Slavic Southern Germany
- Thread starter Vendaval
- Start date
Not an expert on anything before the American Revolution so I couldn't say much......I'd suspect that there might be significantly less Austrian influence on Bavaria and Baden, though.
Austrian German speakers are geographically isolated from Prussian German speakers. (If the terms "Austrian" and "Prussian" even make sense ITTL). German unification stops at OTL Prussia, and in time "Prussian" and "Austrian" are considered separate languages.
Likely another Slavic language evolves in OTL southern Germany, closely related to Czech I would guess.
Likely another Slavic language evolves in OTL southern Germany, closely related to Czech I would guess.
If Southern Germany is Slavic, than it's very likely Austria would be as well, so German in any form would only exist in OTL Northern Germany.
As to the base idea itself, well it would change things so much to make Europe completely different save possibly for having a United Britain and a French state.
As to the base idea itself, well it would change things so much to make Europe completely different save possibly for having a United Britain and a French state.
So a Greater Czechia? Or would they be South Slavs?
Hard to predict anything except the most broad strokes of European history from that. It would likely mean no Germanophone Austria. The Germans would be confined largely to the lower Rhine--and so might become more Dutch than Deutsch over time.
Well what is today eastern and central Austria and eastern and southeastern Bavaria was settled by Slavs in the 6th and 7th century. The first Slavic political formation was situated there (wiki for a quick outlook http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samo ).
So the questions is not what if they settled there but how to keep them from not becoming germanic speakers. Also with a link between west slavs and south slavs there might not be such a division at all. Because even divided by germans and magyars we can still understand each other with some difficulty, with a direct contact there would just be a singular "central european slavic dialect continuum".
So the questions is not what if they settled there but how to keep them from not becoming germanic speakers. Also with a link between west slavs and south slavs there might not be such a division at all. Because even divided by germans and magyars we can still understand each other with some difficulty, with a direct contact there would just be a singular "central european slavic dialect continuum".
slavs had lower population in west. If you somehow manage to have larger slavic population in areast west of poland and czechia and in austria, these areas might never be germanised. + if somehow tribes manage to create states, they should covnert to christianity, so germans wont have casus beli to attack and annex these territories (like they did in OTL east germany)
If they are like the other Western Slavs in the 6th-8th cennturies (low levels of government organisation and small political units), there is a good chance they will either be vassalised or subjected by their Germanic-speaking neighbours. For the Thuringians, the most likely outcome is still becoming a Frankish vassal and their eastern tzerritories being integrated into the Frankish system. The interesting question is, what do the Slavic-speaking but Christianised and Frankish-governed new South Germans do? We might see them play a major role in the genesis of Western Slavic states. In the case of Bavaria, the absence of a strong state may actually encourage the Lombards to project power there.
That would happen if the slavic polities were strong enough to defeat German invasions.
I don't think that would quite fit the bill; because despite the mass influx of Poles, even the biggest Polish communities rarely reached 10% of the local population. This would mean that they would not be likely to significantly alter the makeup of the area or affect the language enough to 'Slavicize' South Germany. In part, this may be because the infrastructure for such importation of laborers didn't really exist until after the development of nationalism.
On the other hand, if you have a situation where an independent Slavic power, such as an independent Bohemia or South Slavic Austria rules the area of modern-day Bavaria, where they also have converted to Christianity and made nice with the Pope, in the first millenium (perhaps a surviving Great Moravia), then you could see Czechs Moravians, or Austroslavs colonizing Bavaria, which would lead to the OP, though I admit, it wouldn't quite be the same as shipping in Poles from Posen to the Rhineland.