‚[…] das vor allen die teutsche Sprach allda solle vervielfältigt werden‘ – Die Etablierung des Deutschen als Kultur- und Herrschaftssprache in Galizien im späten 18. Jahrhundert (original) (raw)

2022, Sprache – Identität – Grenzen

When Galicia was annexed by the Habsburg Monarchy in 1772, the province was basically regarded as an ‘inland colony’ by state officials as well as Josephinian publicists. This understanding of a civilizing mission in the imperial East provided the discursive foundation for the Austrian language policy, which under Maria Theresa was not only associated with the implementation of German as an administrative language, but also with the expansion of the state school system in the ‘revindicated’ province. Standard (High) German, which had undergone a process of cultural revaluation in the Habsburg hereditary lands since the middle of the century, was ascribed the status of a modern language of culture and science, while Latin was generally perceived as antiquated and the Polish vernacular – as well as Ruthenian – was limited to the function of a colloquial language. This development intensified amidst efforts to create a unified German-speaking state under Joseph II. It reached its climax in the area of Jewish education, where the dissemination of (High) German was explicitly linked to the desire for a moral ‘improvement’ of Galicia’s Jewish population via a long-term removal of Yiddish. The ultimate failure of those state initiatives, however, was due not only to the resistance of most of the Jewish communities, but also to the opposition of the Polish nobility, which from the 1790s onwards achieved a gradual repression of German and a revaluation of Polish in Galician public life.