Inventing Luxembourg: Representations of the Past, Space and Language from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-first Century

The grand duchy of Luxembourg was created after the Napoleonic Wars, but at the time there was no 'nation' that identified with the emergent state. This book analyses how politicians, scholars and artists have initiated and contributed to nation-building processes in Luxembourg since the nineteenth century, processes that – as this book argues – are still ongoing. The focus rests on three types of representations of nationhood: a shared past, a common homeland and a national language. History was written so as to justify the country's political independence. Territorial borders shifted meaning, constantly repositioning the national community. The local dialect – initially considered German variant – was gradually transformed into the 'national language', Luxembourgish.

Pit Péporté, PhD (2008) in History, University of Edinburgh, is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg. With a background in the medieval history of the Low Countries, he has also published in the fields of historiography and collective memory.

Sonja Kmec, PhD (2004) in History, University of Oxford, is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg. Her latest book is Across the Channel, Noblewomen in Seventeenth-Century France and England (Trier: Kliomedia, 2009).

Benoît Majerus, PhD (2004) in History, Free University of Brussels, is a postdoctoral researcher (FNRS) at that same university. He has published extensively on the German occupation of Belgium and Luxembourg in the two world wars and the history of psychiatry.

Michel Margue, PhD (1999) in History, Free University of Brussels, is Professor of History at the University of Luxembourg and currently also its Dean of the Faculty of Lettres, Humanities, Arts and Education. He has published extensively on medieval history.