Language policy refers to any political action that influences, or is intended to influence, a linguistic situation.

Language policy measures may relate to languages themselves (corpus planning), their status (status planning) and their acquisition (acquisition planning). In corpus planning, a distinction is made between the codification and the development of a language.^[1] Status planning influences the functional domains of languages within a given society.^[2] Acquisition planning can pursue various objectives by creating opportunities and incentives: the acquisition of a language as a second or foreign language, the collective re-acquisition of a language that is no longer in use, or the preservation of a language with a dwindling number of speakers.^[3]

There has recently been a heated debate over the extent to which the promotion of the languages of national and ethnic minorities is sensible in terms of language policy and democratically legitimate.^[4] Supporters of promotion that goes beyond a mere prohibition of discrimination emphasise the importance of linguistic diversity for cultural diversity and for tolerance within a society. Critics, on the other hand, question the influence of linguistic diversity on cultural diversity. They also point to the high social costs associated with preserving languages of limited communicative value. It is sometimes also suggested that ethnic and linguistic heterogeneity within a country has a negative effect on solidarity amongst citizens.

Language became a significant political factor, particularly following the emergence of modern territorial states and the introduction of compulsory education; in Habsburg Austria, for example, this took place in the wake of the reforms under Maria Theresa and Joseph II. From the late 18th century until the First World War, three states dominated Central and Eastern Europe: Prussia (or the German Empire), Austria (or Austria-Hungary ) and the Russian Empire; in two of these, the German language played a prominent role. From 1830 onwards, language policy in the eastern territories of Prussian Germany evolved into a campaign to combat the Polish national movement through the pursuit of linguistic assimilation.^[5] In Austria, although the ‘locally customary’ languages were granted equal legal status in the wake of the revolutions of 1848–49, this failed to prevent the linguistic conflict between German Bohemia and the growing Czech national movement. Following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (1867), the Germans in Hungary found themselves subjected to a policy of Magyarisation.^[6] German settlers in the Russian Empire were able to maintain their own German-speaking school system until the 1890s, before the introduction of a universal school system made Russian the compulsory language of instruction.^[7]

In the interwar period, language policy in East Central and Eastern Europe was shaped by the situation of German minority groups in newly formed nation states. Following the First World War, a system of minority protection treaties was intended, amongst other things, to safeguard the linguistic rights of national minorities in East Central Europe. Following initially liberal approaches, which went as far as granting cultural autonomy to the Germans in Estonia and educational autonomy in Latvia, language policy towards the German minorities, on the one hand, became caught up in the maelstrom of authoritarian and nationalist tendencies in the states of Eastern Central and Eastern Europe, on the other hand, it responded to the increasing spread of National Socialist ideology amongst the minorities. In the Soviet Union, the policy of indigenisation (korenizacija), which had granted admission of German as the working language of autonomous authorities and institutions, was replaced by repression and the deportation of Germans to the east.

The National Socialist language policy in Central and Eastern Europe was based on a racial ideology which assigned the Germans the role of a ‘master race’ and the nations of Central and Eastern Europe the role of ‘slave peoples’, and which sought the physical extermination of the Jews, Sinti and Roma. The German language, as the language of instruction in schools, was intended to serve as a means of Germanising nations or sections of the population for whom this was deemed possible according to racial doctrine: Estonians, Latvians, and those sections of the Lithuanian, Czech and Polish populations deemed to be of ‘superior’ racial status or of German descent.^[8] For the remaining population groups and nations considered as a whole to be ungermanisable (Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians), German language skills were to be limited to a level sufficient for carrying out orders. In order to weaken Russian and Polish influence, the use of the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages was encouraged to a limited extent.^[9]

After the Second World War, flight and expulsion, the remaining Germans in Central and Eastern Europe found themselves within the sphere of influence of the language policies of socialist states. In Polish Upper Silesia, a verification process lasting several years had already begun towards the end of the war; this involved, amongst other things, testing knowledge of Polish and the Polish-Silesian dialect, and served to identify native inhabitants who were either Polish or Germanised but ‘re-Polonisable’.^[10] Once the verification process was complete, the existence of a German population in Upper Silesia, as well as in other areas ‘regained’ by Germany, was denied. German personal names were Polonised, particularly in Upper Silesia; German place names, street names and gravestone inscriptions were removed; and the use of the German language could result in harassment by the authorities.^[11]

The Germans were recognised as a national minority or ‘co-resident nationality’ in the socialist states of Romania and Hungary, and from 1969 onwards also in Czechoslovakia. In Czechoslovakia, no German-speaking schools were allowed to be established, even though the 1969 Minority Act permitted this in principle.^[12] In Hungary, too, German was not used as a language of instruction; it was merely a school subject, with lessons for members of the minority usually taking place outside the regular timetable.^[13] It was not until the 1980s that schools or school departments with German as the language of instruction were established here – particularly in Transdanubia, with the centre in Pécs, in the Ofener Bergland region and in Budapest. German-language newspapers and theatre groups were also established. Both Czechoslovakia and Hungary each had a German-language weekly newspaper.^[14]Romania’s language policy in the first post-war decades was relatively liberal, allowing not only a German-language press but also German-language schools, university chairs and theatre groups. From the early 1970s, under Communist Party General Secretary Nicolae Ceauşescu, an increasingly Romanian-nationalist course was pursued, accompanied by the emigration of numerous Romanian Germans following a corresponding agreement between Romania and the Federal Republic of Germany. The use of German place names was banned, the number of German-speaking schools fell steadily, and state television programmes in the minority languages were discontinued in 1985.^[15]

In the Soviet Union, de-Stalinisation from the second half of the 1950s onwards led to concessions being made to Germans in the regions to which they had previously been deported. The ministries of education of the Russian Soviet Republic, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, in areas with a high proportion of German residents, made ‘mother-tongue’ German lessons available on the parents’ proposal; however, these often suffered from a lack of qualified teachers, teaching materials and curricula.^[16] German-language radio programmes were broadcast and a modest Soviet-German press and publishing industry emerged; however, this could not prevent the proportion of Germans declaring German as their mother tongue from steadily declining in Soviet censuses.^[17]

Bilingual place-name sign for the village of Nakel/Nakło in
Upper Silesia. [Photo: M. Silarski]

With the collapse of the communist bloc, the legal framework and actual language policy have improved significantly for the German minorities. Two documents from the Council of Europe in particular ensure the protection of linguistic rights at an international level: the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1992 and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of 1995. Both agreements have been signed and ratified by most Central and Eastern European states. Whilst they are not directly applicable law in the signatory countries, they do oblige these states to submit regular reports. A failure to transpose the provisions into national law can lead to negative assessments that attract public attention. The implementation of the linguistic rights of minorities, including the German minority, in the states of Central and Eastern Europe ranges from constitutional provisions to minority and language laws, and includes linguistic provisions in individual statutes. The legal provisions relate to issues such as the use of minority languages in communication with public authorities, the bilingualism of road signs, place-name signs and official information boards, the use of personal names in minority languages (or the restoration of personal names that were forcibly changed to their minority-language forms) and the provision of education in minority languages. The main language policy challenges facing the German-speaking minorities are the widespread loss of German language skills among the middle and younger generations, as well as the lingering mutual reservations between the majority and minority populations, which also influence the debate on language policy.

• Robert L. Cooper: Language Planning and Social Change. Cambridge et al., 1989.
• Jürgen Gerhards: The Cult of Minority Languages. In: Leviathan 39 (2011), pp. 165–186.
• Gertrud Nunner-Winkler: ‘The Cult of Minority Languages or Education for Multilingualism?’ In: Leviathan 39 (2011), pp. 187–193.
• Ingeborg Ohnheiser, Manfred Kienpointner, Helmut Kalb (eds.): Languages in Europe. The Linguistic Situation and Language Policy in European Countries. Innsbruck 1999 (Innsbruck Contributions to Cultural Studies 30).
• Christoph Pan, Beate Sibylle Pfeil (eds.): Minority Rights in Europe. Handbook of European Ethnic Groups, Vol. 2. 2nd, revised and updated edition. Vienna, New York 2006.
• Dirk Scholten: Language Expansion Policy in Nazi Germany. Frankfurt am Main et al. 2000 (Duisburg Studies in Linguistics and Cultural Studies 42).
• Peter Rosenberg: The Development of European Linguistic Diversity and the Role of Minorities. The Linguistic Evidence. In: Christoph Bergner, Matthias Weber (eds.): Resettlement and Minority Policy in Germany. Assessment and Prospects. Munich 2009 (Publications of the Federal Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe 38), pp. 135–149.
• Stefan Oeter: The Development of European Linguistic Diversity and the Role of Minorities. Protection under International Law and National Legislation. In: Christoph Bergner, Matthias Weber (eds.): Resettlement and Minority Policy in Germany. Assessment and Prospects. Munich 2009 (Publications of the Federal Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe 38), pp. 151–175.

• www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/minlang/Default_en.asp (Council of Europe: European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages)
• www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/minorities/default_en.asp (Council of Europe: Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities)

[1] Einar Haugen: Language Planning. In: Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier (eds.): Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Studies. Vol. 3: Sociolinguistics. An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society. Part 1. Berlin, New York 1987, pp. 626–637, here pp. 626ff.

[2] Robert L. Cooper: Language Planning and Social Change. Cambridge 1989, here pp. 99ff.

[3] Cooper: Language Planning (note 2), here pp. 157ff.

[4] A summary of the discussion is provided by Jürgen Gerhards: ‘The Cult of Minority Languages’. In: *Leviathan* 39 (2011), pp. 165–186; Gertrud Nunner-Winkler: *The Cult of Minority Languages or Education for Multilingualism?* In: *Leviathan* 39 (2011), pp. 187–193.

[5] Helmut Glück: Prussian-Polish Language Policy. Hamburg 1979, here pp. 212ff.

[6] Eva Irmanová: Language Problems in Hungary. In: Kristina Kaiserová (ed.): The Language Question and its Solution in the Bohemian Lands after 1848. Ústí nad Labem 1998, pp. 105–117.

[7] Dietmar Neutatz: The ‘German Question’ in the Black Sea Region and in Volhynia. Politics, Economy, Mentalities and Everyday Life in the Tension between Nationalism and Modernisation (1856–1914). Stuttgart 1993 (Sources and Studies on the History of Eastern Europe 37), pp. 327, 338ff.

[8] Dirk Scholten: Language Expansion Policy in Nazi Germany. Frankfurt am Main 2000 (Duisburg Papers on Linguistics and Cultural Studies, Vol. 42), here pp. 148, 252ff.; Christoph Kleßmann: The Self-Assertion of a Nation. Nazi Cultural Policy and the Polish Resistance Movement in the General Government 1939–1945. Düsseldorf 1971 (Studies in Modern History 5), here pp. 89ff.

[9] Frank M. Grelka: On the Transformation of the Polish Nation-State into a Colonial Racial State. The Nationality Policy of the German Occupation Authorities in Eastern Poland 1941–1944. In: Jacek Andrzej Młynarczyk (ed.): Poland under German and Soviet Occupation 1939–1945. Osnabrück 2009 (Individual Publications of the German Historical Institute in Warsaw 20), pp. 253–279, here p. 268; Scholten: Language Expansion Policy (note 8), here pp. 277, 298.

[10] Thomas Urban: Germans in Poland. The History and Present of a Minority. 3rd, updated ed. Munich 1994, here p. 68.

[11] Urban: Germans in Poland (note 10), here pp. 71, 81ff, 86.

[12] Fritz Peter Habel: The Sudeten Germans. 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Munich 1998 (Study Book Series of the East German Cultural Foundation, Volume 1), here pp. 122ff.

[13] Ingomar Senz: The Danube Swabians. Munich 1994 (Study Book Series of the East German Cultural Foundation, Vol. 5), here p. 134.

[14] Habel: The Sudeten Germans (note 12), here pp. 120, 124; Senz: The Danube Swabians (note 13), here p. 135.

[15] Mathias Beer: The Second World War and the Post-War Period. In: Konrad Gündisch: Transylvania and the Transylvanian Saxons. Munich 1998 (Study Book Series of the East German Foundation for Cultural Affairs, Volume 8), pp. 201–252, here pp. 232ff.

[16] Alfred Eisfeld: The Russian Germans. (Study Book Series of the East German Cultural Foundation, Vol. 2) 2nd, expanded and updated edition. Munich 1999, here pp. 137ff.

[17] Eisfeld: The Russians of German Descent (note 16), here p. 137; Annelore Engel-Braunschmidt, Clemens Heithus: Bibliography of Soviet-German Literature 1960–1985. Cologne, Vienna 1987 (Studies on German Identity in the East, Issue 20).

Mark Brüggemann: Language Policy. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2012. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32872 (accessed 2 April 2012).