with Heydrich. At the conclusion of the meeting, Heydrich gave Eichmann firm instructions about what was to appear in the minutes. They were not to be verbatim: Eichmann ensured that nothing too explicit appeared in them. He said at his trial : "How shall I put it – certain over-plain talk and jargon expressions had to be rendered into office language by me." Eichmann condensed his records into

10472-402: 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

10591-422: The murders that were about to be undertaken. Eichmann's biographer David Cesarani agrees with Longerich's interpretation; he notes that Heydrich's main purpose was to impose his own authority on the various ministries and agencies involved in Jewish policy matters, and to avoid any repetition of the objections to the deportations and genocide from his military and civilian subordinates that had occurred earlier in

10710-653: 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

10829-497: The occupants of the conquered territories were to be quietly encouraged. On 8 July, he announced that all Jews were to be regarded as partisans, and gave the order for all male Jews between the ages of 15 and 45 to be shot. By August, the net had been widened to include women, children, and the elderly—the entire Jewish population. By the time planning was underway for the Wannsee Conference, hundreds of thousands of Polish, Serbian, and Russian Jews had already been killed. The initial plan

10948-411: The occupied countries, Jews were rounded up and killed en masse , and anyone who lived in or identified with the Jewish community in any given place was regarded as a Jew. Heydrich commented: "In occupied and unoccupied France, the registration of Jews for evacuation will in all probability proceed without great difficulty", but in the end, the great majority of French-born Jews survived. More difficulty

11067-554: The participation of all involved government organisations. The resulting Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East) called for deporting the population of occupied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to Siberia, for use as slave labour or to be murdered. The minutes of the Wannsee Conference estimated the Jewish population of the Soviet Union to be five million, including nearly three million in Ukraine. In addition to eliminating Jews,

11186-413: The planning stages. The decision to exterminate the Jews had already been made, and Heydrich, as Himmler's emissary, held the meeting to ensure the cooperation of the various departments in conducting the deportations. Observations from historian Laurence Rees support Longerich's position that the decision over the fate of the Jews was determined before the conference; Rees notes that the Wannsee Conference

11305-462: 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

11424-626: The race issue were invited, including the Party Chancellery , the SS Race and Settlement Main Office , and the Office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood (RKFDV). Representatives from the General Government of occupied Poland were also added to the list. Between the date the invitations to the conference went out (29 November) and the date of the cancelled first meeting (9 December),

11543-733: The relevant legislation. The Landtag of Lower Saxony published a condemnation of the Berufsverbot practice. Other states, like Bavaria , still apply the decree. In at least one case ( Vogt v. Germany , 1995), the European Court of Human Rights found Germany in breach of its responsibilities to a citizen ( Dorothea Vogt , a dismissed teacher who was an active member of the German Communist Party ) under Article 10 (right to freedom of expression) and Article 11 (right to freedom of assembly and association) of

11662-593: The situation changed. On 5 December 1941, the Red Army began a counter-offensive in front of Moscow ending the prospect of a rapid conquest of the Soviet Union. On 7 December 1941, the Japanese carried out an attack on Pearl Harbor , causing the U.S. to declare war on Japan the next day. Germany declared war on the U.S. on 11 December. Some invitees were involved in these preparations, so Heydrich postponed his meeting. Somewhere around this time, Hitler resolved that

11781-863: The start of Operation Barbarossa —the invasion of the Soviet Union— Einsatzgruppen were assigned to follow the army into the conquered areas and round up and kill Jews. In a letter dated 2 July 1941, Heydrich communicated to his SS and police leaders that the Einsatzgruppen were to execute Comintern officials, ranking members of the Communist Party, extremist and radical Communist Party members, people's commissars , and Jews in party and government posts. Open-ended instructions were given to execute "other radical elements (saboteurs, propagandists, snipers, assassins, agitators, etc.)". He instructed that any pogroms spontaneously initiated by

11900-420: The state secretary or an undersecretary. With the cabinet not meeting regularly, meetings between the state secretaries were the chief means of policy coordination among agencies. The process of disseminating information about the fate of the Jews was already well underway by the time the meeting was held, and several of the attendees were aware that changes to the Jewish policy were already underway. In addition to

12019-546: 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,

12138-500: 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

12257-488: The wider use of sterilisation as a simpler alternative. Erich Neumann from the Four Year Plan argued for the exemption of Jews who were working in industries vital to the war effort and for whom no replacements were available. Heydrich assured him that this was already the policy; such Jews would not be killed. Josef Bühler , State Secretary of the General Government, stated his support for the plan and his hope that

12376-555: 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

12495-600: 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

12614-601: Was Jewish . One copy of the Protocol with circulated minutes of the meeting survived the war. It was found by Robert Kempner in March 1947 among files that had been seized from the German Foreign Office . It was used as evidence in the subsequent Nuremberg trials . The Wannsee House, site of the conference, is now a Holocaust memorial . Legalized discrimination against Jews in Germany began immediately after

12733-431: Was Jewish and who was Mischling . "The representatives of the ministerial bureaucracy had made it plain that they had no concerns about the principle of deportation per se . This was indeed the crucial result of the meeting and the main reason why Heydrich had detailed minutes prepared and widely circulated", said Longerich. Their presence at the meeting also ensured that all those present were accomplices and accessories to

12852-429: 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

12971-557: Was a Jew for the purposes of "evacuation". He outlined categories of people who would not be killed. Jews over 65 years old, and Jewish World War I veterans who had been severely wounded or who had won the Iron Cross , might be sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp instead of being killed. "With this expedient solution", he said, "in one fell swoop, many interventions will be prevented." The situation of people who were half or quarter Jews, and of Jews who were married to non-Jews,

13090-576: Was a euphemism for death. Heydrich went on to say that in the course of the "practical execution of the final solution", Europe would be "combed through from west to east", but that Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia would have priority, "due to the housing problem and additional social and political necessities". This was a reference to increasing pressure from the Gauleiters (regional Nazi Party leaders) in Germany for

13209-547: 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

13328-462: Was anticipated with Germany's allies Romania and Hungary . "In Romania the government has [now] appointed a commissioner for Jewish affairs", Heydrich said. In fact the deportation of Romanian Jews was slow and inefficient despite a high degree of popular antisemitism. "In order to settle the question in Hungary", Heydrich said, "it will soon be necessary to force an adviser for Jewish questions onto

13447-492: 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

13566-495: Was more complex. Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, their status had been left deliberately ambiguous. Heydrich announced that Mischlinge (mixed-race persons) of the first degree (persons with two Jewish grandparents) would be treated as Jews. This would not apply if they were married to a non-Jew and had children by that marriage. It would also not apply if they had been granted written exemption by "the highest offices of

13685-404: Was pleased with the course of the meeting. He had expected a lot of resistance, Eichmann recalled, but instead, he had found "an atmosphere not only of agreement on the part of the participants, but more than that, one could feel an agreement which had assumed a form which had not been expected". Shorthand notes for the minutes were taken by Eichmann's secretary, Ingeburg Werlemann , and

13804-446: Was really a meeting of "second-level functionaries", and stresses that Himmler, Goebbels, and Hitler were not present. According to Longerich, a primary goal of the meeting was to emphasise that once the deportations had been completed, the fate of the deportees became an internal matter of the SS, totally outside the purview of any other agency. A secondary goal was to determine the scope of the deportations and arrive at definitions of who

13923-530: Was to deport the Jews to camps in occupied areas of the Soviet Union and kill them there, but because victory over the Soviet Union was not forthcoming, the plans had to be changed. Heydrich decided that the Jews currently living in the General Government (the German-occupied area of Poland) would be killed in extermination camps set up in occupied areas of Poland, as would Jews from the rest of Europe. On 8 January 1942, Heydrich sent new invitations to

14042-467: Was to ensure the co-operation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question , whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported to occupied Poland and murdered. Conference participants included representatives from several government ministries, including state secretaries from the Foreign Office,

14161-423: Was to implement Generalplan Ost after the conquest of the Soviet Union. European Jews would be deported to occupied parts of Russia, where they would be worked to death in road-building projects. On 29 November 1941, Heydrich sent invitations for a ministerial conference to be held on 9 December at the offices of Interpol at Am Kleinen Wannsee 16 . He changed the venue on 4 December to the eventual location of

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