Ruhr - Demographics

Demographics

The ten largest cities of the Ruhr:

The local dialect of German is commonly called Ruhrdeutsch or Ruhrpottdeutsch, although there is really no uniform dialect that justifies designation as a single dialect. It is rather a working class sociolect with influences from the various dialects found in the area and changing even with the professions of the workers. A major common influence stems from the coal mining tradition of the area. For example, quite a few locals prefer to call the Ruhr either "Kohlenpott", where "Pott" is a derivate of "Pütt" (pitmen's term for mine; cp. the English "pit"), or "Revier".

During the 19th century the Ruhr attracted up to 500,000 ethnic Poles, Masurians and Silesians from East Prussia and Silesia in a migration known as Ostflucht (flight from the east). By 1925, the Ruhrgebiet had around 3.8 million inhabitants. Most of the new inhabitants came from Eastern Europe, but immigrants also came from France, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. It has been claimed that immigrants came to the Ruhr from over 140 different nations. Almost all their descendants today speak German as a mother tongue, and for various reasons they do not identify with their Polish roots and traditions, often only their Polish family names remaining as a sign of their past.

In 1900, the main concentrations of the Polish minority were:

• District of Gelsenkirchen (Westphalia) 13.1%
• District of Bochum (Westphalia) 9.1%
• District of Dortmund (Westphalia) 7.3%
• City of Gelsenkirchen (Westphalia) 5.1%

Official minority status and rights for Poles (Polish-speaking emigrants and their descendants) in Germany in general and in Ruhr specifically were revoked by Hermann Göring's World War II decree of 27 February 1940, and their property was confiscated. After World War II, even more immigrants arrived from beyond Germany's new eastern and southern borders, first the former Polish, Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war and slave-laborers of Nazi Germany who stayed in the Ruhr, and then the guest workers from the south and other emigrants (Silesians, Masurians and Kashubians) from beyond the Iron Curtain. These guest workers or Gastarbeiter came mostly from Italy, Yugoslavia and Turkey and since the fall of communism most other Eastern European countries as well. Official minority status for Poles in Germany has never been restored nor Nazi-confiscated property returned, in spite of numerous promises and declarations by various German governments and European Community reports. The Polish government signed a treaty with Germany called the Treaty of Good Neighbourship on June 17, 1991 in which official Polish minority status in Germany was not recognized whereas the German minority in Poland status was and has since been fully protected.