The people of Alsace and eastern Lorraine are preponderantly German-speaking; those of western Lorraine speak French. French is also much spoken in the towns of Alsace. 76 per cent of the whole population is Catholic, 22 per cent Protestant.
Alsace-Lorraine as a single political division was a creation of the German government in 1871; the two districts have different origins and a different history, indeed each of them is made up of parts with histories still further separate and distinct. All have in common the fact that they form part of a region which since the ninth century has been debated ground between Germany and France. In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries the territory which now forms Alsace and Lorraine was acquired bit by bit by France; in 1871 it was transferred in one lump to the new German empire.
In the later Middle Ages Lorraine formed a duchy, within which lay a number of small and in some cases independent feudal states and the city of Metz, a free city of the Holy Roman Empire whose people spoke French. In 1552, on the petition of certain German Protestant princes, Metz was placed under the protection of the king of France, who took possession of the city and the surrounding territory subject to it. In 1613 the bishopric of Metz and its lands were taken over by the French king, the whole being combined with Toul and Verdun into the province of the Three Bishoprics (Trois Evêchés), and the cession was confirmed by the Emperor in the treaty of Westphalia of 1648. Further acquisitions made in the seventeenth century, notably Sierck and Saarlouis, gave France a strategic line of communication through Lorraine to Alsace. The duchy of Lorraine, which had likewise been dependent on the Holy Roman Empire, was declared free by Emperor Charles V and was gradually drawn into the French sphere of influence. Relinquished by its Hapsburg duke in 1736, in 1738 by the treaty of Vienna it was handed over to a Polish duke, Stanislas Leszcynski, on condition that at his death it should pass to his son-in-law, Louis XV of France, by whom it was accordingly acquired in 1766. Certain small enclaves within Lorraine did not pass to France until the Revolution.
Alsace, except the city of Mulhouse, was annexed to France in the course of the reign of Louis XIV. The Middle Ages had broken the country up into a great variety of feudal states and free cities; the Reformation divided it still further by religious dissensions. In the Thirty Years’ War France intervened on the side of the Protestant princes of Germany; at its close France received considerable possessions in Alsace, in much the same way that Brandenburg (the future Prussia) then secured valuable additions in the north. The treaty of Westphalia (1648) assured to France certain lands and certain governmental rights possessed by the Emperor in his imperial capacity and as head of the house of Hapsburg, but the provisions were, possibly with intention, left vague at certain points and became the occasion of protracted legal and historical disputes. By a combination of undoubted grants, more or less justified legal interpretations, and the direct seizure of the city of Strasburg, Louis XIV rounded out his possession of the whole of Alsace. The sole exception, Mulhouse, allied with the Swiss Confederation, voluntarily offered itself to France in 1798.
Thus united to France, Alsace and Lorraine retained their boundaries until the treaty of Vienna. The general principle of the territorial adjustments of 1814 was to leave to France its frontiers of 1792; after Napoleon’s return and defeat at Waterloo the treaty of 1815 was supposed to reduce these to the limits of 1789. In Alsace and Lorraine two deviations were made from this principle, both to the disadvantage of France. At the northern end of Alsace France lost to Bavaria the territory between the Lauter and the Queich, including the fortress of Landau which she had possessed in 1789. On the northern border of Lorraine the frontier was readjusted to the advantage of Prussia, partly for strategic reasons, in connection particularly with the fortress of Saarlouis, partly in order to take away from France the valuable coal deposits of the Saar valley.
At the close of the Franco-Prussian war Germany required of France the cession of Alsace and Lorraine, with a boundary on the west which was defined by the treaty of Frankfort in 1871.
In the next forty years Alsace-Lorraine passed through various stages of government, from military dictatorship through a certain amount of territorial independence to the definite constitution imposed by the Reichstag in 1911. Those who had hoped for autonomy were disappointed in this instrument, which failed to elevate the Reichsland to the position of a federated state of the empire, although an anomalous provision was made for its representation in the Bundesrat. Legally Alsace-Lorraine was still a subject territory of the empire.
Under the constitution of 1911 the emperor possessed supreme executive authority, exercised chiefly through a governor (Statthalter) appointed and recalled by the emperor and resident in Strasburg. Legislative power was entrusted to a bicameral Diet (Landtag). The upper house (First Chamber) consisted of forty-six members, half of them named directly by the emperor, the others made up of certain ecclesiastical dignitaries, the president of the Superior Court, and representatives of cities and economic interests, so that the majority was under the emperor’s control. The sixty members of the lower house (Second Chamber) were elected by universal male suffrage. The emperor possessed the right of veto over the legislative acts of the Landtag; he could levy taxes if it refused to pass the budget; and he could prorogue it and issue decrees with the force of law during its recess. Independent in local matters of the Reichstag, the Reichsland was far from independent of the emperor.
In imperial matters Alsace-Lorraine had three representatives in the Bundesrat, appointed by the Statthalter and thus ultimately by the emperor; but “their votes were counted only when it made no difference how they were cast.”[16] Alsace-Lorraine had sent representatives to the Reichstag since 1874; these numbered fifteen, elected by all male citizens over the age of twenty-five.
For local government Alsace-Lorraine consisted of the three districts (Bezirke) of Upper Alsace (capital Colmar), Lower Alsace (capital Strasburg), and Lorraine (capital Metz). Each of these fell into circles (Kreise), cantons, and communes (Gemeinden). The presidents of the districts and the directors of the circles were named by the emperor, as were also the directors of police. The organization of the local bodies and the distribution of their functions were similar to the system prevailing in Prussia.