Rhine Franconian

The Rhine Franconians speak the West Central German dialect chain between the Sankt Goar and Speyer lines, covering Rhenish Hesse and the Palatinate, its best-known varieties Palatine German and Hessian. Its northern anchor is Mainz, whose archbishop-elector ranked first among imperial princes; in 1455 Johannes Gutenberg printed his Bible there with movable type.

Martin Luther defended his teaching at Worms in 1521, and the Protestation at Speyer in 1529 named the Protestant movement. The Electoral Palatinate, held by the Wittelsbachs from 1214 and ruled from Heidelberg, became a Calvinist stronghold; Elector Frederick V accepted the Bohemian crown in 1619 and as the Winter King helped ignite the Thirty Years' War. Louis XIV's troops ravaged the Palatinate in the Nine Years' War of 1688 to 1697.

War and poverty drove thousands of Palatines to emigrate, especially to Pennsylvania, where their speech survives as Pennsylvania Dutch among the Amish. Mediatisation in 1803 secularised Mainz and dissolved the Palatinate; the Congress of Vienna in 1815 gave the left bank to Bavaria and Mainz to Hesse.