Brandenburgish

The Brandenburgish are Low German speakers of the western marches of Brandenburg, the Altmark and Magdeburg Börde, held by Slavic Wends in the eighth century. Henry the Fowler subdued the area in 928 and 929; Otto I set up the Northern March in 936 and the Magdeburg Archbishopric in 968, until the 983 Wendish rising overthrew the march for a century and a half.

In the Ostsiedlung Albert the Bear retook Brandenburg in 1157 and founded the Margraviate; colonists' Low German became the Brandenburgish dialect. Its margraves became electors under the 1356 Golden Bull, and Hohenzollern Frederick I took over in 1415.

Brandenburg accepted the Reformation in 1539; in the Thirty Years' War the Catholic League sacked Magdeburg in 1631, killing some twenty-five thousand. The Great Elector's 1685 Edict of Potsdam welcomed Huguenot refugees; the margraviate became the heart of the Prussian kingdom until the Holy Roman Empire dissolved in 1806.