German Language in the Comprehensive High School of the Multicultural City of Osijek as a Transmitter of Central European Cultural Values - A Historical Approach

Abstract

Multilingualism and multiculturalism are inseparable parts of the identity of the city of Osijek, in which the German language played a unique role. In the introduction to this paper, the multicultural and multilingual milieu of the city of Osijek from the 17th to the 20th century is presented as the socio-linguistic ground for the development of the Essek dialect. The focus of the investigation is the German language as one of the carriers of Central European values, culture and worldview. Those values strongly influenced the way of life of the local population and the swing in the cultural and economic life of the city in the second part of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Although Croatian was declared the official language around the mid-19th century, German was still the spoken city language in the multilingual milieu of Osijek in the first decades of the 20th century. For a long time, German was the language of instruction in its classical (large) high school and, depending on the mother tongue of his students, it was their first or second language. Based on the school documentation kept in the Osijek City Museum and in the State Archive in the fundus of the classical high school, the teaching content and the obligatory reading in the subject “German language” at this high school are researched and analyzed. The aim of this study is to determine which values and worldviews were conveyed to the students through their German lessons. An interesting source of information about the values and educational goals promoted at that time in the classical Osijek high school are the subjects of compulsory essays in German, the lists of which can be found in the regular annual school reports of the high school. In the concluding part of the work, some negative features of life in a multicultural city in different socio-political circumstances are discussed as well.