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Six things to know about Saarland – Germany’s little France

On Sunday. the Social Democrats were poised for a clear victory in the Saarland election. But what else is there to know about this small western state?

Published: 23 March 2017 16:38 CET
Updated: 27 March 2022 19:33 CEST
The Ludwigskirche in Saarbrücken, Saarland, in October 2017.
The Ludwigskirche in Saarbrücken, Saarland, in October 2017. Photo: picture alliance / Katja Sponholz/dpa

With a population of just over one million, and its capital of Saarbrücken attracting less international acclaim than other larger German cities, Saarland may have never been on your radar before.

But following its state election this Sunday, we’ve updated this story from our archive to give you a bit of background on the small yet fascinating state in western Germany. 

Saarland has a long history with neighbouring France

The region’s first inhabitants up to the Middle Ages were Celts and Germanic Franks, and it was often inhabited by German-speakers. But today’s Saarland also was long influenced by the French, especially after it became a French province in 1684.

The area known as “Saar” would go back and forth under French or some other rule for years to come after that, until Napoleon Bonaparte’s defeat in 1815 when most of it was ceded to Prussia.

It’s largest modern-day border is still with France, with Luxembourg also to its west. France and the French language are still quite important to the region, and the state government in 2014 announced it wanted to become fully bilingual by 2043, making French its second common language spoken by all.

France is also the state’s most important trading partner for iron, sheet metal, coal, and other industrial materials.

It voted to join the Third Reich in 1935

After the end of the First World War, Saarland was placed under the administration of the League of Nations and for 15 years was its own political entity with its own currency and stamps.

Then in 1935, the locals voted overwhelmingly to be part of the Third Reich with more than 90 percent support in a referendum.

It also voted to join West Germany after the Second World War

Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in Saarland on January 1st, 1957, when the state joined West Germany. Photo: DPA.

After the Second World War, the Allied powers occupied Germany, splitting the country into zones of responsibility under the UK, US, France and the Soviet Union.

Saarland was occupied by the French and continued to be the Saar Protectorate under France when the other west-occupied regions merged to form the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) in 1949 during the Cold War.

France had offered to establish Saarland as an independent state, but the population voted against this plan in 1955, which was essentially a vote in support of the region joining West German instead.

It wasn’t until 1957 that the French and West German governments implemented a treaty to allow Saarland to join the other western states under the Federal Republic. This is known as the “Little Reunification” – Kleine Wiedervereinigung – in German, and was the most significant border change in Europe until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It has mostly been governed by the CDU party

Since Saarland’s first state parliament elections in 1960 after joining West Germany, the conservative CDU has mostly governed the state as the largest party, except for between 1980 and the 1999 elections when the the Social Democrats (SPD) took power – and of course the SPD – under the leadership of Chancellor Olaf Scholz – are currently on course for a huge victory in the 2022 state election.

At the last Saarland election in 2017, the CDU came out on top and had been governing regionally in a power-sharing coalition with the SPD.

READ MORE: Social Democrats clear first election test with win in Saarland

Their dialect often refers to women and girls as ‘it’

The Saarland state website is quick to point out that they don’t have just one single dialect. Instead, people speak either Rhine Franconian or Moselle Franconian.

“There is no united Saarland dialect,” the state website insists. “That is to say that Saarland speaks many dialects.”

And one thing in particular about the local dialects is that people often refer to all women and girls in the neutral, or “it”, form.

One theory behind this is that it comes from women’s names and references taking on the diminutive form. German has three genders – feminine, masculine, and neuter – and women are usually referred to in the feminine in Standard German. But when nouns are in the diminutive – like Mädchen for girl or calling a woman Anne “Annchen” they become neuter. And this is apparently the reason behind Saarlanders calling all women and girls “it”.

But some researchers have said this explanation is too simple, suggesting instead that the neutral form is a way to show more familiarity or proximity to the person you’re speaking with. Linguist Damaris Nübling observed last year that women who were unfamiliar to the speaker were still referred to in the feminine form, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported.

It’s home to two of Germany’s absolute best restaurants

Three-star chef Klaus Erfort. Photo: DPA.

For such a small state, Saarland actually has more three-star Michelin restaurants than Berlin or Munich. There’s Victor’s Fine Dining by Christian Bau in Perl, which is housed in an old castle and blends elements of both Eastern and Western cuisine.

And there’s also GästeHaus Klaus Erfort in the capital of Saarbrücken, which specializes in French cuisine.

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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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