Alsace-Lorraine
, area
comprising
the present French
departements
of Haut-Rhin, Bas-Rhin, and Moselle. Alsace-Lorraine was the name given to the 5,067 square miles (13,123 square km) of territory that was ceded by
France
to
Germany
in 1871 after the
Franco-German War
. This territory was retroceded to France in 1919 after
World War I
, was ceded again to Germany in 1940 during
World War II
, and was again retroceded to France in 1945.
Historically, the area was at the centre of
Charlemagne
’s Frankish empire in the 9th century and later became part of the
Germanys
of the
Holy Roman Empire
, remaining a German territory under various
sovereignties
up to the
Thirty Years’ War
. The
Peace of Westphalia
(1648) concluding that war gave control of Alsace-Lorraine to France.
Because of its ancient German associations and because of its large German-speaking population, Alsace-Lorraine was incorporated into the German Empire after France’s defeat in the
Franco-German War
(1870?71). The loss of Alsace-Lorraine was a major cause of anti-German feeling in France in the period from 1871 to 1914. France also suffered economically from the loss of Alsace-Lorraine’s valuable iron ore deposits, iron- and steelmaking plants, and other industries to Germany.
Under German rule, Alsace-Lorraine was classified as a
Reichsland
(imperial state) and was denied effective self-government until 1902. Moreover, its population was initially enthusiastic over the new French republic, and German rule remained unpopular for some years among the inhabitants, who continued to protest the German annexation. Thousands of residents who considered themselves French emigrated during this period. By 1905, however, many of Alsace-Lorraine’s
Roman Catholics
had been alienated by the French republic’s anticlerical policies, and so they shifted their
aspirations
toward an
autonomous
Alsace-Lorraine within the
German Empire
. Thereafter, especially with the grant of a constitution in 1911, some progress was made toward Germanization in the
region
.
Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France in 1919 after
World War I
. The French government’s attempts to rapidly
assimilate
Alsace-Lorraine met with problems, however, especially in France’s plans to substitute state-run schools for the region’s traditional church schools and in its attempts to suppress German newspapers (German being the written language of 75 percent of the inhabitants). As a consequence, Alsace-Lorraine developed a strong “home rule” movement in the 1920s and unsuccessfully sought
autonomy
within the French Republic.
Early in
World War II
, the collapse of France in 1940 was followed by the second German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, which was again returned to France in 1945. Since then many of the French prewar governmental policies that had clashed with the region’s particularism have been modified, and the autonomist movement has largely disappeared. Linguistically, the German
dialect
known as Alsatian remains the
lingua franca
of the region, and both French and German are taught in the schools.
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