Opens:
It had long been my intense wish to get to know the cradle of ancient Netherländic literature. [...] On 19 September 1837 I reached the Belgian border. I had no interest in the Walloon areas, which I had got to know during my student days in Bonn; all my curiosity was focused on old Brabant and Flanders. At the dawn of the next day I reached Louvain, and met many locals; I did not hear a word of Flemish. I went to the railway station, handed in my luggage and booked a ride to Mechelen; I did not hear a word of Flemish. I got into my carriage, surrounded by hundreds of people; I did not hear a word of Flemish. I arrived at Mechelen’s great square, a concourse for thousands of people from the four Belgian railroads that meet there: even here I did not hear a word of Flemish except the inquiries spoken, in vain, by myself. [...] not even the names of the towns! And yet I had read and heard that the Flemish population had kept a certain attachment to their native language! That evening I arrived in Gent; I received a cordial welcome from Willems. [...] He introduced me to various public associations in Gent and to the most eminent scholars in that city. My impression was confirmed that, while the native language, shamefully abandoned in public life and relegated to the domestic sphere, still has its friends and champions, the country as a whole, especially since the revolution of 1830, has been strongly frenchified. [...] In everything that has any public stature, French has infiltrated, only church sermons are still hed in Flemish [...]
That is how I found the situation in Flanders and Brabant, and I must admit that it deeply pained me to see how the German, which still shows through in the essence and life of the Fleminglanders, is receding before the foreign influence. I saw this delightful, blessed land, with its many populous towns, its lively highways and railroads, its navigable rivers, its fertile corfields, its lush meadows, its trade, arts and commerce, I saw how a multitude of things are here at work to render a people content and happy – and even so I was pained to see how this land was torn away, is tearing itself away, from the great German national lineage.
The conclusion:
Fleminglandish is a Niederdeutsch language and conveys just like Plattdeutsch a familiarity and understanding of High German (Hochdeutsch). If German Belgium were to give up its own language and literature, then the High German language would have a more natural, and therefore more justified claim than that non-German, French language. If at some future date the educated classes of German Belgium were to speak and write High German, and to that extent take part in the German-language literary production, then this would not be a great marvel, any more than that ever since the 16th century the Nether-Germans in Germany’s northern lands (the lower Rhine, Westphalia, Lower Saxony) and on the hither shores of the Baltic Sea speak and write High German, and add their intellectual cooperation to German literature as much as the inhabitants of the regions where the Upland-German (Oberdeutsch) tongue is spoken, even though Niederdeutsch has remained their native tongue.