Germanic Europe

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Germanic Europe or the Germanic Sphere is the part of Northern Europe which came under the sphere of influence of Germanic culture, giving rise to the linguistic predominancy of a Germanic language (or one heavily influenced by one). Since the Reformation, most of these regions have been predominantly protestant.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Britain 1.2 Scandinavia 1.3 Continental Europe 1.4 Huge reduction of Germanic territory 2 Language 3 Religion 4 Partially Germanic 5 Cities 6 See also 7 References

[edit] History

The historical Germanic peoples originated in Northern Europe during the Iron Age and migrated into the territory of the failing Roman Empire during Late Antiquity. They were Latinized in some parts (Burgundy, Lombardy, Western Francia, Visigothic Kingdom), but in other parts their intrusive Germanic dialects persisted, in medieval England and much of the Holy Roman Empire (including the Netherlands and the Alpine region), so that Germanic Europe extends beyond Northern Europe into Central Europe and Western Europe.

From the High Middle Ages, the history of Germanic Europe can be divided into three major regions:

1. the British Isles (Anglic languages)
2. Scandinavia (North Germanic languages).
3. the Continental Holy Roman Empire (the dialect continuum of High German, Low German, and Low Franconian; and Frisian)

[edit] Britain

Great Britain has been a unified political entity since the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. Since that time, the English language has come to dominate not only in the historically Germanic-speaking nation of England but also in the Celtic countries of Scotland (though the Lothian and Borders region was traditionally Northumbrian in language), Wales, Cornwall (already mostly English speaking by 1707) and Ireland.

[edit] Scandinavia

Scandinavia was united in the Kalmar Union until 1520, following which after a series of conflicts the modern states of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland emerged, the population of the latter comprising some 5.5% of Swedish-speaking Finns. The contemporary division into these countries has been implemented since the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905 and the independence of Iceland from Denmark in 1944.

[edit] Continental Europe

The history of the continental part of Germanic Europe is clearly the most complicated of the three, and the region has settled into its contemporary political divisions only in 1945, following World War II. The Germanic speaking portions of the Holy Roman Empire by the 17th century were partitioned into the Dutch Republic (evolving into the Netherlands), the Old Swiss Confederacy (evolving into Switzerland), Habsburg Austria (evolving into Austria) and a core territory that gave rise to the German Empire in 1871, and finally to modern Germany. The Alsace became part of France while Flanders was divided between France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The small territories of Luxembourg and Liechtenstein have been sovereign countries since the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

[edit] Huge reduction of Germanic territory

Before the Second World War German was spoken as far as Kaliningrad for centuries known as Königsberg. But with the defeat of the Third Reich, Germans where forced out of the former eastern territories of Germany and ethnic Germans from areas across Europe to the Allied Occupation Zones in Germany towards the end and in the aftermath of World War II. With at least twelve million^[1][2][3][4] Germans directly involved, it was the largest movement of any European people in modern history,^[2][5] and the largest of several post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe which displaced a total of about twenty million people.^[1]

The expulsion of the German population had been agreed to by the allied leaders of the US, UK, and the USSR,^[6][7][8] and supported by France.^[7] The policy was part of the geopolitical and ethnic reconfiguration of postwar Europe, and in part revenge for the Nazi initiation of the war and subsequent brutal occupations and atrocities.^[9][10]

As the Red Army advanced into German-settled areas in the last year of World War II, a considerable exodus of German refugees began from the areas near the front lines.^[11] Many Germans fled spontaneously or under vague and haphazardly implemented evacuation orders of the German government in 1944 and in early 1945.^[11] Most of those who remained in or returned to their homes were forced to leave by Communist local authorities between 1945 and 1950. Census figures in 1950 place the total number of ethnic Germans still living in Eastern Europe at approximately 2.6 million, about 12 percent of the pre-war total.^[12]

The majority of the flights and expulsions occurred in the former eastern territories of Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Others occurred in Hungary, northern Yugoslavia (predominantly in the Vojvodina region), and other nations of Central and Eastern Europe.

Past research provided estimates ranging from 13.5 to 16.5 million people who fled or were evacuated, directly expelled, or died from all causes during the movements westward. Recent research places the number at more than 12 million, including all those who fled during or directly after the war to both the Western and Eastern zones of Germany and to Austria.^[12] At least two million people perished during the evacuation and expulsion. Of these, 400,000 to 600,000 were killed either during military operations or murdered afterwards.^[13]

[edit] Language

The Germanic languages are a group of related languages constituting a branch of the Indo-European (IE) language family. The common ancestor of all languages comprising this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the latter mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age Northern Europe.

The largest Germanic languages in Europe in terms of speakers are the German and English languages, with approximately 95 and 65 million native speakers respectively. Both belong to the West Germanic group, together with Dutch (22 million speakers) and Frisian (0.5 million).

The North Germanic languages include Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese with a combined total of about 20 million speakers.

Germanic-speaking Europe consists of Iceland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Faroe Islands, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Swedish-speaking municipalities of Finland, French Flanders and Alsace-Moselle in France, Flanders and the smaller German-speaking Community in Belgium, the German-speaking part of Luxembourg, Germany, the formerly German parts of Poland, Liechtenstein, the German-speaking part of Switzerland, Austria, and the province of Bolzano-Bozen in Italy, the latter being a mix of Germanic and Italic.

[edit] Religion

Contrasted with Latin Europe's Roman Catholicism, and Slavic Europe's Eastern Orthodoxy, Germanic Europe is religiously categorized as Protestant.

The predominant organized religion in Iceland, the UK, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia is Protestantism, while in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism are highly present.

Despite having a Germanic language as official, the sole dominant religion of Austria, Ireland and Liechtenstein is Roman Catholicism.

[edit] Partially Germanic

Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, whilst also belonging to Celtic Europe, are considered (here) to be partially Germanic because of the dominance of the English language in these areas. And in the case of Scotland, also its history of Viking raids and settlement, its own Germanic/Anglic language (Scots) and the fact that south-eastern Scotland was once part of Northumbria, an Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Ireland has also received waves of settlers from England and Scandinavia over its history, and together with Scotland could be considered a mix of Germanic and Celtic Europe.

Estonia, Latvia, and Finland are considered partially Germanic due to their religions, yet linguistically are Finno-Ugric (Estonia and Finland) and Baltic (Latvia).

Switzerland, Belgium, and Luxembourg have dual use of Germanic and Romance languages, while Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland share both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism as the dominant religion, while Austria and Liechtenstein despite using a Germanic language, are predominantly Roman Catholic. Thusly these countries are considered a mix of Germanic and Latin Europe.

Due to British presence, Malta and Gibraltar have both adopted much of Germanic culture, even though they are both part of Latin Europe and the Maltese language is descended from Arabic.

[edit] Cities

London	London	Berlin	Munich
Amsterdam	Amsterdam	Stockholm	Stockholm
Oslo	Oslo	Copenhagen	Reykjavík

[edit] See also

• Germania
• Germanic languages
• Germanic peoples
• Ethnic groups of Europe
• Latin Europe
• Slavic Europe
• Celtic Europe
• Turkic European

[edit] References