Bavarians

Bavarians are a German ethnographic group native to Bavaria, a state in Germany. The group's dialect or speech is known as Bavarian, native to Altbayern ("Old Bavaria"), roughly the territory of the historic Electorate of Bavaria in the 17th century.

Like the neighboring Austrians, Bavarians are traditionally Catholic. In much of ''Altbayern'', membership in the Catholic Church remains above 70%,
and the center-right Christian Social Union in Bavaria (successor of the Bavarian People's Party of 1919–1933) has traditionally been the strongest party in the Landtag, and also the party of all minister-presidents of Bavaria since 1946, with the single exception of Wilhelm Hoegner, 1954–1957.

Areal and dialectal subdivision

There is no linguistic distinction between Bavarians and Austrians. The territory of Bavaria has changed significantly over German history; in the 19th century the Kingdom of Bavaria acquired substantial territories of Franconia and Swabia, while having to return territories to Austria who had become Bavarian only a few years earlier. Thus, only three of the seven administrative regions of the state of Bavaria are culturally Bavarian: Upper Bavaria (Oberbayern), Lower Bavaria (Niederbayern) and the Upper Palatinate (Oberpfalz), to the exclusion of Bavarian Franconia (historically inhabited by Franks) and Bavarian Swabia (inhabited by Swabians).

The Bavarian language is divided into three main dialects:
* Upper Palatinian (''Oberpfälzisch'') is spoken in northern Bavaria (Bohemian Forest, Regensburg).
* Danube Bavarian (''Donaubairisch'') is spoken in central and south-eastern Bavaria and in Central and Lower Austria (Munich, Salzburg, Vienna).
* Alpine Bavarian is spoken in south-western Bavaria, in southern Austria (Tyrol, Carinthia, Styria) and in South Tyrol.

History

Origins

The ''Baiuvarii'' were the early Bavarians, who are known from records starting in the 6th century. Their name indicates a connection to the Bohemian Forest area, which had been the territory of the Boii during antiquity, although the nature of this connection is uncertain. The name is Latinized from the ethnonym *Bajōwarjōz, meaning "citizens of Bohemia" from Proto-Germanic *Bajōhaimaz (Boiohaemum, Bohemia), meaning "Boii home", which was a term already mentioned by Tacitus in his ''Germania'' at the end of the 1st century AD, by which time parts of the Celtic Boii had already left the area, leaving it to be dominated by Suevic Germanic groups in close contact with the Romans, such as the Marcomanni in what is now the Czech Republic, and their neighbours the Hermunduri and Varisci in what is now northern Bavaria. On the southern side of the river Danube were the Vindelici in the Roman-controlled province of Raetia.

Bavarians are first mentioned in the mid-6th century, in the foothills north of the Alps, on both sides of the Danube. It is difficult to distinguish the mobile and mixing groups of the Danube in this period archaeologically. The timing comes after the period when the neighbouring Alamanni (to the west) and Thuringians (to the north) had come under Frankish hegemony, and in Italy the kingdoms of Theoderic and Odoacer had come to an end, creating a new power vacuum in the Alpine region. They seem to have been closely related to the Lombards who were developing as a force to the east of them. Their legal system shows heavy Roman influence, and their unification appears to have been under a Duke installed by the Franks (Old Bavarian law codes refer to five main lineages).

The Danubian frontier between the Roman empire and "Germania" had by this time become a region where older populations had been added to significantly by generations of Roman border troops, Germanic clients, and then various "barbarian" peoples from outside the empire, some of whom had been under the hegemony of Attila the Hun. " Elbe Germans", came from the river Elbe to the north, which was under Thuringian rule, and is where the Lombards had also been. But also more northern groups had moved along the Elbe from the direction of the North Sea, as did some Saxons who joined the Lombards, and possibly the Heruls. Also, East Germanic groups such as the Goths had entered the Pannonian region east of the Bavarians in the generations leading up to the empire of Attila. These peoples had not only contributed to the Hunnic empire, but also sometimes been settled peacefully as Roman ''foederati''.

Also entering the area, more contemporary with the Bavarians and Lombards, were Slavs, who particularly settled the Upper Palatinate as well as around Regensburg itself (distr. Großprüfening).

Neighboring the emerging Bavarian people in the 6th to 7th centuries were the Alamanni to the west (with the river Lech as boundary, which remains a dialectal division today), and Thuringians to the north, both dominated to some extent by the Franks as were the Bavarians (in the late 7th century however, there was a period where Radulf, King of Thuringia rebelled and some independence was returned to these three regions for a while).) Slavs were settling to the north-east, and Goths and Langobards to the east and south were later displaced by Slavs and Magyars.

Much like was the case in neighboring Alemannia, Bavaria was nominally Christian by virtue of being ruled by Christian dukes from the 6th century, but Christianization of its population was a gradual process lasting throughout the 7th century and into the 8th; Saint Corbinian was sent by Pope Gregory II

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