Europe Map: German-Speaking Areas (1910 vs. 2010)

The map above shows Germany and some of its European neighbors in relation to the number of the German-speaking population in the area in the years 1910 and 2010.

It is a dramatic transformation in the spread of the German language across Europe in the span of that century, shaped by the horrible events of two world wars. Once a dominant tongue across vast regions, the German language’s footprint shrank significantly as borders shifted and populations moved.

Today, some 95 million people worldwide speak German as their primary language, with the majority of them residing in the so-called DACH countries: Germany (Deutschland), Austria (Österreich), and Switzerland (Confoederatio Helvetica). Germany leads with 69.5 million speakers, followed by Austria (7 million) and Switzerland (5 million).

In the year 1900, the German Empire boasted 52 million speakers, with another 12 million in Austria-Hungary. However, territorial losses after World War I and World War II, coupled with the mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe, drastically altered this linguistic landscape. This forced migration, one of the largest in history, reshaped communities and erased German-speaking enclaves across the continent.

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See also  Iron Curtain Map