Walddeutsche
ethnic group
Walddeutsche (lit. "Forest Germans" or Taubdeutsche – "Deaf Germans"; Polish: Głuchoniemcy – "deaf Germans") was the name for a group of German-speaking people, originally used in the 16th century for two language islands around Łańcut and Krosno, in southeastern Poland. Both of them were fully polonised before the 18th century, the term, however, survived up to the early 20th century as the designation na Głuchoniemcach, broadly and vaguely referring to the territory of present-day Sanockie Pits, which has seen a partial German settlement since the 14th century, mostly Slavicised long before the term was coined.
Nomenclature
The term Walddeutsche – coined by the Polish historians Marcin Bielski (1531), Szymon Starowolski (1632), Bishop Ignacy Krasicki, and Wincenty Pol – also sometimes refers to Germans living between Wisłoka and the San River part of the West Carpathian Plateau and the Central Beskidian Piedmont in Poland.
The Polish term Głuchoniemcy is a sort of pun; it literally means "deaf Germans", but sounds similar to "deaf-mutes" (pl. głuchoniemi, sg. głuchoniemy): Niemcy, Polish for "Germans", is derived from niemy ("mute", unable to talk comprehensibly, i.e. in a Slavic language), and głuchy ("deaf", i.e. "unable to communicate") sounds similar to głusza meaning "wood".
History
In the 14th century a German settlement called Hanshof existed in the area.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Walddeutsche” is ethnic group. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Walddeutsche, ethnic and group, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Walddeutsche” 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.