FACTS ABOUT PALATINATE
Palatinate:
List of Rulers of the Palatinate
GERMAN DIALECTS IN 1800, A MAP
What is a Palatine?
Take a quick look at both of my maps, the list of rulers and the history before you continued, so you get a better idea about Palatinate....
See enlarged map with Edenkoben, Palatinate
.... In simple terms a Palatine is an inhabitant of a German area known as Palatinate which is nestled in the hills of vineyards along the west side of the Rhine River and is presently found in what is called the Rhineland-Palatinate [Pfalz]area in the year 2000.
My first known ancestor, who was born in 1654 in the area, now, known as Rhineland-Palatinate, lived in the prosperous wine town of Nustadt-on-the-Wine Road [Weinstrasse] , also, known as Nustadt -on-the-Hardt [River], which was the Rhenish [Old Lower Palatinate] capital. The records show the Roemmich clan had migrated from Leiman, a village just south of Heidelberg, which is presently in Wuerttemberg, but in the earlier times had been part of Upper Palatinate and the older capital.
The wine road to the south passes through the village of Edenkoben where we find in the records of another ancestor marrying a local girl in 1720. Here the family would remain until 1809..
A Little History of Bavaria and the Palatinate
Keltic [Celtic] tribes ruled the area known later as Palatinate and left their mark..... To the north were the Germanic [Teutonic] tribes, to the east were the Slavs and to the south were the Italics.
The Roman Empire sent troops westward in 14 AD.....
The Kelts and the Teutonic tribes fought the Roman legions. One of those tribes were the Remi who fought with their fellow Belgae [forerunner of Belgium] : Bellovoci, Nervii, Suessions, Aduatuci and Menappi. A group of the Remi were swift oarsmen [Raemh=oar] who eluded the Roman sailors on the rivers of the Rhine, Mosele and Marne. After a great amount of blood shed one of the Remi leaders must have realize the Romans were not going to be defeated and joined the Roman legions because the name Raemh was Romanized to Roemigius
Romans ruled Europe until the year 280....
The crowns passed from Roman hands into the hands of the Germanic [Teutonic] kings....
The founder of the Merovingian [des. of Viking family Meerwings, the long hairs ] Clovis I [c. 466-511] King of the Franks , defeated his rivals and soon ruled Francia, which included the area west and east of the Rhine River.
Clovis I embraced the Catholic faith in 497. The priest who baptized Clovis I was Bishop Remigius [Roemigius], who was later known as Saint Remigius.... .See History of France
We, the Roemmichs, may or may not be a desc. of Remigius, however, it may be safe to say we were of the same family who benefited from the political power and lands received during the reign of Clovis I. We became protectors of the Remigius Cloisters down through the ages.....
Charles the Great, better known as Charlemagne (768-814) defeated the Barvarians in 788....... and became king of the Franks, Emperor of the West Franks (800), restored the Leo II to Papal, and became the base of what we know as the Holy Roman Empire.
From 814 to 1149 France [Gaul] suffered a variety of invaders: Vikings, Magyars and Saracen....
Meanwhile, the various Emperors, Kings, Princes, Duke, marriages and politicians, plus the spread of religions, were reshaping borders in Europe into areas which we in the 21st century are more familiar.
From 962 to 1356 the Medieval German Empire began to emerge.
Franconia , one of the German states within the Holy Roman Empire, held the large western towns like Speyer, Worms, Kaiserslautern, Heidelberg and Bamberg to the east with Frankfort in the north. Bohemia was to the east, Saxony to the north, Swabia and Bavaria to the south.....
In 1214 the Palatinate was given to the Wittelsbach and their lands border was west of the Rhine River to the French border which included parts of Baden and Hesse [but not Speyer] down to Saaarland, Bavaria, which took in east of Czechoslovakia by the Bohemian Forest
List of Rulers of the Palatinate
In the 1338 the Wittelsbach Rupert III's heirs, four sons, divided Bavaria and Palatinate into four area. Louis ruled Palatinate of the Rhine; John ruled the Upper Palatinate (i.e. northern Bavaria); Christopher gained Zwekbruecken and Simmern; and Otto received Mosbach.The major line held the Rhinish-Palatinate with the title of Elector in 1356.
In 1550 Lorentz Remig [Roemich] is born in Leiman / Heidelberg., and, later, would become the 10th Count of Leiman.
In 1559 the major line of the Wittelsbach held no heir and the lands and title was given to the minor line [Simmern] who had left the Catholic Church and had taken in the Protestant faith during the Reformation, the religious revolution in Western Europe, which evolved into reforms in the Catholic Church and the rise of the Protestants....
1618 our ancestor Georg Roemich b. 1602 was attending Heidelberg University when the war broke and he left school and joined the army...
Politics and the defeat of the Protestant Winter King Frederick V of Bohemia, who had inherited, also, Palatinate, the Thirty Years War [1618-1648] and the devastation caused by the French troops who had invaded Palatinate left Palatines confused, bruised and bleeding.
In 1777 the ruling Wittelsbach failed to produce a male heir .... Duke Maximillian of Zweibruecken, heir of Palatinate through the Simmern [the minor lineage] gained these lands and in 1799 reuntied all the Wittelsbach lands under a single ruler.
The French invaded palatinate, again, in 1796 and annexed all lands west of the Rhine. In 1803 Maximillian ceded the Palatinate lands east of the Rhine River to Baden, Hesse and Nassau.
With the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, and the rise of new powers in Europe, Maximillian became King of Bavaria, and, regained Palatinate which remained under the Bavarian wing until 1945.
Early Migration - Pennsylvania., [USA], c. 1710
In 1689 to 1697 when the French marched into the Palatinate area and many of the Germans fled. Some Palatines migrated to the Americas and became part of what is known as the Pennsylvania Dutch Others took different routes before landing on American soil. Those routes took the fleeing Palatines to other German states, Switzerland, England, Russia, France and even Ireland, then, later, some of the ones who had fled or their descendants migrated to the America. .
I have one ancestor of the Roemmich family who migrated to the American Colonies [USA]. about 1710. Her name was Anna Elizabeth, nee Spohn, Geringer who remarried Hans Peter Frank in 1683 . With her husband his children they migrated to Chester County, Pennsylvania [USA}.
See Roemmich migration from Edenkoben list.
In LDS library there is a list of emigrants titled "1833 thru 1906 Palatine Emigrants From Edenkoben (in Rheinland Pfalz, West German) To North America " created by the Palatatines to America, Pennsylvania Chapter, #943.3, W2K. The Edenkoben minster Kuby who helped with the research is des. of Roemmich family of Edenkoben..
Migration in Early 1800s
In 1789 the French Revolution began.
In 1791 in the Castle of Pillnitz, Saxony, the Pillnitz Declaration was issued by Emperor Leopold II and the Prussian King Frederick Wilhelm II "the Great" who were calling all European powers to restore Louis XVI to his full authority as king of France. It was this declaration the French revolutionaries waved as they declare war on the rest of Europe and thus began what historians called the Revolutionary Wars.
The French troops invaded the the Palatinate in 1796.....
It wasn't until 1809 that a group of my ancestors fled the French invaders and migrated from Palatinate to Russia to a colony known as Worms some sixty miles from the Black Sea Port of Odessa.
Palatine Festivals and Customs
An excellent book on German Festivals and Customs by Jennifer M. Russ.
Palatine Language
The Palatines spoke German. But which dialect? The German language was divided into three main groups: "Mitteldeutsch" [middlelander German] "Niederdeutsch" [lowlander German] and Oberdeutsch [highlander German]. As you have probably concluded, the German language is divided into geographical areas: (1) the middlelanders were in the middle of Germany which includes Rhineland-Palatinate, Northern Bavaria, Hessen, Saxony and Thueringia which are hilly and with forests; (2) lowland are the flatlands; (3) highland is the mountainous regions of Southern Bavaria and Austria....
These fact indicate my Roemmich ancestors from Edenkoben, Palatinate spoke middlelander German. However, I had heard that the Roemmichs who migrated to the Black Sea area near Odessa spoke "low" German, which I assumed is the same as lowlander German. I remember my mother teasing my father about his German. I believe my mother's German dialect that is part of the middlelander German. So, now I'm puzzled. Perhaps, I thought, the difference between the two middlelanders might be something like the differences between our own English here in the USA. When my husband's southern state relatives visit, they speak English with an accent which is foreign to our California ears. Maybe, this is the same within the middlelander's German. Palatine is north of Wuerttemberg where many of my mother's ancestors had lived.
Let's take a deeper look into the middelander German, which people tell me Edenkoben / Landau, Palatinate is linquisticaly a part. Some refer to this German dialects being Franconian derived from the medieval Duchy of Franken of the 9th century. To complicate things, the area is broken into three groups: (1) Rhenish-Franconia {Speyer, Frankfurt, Worms, Edenkoben, Rhenish Palatinate and Hessen): (2) East Franconia (Weurzburg,Bamberg and Nurmeberg: and, (3) some include Baden-Wuerttemberg, but, I'd give my mother and her family's German their own description and call their dialect Swabish because so many held onto the old German used by Germanic tribes known as Alemanni who were defeated by the Franks in 469 by Clovis I. Swabish was the language the Royal Prussian Family of Hohenzollern spoke near their castle which is near Tuebingen Wuerttemberg before they took up a higher political position in Berlin and, later, ruled Prussia.
Joseph S. Height's books gave us a few quick examples:
|
|
Since I don't speak German, you will need to find more information in your own library.
One of the book I've used for reference is OF GERMAN WAYS by Lavern Rippley who talks about High, Middle and Low German which , he, too, refers to areas of Germany, and, the German spoken by the Pennsylvania Dutch. He, also, shows the influence the Romans had on the German language. Those of us who's ancestors were from Edenkoben should take notice of this influence. Near Edenkoben / Landau, Palatinate are ruins of Roman baths, and, therefore, the Romans did touch the lives of our ancestors who were living in this area at the time.. A few of the Romans might well have been our ancestors.
| .................................................. |
|
Roemmich Family's Dialect and Migrations
When and where had the Roemmichs changed their dialect which was a variant of middlelander German they spoken in Palatinate to "low" German? In Russia after their migration in 1809?.
One of my distant cousins Herman Roemmich wrote: "Problems with Language: The Legitimacy of Dialects" in Chapter VIII p. 39 to 41 A CONFLICT OF THREE CULTURES: GERMANS FROM RUSSIA IN AMERICAN, A History of the Jacob Roemmich Family. Herman told us his family spoke the German dialect which he called "Pfalzian". Was this a variant of middlelander German? It was. So, how did the cousins become separated in their language when they lived in the same area, a German-Russian village called Worms? The answer was within Herman's book. In the Roemmich homes, they spoke middlelander German [Pfalzian] but in the schools and church they were required to speak highlander {High} German. The Roemmich children were constantly told by their German teachers and religious instructors their German was improper and their German was spoken by the "lowly" [uneducated]. Their teachers and their religious instructors demanded, "You must earn proper German!" So, "lowly" German wasn't lowlander [Low} German at all. The Roemmich's German was / is middlelander German known as Pfhazian and as Herman wrote: "...a dialect with considerable legitimacy".
German Dialects
New High
German
A. LOW SAXON 1 = S;eswocloam 2 = Holsatian 3 = North Low Saxon 4 = Gronings - East Frisian 5 = Dutch Low Saxon 6 = Westphalian 7 = Eastphalian |
West Central (Middle = Midlanders' German) 16 = Ripuarian 17 = <ps;;e Framcpmoam 18 = :ixe,bpirgosj 19 = Hessian 20 = Rhine Franconian 21 = Lorrainian Franconian |
UPPER NORTH UPPER GERMAN (OLD HIGH GERMAN) 26 = East Franconian 27 = South Franconian WEST UPPER GERMAN 28 - Schwabian 29 = Low Alemannic (Low Schwabian) 30 = Alsatian 31 = High Alemannic (Middle Schwabian) 32 = Highest Alemannic (High Schwabian
|
||
|
B. EAST LOW GERMAN (EAST LOWLANDERS GERMAN) 8 = Pomeranian 9 = North Marravian |
EAST CENTRAL GERMAN (EAST MIDLANDERS GERMAN) 22 = Thuringian 23 = Upper Saxon 24 - Berlin Dialect 25 = Lower Silesian |
EAST UPPER GERMAN 33 = North Bavarian 34 = Central Bavarian 35 = Southeran Bavarian |
||
Frisian Dialects 1 = West Frisian 2 = East Frisian 3 = North Frisian |
Dutch Dialects 1 = Hollandic 2 = Brabantian 3 = Limburgish 4 = Flemish 15 = Low Rhenish
DUTCH Areas of both blues, Dutch was spokn, in the 17th century the majority of the people in the area spoke Dutch. Today just in the areas of light blue |
ALSATIAN GERMAN Although the Alsatian German dialect has seen a stong decline since the Secord World Was, a reasonable amount of people still claim to speak the dialect. Germerally some 45 % of the population claims to speak it. |
||
Regions where German colonized in other countries and eld onto their German dialects through the years. Does not show not show German-Russian colonies. See Remmick Family Tree web site. |
MOST GERMANS TODAY, 2011
Proper / Educated Person's German / Standard The present day proper German is "New High German" which was formed from the new "standardized" German grammar. The new grammar held several nicknames: Schriftdeutsch [the written German] and "Buehnensprache" [the stage German]. The creation of the new High German is interesting. Before the "New" HIgh German known today as the Standard German |
History of Religion and "New"High German
There were three reasons why the New High German came into being. It started with Guttenberg's press in the 1400s and a Saxon Duke who was trying to standardize the German dialect in his own Duchy. As fate demanded it, Martin Luther [1483-1546), who had translated the Bible from Latin to German was from Saxony, therefore, he wrote in the German dialect known as "Kanzleisprache". However, for the bible he tried to create a "common" German that incorporated both High and Low German and ended up with something that was close to Middle German.
One can imagine the joy the German people had to be able to read the bible in German and the printing presses churned out the new German bible as fast as they could. Those who read this new version had to learn this New Middle German.
Martin Luther's House of God was to become part of the Protestant Reformation and from his teachings sprung the Lutheran Protestant Churches.
The Lutheran religion divided the Catholic world and families as well as countries took different roads.
In the 1700s the exiles from Palatinate established Lutheran churches in the American states of New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland.
The Protestant Reformation included other leaders like Zwingli in Switzerland and Calvin in England who began their own church and called it the Reformed Church.
A Roemmich ancestors, Hans Ochsner and Elizabeth Spruengl were married by Zwingli in the Great Cathedral in Zurich, Switzerland in 1525. The Ochsner des. migrated to Edenkoben after the Thirty Years War and later, in 1809, to the same Russia village as the Roemmich family.
The Roemmichs and the Ochsners attended the Reform Church in Edenkoben...
Prussia became Lutheran while Austria, who's Emperors ruled the German states under the title of the Holy Roman Empire, remained Catholic.
The French invaded the Palatinate area in 1796.... The Revolutionary leaders were not interested in religion, in fact, they had made a point of denoucing all churches. Once, again, their was a flood of Germans who fled to other countries looking for religious freedom and with hopes of remaining German, not French.
All of these events gave a new form to the High German spoken in the universities and churchs a new form and thus it became known as the New High German which one hears on telvision in this year of 2000.
Roemmich's In Russia
This is what Roland Wagner wrote about our Palatines in the Beresan valley near Odessa: "My family, also, originated from the west bank of the Rhine (Rheinpfalz) as yours, and migrated to the Beresan colonies (Worms, Landau, Speier, Rastadt, Muenchen, etc.). The predominant dialect spoken there was Pfaelzisch (lower southeastern version) which is a variant of High German [Hochdeuatsch).... One of my great uncles from Karlsruhe told me he had discovered over the years that the family dialect was awfully similar to that spoken by people from the Schwaebish regions of Germany. And, he was right, Pfaelzisch dialect zone in Germany borders on the Schwaebish. Each of the colonies developed its own variant, depending on the predominant mixture of regions from which the founding families originated"
This affirms what Herman Roemmich had written, the German spoken was not "low" German. It was a variant of Middlelander German that was mixed by the close association and intermarriages of the other colonists who were not from Palatinate and lived in or near Worms.
The Worms list of 77 original German families who settled the colony were from Palatinate and Baden, [both were about equal in numbers and Wuerttemberg [which I'd estimate was less than a fourth of the 77].
Were there marriages into families who's roots were not Palatine? My 4th great grandfather Phillip Roemmich was married in Edenkoben to a Lingenfelder from Edenkoben. My 3rd great grandfather Jon Jacob Roemmich m. in Worms to a Winterrott who's family was from Rhineland-Palatinate. My 2nd great grandfather W. Michael Roemmich m. in Worms to a Ochsner who's father's family had been from Edenkoben..... They were des. of Swiss who spoke High German which was mixed with a romantic lanuage known as Walloon. My great grandfather Jacob Roemmich had a child by a Pfaff who's family was, also, from Palatinate. My grandfather married a girl who desc. of Germans who spoke High German dialect found in the Alsace. My father married my mother's who German is Swabish. I married a Hubert who's German family roots were from Trier, known to be the oldest city in Rhineland-Palatinate and Germany
Migration to USA-1906
In 1906 my great grandfather, Jacob Roemmich's son, Jacob suggested they all leave for the USA after he left the army, which they did. They migrated to North Dakota and settled near Streeter N. Dakota. My Grandfather and father both spoke German at home as their first language and both learned English in the public schools.
My first lanuage was English.
Roemmich's German Dialect Road Map
The variants of the Roemmich's German dialect reads like a road map and takes us back into time. So, let us see just how far back into time, we, now, can travel. My first language is English. My father's first language was German even thought he was born in the USA. My grandfather was born in Russia and his first language was German. My Roemmichs migrated in 1906 to the mid-western state of North Dakotas where the children in the schools picked up English . From 1809 to 1906] the Roemmichs had lived in or near Worms / Odessa, S. Russia which held a mix of Germans dialects with Pfaelzisch as one of the dominate dialects. Marriages added women into the family who spoke different dialects. From 1620 to 1809 the Roemmich's in Edenkoben / Landau, Palatinate spoke Pfaelzisch that was sprinkled with Swiss-German [highlander] by families like the Ochsner family.from Zurich, Switzerland who were part of a emigrated to Ednekoben after the Thirty Years War. Before 1620, the year our Roemmich ancestor married a girl from and in Edenkoben, the Roemmichs lived just north in a town called Nustadt -on -the -Wine Road [Weinstrasse], the capital of Palatinate, where one of our ancestors held a high position as Treasurer. Before Nustadt- on-the- Wine Road, the Roemmichs had lived near Heidelberg, which was part of Wuerttemberg, middlelanders, in the 1500s. One of our ancestor attended the University of Heidelberg which he left shortly before he graduated, joined the army and fought in the Thirty Years War[1618-1648]. Before this war, the Roemich [Roemig] who held positions in local government, were judges and seem to have money and land. If anything, their German dialect lean toward the highlander dialect which was used by scholars....... Listed as a nobleman is another Roemich ancestor who was the 10th Count of Leiman which is, now, just south of Heidelberg, which was the old capital of Palatinate.... When the Romans ruled the area, some of the Roemichs must have entered their military ranks and added "ius" to their name and it became Roemigius... later, it was removed..... It was the Romans who recorded in history that a group of Keltic [Celtic] men, known as Romig, who swept down upon them in their boats, attacked and than vanished back to the north because they were "rowers" who were faster than the Roman sailors. The Gaelic word for oar is Raemh. Before the Kelts were pushed into Scotland and Ireland, they ruled the western and central Europe between 1200 and 400 B.C. The Keltic language is a subfamily of Indo-European and was spoken by a group of people who lived in the Palatinate area as early as the 2d millennium B.C.. Some of us still knock on wood for good luck just like our Keltic ancestors did so long long ago....
Palatinate: Migration from Walloon Brabant Province, Belgium to Edenkoben / Landau, Palationate After Thirty Years War [1648]
Walloon: What Is A Walloon?
Web Sites
For additional information go to the following web sites:
Kaiserslautern - A Palatinate city [near Edenkoben] with history, legends and other information [present and past]
Weidenreich, Franz 1873-1948, [German anatomist and physical anthropologist who was born in Edenkoben / Landau, Palatinate].
http://encarta.msn.com/index/conciseindex/22/022D4000.htm?z=1&pg=2&br=1
Tourist page with places of interest in Rheinland-Pfalz
http://www.caltim.com/rheinland/
Germany GenWeb Project
http://www.rootsweb.com/%7Ewggerman/
Europe at War with France, 1689
http://www.rootsweb.com/~wggerman/map/grandalliance.htm
Other Sites recommended to find information on German dialects:
Genealogy.net: http://www.genealogy.net/misc/dialect-e.html
Robert Shea's Map with areas marked to show high, middle and low German dialects: http://www.serve.com/shea/germusa/dialkart.jpg
E-mail:
The biggest waves of GR migrations occurred from 1763 to 1862 during which time Germany didn't even exist as a country or an empire. The 'Germanic' area existed rather as conglomerate of states each speaking their own 'Germanic' dialect - some of which are Bairisch, Berlinisch, Donaubairisch, Elsässisch, Friesisch, Helgoländer Friesisch, Hessisch, Hochalemannisch, Hochpreußisch, Holsteinisch, Lausitzisch, Märkisch, Mecklenburgisch, Meißnisch, Mittelfränkisch, Mittelmärkisch, Mittelpommersch, Moselfränkisch, Niederalemannisch, Niederdeutsch, Niederfränkisch, Niederlausitzisch, Niedersächsich, Nordmärkisch, Nordmeißnisch, Nordniedersächsich, Nordostmeißnisch, Oberfränkisch, Osterländisch, Osterzgebirgisch, Ostfälisch, Ostfränkisch, Ostfriesisch, Plattdeutsch, Ripuarisch, Salzburgisch, Saterländisch, Schlesisch, Schwäbisch, Stadtfriesisch, Südbairisch, Südmeißnisch, Südostmeißnisch, Südrheinfränkisch, Thüringisch, Walserdeutsch, Westerzgebirgisch, Westfälisch, Westfriesisch, Westlausitzisch, Westmeißnisch, Zentralthüringisch...
regards,
Jake B.
Fiechtner shows two basic styles to the rhyme. The first group (which he groups under "hoppa, hoppa reita") all involved a male rider galloping with a sword at his side, who in the end goes "plump," "plop in the Dreck," or some variation of that. That version seems to have been played primarily with the little boys. The second group of rhymes (which he groups under "hoppa, hoppa Roessle") involve girls inside a house, spinning, etc. Interestingly they don't go plop at the end. Here's one variation:
Hoppa, hoppa Roessle,
Droba steht a Schloessle,
Drei Fraua guckat raus,
Die eine spennt Seida,
Die andre klengt Weida,
Die dritt macht's Feuer aus,
D' Katz kehrt d' Stub aus,
D' Maus tragt dr Dreck naus.
Haengt a Kendle an der Wand --- etc.
-- Roland Wagner
