Burgundians, Alamanni and the Abbey of Saint-Maurice
Saint-Maurice, Fribourg, Biel/Bienne, Valais
Key figures: Aetius, King Sigismund
HLS (German): Burgundians, Alamanni
The Burgundians in Sapaudia (443–534). In the fifth century Roman authority dissolves. In 443 the Roman general Aetius settles the survivors of the Burgundian people in Sapaudia, a region between the Jura, Lake Geneva, the Rhône and the Aare (not to be confused with present-day Savoy), probably to guard the Alpine passes and the route between the Rhône and the Rhine. They are few: according to the most recent estimates between 5,000 and 25,000 people. Within a few decades their kingdom expands to Lyon (461) and the Durance (478), with Lyon as its capital and a lesser kingdom at Geneva. In 532–534 it is conquered by the Franks.
Germanic people who speak Latin. The Burgundians integrate very quickly with the much larger Romance-speaking population: in Sapaudia they are perhaps a tenth to a third of the inhabitants, in the kingdom as a whole fewer than one in ten. Romans and Burgundians are buried in the same cemeteries, as at Sézegnin near Geneva, and the Burgundian law, issued by King Sigismund in 517, regulates the division of land: two thirds of the fields, a third of the slaves and half of the houses, woods and pastures go to the Burgundians. Their Germanic language disappears, leaving very few traces: people go on speaking Latin, from which the Franco-Provençal dialects of western Switzerland will emerge. Arian Christians, the Burgundians become Catholic with Sigismund, who converted between 501 and 507.
The Alamanni in the north-east (6th–8th centuries). The Alamanni, a Germanic people whose name means “all men”, are recorded from 289. Only in the second half of the sixth century and in the seventh, under Frankish leadership, do they cross the Rhine and settle on the Plateau. Their language is Old High German, the basis of the Swiss German dialects: its oldest evidence is a runic inscription on a brooch found at Bülach, from the first half of the seventh century. Place names tell the stages of settlement: first those ending in -ingen, then in -ikon, finally in -wil. Names beginning with Walen-, from the word the Germanic peoples used for the Romans (the same as “welsch”), mark areas where the two languages coexisted.
A border that forms slowly (7th–16th centuries). The language border is not the direct result of the arrival of the Burgundians and the Alamanni. In many areas the Romance language survives for a long time alongside the Germanic one, and only in the seventh and eighth centuries does a real border emerge in the main valleys; in the almost uninhabited mountain and forest areas between one valley and the next it forms later, little by little. In the Valais, German-speaking groups reach the Upper Valais between the eighth and ninth centuries, and an early border runs near Gampel and Steg. Over the following centuries German advances westwards and stops in the sixteenth century just above Sierre, at the Pfyn forest (Bois de Finges), where it still runs today.
Fribourg and Biel/Bienne, towns on the border. Two towns lie right on the line and are officially bilingual. In Fribourg German is the language of the administration from 1483 to 1798; after a period in which French and German alternate, both have been official languages since 1857 and fully equal since 1991. Today about two in three inhabitants speak French and one in four German. Biel/Bienne, originally strongly German-speaking, attracts many French speakers from the nineteenth century onwards to work in the watch industry; today about four in ten inhabitants speak French, and since 1996 bilingualism has been written into the municipal regulations.
The “Röstigraben”. The language border has also become a political image: the “ditch” separating German-speaking from French-speaking Switzerland. According to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland the idea emerges at the beginning of the First World War, when French-speaking Switzerland sides with France and German-speaking Switzerland with Germany; the word Rösti, the Swiss German potato dish, was probably added only in the 1970s and 1980s. Today the term is used above all when the two regions vote differently, for example on European issues. It has little value as analysis but great evocative power, so much so that it inspired the “Polentagraben” towards Ticino.
The Abbey of Saint-Maurice (515). In 515 the Burgundian king Sigismund founds the Abbey of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune in the Valais, on the site where, according to tradition, Saint Maurice and his legion were martyred. A few years later, in 523, Sigismund is captured while seeking refuge in the very monastery he founded, handed over to the Franks and killed shortly afterwards. The abbey is the oldest monastery in the West to have remained active without interruption.
The Abbey of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune in a photograph from 1935
Swedish National Heritage Board, Wikimedia Commons, no restrictions
The Kingdom of the Burgundians: in dark green the area settled after 443, in light green the kingdom in 476 (modern map)
Marco Zanoli, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Switzerland’s language regions by municipality, 2024: German, French, Italian and Romansh (map, German labels)
Tschubby, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
The bilingual street signs of the Grand-Rue/Reichengasse in Fribourg, 2025
Photo Martin Thurnherr, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Bülach brooch, first half of the 7th century, bearing the oldest Old High German inscription found in Switzerland, in runes, Swiss National Museum, Zurich
Photo Adrian Michael, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5
The Pfyn forest (Bois de Finges) between Sierre and Leuk, where the language border in the Valais has run since the 16th century, 2025
Photo Arkelin, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
André Bucher, the Röstigraben monument on the bank of the Saane/Sarine in Fribourg, 2008
Photo Ludovic Péron, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0