Strasbourg, with its quarter-million souls, has a curious small-town feel to it. Intersecting the street grid is a parallel network of picturesque canals. Bridges crossing the waterways are in summer adorned with magnificent floral decorations, and along the banks lie centuries-old half-timbered houses, as colourful as the flowers. The atmosphere is as much that of a German village as a French city; Germany is indeed so close that a tram service carries you there is a few minutes. When the European Parliament is in session, Eurocrats will cross the Rhine for the cheaper hotels and cheaper tobacco products, and undoubtedly also for the legal gambling and prostitution.
Another peculiarity of the city is how street signs appear in two different languages. This is not a unique phenomenon; in many parts of Europe signs have their duplicates in local language variants that seem closer to dialects: Occitan in Toulouse, Catalan in Barcelona. Elsewhere, more diverse tongues are represented to preserve smaller languages of particular ethnic significance, under threat from the dominant language: Celtic in Ireland or Wales, Sámi in Sápmi. But in Strasbourg what we encounter are two of the dominant languages, and language groups, of Western Europe: French and German. Though, to be precise, the second sign is in fact in Alsatian, a dialect closely resembling standard German. But how long have things been this way? For how long has writing in Western Europe been bilingual? Well, as it happens, we know the answer to this question quite exactly: since 14 February 842.
But before exploring this event, let us go back to the city’s origin. The Romans founded a fortified settlement here in the first century BC, and called it Argentoratum. Situated as it was on the Rhine, it remained an important outpost at or near the border of the Empire for its duration. Such fortifications were there to guard Rome against the Germanic tribes lined up along its border, but gradually these tribes infiltrated the Empire until they overran it completely in the fifth century AD. Yet the Germanic invaders who were now in charge of the post-Roman kingdoms made up only a thin layer at the top of existing society, and had little influence on general culture.[1] A divide therefore remained between the lands that had been part of the Empire, and had been thoroughly Romanised, and the old Germanic heartland, which had not. This divide was perhaps most clearly expressed through language, where the tribes beyond the Rhine spoke various Germanic tongues, while the peoples of the Western Roman Empire spoke Latin, gradually evolving into the Romance vernaculars.[2]
One of these Germanic tribes, the Franks, remained standing with one foot in each camp. Originally from the northern Rhine region, their first king, Clovis, around 500 conquered an area corresponding to modern France – or Roman Gaul – though some of their territory still lay beyond the Rhine. Three centuries later, the unification of these two realms was completed. Charlemagne, by the conquest of territories like Saxony and Bavaria, did what the Romans had never managed: bringing Germania into the Empire, which Charles now purported to have resurrected.
But this unity was not to last. The Franks had a frustrating habit of dividing land between sons, rather than relying on the tidier practice of primogeniture, where the oldest son inherits everything. Mostly through luck, the Frankish lands remained undivided from Charles’s father Pepin’s seizure of the crown in 751, through his son Louis the Pious’s reign, ending in 840. But when Louis died, war broke out between his three sons for control.
In 842, Charles the Bald and Louis the German united against their brother Lothar, whereupon they and their followers swore an oath of mutual protection.[3] This oath, made at Strasbourg on the abovementioned date, was drawn up in the vernacular languages of the age, rather than in Latin, so that the soldiers present would be able to understand it. It is one of the first examples we have of Old High German, and the very first example of Old French, or “the Roman tongue”, as it was called. Louis and his men first swore their allegiance in French for the benefit of Charles’s francophone followers, then vice versa. The texts of the oaths reveal two languages that have evolved greatly, but are still highly recognisable. These are the oaths Louis and Charles made respectively, followed by an English translation:
Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun saluament, d’ist di in auant, in quant Deus sauir et podir me dunat, si saluarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in adiudha et in cadhuna cosa si cum om per dreit son fradra saluar dist, in o quid il mi altresi fazet. Et ab Ludher nul plaid nunquam prindrai qui meon uol cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit.
In Godes minna ind in thes christianes folches ind unser bedhero gealtnissi, fon thesemo dage frammordes, so fram so mir Got geuuizci indi mahd furgibit, so hald ih tesan minan bruodher, soso man mit rehtu sinan bruodher scal, in thiu, thaz er mig sosoma duo ; indi mit Ludheren in nohheiniu thing ne gegango, zhe minan uuillon imo ce scadhen uuerhen.
For the love of God and for the Christian people and our common salvation, from this day forward, insofar as God gives me knowledge and power, so I will help my brother Charles, [missing in the German: both in aid and in every thing,] as one by right must help his brother, on the condition that he does the same for me, and with Lothar I will never make any pact, which, by my consent, might be harmful to this my brother Charles.[4]
Already the next year, however, all three brothers made peace, and by the Treaty of Verdun they divided the empire between them. Charles the Bald became king of West Francia, while Louis the German received East Francia. Though no one knew it at the time, the kingdoms of France and Germany respectively had thereby been created. In between these two were the lands of Lothar. This middle kingdom, Middle Francia, stretched from the Benelux region in the north, through south-eastern France into northern Italy in the south. After Lothar’s death, his lands were again subdivided, and the northern portion – in modern terms from the Netherlands to Switzerland – descended to Lothar II. This became the kingdom of Lotharingia. The middle part of this kingdom consisted of Lorraine, the French derivative of Lotharingia, and Alsace. where we find Strasbourg.
Lotharingia was obviously an artificial construct, and was in time consumed from east and west. Where France and Germany became permanent fixtures on the European map, Lotharingia simply disappeared. And yet, the remnants of this “ghost kingdom” continued to haunt Europe for centuries.[5] Like a wound that has been stitched up and had the sutures removed, the scar remains as a permanent reminder of what went before. From that moment on, Lotharingia constituted the borderland between Germanic and Romance Europe, as the contrast between the two was reinforced in various ways.
Economically, northern Europe developed into a separate sphere during the Middle Ages, especially once Viking attacks subsided in the eleventh century. The rivers here empty into the North and Baltic seas, and rivers were essential for medieval trade. This region therefore became a commercial area separate from that of the Mediterranean. The only overland connection with the Mediterranean world went through the former Middle Francia, where the river Rhône runs through the Champagne region and Lyon, central to north-south trade.[6]
Then, in the sixteenth century, this separation became even more salient as the Protestant Reformation created a religious divide right through Western Europe, and this divide ended up running remarkably parallel to the pre-existing linguistic one. More than a century of warfare followed, culminating in the Thirty Years’ War. These linguistic, commercial and religious divisions have been a source of intermittent conflict and conciliation till this day, from Belgium and the Netherlands in the north, to Switzerland in the south.
Nowhere, however, has conflict been more pronounced than in the border area between France and Germany, and the city of Strasbourg is a good example of the resulting turbulence. Strasbourg became part of the Holy Roman Empire, and remained so until 1681, when Louis XIV seized the city. A blatant act of unprovoked aggression, Louis nevertheless had a purpose behind the move. The Sun King’s many wars were intended to “rationalize” France’s rather jagged borders, and thereby make them easier to defend.[7] By bringing those borders all the way to the Rhine, Strasbourg served this purpose. The city was still allowed to retain the Protestant faith it had adopted, and its spoken language remained overwhelmingly German.[8]
For this reason, once the nationalist movement gained hold in Germany, Strasbourg and its region became a natural target for appropriation. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, French Alsace-Lorraine became German Elsaβ-Lothringen. It remained so until it was returned to France after World War I, before briefly returning to Germany during World War II. This meant that a person who was born in Strasbourg before 1870 and died after 1945, was born in France, became German, became French again and then once more became German, before dying a citizen of the French Republic.
And yet, the partition was never absolute. The clue to the continent’s continued unity lies hidden in the Oaths of Strasbourg, in the invocation of the christian poblo or christianes filches – the Christian people. This was an expression of a concept that originated in Carolingian Europe: that of “Christendom”, which was more than just a faith, but a cultural sphere positioned against the lands of unbelief surrounding it. Europe was now starting to define itself in contrast to Islam, which was encroaching from the south-east and south-west simultaneously. This concept, even freed from its religious connotations in a more secular age, evolved into a pan-Europeanism that never disappeared. Once Strasbourg had changed hands for (presumably) the last time, after World War II, France and Germany united in what would eventually become the EU. And where else would its parliament be, but right there in Strasbourg itself. In the parliament building, as in many other places around the city, can be found a copy of the Oaths of Strasbourg – that original document of unity between Germanic and Romance Europe.
Kronenbourg
Those bilingual street signs can serve as a guide to the seesaw history of the region. One particular street was in the Middle Ages called the rue de Bestiaux in French and Vihegasse in Alsatian, both translating roughly to Cattle Street. In 1771, it was renamed rue Dauphine, in honour of the French crown princess, Marie Antoinette. The revolutionaries, not satisfied with removing her head, also removed her from the street signs, and in 1793 the street became rue Rousseau. This was again changed to rue du 10 Août two years later, to commemorate an important date in the French Revolution. With the restoration of the monarchy, the royal name was also restored. The 1830 revolution led to another name change, and rue d’Austerlitz must surely have been a provocation to Germans, referencing as it did Napoleon’s great victory against the Austrian Empire. In 1872, the German invaders returned the street to its origins, when they named it Metzger-Strasse (rue des Bouchers in French), or Butcher Street. Since 1945, signs again say rue d’Austerlitz, but underneath is another saying Metzjergrawe.
At the end of the rue d’Austerlitz lies the place du Corbeau. In this building, in 1664, Jérôme Hatt laid the foundations of what would become France’s largest brewery: Kronenbourg. Its German heritage gives Alsace a beer culture missing in other parts of France: some 60% of the nation’s beer is today brewed here. None is larger that Kronenbourg, and its flagship lager carries the name of its date of origin. Ask for “une seize” if you want to sound like a local, or at least a pretentious tourist. Beer purists may object to the use of additives like glucose syrup, but it does have a sweet, pleasant taste to it.
[1] Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 (New York: Viking, 2009), 101.
[2] The main exception here is Roman Britain, where Latin never took hold, and where the Germanic invasion was far more comprehensive: Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome, 152.
[3] Marios Costambeys, Matthew Innes, and Simon MacLean, The Carolingian World (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 303.
[4] Translation: R. Wright, Latin and the Romance Languages in the Middle Ages (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 324–26.
[5] Simon MacLean, ‘Shadow Kingdom: Lotharingia and the Frankish World, C.850–C.1050’, History Compass 11, no. 6 (June 2013): 443–57.
[6] Clifford R. Backman, The Worlds of Medieval Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 131–32.
[7] John A. Lynn, The French Wars 1667 – 1714: The Sun King at War (Oxford: Osprey, 2002), 36.
[8] John A. Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667-1714 (London: Longman, 1999), 177–78.