Alsace: Is it German or French?

My mother's paternal grandfather came from a small town in Alsace called Erstein.  He immigrated to the United States in 1880 as a young child with his mother and younger brother.  His father had already made the trip a couple months before.  Years later, my great-grandfather's nine sons had very loud debates about whether they were French or German.  Given the history of the region, it was no wonder they argued.

Alsace, or Elsass in German, is a small fertile valley of land between the Voges mountains and the Black Forest Mountains in Europe, located geographically smack dab between the two great nations of France and Germany. The Rhine river, now the border between France and Germany, runs through the region.  Today, Alsace is a French region, but historically it has been both, and both countries have very valid reasons for having laid claim to it over the centuries.

Because borders were often rapidly changing, the history of the region is somewhat muddled.  In fact, different history books often don't mention all of the varying kingdoms of which Alsace belonged to just because it changed rulers and kingdoms so often.

What is known is that what is now the Alsace area was inhabited by Celtic peoples called Gauls from from well before the modern era until the time of the Roman Empire.  The Romans colonized the area as well, and co-mingled with the Gauls.  The city of Strasbourg, in the Bas Rhin region, was founded in this period.  But by the fifth century, Germanic peoples known as the Alemanni began to cross the Rhine River and attack Gallic and Roman fortifications in an invasion attempt.  By 496, the Alemanni had been conquered by the another Germanic people, the Franks, under Emperor Clovis, and the area was on Christianized. By the ninth century, Alsace was combined into the kingdom of Lothringia and then the Duchy of Swabia.

In the twelfth century, Alsace was incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire, with who it would be united until the mid-17th century, passing from one landgravate to another.  After the Thirty Years War, Alsace was granted to the kingdom of France by the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 and would become French in nature for more than two hundred years.  The region also became a hotbed of Reformation and religious freedoms, and Strasbourg was known as the capital of these radical ideas.

Because it was peopled by the Gauls, the Romans, the Alemanni and the Franks at various points in history, both France and Germany felt a kinship to the people who lived there, who were distinctly French and German and distinctly their own culture all at the same time.  The upper classes spoke or at least understood French, traders spoke both German and French given that both traded quite frequently in that region, while most everyone spoke Alsatian, a High Germanic language.  While many had German sounding last names, they had very French first names.  In the case of my great-great-grandfather, he was named Florian Waldspurger.  He was also the father of the man who later had nine sons.

Florian Waldspurger

Florian Waldspurger was born at 10 at night on 5 May 1845 in house number 66 of the quartier blanc in the small commune of Erstein in Alsace.  He was born the sixth of nine children to a stocking maker (faiseur du bas) named Francois and his wife, Sophie Egermann.

Erstein was an old fortified town just along the Rhine river and is located just south of the capital of Strasbourg. In the Middle Ages, a Benedictine Abbey was located in the commune.  During the time of its union with the Holy Roman Empire, Erstein became part of the Archdiocese of Strasbourg when the Bishop of Strausbourg, John of Lichtenberg, purchased the landgrave of Erstein in 1359 for 32,000 gold florins.

Erstein, due to its proximity to Strasbourg, saw conflict during the Thirty Years War, when over half its population was wiped out.  While the Treaty of Westphalia ended the war in 1649, Erstein, because it was attached to Strausbourg, did not join Fraince until the 1670s.

During the late 18th and throughout the 19th century, Erstein was the location of a number of textile manufacturers, including stocking makers, but also was known for its tobacco farming.  A number of people migrated from other areas to take advantage of the manufacturing jobs.  In the case of the Waldspurgers, they immigrated from the small village of Dibolshiem, south of Erstein about 20 kilometers.

Some wonderful historical maps of the area can be found on Wikimedia Commons.

Erstein, and indeed all of Alsace, saw a great deal of conflict during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.  The Franco-Prussian War and the fallout from it was the reason my Alsatian ancestors immigrated to the States in the end. But that's a story for another blog.

To answer the question my pop and his brothers would argue over many times, ideally Alsatians are both French and German.  While culturally, the area is a mix of French and German, genetically, at least in the case of my Waldspurger family, they were closer to the Higher Germans and the Alemanni than to the Celts and Franks, at least  according to DNA tests done by myself and my first cousin.  But, as a future blog will demonstrate, the Waldspurgers were more aligned with the French ideals than they were with German ones, even if genetically they were German.

Sources Used for Research

"Alsace." Encyclopædia Britannica. December 31, 2018. https://www.britannica.com/place/Alsace.

Braun, Célia. "Histoire Et Patrimoine." Site Officiel De La Ville D'Erstein. http://www.ville-erstein.fr/se-divertir/decouvir-erstein/328-histoire-et-patrimoine.

"Erstein." Revolvy. https://www.revolvy.com/page/Erstein

"Kings of Lotharingia." The History Files: European Kingdoms, The Franks. January 02, 1999. https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsEurope/FranceLorraine.htm.

Putnam, Ruth. Alsace and Lorraine, from Caesar to Kaiser 58 B.C.-1871 A.D. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1915.

Vizetelly, Ernest Alfred. The True Story of Alsace-Lorraine. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1918.