What is meant by the term "high-type German"?

Question

I just received some information today on my adopted mother's birthfamily. Apparently, her maternal grandparents (who were missionaries in "South West Africa") are described as a "high-type German family". What exactly is meant by this term? I've looked a little bit on the internet, but anything "High German" appears to be referring to the German language only.

Comments

Can you give us access to the document? Perhaps context allows to make more sense of it.

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What would you suggest would be the best method of providing access to everyone here? It is presently in the  form is a typed document I received in the mail, not on the internet at present. (Or I could just scan it and send it to you specifically).

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You can scan and send it to me or post on the profile.

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Within Wikitree is a project that includes only continental European persons (none for/from  the British Isles): Project: European Royals and Aristocrats 742-1499. This project contains "EuroAristo" categories. The leader of this project is Doug Straiton. He writes: "Add euroaristo to your list of followed tags. That way you'll see all of our discussions in your G2G Feed." I'm fairly certain he or others joining this project will have an authoritative answer to add to those already stated.

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Some more thoughts: What was the family name and what was the time frame of their missionary work? Here is a list of German missionaries to Southwest Africa/Namibia:

http://www.safrika.org/Names/RhenMiss.html

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I don't presently know the family name. This is non-identifying information.

My mother's grandfather was a minister, as was his father, and his father before him, It looks like the grandfather was born around 1872. All three are listed as being born in "South-West Africa,"

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I looked at the letter and would think that "high-type German family" refers to an educated, probably upper middle class in today's terms, family. It certainly does not refer to language and is also not a term otherwise commonly used.

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South West Africa refers to the current Namibia, formerly the German colony Deutsch-Südwestafrika. German missionaries there were under the auspices of the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft which became part of the Vereinte Evangelische Mission in 1971. Apparently the National Archives of Namibia have records, but they are not digitized and would require a trip to Windhoek to look at. If they were easily accessible it should be possible to identify your mother's family from the estimated birth years for the family members. It would not be that daunting of a task since in 1903 there were only 3,701 Europeans in that country. Another option would be to see if the Vereinte Evangelische Mission has records of their missionaries there in the timeframe you need to look at. apelt-w@vemission.org is the email address for the contact person for their archives.

Answer 1

It could be that the speaker/writer was simply referring to a German family of some financial and social stature.  The context of the piece should help sort out whether or not the reference was to status rather than language.

Reg Shrader

Comments

I agree.

Answer 2

It sounds to me like they were upper class.

Answer 3

My maternal grandmother talked about it. She referred to it as one of three or four levels of German language. High, Middle and Low German and sometimes another level. When she wanted to talk to one of her relatives on the phone and not want anyone on the party line to understand she would speak in High German. One busy body was so upset, because she could not understand, she called my grandmother and asked her what she had said. She could only understand Middle or Low German.

Comments

High German was typically spoken by people from Prussia.  Low German was from the plains area closer to Belgium and Holland, so typically north and west coast what is currently Germany.  I would guess middle German would be Bavaria and Austria, but I'm not a linguist.

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There are 2 meanings for "High German":

• Most commonly it is used for Standard German which has different variants for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
• It is used linguistically to distinguish between High German dialects and Low German dialects, literally meaning high and low as in the more mountainous regions in the South vs. the flatlands of the North. High German dialects are for instance Alemannic, Swabian, Bavarian, Swiss, Austrian, and South Tyrolian.

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While I'm familiar with the terminology of "high" and "low" German in reference to different dialects, recently in a North American  record (I think it might have been a Dutch-language church in New York state) I saw the "high" terminology used in a context that suggested that it indicated that the person came from Germany and not the Netherlands or Flanders.

In some parts of America it was common for Germans to be called "Dutch" (a colloquialism, from Deutsch). I speculate that in areas with populations from both the Netherlands and Germany, the words "high" and "low" were added to distinguish the two different kinds of "Dutch."

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In German linguistics, the Benrath line is the border between low (to the North) and middle and high German dialects (to the South). It runs from Eupen in Belgium to Frankfurt an der Oder on the Polish border. There is a continuum of dialects and languages from Low German dialects through Friesian to Dutch. Dutch was originally called Nederduits, then Diets (the language of the people as opposed to Latin in administration and French spoken by the nobility). Diets and Deutsch are cognates, developed from the Germanic thioda = people.

Answer 4

The term High German was the term used to indicate a professional or educated German.

The most spoken or used was the conversational German. Some using High German used terms not familiar to the common public.