South German ethnicity?

At the risk of putting myself on Susano's Death-list, I propose that European ethnicities are not set in stone, and have evolved somewhat over the centuries. I also propose that ethnicity is largely based on what people think ethnicity is.

With this in mind, I wonder - with suitable anti-Prussian and Pro-Austrian sentiment in southern Germany (not hard to arrange both), would one be able to forge a "South German" or "Catholic German" ethnicity, claiming to be just as non-Prussian as, say, the Netherlands? Certainly the dialects are less than entirely comprehensible throughout the nation, and Europe largely focuses on dialect and language to define its ethnicities.

Just a thought.
 
Bismarck dies early, and the German states outside the North German Confederation form their own nation.
 
I'm talking about a collective ethnicity for the entire South-Germany-Austria-Bohemia region of "Catholic-German" or "Southern German", not just the little sub-ethnicities we have right now.
It might have developed, altough Austria would be a part of it.
And North German would be quite different from what we'd seen as German, most likely.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
I'm talking about a collective ethnicity for the entire South-Germany-Austria-Bohemia region of "Catholic-German" or "Southern German", not just the little sub-ethnicities we have right now.

There are just a little problem, a lot of them are Protestant (like Wüttenberg and Switzerland). But I don't think you challenge is impossible, you just need to create some large south German state, like a union beetween Baden, Wüttenberg and Switzerland.
 
But is Austria, or Oostreich, not the identity of the East Germans? So to include them in the Sudreich might be a bit awkward... that's why I was thinking of the non-Austrian principalities, of which Bavaria would be the largest and possible aggregator.
 
But is Austria, or Oostreich, not the identity of the East Germans? So to include them in the Sudreich might be a bit awkward... that's why I was thinking of the non-Austrian principalities, of which Bavaria would be the largest and possible aggregator.
There aren't that much of an East German identity, and most of what there is was created by the DDR and it's existence, not by Austria.
What I'm going to say now is not entirely correct, but: the cultural differences in Germany runs more on a North-South axis then on a West-East axis.
 
My Rhine German ancestors called themselves "Deitsch" instead of "Deutsch", as Pennsilfaanisch-Deitsch speakers still call themselves in their native dialect. If the Dutch of the Netherlands can become its own language and ethnicity, so called the Dutch of the Rhine.
 
There aren't that much of an East German identity, and most of what there is was created by the DDR and it's existence, not by Austria.
What I'm going to say now is not entirely correct, but: the cultural differences in Germany runs more on a North-South axis then on a West-East axis.

I don't mean the East German of the DDR/Cold War era, but the name Austria or Oostreich means East State - that's the identity for Germans in the East that I'm referencing.
 
I don't mean the East German of the DDR/Cold War era, but the name Austria or Oostreich means East State - that's the identity for Germans in the East that I'm referencing.
I know that, but there isn't that much of a cultural difference between West And East, nontheless.
The name was because it was in the East of the HRE, not because it was for the East Germans.
In OTL, but it would require some very complicated butterflies to change that, I think.
 
Well, if we split by linguistics rather than religion - Catholics and Protestants were hopelessly inter-mixed... then you might get this area, the High German dialect:

Oberdeutsch-1945.png
 

Susano

Banned
At the risk of putting myself on Susano's Death-list,
*shoots to kill*

It would make little sense, or at least it would be highly ironic, considering how Standard German is base don Upper and Middle German, not Lower German. The problem with that is that the sentiment of the Catholic Germans during the Kulturkampf was not "We are an own group", but quite the contrary, more like: "We are Germans, too, why do you discriminate against us?"

And the point about the two groups being hopelessly intermxied is, true, too. If at all, a seperate Lower German identity would make more sense, and to a part there is of course, its called Dutch...

And Dutchie, thats map is rather odd. I have seen no other dialect map of Germany that says Upper German goes as north as Eisenach and Plauen! That would be territories of teh Saxonian dialect, which is Middle German. Indeed, I have also seen maps that even claim East Franconian (2 on the map) as Middle German, though others dont...
 
After the war of 1866, when Prussia in effect annexed all of Germany north of the Main, why didn't Bavaria seek an alliance or even some sort of union with Austria? I know that Prussia was not loved by Bavaria.
 
Prussia did not allow and in fact forced the South German states in an allaince with itself.

Prussian troops were deep inside Bavaria at the end of the war.
 
And Dutchie, thats map is rather odd. I have seen no other dialect map of Germany that says Upper German goes as north as Eisenach and Plauen! That would be territories of teh Saxonian dialect, which is Middle German. Indeed, I have also seen maps that even claim East Franconian (2 on the map) as Middle German, though others dont...

I just googled "German speaking areas map" and this is what I got - admittedly the map is dated 1945, and i don't know what changes might have occurred since then.
 
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