Other divisions · Language
Low German and High German
North of the Benrath line people traditionally said "maken", south of it "machen". 130 of today's 401 districts lie mostly in the old Low German north, home to 37% of Germany's people; 34% live in the Central German belt and 29% in the Upper German south.
| Zone | Districts | People | Share | Area |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low German (north of the Benrath line) maken, ik, Appel — Low Saxon and Low Franconian dialects | 130 | 31 m | 37.2% | 147,285 km² |
| Central German (between the lines) machen, Appel — Ripuarian, Moselle Franconian, Hessian, Palatine, Thuringian, Upper Saxon | 128 | 28.1 m | 33.7% | 99,525 km² |
| Upper German (south of the Speyer line) machen, Apfel — Alemannic, Swabian, Bavarian, East Franconian | 143 | 24.3 m | 29.1% | 110,779 km² |
Between about AD 500 and 800 the High German consonant shift turned p, t and k into pf, ts and ch in the south of the German-speaking area, but faded out towards the north. The result is a staircase of dialect boundaries, each marking where one sound change stopped. The best known is the Benrath line, named after a district of Düsseldorf where it crosses the Rhine: north of it the k in "maken" survived, south of it it became "machen". It runs from Aachen past Düsseldorf and Kassel, along the southern edge of the Harz and over the Elbe at Barby to Frankfurt an der Oder.
Further south the Speyer line marks the Appel/Apfel boundary, from the Palatinate across the Rhine near Speyer, through the Odenwald and the Spessart and along the northern edge of the Thuringian Forest to the Vogtland. Between the two lines lie the Central German dialects (Ripuarian Kölsch, Moselle Franconian, Hessian, Palatine, Thuringian, Upper Saxon); south of the Speyer line the Upper German ones (Alemannic, Swabian, Bavarian, East Franconian). Standard German grew mainly from the Central and Upper German written languages, which is why "machen" and "Apfel" are the standard forms.
The lines are drawn as Georg Wenker's survey found them around 1880, and they have moved since. In the 16th century Low German was still spoken in Halle, Dessau and Berlin; by Wenker's time Berlin's city speech had shifted to High German, and in much of Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg the old Low German dialects have now all but disappeared. In the north Low German (Plattdeutsch) survives as a regional language recognised under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, still spoken mostly by older people.
The dialect belts line up with a north–south gradient in today's economy, although language is surely not the cause: within the former West alone, unemployment falls from 7.3% in the Low German north to 6.3% in the Central German belt and 4.2% in the Upper German south, while average gross monthly salaries rise from €4,125 to €4,299 and €4,408.
Does the line still show?
Today's figures on each side, as population-weighted averages of the district values (our calculation from the live themes on this site).
| Indicator | Low German (north of the Benrath line) | Central German (between the lines) | Upper German (south of the Speyer line) |
|---|---|---|---|
| AfD vote 2025 | 19.3% | 22.4% | 19.9% |
| Green vote 2025 | 11.5% | 11.4% | 12.6% |
| Unemployment 2025 | 7.3% | 7.0% | 4.3% |
| Gross monthly salary € 31.12.2025 | 4,041 | 4,127 | 4,385 |
| Young people 31.12.2025 | 12.9% | 13.2% | 13.4% |
| Childcare 1 March 2025 | 39.4% | 42.3% | 33.6% |
| Foreign population 31.12.2025 | 15.3% | 17.3% | 18.3% |
How we drew the line
The Benrath line (maken/machen) and the Speyer line (Appel/Apfel) are drawn as polylines through the 39 and 21 places that the dialectological literature names for their course in Georg Wenker's survey of the 1880s (straight between these places; the Benrath line is drawn as a wide arc around Berlin, whose urban speech was already High German). Each of today's 401 districts is assigned to the dialect zone that holds the majority of its area, estimated from about 2,000 sample points per district on the official BKG boundaries (VG2500). North of the Benrath line: Low German; between the lines: Central German; south of the Speyer line: Upper German.
- An approximation by today's district boundaries: districts that a line crosses are shown wholly in the zone holding most of their area.
- The lines are drawn straight between documented places; real isoglosses wind from village to village and form bundles rather than single lines, so districts within a few kilometres of a line (e.g. in the Bergisches Land, the Rothaar Mountains, northern Hesse, the Harz foreland, the Odenwald, the Spessart and the Rhön) could fall either way.
- The Speyer line is the classic Appel/Apfel isogloss; because it puts southern Thuringia on the Upper German side, many dialectologists now draw the Central/Upper German boundary further south along the Germersheim–Geisa–Hof line.
- Shows the traditional rural dialects around 1880. Since then Low German has retreated, especially in Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg, and most people now speak regional varieties of standard German.
- Small language islands are not shown (e.g. the Central German Upper Harz around Clausthal-Zellerfeld inside the Low German area).