Franconian Beer Message Board

~~Franconia – a very short and insufficient explanation by Jürgen. First of all Franken is a tribe name deriving from “bold, free, daring people/warriors”. It’s subdivided into a West Franconian and an East Franconian group clearly distinguishable by language/dialect and speaking syntax. The West Franconians are nowadays known as the Germans of Rheinland-Pfalz, Saarland, East Lorraine, Luxemburg, Flanders and the Netherlands, whereas the much smaller East Franconian group kept its tribe name and are what you nowadays know as the Franconians. Now, please don’t reduce Franconia to the modern Bavarian administrative districts of Oberfranken, Mittelfranken and Unterfranken. The Franconian territory is larger by far. The Bavarian monarch family, the house of Wittelsbach of a then very small and unimportant Bavaria, supported the French in the Napoleonic wars and were gifted by Montgelas in 1806 with huge parts of Franconia. And because the Wittelsbach family was broke as well the first thing they did was plundering the Franconian castles and cloisters and bringing everything valuable down to Munich. Another huge part of Franconia went to modern Baden-Württemberg. The districts of Schwäbisch Hall, Heilbronn, Künzelsau and Tauberbischofsheim form  what we know as Hohenlohe-Franken and the districts of Buchen and Mosbach form Odenwald-Franken. Another part of Franken went to modern Thuringia: The districts of Meiningen, Schleusingen, Hildburghausen and Sonneberg. We know that area as Henneberg-Franken. And a tiny, tiny bit went to Hessen: The most westerly part of the Fulda district. All of those areas are Franconian speaking and most use the Franconian rake as part of their coat of arms. As in the Bavarian coat of arms you also find the Franconian rake in the Baden-Württemberg coat of arms.

Any questions?