German Empire - Linguistic Minorities

Linguistic Minorities

About 92% of the population spoke German as their first language. The only minority language with a significant number of speakers (5.4%) was Polish (a figure that rises to over 6% when including Kashubian, Masurian, and other forms classified by the Imperial government as separate languages but today more often considered variants of Polish).

The non-German Germanic languages language group (0.5%) like Danish, Dutch and Frisian were located in the north and northwest of the empire, near the borders with Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Low German was spoken throughout northern Germany and, though linguistically as separate from High German (Hochdeutsch) as from Dutch and English, is considered "German", hence also its name. Danish and Frisian were spoken predominantly in the north of the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein and Dutch in the western border areas of the Prussia—that is, Hanover, Westphalia and the Rhine Province.

Polish and other Slavic languages (6.28%) were spoken chiefly in the east.

A few (0.5%) spoke French, especially in the Reichsland Elsass-Lothringen, where French-speakers formed 11.6% of the total population.

Native languages of the citizens of the German Empire
(1 December 1900)
Language Count Percentage
German 51,883,131 92.05
German and a foreign language 252,918 0.45
Polish 3,086,489 5.48
French 211,679 0.38
Masurian 142,049 0.25
Danish 141,061 0.25
Lithuanian 106,305 0.19
Kashubian 100,213 0.18
Wendish (Sorbian) 93,032 0.16
Dutch 80,361 0.14
Italian 65,930 0.12
Moravian 64,382 0.11
Czech 43,016 0.08
Frisian 20,677 0.04
English 20,217 0.04
Russian 9,617 0.02
Swedish 8,998 0.02
Hungarian 8,158 0.01
Spanish 2,059 0.00
Portuguese 479 0.00
Other foreign languages 14,535 0.03
Imperial citizens on 1 December 1900 56,367,187 100

  • Danish

  • Dutch

  • Frisian

  • Polish

  • Czech (and Moravian)

  • Masurian

  • Kashubian

  • Sorbian

  • French

  • Walloon

  • Italian

  • Lithuanian

  • non-German

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