Sprache und Identität im frühen Mittelalter

That every people has its language seems, from the perspective of our culture, self evident. Since Antiquity language is seen as one, and sometimes as the defining characteristic of a people. Modern nationalism went even further and saw in language an expression of the innermost soul of a people; often deriving a political order from this. The history of the early Middle Ages provides an ideal forum in which to pursue the relationship between language and ethnic identity over a long period of time. In the period between about 400 and 1000 in Europe a number of new nations and states as well as many new languages took shape/ developed. But how should 'people' and 'languages' be methodically delineated? What makes an ethnic group its own people, and how does a dialect within a linguistic continuum develop into a distinct language? When for instance did Latin become Old French? Were linguistic similarities and differences striking enough to justify distance as unity consciousness? Must an identity be effective at the same time as the vernacular language? What impact had multilingualism on the sense of identity? These and similar questions were posed by historians and philologists at the international conference, “Language and Identity” in Vienna in 2009. For the early Middle Ages they were so far never discussed in such a broad comparison. That's why the present proceedings, which was created as part of the Wittgenstein Prize-project "Ethnic Identities in Early Medieval Europe", is a unique survey; its results are of interest far beyond the period dealt with.