Die Dialekt-Debatte im „Heimatbrief“ des Heimatkreises Mies-Pilsen 1950
The Dialect Debate in the „Heimatbrief“ – Magazin of the Heimatkreis Mies-Pilsen 1950

Summary/Abstract: The former German Bohemian minority that lived in the city of Pilsen (in Czech: Plzeň) and the West Bohemian district of Mies (Stříbro) until the forced resettlement in 1945/46, remains an almost blank spot in the context of research on Germans in the Bohemian lands. In this article, contributions from the journal „Mies-Pilsner Heimatbrief“ from 1950 are analysed and considered for the first time as a source type for the topic mentioned. The following questions were investigated: Which language varieties did the German residents of the city of Pilsen and the rural Mieser area use? Which language attitudes towards dialect and standard language did they represent? And what was the significance of dialect for their identity? These questions are dealt with by way of example using a dialect debate in the aforementioned monthly. In the second year of the magazine, a letter to the editor called for the publication of dialect stories to be stopped. In the following three editions, five other readers speak up, who vehemently contradict this demand and explain why dialect texts and dialect as such are valuable in their opinion. A native Pilsener even partially phrased his letter to the editor in his native dialect. In a brief analysis, this text turns out to be in northern Bavarian dialect, or in Egerland dialect, as he calls it. In addition to these structural linguistic investigations, the arguments used in letters to the editor to reject or approve dialect (texts) are considered from a sociolinguistic point of view. In this way we also learn something about the identity of the West Bohemian expellees. On the one hand, the arguments are of a general nature, such as that the dialect represents the “actual mother tongue”. On the other hand, the specific situation after the expulsion is discussed, in which the dialect represents „a piece of home“ in the foreign country for the Sudeten Germans. This intangible cultural heritage of the homeland should therefore continue to be cultivated and passed on to the next generation. At the end of the last letter to the editor, the editor of the magazine finally announced that texts in the dialect of Western Bohemia should continue to be printed in the future.

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