Alsace is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in the Grand Est administrative region of northeastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine, next to Germany and Switzerland. In January 2021, it had a population of 1,919,745. Alsatian culture is characterized by a blend of German and French influences.
Until 1871, Alsace included the area now known as the Territoire de Belfort, which formed its southernmost part. From 1982 to 2016, Alsace was the smallest administrative in metropolitan France, consisting of the Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin departments. Territorial reform passed by the French Parliament in 2014 resulted in the merger of the Alsace administrative region with Champagne-Ardenne and Lorraine to form Grand Est. On 1 January 2021, the departments of Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin merged into the new European Collectivity of Alsace but remained part of the region Grand Est. In April 2026, the French National Assembly approved a bill to separate Alsace from the Grand Est region, though this bill has yet to pass the Senate.
Alsatian is an Alemannic dialect closely related to Swabian, although since World War II most Alsatians primarily speak French. Internal and international migration since 1945 has also changed the ethnolinguistic composition of Alsace. The economic and cultural capital of Alsace, as well as its largest city, is Strasbourg, which sits on the present German international border. The city is the seat of several international organizations and bodies.
Alsace was part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, but after defeat in the Thirty Years' War it was annexed by France in the 17th century. In 1871, it became part of the newly founded German Empire, forming part of Alsace-Lorraine. Alsace was returned to France in 1919, but was reincorporated into Germany in 1940. After 1944 it again became French.
Etymology The name Alsace can be traced to the Old High German or Elisaz, meaning "foreign domain". An alternative explanation is from a Germanic Ell-sass, meaning "seated on the Ill",Roland Kaltenbach: Le guide de l’Alsace, La Manufacture 1992, , page 36 a river in Alsace.
History
In prehistoric times, Alsace was inhabited by nomadic hunters. Part of the province of Germania Superior in the Roman Empire, the area went on to become a diffuse border region between the French and the German cultures and languages. Long a center of the German-speaking world, after the end of the Thirty Years' War, southern Alsace was annexed by France in 1648, with most of the remainder conquered later in the century. In contrast to other parts of France, Protestants were permitted to practise their faith in Alsace even after the Edict of Fontainebleau of 1685 that abolished their privileges in the rest of France.
After the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War, Alsace was annexed by Germany and became a part of the 1871 unified German Empire as a formal Reichsland, or "imperial territory." After World War I the victorious Allies detached it from Germany and the province became part of the Third French Republic. Having been occupied and annexed by Germany during World War II, it was returned to France by the Allies at the end of World War II.
Pre-Roman Alsace The presence of hominids in Alsace can be traced back 600,000 years. By 4000 BC, farming arrived in the form of Linear Pottery culture in the region from the Danube and the Hungarian plain. The culture was characterized by "timber longhouse settlements and incised pottery ... favoring floodplain edge situations for their permanent villages ... [and] small clearings in the forest" for their crops and animals."
By 100 BC, Germanic peoples, including eventually the Suebi and other tribes under Ariovistus, had begun to intrude into areas along the upper Rhine and Danube long settled by Celtic Gauls. Alsace itself had come to be occupied by the Triboci, a Germanic tribe allied with Ariovistus.
Roman Alsace In response to the threat posed by Ariovistus, the Aedui, a Celtic tribe allied to Rome, appealed to the Roman Senate and Julius Caesar for aid. In 58 BC, after negotiations with Ariovistus failed, Julius Caesar routed the Suebi at the foot of the Vosges near what became Cernay in southern Alsace. There followed a "long period of security ... for the Gauls along the middle and upper Rhine."
From the time of Augustus to the early fifth century AD, the area of Alsace was incorporated into the Roman province of Germania Superior. As a border province, the Romans built fortifications and military camps, many of which, including Argentoratum (Strasbourg), evolved into modern towns and cities.
Alemannic and Frankish Alsace
In 357, Germanic tribes attempted to conquer Alsace but they were rebuffed by the Romans. With the decline of the Roman Empire, Alsace became the territory of the Germanic Alemanni. The Alemanni were agricultural people, and their Germanic language formed the basis of modern-day dialects spoken along the Upper Rhine (Alsatian, Alemannian, Swabian, Swiss). Clovis and the Franks defeated the Alemanni during the 5th century AD, culminating with the Battle of Tolbiac, and Alsace became part of the Kingdom of Austrasia. Under Clovis' Merovingian successors the inhabitants were Christianized. Alsace remained under Frankish control until the Frankish realm, following the Oaths of Strasbourg of 842, was formally dissolved in 843 at the Treaty of Verdun; the grandsons of Charlemagne divided the realm into three parts. Alsace formed part of the Middle Francia, which was ruled by the eldest grandson Lothar I.
Lothar died early in 855 and his realm was divided into three parts. The part known as Lotharingia, or Lorraine, was given to Lothar's son. The rest was shared between Lothar's brothers Charles the Bald (ruler of the West Frankish realm) and Louis the German (ruler of the East Frankish realm). In 870, Alsace became part of the East Frankish sphere under the Treaty of Meerssen and, together with Alemania east of the Rhine, came under the Duchy of Swabia, one of the five stem duchies of the medieval Kingdom of Germany.
Alsace within the Holy Roman Empire At about this time, the surrounding areas experienced recurring fragmentation and reincorporations among a number of feudal secular and ecclesiastical lordships, a common process in the Holy Roman Empire. Alsace experienced great prosperity during the 12th and 13th centuries under Hohenstaufen emperors.
Under the Hohenstaufen, a royal procuratio developed in Alsace, corresponding to the territorial sphere of the later Alsatian Landvogtei,Wolfgang Metz, Staufische Güterverzeichnisse: Untersuchungen zur Verfassungs- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1964, pp. 106-108. with its administration entrusted in part to ministeriales, legally unfree service personnel that later developed into a distinct ministerial nobility. The idea was that such men would be more tractable and less likely to alienate the fief from the crown out of their own greed. The province had a single provincial court (Landgericht) and a central administration with its seat at Hagenau. Frederick II designated the Bishop of Strasbourg to administer Alsace, but the authority of the bishop was challenged by Count Rudolf of Habsburg, who received his rights from Frederick II's son Conrad IV. Strasbourg began to grow to become the most populous and commercially important town in the region.
In 1262, after a long struggle with the ruling bishops, its citizens gained the status of free imperial city. A stop on the Paris-Vienna-Orient trade route, as well as a port on the Rhine route linking southern Germany and Switzerland to the Netherlands, England and Scandinavia, it became the political and economic center of the region. Cities such as Colmar and Hagenau also began to grow in economic importance and gained a kind of autonomy within the "Décapole" (or "Zehnstädtebund"), a federation of ten free towns.
Though little is known about the early history of the Jews of Alsace, there is a lot of information from the 12th century onwards. They were successful as moneylenders and had the favor of the Emperor. As in much of Europe, the prosperity of Alsace was brought to an end in the 14th century by a series of harsh winters, bad harvests, and the Black Death. These hardships were blamed on Jews, leading to the pogroms of 1336 and 1339. In 1349, Jews of Alsace were accused of poisoning the wells with plague, leading to the massacre of thousands of Jews during the Strasbourg pogrom. Jews were subsequently forbidden to settle in the town. An additional natural disaster was the Rhine rift earthquake of 1356, one of Europe's worst which made ruins of Basel. Prosperity returned to Alsace under Habsburg administration during the Renaissance.
Holy Roman Empire central power had begun to decline following years of imperial adventures in Italian lands, often ceding hegemony in Western Europe to France, which had long since centralized power. France began an aggressive policy of expanding eastward, first to the rivers Rhône and Meuse, and when those borders were reached, aiming for the Rhine. In 1299 the French proposed a marriage alliance between Blanche (sister of Philip IV of France) and Rudolf (son of Albert I of Germany), with Alsace to be the dowry; however, the deal never came off. In 1307, the town of Belfort was first chartered by the Counts of Montbéliard. During the next century, France was to be militarily shattered by the Hundred Years' War, which prevented for a time any further tendencies in this direction. After the conclusion of the war, France was again free to pursue its desire to reach the Rhine and in 1444 a French army appeared in Lorraine and Alsace. It took up winter quarters, demanded the submission of Metz and Strasbourg and launched an attack on Basel.
In 1469, following the , Upper Alsace was sold by Archduke Sigismund of Austria to Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Although Charles was the nominal landlord, taxes were paid to Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor. The latter was able to use this tax and a dynastic marriage to his advantage to gain back full control of Upper Alsace (apart from the free towns, but including Belfort) in 1477 when it became part of the demesne of the Habsburg family, who were also rulers of the empire. The town of Mulhouse joined the Swiss Confederation in 1515, where it was to remain until 1798.
By the time of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, Strasbourg was a prosperous community, and its inhabitants accepted Protestantism in 1523. Martin Bucer was a prominent Protestant reformer in the region. His efforts were countered by the Roman Catholic Habsburgs who tried to eradicate heresy in Upper Alsace. As a result, Alsace was transformed into a mosaic of Catholic and Protestant territories. On the other hand, Mömpelgard (Montbéliard) to the southwest of Alsace, belonging to the Counts of Württemberg since 1397, remained a Protestant enclave in France until 1793.
German Land within the Kingdom of France