Statistics

Number of speakers: native

It is not possible to specify the exact number of speakers for the Bielsko German dialect for any historical period.
Based on the oldest known placenames written down in the Liber fundationis episcopatus Vratislaviensis (The Book of Endowments for the Bishopric of Wrocław), Bożena and Bogusław Chorąży attempted to determine the initial ethnic makeup of those settlements prior to joining the Bielsko language enclave. They assessed that Kamienica, Międzyrzecze and Stare Bielsko were founded by a Slavic population, whereas Bielsko and Komorowice (Bertoldowice) must have been established by a German one. Furthermore, Mikuszowice and a district of Komorowice, Mückendorf , were inhabited primarily by a Germanic people (Chorąży and Chorąży 2010c: 214Chorąży i Chorąży 2010c / komentarz/comment /
Chorąży, Bożena i Bogusław Chorąży 2010c. „Zaplecze osadnicze Bielska”, w:  Panic 2010: 205-222.
). These were the people who have given birth to the German dialects of Bielsko and its surroundings.
When the German language was still in the early stages of its codification, the 17th century German-speaking population of the Bielsko-Biała language enclave was likely to use only their local dialect. While it is not possible to determine how many people out of the total population spoke these dialects there are certain document that may shed some light on the issue. For example, the Schematyzmy biskupów wrocławskich (a type of document containing statistical figures) tended to suggest which language should be used to mass so that the majority of the congregation can understand it. Panic has conducted some prelimary research on these documents (2010: 341Panic 2010 / komentarz/comment /
Panic, Idzi (red.) 2010. Bielsko-Biała. Monografia miasta. Tom I. Bielsko od zarania do wybuchu wojen śląskich (1740). Bielsko-Biała: Wydział Kultury i Sztuki Urzędu Miejskiego w Bielsku-Białej.
) but much more work is needed.  
Walter Kuhn, Idzi Panic (2010: 362Panic 2010 / komentarz/comment /
Panic, Idzi (red.) 2010. Bielsko-Biała. Monografia miasta. Tom I. Bielsko od zarania do wybuchu wojen śląskich (1740). Bielsko-Biała: Wydział Kultury i Sztuki Urzędu Miejskiego w Bielsku-Białej.
) and Jerzy Polak (2010: 186Polak 2010 / komentarz/comment /
Polak, Jerzy (red.) 2010. Bielsko-Biała. Monografia miasta. Tom II. Biała od zarania do zakończenia I wojny światowej (1918). Bielsko-Biała: Wydział Kultury i Sztuki Urzędu Miejskiego w Bielsku-Białej.
) attempted to determine the ethnic composition of Bielsko and Biała by looking at the surnames contained in the towns' urbaria. The relation between Germanic and Slavic surnames exhibited much fluctuation. The methodology itself was questioned by its authors as highly unreliable.


Theatre Square in Bielsko
see: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bielsko-Bia%C5%82a_Plac_Teatralny_002.JPG

The 19th century saw census to be conducted on a much larger scale. The first census that would provide detailed information on the demographics of Bielsko, Biała and their surrounding towns and villages was held in 1880. While it did not ask for nationality, it did require an answer to the "language at home" question (Polak 2010: 384Polak 2010 / komentarz/comment /
Polak, Jerzy (red.) 2010. Bielsko-Biała. Monografia miasta. Tom II. Biała od zarania do zakończenia I wojny światowej (1918). Bielsko-Biała: Wydział Kultury i Sztuki Urzędu Miejskiego w Bielsku-Białej.
). The table below presents the results of the 1890, 1910, 1921 and 1943 censuses (Wurbs 1981: 7-8Wurbs 1981 / komentarz/comment /
Wurbs, Gerhard 1981.  Die deutsche Sprachinsel Bielitz-Biala. Eine Chronik. Wien.
). The left columns represented the total population of a given town or village, the number of people speaking German at home can be found in brackets, just as how big a percentage they constitute against the total population.

	1890			1910			1921			1943
Aleksandrowice	1946	1462	75%	2417	2078	86%	2475	1757	71%
Stare Bielsko	2559	2175	85%	2888	2628	91%	2627	2154	82%	2198	1780	81%
Komorowice	448	228	51%	655	498	76%	721	115	16%	863	483	56%
Bystra	435	322	74%	547	284	52%	581	267	46%	751	383	51%
Kamienica	2348	2090	89%	3389	3118	92%	3258	2574	79%
Wapienica	749	494	66%	818	638	78%	837	686	82%	2995	2456	82%
Mikuszowice	1091	873	80%	1484	1217	82%	1625	1137	70%
Międzyrzecze G.	1635	1063	65%	1642	1100	67%	1575	1087	69%	2398	1607	67%
Bielsko	14573	11658	80%	18568	15225	82%	19758	12860	65%	54393	39162	72%
Biała	7622	5869	77%	8264	6529	79%	7746	2168	28%
Hałcnów	2592	2385	92%	2651	2045	77%	2692	1804	67%	3157	2336	74%
Lipnik	7172	4088	57%	8417	4798	57%	9326	2797	30%	4307	1981	46%
Wilamowice	1725	1242	72%	1191	786	66%	1744	52	3%	3157	2336	74%
Razem	44895	33949	76%	52931	40944	77%	54994	28458	52%	73180	51177	70%

The above table does not include the census reports for 1931 which indicated a developing polonisation process of the region. In Biała and the newly incorporated into it Lipnik, 18,2% of its inhabitants declared that their language used at home was German.  Polak (2012: 77Polak 2012 / komentarz/comment /
Polak, Jerzy 2012. Bielsko-Biała w zwierciadle czasu. Wspomnienia mieszkańców z lat 1900-1945. Bielsko-Biała: Wydział Kultury i Sztuki Urzędu Miejskiego.
) estimates that at the time the percentage of Germans and Jews who became assimilated by the German population was higher and constituted around 35%. At the same time, the same data for Bielsko showed 56,7%.

The questions in the census were not open. One could choose between German, Polish, possibly "Jewish", Czech and Slovak. That is why it is impossible to estimate how many speakers of the languages and dialects of the Bielsko-Biała language enclave there actually were. Numerous sources state that until the II World War both Hałcnów and Wilamowice were mostly Hałcnovian and Wilamowicean speaking. There is hardly any mention of any other dialect being used, but by combining the few sources that exist with auxiliary historical documents it is possible to draw some conclusions.
Industrialization caused masses of people to emigrate to Bielsko and Biała, and other localities in their vicinity as well. As can be seen in the table provided, despite two World Wars there populations of both towns increased twofold between 1890 and 1943. The native populations, thus, became the minority and as a result, the old dialectal varieties slowly vanished while new ones appeared. It was only in 1908 that Erwin Hanslik (1908: 31-32Hanslik 1908 / komentarz/comment /
Hanslik, Erwin, 1908. Biala, eine deutsche Stadt in Galizien. Wien-Teschen-Leipzig.
) referred to this situation:  

The collections of Bukowski are of great value because the things he describes no longer exist. We were not able to save anything more. It was already too late and most of it is lost forever.

Also Komorowice, Bystra, Kamienica, Wapienica and Mikuszowice experienced a sudden spike in their population sizes. The population levels remained stable in Lipnik, Aleksandrowice, Międzyrzecze, Stare Bielsko, Wilamowice and Hałcnów. By observing the demographics it was in these towns and villages that the local language varieties ought to be spoken by the largest percentages of their populations before the II World War. This assumption is confirmed when it comes to Stare Bielsko given the sources of both academic and private nature. That is how Erwin Hanslik wrote about Stare Bielsko in 1909: 

Here is where the old, Middle German dialect is still spoken as it was once spoken throughout the whole of the language enclave.

As we can read in the memories of Anna Herok, a Pole living in the 1930s and 1940s: 

I can still remember the native Old Bielsko men and women who would wear their characteristic dresses with their high conical hats and would speak their dialect, a kind of malformed German language (Polak 2012: 120Polak 2012 / komentarz/comment /
Polak, Jerzy 2012. Bielsko-Biała w zwierciadle czasu. Wspomnienia mieszkańców z lat 1900-1945. Bielsko-Biała: Wydział Kultury i Sztuki Urzędu Miejskiego.
).

Based on these sources it can be concluded that prior to the II World War there were no more than 10 thousand speakers of any of the old language varieties spoken around Bielsko and Wilamowice. This number comprised of the majority of the inhabitants of Wilamowice, Hałcnów and Stare Bielsko, as well as some less numerous speakers of other local dialects. The percentage of those who did not speak either Polish or standard German was likely to be close to null.


The Old Marketsquare in Bielsko
see: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bielsko-Bia%C5%82a_Rynek_003.JPG

Speakers at present

One of the consequences of the II World War were oustings of the majority of the German-speaking population of Bielsko and Biała to Germany and Austria. Although there is a number of organizations in Austria and Germany that associate the former residents of the Bielsko-Biała language enclave and their descendents, there is no way of knowing whether any of them still can speak their local dialects. They might have lost the language of their childhood as living in a German-speaking environment, they may have quickly been assimilated.

What can be known, however, is that in July 2012 there were 8 people who knew Hałcnovian in Bielsko-Biała. The eldest was 90 years old, the youngest - 75 years old. Although each of them highly values their language, there are dim chances for its survival.