by Marron C. Fort

The East Frisians of today speak Hoog un Platt un over anner Lü, but between 1650 and 1850 East Frisia was a trilingual land. In the reformed west, people taught and preached in Dutch, while in the Lutheran east the language of the school and the pulpit was High German. In both parts of the country, however, the lingua franca was Low German.

In 1595, the citizens of Emden deposed the council installed by Count Edzard II and seized the count's castle. Edzard II was forced to move his residence to Aurich, and under the Treaty of Delfzijl of 15 July 1595, he had to agree to renounce most of his rights in Emden. The united Netherlands supported this endeavour by sending a protection force to Emden, which did not leave again until 1744. As a satellite of the Netherlands, Emden almost acquired the legal status of a free imperial city and, together with the reformed south-west, became ever closer to the Calvinist Church of the Netherlands, so that in the course of the 17th century Dutch became the standard language of the upper middle classes. In contrast to Reformed Emden, Aurich was the centre of the Lutheran East, whose school and church language was High German.

There had been public schools in East Frisia since the early 16th century, and Countess Anna introduced compulsory schooling as early as 1545. However, Reformed and Lutherans were taught separately. This religious division was formalised in 1595 by the Treaty of Greetsiel, according to which only the Reformed religion was allowed to be taught in Emden anyway.

Until the middle of the 17th century, however, the language of the Reformed and Lutheran schools was Low German. The Emden school regulations from 1577 and 1596 were written in Low German, as was the Arithmetica by the arithmetician Hermann Fresenborch, which was used as a textbook throughout East Frisia.

It was not until the middle of the 17th century, when the Lutheran congregations in the east switched to High German and the Reformed churches to Dutch, that the schools in the respective areas adapted to the churches. Low German ceased to be a written language, but remained the favoured colloquial language in the entire East Frisian region.

As a result of the struggle for freedom in the Netherlands, more than 6,000 reformed Dutch refugees flocked to Emden between 1570 and 1600. Although Low German was still the language of school and church at the beginning of the 17th century and Calvinist theologians such as Menso Alting and Daniel Bernhard Elshemius preached their sermons in Low German, Dutch became the third commercial language alongside Low and High German. Dutch was also used for preaching and teaching in churches and schools.

Since the Reformation, there were also closer ties between East Frisia and Groningen. Ubbo Emmius, born in Greetsiel and rector of the Latin school in Leer, became the first rector of the newly founded Groningen University in 1614. From this time onwards, reformed East Frisian theology students studied in Groningen or Leiden.

Until around 1650, the written language in East Frisia was Low German. In the second half of the 17th century, the Lutheran parishes switched to High German and the Reformed parishes to Dutch. Despite the predominance of the two standard languages in written communication, the colloquial language remained Low German. Although Dutch influenced Low German, it was not able to supplant it, and Low German was written until 1700, especially in private correspondence.

Dutch was read, but not always understood. We also know that many East Frisians did not master the pronunciation. The fact that an increasing number of East Frisian students enrolled at Groningen University from 1625 onwards did not mean that they really spoke the standard Dutch language either. Even today, Groningen's Low Saxon hardly differs from the dialects of Emden, Leers, Westoverledingen, Krummhörn and Rheiderland and thus became a common language across borders. Although Dutch was the language of the university alongside Latin, it was probably only actually spoken by a relatively small minority.

From 1600 to 1650, only five of the 45 or so pastors in the reformed West were Dutch by birth. Fifty years later, they accounted for a third - with considerable consequences. In 1652, the reformed people of Emden introduced the first Dutch hymnal because they considered Dutch to be a "better" language. This was followed in 1676 by a Dutch version of the catechism, which was also made compulsory for teaching in schools. However, the language did not gain a foothold in the Emden population that quickly. Around 1700, a Dutch theologian wrote about the language skills of the citizens: "Emden is een plaats, daar mijn moedertaal men nog zoo kundig niet is", and when introducing a Reformed clergyman of the time, an official remarked that he "preached in Dutch, and this was miserable to listen to, since he neither understands it nor has any skill in pronunciation". Nevertheless, from 1670 until the 19th century, more and more Emden residents wrote in Dutch. Between 1690 and 1730 we find Low German and Dutch minutes from the guilds, guilds and guilds, and from 1740 only Dutch. From 1700 onwards, wills and purchase contracts are also written mainly in Dutch. And since Dutch was also the language of the church, the following rule applied in south-west East Frisia: Low German was the colloquial language, Latin was the scholarly language and Dutch and High German were the usual written languages.

Between 1660 and 1740, there was a steady increase in the number of Dutch prints in the city of Emden. Whereas in the period 1600-1650 there were only 5% Dutch prints, between 1660 and 1740 Dutch books accounted for 56% of the total number of printed works.

When East Frisia fell to Prussia in 1744, the Prussian government banned East Frisians from studying at foreign universities in 1748 and assigned students to what was then the University of Lingen. The new rulers were primarily concerned with damaging relations between the reformed south-west and the University of Groningen. This regulation was not applied very strictly, as can be seen from the fact that one year of study in the Netherlands was granted after all. The Prussians were primarily concerned with breaking the monopoly of the Dutch language in the Reformed parts of the country and creating a certain amount of room for manoeuvre for High German.

The Emden Church Council, fearing a loosening of intellectual and cultural ties with the Netherlands and a weakening of its own power, clung to the Dutch language, which remained the language of instruction in the Reformed schools even after 1744. The church council, which voted against the magistrate's nomination of a High German teacher in 1750 and appointed a Dutch teacher, had to be forced to give in by the Prussian minister. Of the six pastors working in Emden at the time, only one preached in High German. From 1757 to 1847, all meeting minutes and church records were written in Dutch.

The decrees of the Emden magistrate were printed in both languages, but between 1751 and 1800 there were only 30% High German decrees compared to 70% Dutch. It was only after the foundation of the first German-speaking Lutheran school in Emden in 1749 that the Emden Church Council decided to introduce High German as a subject at the Reformed schools in 1754 in order to prevent worried Reformed parents from sending their children to the (High) German-speaking Lutheran schools.

The Dutch spoken in Emden was of dubious quality. The pastors, most of whom had studied in the Netherlands, spoke better Dutch than the teachers, who had not had the opportunity to learn the language in Holland, but, as one observer noted in 1843: "In Emden, the Dutch language is still used in the church and the primary schools; however, this is, especially in school, so much mixed with German or dialectical Platt that the Dutch rarely recognise it as classical."

At the beginning of Prussian rule (1744-1760), Dutch (48%) and High German (52%) prints in Emden balanced each other out. Around 1800, only 22% High German prints compared to 67% Dutch prints. These were not only theological and legal works, but also entertainment literature and children's books.

In the 18th century, despite the annexation to Prussia, the Dutch language became firmly established among the people, which was also due to the lively economic exchange between reformed East Frisia and the Netherlands. When Frederick the Great visited East Frisia in 1751 and 1755, the Emden fishmongers and greengrocers welcomed him with Dutch inscriptions. But at that time, Dutch in East Frisia was like English in today's Germany: it was spoken often, fluently and mostly badly.

As the Reformed Church with its Dutch language resisted the rationalism of the Enlightenment, both Dutch and Low German were seen in educated circles from the beginning of the 19th century as languages of lack of culture and backwardness. The golden century of Dutch, which had radiated political and cultural superiority 150 years earlier, was over. The language of Lessing, Klopstock, Goethe, Schiller and early Romanticism had left those of Hooft, Cats and Vondel far behind.

The language of the Prussian administration and all East Frisian newspapers and magazines finally became High German, but this High German was not understood everywhere in the reformed parts of the country around 1800. The fact that - despite the early introduction of compulsory schooling - no more than 40% of the population of agricultural East Frisia at the time could read also stood in the way of the spread of High German. As early as 1786, an anonymous author wrote in the Neue Hannöversche Magazin: " ... the Low German language [is] an unfortunate and almost impenetrable partition between the lower and ... the higher and more educated classes ..." Dutch was seen in a similar light. In 1800, another anonymous author wrote in the journal Pallas: " ... That the ... [Dutch language] has yet to boast any great progress in culture, and is much inferior to German, is ... is well known." In 1802, Pallas wrote again that the use of Dutch reinforced the confessional border and that German should be spoken on German soil. Thus Dutch was seen and fought against as a foreign body in East Frisia and as a backward, culturally hostile threat to the national unity of Germany.

From 1818, the Hanoverian government demanded the introduction of High German preaching in the Reformed churches, and eight years later it was decreed that the church registers had to be kept in High German. It is strange that the introduction of High German was not made compulsory for schools until 1845. This meant that Dutch finally disappeared between 1850 and 1880, and with it the old conviction that the Dutch of the Statenbijbel was the only language of worship and schooling for a good Reformed Christian.

The East Frisians broke away from the language and culture of a country that was small in area but, sub specie aeternitatis, very large in culture. Nowadays, almost all East Frisian school leavers speak English, but only a handful speak Dutch. Young East Frisians would like to study at Stanford or the Sorbonne, but very few think about a year in Nijmegen, Utrecht, Amsterdam or Groningen. The well-travelled Germans long for the international, the multicultural and intercultural, the exotic; but the neighbouring country, which is home to thousands of people from every race and religion on earth, most of whom also consider themselves Dutch, doesn't even seem to appeal to the borderlanders between Bunde and Wittmund: hoe dichter bij de paus, hoe slechter christen.

Since the Second World War, relations between Germany and the Netherlands have resembled an eternal chess game in which both parties are stalemated. We cannot expect the older Dutch to forget or forgive the occupation, the collaboration, the deportation of the Jews and the hongerwinter of 1944/45, but for the younger members of both nations, especially in the border region, a new beginning aimed at reconciliation and closer co-operation must be possible. Oranje boven! Ik hoop op betere tijden.

The author

Dr Marron C. Fort, Senior Academic Advisor and Head of the Low German and East Frisian Department at Oldenburg University Library since 1986, grew up in New Hampshire (USA). He studied German, English, Dutch and Scandinavian studies as well as mathematics in Princeton, Philadelphia and Ghent. After a period of study in Germany, he completed his doctorate with a thesis on the Low German dialect of Vechta. From 1969 to 1985, Fort was Professor of German Studies at the State University of New Hampshire (USA). Two guest professorships took him to the University of Oldenburg in 1976/77 and 1982/83, where he stayed permanently in 1986, devoting himself in particular to Sater Frisian and the Low German dialects between Lauwersmeer and Weser.