Was Alsace/Elsaß french or german? Did they ever have a say in their annexion by France/Germany...

But that was before nations were a thing.
I'd say it's the other wayy round, french feels alsatians are french because it's been part of France for a long time and their language is dying in favour or french just like ireland and irish.

Alsatians were their own breed until the post-WW2 era quite honestly, you had a pretty even split before that

>second Reich period it sent deputies to the Reichstag that demanded (in french) to allow the alsatians to vote on the issue.

could you please give a source for that?

>Nowadays everyone admits that they are French.
I thought they considered themselves neither french nor germans, i also met french and german people who saw them as germans living in france.

For a long time language was not really so significant regarding nationality.
And after it became relevant, then they voluntarily (mostly) decided to abandon their dialect in favour of French.

My grandmother was born close to Luxemburg's border, and her and her siblings chose not to teach their dialect to my mother, her brothers and cousins.

>
And after it became relevant, then they voluntarily (mostly) decided to abandon their dialect in favour of French.
Why would they do that?

>I thought they considered themselves neither french nor germans, i also met french and german people who saw them as germans living in france.

Alsatian here. We are french, we are not meant to belong to germany because we speak (spoke) a language that’s related to german.
What’s more german rule after 1870 has been harsh and they tried to remove our language and germanize us. Same thing when France was occupied during WW2.

Vous avez pu germaniser la plaine mais nos cœurs eux resteront français

>referendum in 1682

lol

Is your family from Alsace as well? Do your parents/grandparents speak/understand the language?
How did they "germanize the meadow" when its identity was thoroughly germanic?

>source
Can you read French?
www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/decouvrir-l-assemblee/histoire/1914-1918/les-deputes-protestataires-d-alsace-lorraine#node_4345

Because they felt more attachment to the rest of the nation than to their dialect.

My mother also suspects that the generation of her own mother enjoyed the fact that they could, when they wished to, speak between themselves a language that their children could not understand.

It doesn"t say it was in french though and this movement apparently died out in the 1890's

Why do you make this thread since you're obviously convinced that Alsace should be german?

I said their identity was germanic, which is true, and that your source doesn't say the same thing as what you've stated. I've never said they should be german, i'm wondering if they were willing to be part of germany/france and if they considered themselves germans.

here's my input : read a book and shut the fuck up

no offense intended

none taken you smelly frog fuck

the centralist french state did a relatively good job at surpressing pretty much all dialects. always sad to see people cuck to centralists and relinquish linguistic diversity.

on whom they should belong too: i dont care, as long as they dont end up as a aprt of switzerland. we like our alsacian worker bees cheap

It was 95% German (in terms of culture and ethnicity, Lorraine is a different story though) up until '45, today it's 100% gpyso-African.

Alsatian is an Upper German dialect, your distinction Alsatian German is constructed. Of course there are differences between the vernacular and the German standard language, but this is the same for every other German dialect.

That said, speaking a German dialect obviously doesn't necessarily mean that one has to fell as a part of the German nation; the Swiss have no problems admitting that they speak German while emphasizing their national autonomy; for Alsatians it seems to be really important to make clear that Alsatian is not German.

>they tried to remove our language and germanize us

What they did was replacing French in the official use with standard German, in informal situations anyone spoke his dialect just like in the other parts of Germany. It's noteworthy that before the French annexation in the 17th century, Alsatians did not write in their dialect either, the used the same sort of Upper German standard language that was also used in the rest of Southern Germany and Austria. For the Alsatian humanists of the 16th century, it was clear that Alsace is a part of Germany, but that only shows how quickly these things can change.

But it's a bit ironic that you object to the alleged removal of Alsatian by the Germans when the dialect is almost dead in the younger generations after 90 years of French language policy.

>the centralist french state did a relatively good job at surpressing pretty much all dialects.
Like Spain, Italy, Germany, Britain, ... like pretty much every country in fact.

>are they still seens as germans in France/Germany?
Still? You missed some history lessons user, they were never ever seen as Germans, they're in France since before Germany even existed.

spains acceptance of catalan and gallego as official languages of the corresponding regions is quite different from how france handles languages like occitan and breton.

It was French land. It had been French land for ages. Krauts had no right to it.

They were seen as ethnic germans much like the sudetendeutsche were

it has been under germanic/german rule much longer than under french rule.

>died out
It says it weakened. In the elections of 74, 81, 84 and 87 all but once (14/15 in 84) the fifteen seats had been occupied by deputies who refused this annexation... I doubt that it just disappeared suddenly.
Checking there deacademic.com/dic.nsf/dewiki/61938#Ergebnisse_der_Reichstagswahlen_1874.E2.80.931912
This indicates that the regionalist party went down to a third to a half of the votes (46% in 1912). Note that a lot of the gains made over them went to the social democrats. And I read there
jstor.org/stable/22512?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
that German socialists at least initially supported autodetermination for elsass-lothringen.

As for the language, maybe you're right and it was made in German. Wikipedia says in French but there's no source.
According to this
persee.fr/doc/mat_0769-3206_1996_num_41_1_402931
the deputies asked for the authorization to discuss and defend the motion in French.

You're on Veeky Forums, stop assuming that you're always speaking to the same user. He's not me.
My source indeed doesn't say that the motion was in french but it does say that for the first decades after the annexation the people voted for parties opposed to the annexation.
That should answer your question regarding their willingness to join Germany, but you don't seem to accept it.

Germany surpassed France so there was no reason anymore to worry about the economic prospects of the annexation.

And still the majority party was always (but once in 1907, 30% vs 31% for zentrum) the pro-French party.

ELSASS FREI

>Spain
Are you kidding?
Spain recognizes many official languages
France has worked -and succeeded- to erase every other autochtonous language from existence
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergonha

They wanted to be French and suffered under the eternal kraut for 50 years until liberated by their French brothers, and thus are French

they deserved it, patois must be exterminated for the good of the nation

>destroy every root, every tradition, every language linking autochtonous people to their land
>proceed to import millions of africans, settle them on the lands you just took from their rightful heirs and claim it is now that of the newcomers
>in a couple of generations no one will ever remember there used to be entire people with their own cultures before it became this standardized muddy-culty americanized melting pot
Why is France si diaboölical?

Are these numbers for Alsace-Lorraine or just Alsace?

There was not a single regionalist party, these are several parties; see the German wiki article: The protesters (P) who refused to cooperate with the Reich were very strong for a long time, but then they disappeared and more pragmatic autonomist/regionalist parties like the ELZ took their place. And of course the SPD

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsland_Elsaß-Lothringen#Ergebnisse_der_Reichstagswahlen_1874.E2.80.931912

Lothringen had a French speaking majority, it's no surprise they advocate for belonging to France.

Agree with your post except that
>destroy every root, every tradition, every language linking autochtonous people to their land
It's rather the opposite, it happened naturally, like everywhere in the western world, and actually a lot have been made to stop the process and preserve regional cultures.

I am from Freiburg, which is not Alsace but literally right beside it.

It was German. But yes, it has undergone Frenchification since Napoleonic times, and especially in the early 20th century (except for when it was German again between 1870 and 1918). Since they were mostly poor farmers, it wasn't hard to break them and forced expulsions and land confiscation was common. The more French Alsatians often went to Algeria, and more German Alsatians often went to Eastern European/Russian colonies.

The region still uses German as a meme language (actually it's the Elsass dialect, related to Badisch and Swiss German dialects) on signs there. Actually, genuine speakers are pretty few and far between, and most who can speak German have learned Hochdeutsch (Standard German) as a second language for business purposes (lots of Germans go there). I recall my grandmother telling me a few times that when she was a little girl, her parents told her of cousins on the 'French side', although they apparently didn't have a lot of contact as travelling wasn't as common back then and it's not clear what language they spoke.

>British argument that Ireland is Britain
that's true though

>the republic creates mandatory schools
>they forbid the use of dialects there
>Muh roots ! They're forcibly destroyed !

Don't be silly. No one was ever shot for teaching his kids his dialect.
There was just a widespread social pressure to speak a language that would allow people to communicate with their countrymen.
Traditions and local culture were never endangered by political choice, except when it was political and conflictual (like royalism in vendée) in nature, when it went against the law (like the customary inheritance rules), or as a side effect of other social evolutions (industrialization...).

This social pressure was lifted at the same time for African immigrants (during the sixties it was self evident that they had to give up their roots or/and lay low) and for locals.
Now they put street names in occitan everywhere, and road signs in breton/corsican/whatever, the state funds schools that forbid the use of french...
This is the end of the republic.

That's basically what I said. French state has made everything possible to preserve regional cultures, contrary to what some people here seem to believe. Hell, even the village churches haven't been rased despite being at the expense of the communes who would have gladly abandoned them in many cases.