The Alldutch Movement (Dutch: Aldietse Beweging) was a movement within the liberal part of the Flemish Movement that strived for the unity of the Low German peoples, from Königsberg (modern Kaliningrad) to Dunkirk. The Alldutch Movement was founded in the middle of the 19th century and is based on the idea that the Low German/Dutch peoples should be united in one state. The movement did not succeed in politics.
The language of the Alldutch Movement had to be something between the Middle Dutch language and the Low German languages, so the movement could eventually merge in a Greater Germany.
After the German Unification of 1871, the movements influence declined due to the rise of the Pan-Germanic Movement, which sought to the unification of all Germanic Peoples, at least the West Germanic peoples.
During the First World War, the movement actually had some influence on politics with the Flemish Movement urging for an independent Flanders as a protectorate of the German Empire, which had to establish a Greater German Reich with all Germanic nations, including England (Anglo-Saxon).
Nowadays the movement doesn't exist anymore, due to the impact of the Second World War on the Germans and the denials of the Dutch that, following nationalist theories, they would be in fact "Low Germans"[citation needed]. The Poles and Russians killed and expelled all Germans living east of the Oder/Neisse rivers, which reduces the Low German territory. Since the Unification of Germany in 1871 and the rise of Prussia, the High German language was introduced in Northern Germany and it suppressed the Low German languages.
Literature
edit- Ludo Simons, From Dunkirk to Königsberg, history of the Aldiet movement, Orbis and Orion, 1980.
References
edit- ^ The area contains the Benelux, French Flanders, Germany above the Benrather line and in Poland and East Prussia the areas were chosen where Low German was still spoken in 1910; see also c:File:German1910.png.
