LL-L: "Plautdietsch" 06.JUL.2000 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 06.JUL.2000 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Criostoir O Ciardha [paada_please at yahoo.co.uk]
Subject: Plautdietsch

Dear all,

You are of course correct, Ron. Not at all 'Russian
Germans' were Plautdietsch-speakers, but the term was
one developed by the Soviet nationality programme in
an attempt to create a neat and tidy 'ethnic' entity
along the lines of the other ethnic groups inhabiting
the Soviet Union. It was inevitable therefore, that
Plautdietsch speakers, Swabians, Bavarians and even
Frisians may have been lumped together to form the
'German' ethnic group. If anyone has any information
of the proportion of Plautdietschers in the 'Germans'
of the Soviet Union I would like to be informed.

So far as I recall, a number of these "German and
Low-Saxon speaking artisans" congregated on the Volga
around Volgograd and when the 'autonomous' republics
were created in the 1920s, these 'Volga Germans' were
given the honour of their own ASSR, which was revoked
after World War Two and never reinstituted. I'm
unaware of what language apart from Russian was used
in the ASSR, but I assume it was standard High German,
mainly because the Soviet Union had a habit of
over-riding local language issues for its minorities
and making the language they THOUGHT should be spoken
official rather than the local variant that WAS
spoken. The logic runs along the lines of 'They're
Germans, right? Well, the official language can be
German then' regardless of whether the 'Germans' in
question spoke 'German' (i.e., High German) or not.
This policy was also implemented in Kosovo by the
Yugoslavs, where although the local Albanians spoke
the Tosk variant, the Gheg version was made official
in the province solely because it was the official
language of Albania proper.

The Economist is a magazine renowned for its
insensitive and deliberately ill-informed reportage of
minority situations. For example, an article
discussing the bilingual situation in Wales claimed
that seeing as though all Welsh speakers also spoke
English, there was little reason for Welsh to be a
co-official language.

It is this type of journalistic imperialism that no
doubt infuriates many of us here; the assertion that
local languages have no worth and should be extirpated
is something we have all fought against for a thousand
years or more, and now, just as parity of esteem is
being promoted for minority tongues in their own areas
(e.g., Frisian in Friesland) along comes the voice of
the reactionary and demands that we should all give in
to "progress" and promptly cease speaking our own home
languages. It depresses me because I believed for a
while that attitudes like that persisted only in
elderly middle-class chauvinists who were all sound
and fury. What is truly upsetting is that the
Economist expounds its imperialism with glee and makes
those who speak minority languages feel inept, archaic
and regressive, as in the extract "an archaic dialect
of German" which Marcel succinctly summarised: "as if
the real language was German and the dialect the
variety."

With regards to the issue of religion, I assumed that
with the exception of those 'Russian Germans' (I will
persist in using the term, no matter how inaccurate it
may be) who had immigrated as artisans or skilled
migrants, most belonged to various sects including
Anabaptists, Mennonites, Hussites et al, and that
their journey as refugees from persecution had began
not in Germany but in the Czech Republic, whence they
had migrated through Slovakia and Hungary to what is
now the Ukraine, as Marcel pointed out. From there
they scattered across what is now the Russian
Federation, with some of sects which were considered
'heretical' pushing into Siberia, while others
congregated in what later emerged as the Volga German
ASSR.

What must be remembered is that expatriate Germans
were nothing unusual. Remnants of these groups
remained until our own times in the Russian Germans,
the Transylvanian Saxons, and the Baltic Germans in
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Historically, however,
most major and minor cities in Europe had a small
German (whether Low-Saxon, Swabian or Schwyzertuutsch)
community engaged in commerce or diplomacy. This of
course reached its apogee with the Hanseatic League
and the Germanisation of Prussia, which had up until
then been solidly Baltic-speaking. Similarly, German
communities in Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Russia and
the Ukraine can be traced back as far as the 10th
Century, although most arrived between 1200-1500 CE.
Are there any Plautdietsch speakers in the Romanian
German population? Haven't they too mostly emigrated
to Germany now?

In this sense it is perhaps remarkable that the
Plautdietsch and other languages persisted as long as
they did in the emigrant communities. In the
religion-based ones there was a sense of social
isolationism and a 'myth of return' which provided
impetus for maintaining the language as an everyday
means of communication. Similarly the prestige of the
language - whatever it was - as the liturgy no doubt
enhanced its status and encouraged its survival. In
the commerce-based ones, however, I may conjecture
that areas such as the Volga German ASSR would have
been solidly 'German'-speaking out of sheer weight of
numbers, with whatever language was used as a link to
the trade of the outside European world.

As for ethnic tension in Central Asia, I agree that it
is generally aimed against all non-Turkic outsiders.
This tension means that Germans, Armenians et al are
harrassed but the Crimean Tatars who were exiled are
generally left alone. However, in a book on Chechnya
that I read a fair while back mention was made of an
elderly mujaheddin (guerilla fighter against the
Russians in 1994) who had been a Volga German named
Weiss exiled to Kazakstan in the 1940s. There he began
to associate with deported Chechens, learnt the
Chechen language, adopted Islam, and renounced his
Germaness to become a Chechen, returning when the
Chechens were exonerated by Krushchev in 1957.
Therefore, there was clearly in the Central Asian
environment not as much inetr-ethnic tension as one
might reasonably assume. However, Ron raises the issue
of Germans calling themselves Hollanders when
anti-German feeling was strong. No doubt our Chechen
German was in part motivated by this mood.

As Ron points out, ethnic Russians bear the brunt of
'native' reassertion. It must be remembered that in
Soviet times local Communist parties in Central Asia
were invariably 70-80% ethnic Russian and that Soviet
policy encouraged the Russification of much of the
Soviet empire in preparation for the Russian-speaking
era of the 'New Soviet Man'. This policy saw the
native populations of many republics within the
Russian Federation become minorities, and indeed today
only a few - Chuvashia, Tatarstan, Tuva et al - have
native majorities, and that in some - Karelia,
Udmurtia, Komi - native populations have been swamped
by Russian incomers and now number less than 25% of
the population, down from perhaps 75-90% one hundred
years ago. In the case of Karelia, native Karelians
now constitute only 11% of the republic's population.

Much of the antagonism has been provoked by Russian
elements who refuse to learn the local language and
who refuse to give up their Soviet 'Great Russian'
privileges. It should be pointed out, however, that
many Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians DO make
efforts to learn the local tongue and wish to
assimilate into Kazak, Kyrgyz or Uzbek society.
However, many Russians also believe that 'Mother
Russia' will still intervene in Central Asian affairs
- particularly when ethnic Russians cry foul - and so
steadfastly refuse any attempt at compromise with
indigenous populations. As Ron asserts, many Russians
(although not all) have difficulty accepting the new
consensus of local power and act as though the Soviet
Empire still exists.

How far this 'native reassertion' has affected
Plautdietsch-speakers is unclear. Soviet policy meant
that the precise numbers of Low Saxons in Central Asia
were never enumerated, statiscians preferring to lump
them together with completely separate peoples as
'Germans' I suspect that Plautdietschers in Central
Asia are suffering a kind of double discrimination as
they are assumed to be divergent Germans by
High-German speakers as well Europeans by the local
population.

The evidence from the documentary I saw agrees with
Marcel in that there appears to be a very great sense
of alienation and dislocation in those Central Asian
Germans who have emigrated to Germany. It is perhaps
ironic that Plautdietschers and Germans in the Soviet
Union in the 1940s and 1950s perhaps chose not to pass
on their languages to their children, assured as they
were of an eternity of progress in a Russian-speaking
Soviet empire; little could they have dreamed that
forty-five years later the Russian Empire would have
collapsed and that they would need to move to old
Germany. Perhaps if they could have foresaw that, they
would have raised today's dislocated Russian-speaking
'Germans' in their own mother tongue.

Foresight, eh?

----------

From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Plautdietsch

Criostoir,

Just quickly two points:

> As for ethnic tension in Central Asia, I agree that it
> is generally aimed against all non-Turkic outsiders.
> This tension means that Germans, Armenians et al are
> harrassed but the Crimean Tatars who were exiled are
> generally left alone.

While, expectedly, it may have come to some individualized expressions of
anger and/or impatience, I am not aware of any patterns of harrassment,
certainly of nothing organized or policy-based, nothing approaching the
severity of, for instance, individual and police harrassment of "dark"
people (i.e., people from the south of the former Soviet Union) in Russia.
Also, Central Asian language policies (i.e., requiring proficiency in the
original language of the land) are no different than those of other former
Soviet Republics, are certainly not as ... fervent as some of what has been
practiced in the Baltic countries in recent years.  Again, I suggest taking
reports such as those of "harrassment" with a good-sized grain of salt,
bearing in mind also traditional anti-Islamic sentiments and "Yellow
Hordes" paranoia in the West.  I can well imagine that some people would
perceive it as harrassment if they were suddenly propelled from a position
of perceived cultural superiority to one of having to adapt to the original
culture of the land and ... God forbid! ... learn the language.  Why are
Crimean "Tatars" and similar not being "harrassed"?  Just because they are
Turkic too?  I am under the impression that it is because as a rule they
*did* bother to learn the language of the land and did not put on airs of
superiority.

About Plautdietsch:

> Similarly the prestige of the
> language - whatever it was - as the liturgy no doubt
> enhanced its status and encouraged its survival.

I am rather under the impression that many, if not most, Mennonites, like
Low Saxon speakers in Germany, have been indoctrinated into believing that
their language of the home is inferior to "High" German.  I understand that
only some use Plautdietsch in church services.

Also, I believe that the migration route of Mennonite Low Saxon
(Plautdietsch) was quite different from that of other "Germans" you
mentioned, starting off from Western Prussia, today's Northern Poland.

Criostoir and others, I strongly suggest you read the splendid introductory
book written by our own Reuben Epp:

Epp, Reuben, _The Story of Low German & Plautdietsch: Tracing a Language
Across the Globe_, Hillsboro, Kansas: The Reader's Press, 1993, ISBN
0-9638494-0-9.

Best regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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