[LINK] Regionalism in the World

[rfmcdonald]

Over at his Livejournal, jhubert explains how Germany's long history of regionalism expresses itself in regional stereotypes.

So what does it mean for the "cultural identity" of Germans? Well, it's fractal.

Let's start with an example - me. I was born in the city of Erlangen, which lies a bit north of Nuremberg - in Bavaria. Which makes me a Bavarian.

Actually, no - I am Franconian. Franconia might be part of the territory of the state of Bavaria, but only because those filthy Wittelsbachers first allied with Napoleon (thus getting lots of territories when he overran Germany - and making the Wittelsbachers into a line of kings) and then stabbing him in the back when his fortune waned (thus allowing them to keep much of their new territories, including Franconia). Franconia and Bavaria "proper" are still divided by different regional dialects, denominations (Franconia has quite a large number of Protestants, while Bavaria itself is almost entirely Catholic), and what kind of sausages should be preferred ("Bratwurst" in Franconia, Weisswurst in Bavaria). There is still an identifiable boundary between the two regions.

But regional identity is going down even further. Erlangen, Nuremberg, and Fürth (the birthplace of Henry Kissinger) form a small group of cities in the middle of Franconia - and each city is sure to emphasize its uniqueness and superiority over the other two. In Erlangen, there is the saying:

"Wer nichts ist und wer nichts wird, kommt aus Nürnberg oder Fürth."

Roughly translated, this means: "People who never have and never will amount to anything come from Nuremberg or Fürth". And I am sure that people from these cities have similar sayings about people from Erlangen...

In the meanwhile, at his blog Noel Maurer talks about how people in an Argentine province are rallying around an old flag.

that flag doesn't proclaim “Stop Argentina,” which is what an uninformed observer might think. Rather, it’s the banner of the Federal League (also known as the League of Free Peoples), an insurgency led by José Artigas that waged a long war against Buenos Aires between 1813 and 1820. (The Wikipedia entry is essentially unreadable.)

For a while the League ruled both modern Uruguay and several littoral provinces of northern Argentina. As usual for the period, it wasn’t always clear what the fighting was about. Artigas’s early demands were for federalism, although he was a bit vague on commercial issues. He rejected secession, even when Buenos Aires offered it, but he also rejected a federal compromise with Buenos Aires that would have met most of his early demands.

[. . .]

Artigas also later became the symbolic founding father of Uruguay ... even though he rejected the idea of Uruguayan independence. What I did not know was that the Federal League still possessed enough historical resonance that angry Argentines would carry its flag in a protest against the Uruguayan government’s decision to approve a big paper mill on the other side of the river.