German-speaking Community of Belgium
one of the three official communities in Belgium
The German-speaking Community (German: Deutschsprachige Gemeinschaft (Belgiens), pronounced [ˈdɔʏtʃˌʃpʁaːxɪɡə ɡəˈmaɪnʃaft ˈbɛlɡi̯əns], DG), also known as East Belgium (German: Ostbelgien [ˈɔstˌbɛlɡi̯ən] ), is one of the three federal communities of Belgium. The community comprises nine municipalities in Liège Province, Wallonia, within the Eupen-Malmedy region in Eastern Belgium. The primary language of the community is German, making this one of the three official languages in Belgium. Traditionally the community and the wider area around it forms an intersection of various local languages and/or dialects, namely Limburgish, Ripuarian and Moselle Franconian varieties. The community has an area of 854 km2 (330 sq mi), and has a population of around 79,000 (as of January 2024) – about 7.0% of Liège Province and about 0.7% of the national total.
Bordering the Netherlands, Germany and Luxembourg, the area has its own parliament and government at Eupen. The German-speaking Community of Belgium was ceded in 1920 by Germany. There are also some other areas where German is spoken that belonged to Belgium before 1920, but these are not part of the German-speaking Community. This category includes the Bleiberg-Welkenraedt-Baelen area in the northeastern part of the province of Liège, as well as Arelerland (the city of Arlon and some nearby villages in the southeastern portion of the province of Belgian Luxembourg). However, German is declining in these areas outside of the core German-speaking Community due to the expansion of French.
“German-speaking Community of Belgium” enters the record as one of the three official communities in Belgium. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what German-speaking, Community and Belgium can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“German-speaking Community of Belgium” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, German-speaking, Community and Belgium provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q90027. VIAF identifies the subject as 145273217. The Library of Congress control number is n91037040. Authority coordinates are 50.419, 6.266. 3 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2024 and 1920.
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This entry incorporates text from “German-speaking Community of Belgium” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.