AREA OF TIIE GERMAN LANGUAGE. The area of the German language is not identical either with that of the German stock or that of the German Empire. Thus, in the larger part of Eastern Germany (the country east of the rivers Elbe and Saale), the German-speaking population is, as far as the race is concerned, largely of Slavic, or, in some cases, Baltic origin. In this region the boundary between Slays and Germans has been subjected in course of time to various changes. At the earliest historic period (at the time when Tacitus wrote his Germania) East ern Germany was held by Germanic tribes. Later on, probably in the sixth century. the inroad of the Slays began, who by the middle of the eighth century had succeeded in crowding the Germans back even beyond the left banks of the Elbe and Saale. From the time of Charlemagne to the present date the Slavonization of the East has been followed by its Germanization, or rather re-Germanization. Except among the Wends or Lusatio-Sorbs around Cobus in Brandenburg, and the Lithuanians in the northeastern corner of East Prussia, German is now spoken throughout those parts of Prussia which constituted the kingdom at the time of the accession of Fred erick the Great (1740). It is only by many of the geographical names (including such familiar names as Pomerania. Silesia, Berlin, Danzig, Dresden, Leipzig, etc.) that the former extent of the Slavic settlements in Germany may still he traced. Toward the end of the eighteenth cen tury, however. when in 1772. 1793. and 1795— under Frederick the Great, and his successor. Frederick William II.—the Kingdom of Poland was divided between Russia, Austria, and Prus sia. a new lot of Slavic inhabitants, and this time mostly of Polish extraction, fell to Prussia (which already possessed a large Polish popula tion in Silesia) as its share in the partition; with the result that at present Polish is the mother tongue of about one-tenth of the whole population of Prussia.
If we turn to other parts of Germany, we meet with Danes in the northern portion of the Prus sian District of Schleswig, which until 1864 be longed to Denmark, and with Frenchmen in the western portion of the Reichsland of Alsace-Lor raine, which was retaken from France after the war of 1870-71.
Of the 56,000,000 inhabitants of the German Empire returned in the census of 1900, upward of 4,200,000 were entered as speaking foreign languages. Of this number, nearly 3,330,000 were Poles (including Kassubs and Mazurs), 107,000 Czechs and Moravians, 93,000 Wends, 106,000 Lithuanians, nearly 224,000 French, 141, 000 Danes, 80,000 Dutch, 66,000 Italians, and 20,000 Frisians.
German is the vernacular of almost the whole of Luxemburg, of the greater part of Switzerland, and of portions of Austria-Hungary. In Luxem burg the German-speaking population in 1900 amounted to 221,000 (out of a total population of 236,500), in Switzerland to 2,319,000 (or 69 per cent. of 3,325,000), in Cisleithan Austria to
9,171,000 (or 36 per cent. of 25,633,100), in Hungary to 2,135,181 (or 12 per cent. of 19,254, 559).
Russia, too, has a German element of some importance. There are many German settlements in the Southern Russian provinces, one of them, founded in 1768 (between Kamyshin and Volsk on the Volga), consisting of 173 villages, and covering an area not much smaller than that of the Kingdom of Saxony. German has, more over, from the thirteenth century on been the language of the educated classes in the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire (i.e. in Cour land, Livonia, and Esthonia). As regards the numerical strength of the German element, the latest accessible statistics are those of 1883, in which they are reckoned as forming 1.5 per cent. of the population of European Russia. If we apply this ratio to the census of 1897, when the population of European Russia was 105,542, 033, the number of German inhabitants would amount to about 1,500,000.
Outside of Europe the largest number of Ger mans is found in the United States, whose Ger man-born population amounts to about 3,000,000. For the city of New York alone the census of 1900 gives the German-born population as 322, 343. In addition to these we have the 'Penn sylvania Germans' or 'Pennsylvania Dutch,' whose dialect is still the vernacular of many dis tricts in the State of Pennsylvania. An exact count of the Pennsylvania Germans has apparent ly never been made. Their number is by no means identical with that of the Pennsylvanians of German descent. There is a large German population in Brazil and Argentina, as well as in Canada and other parts of the British Em pire, and there are many Germans scattered in all parts of the world.
Altogether German is nowadays spoken by about 75,000,000 people. German thus ranks third in number among the four leading lan guages of Europe, the first being English, the second Russian, and the fourth French.
Our figures for German do not include the Dutch language. For although Dutch, from a linguistic point of view, represents the Low Ger man branch of tile Franconian dialect, it has developed a literary language of its own, and, therefore, is to be regarded as a separate lan guage. In like manner Flemish is left out of consideration.
On distribution, consult: Kiepert, Uebersicht skarte der Verbreitung der Deutschen in Europa (Berlin, 1887) ; Nabert, Kane der Verbreitung der Deutschen in Europa (Ilogau, 1891, in S sec tions) ; id., Das deutsche Sprachgebiet in Europa (Stuttgart, 1893) ; Hiibner, Geographischstatis tische Tabellen, aller Lander der Erd,e (51st edi tion, Frankfort, 1902).