Selling French: Netherlandish Migrants as Linguistic Brokers in Early Modern Germany (1560–1600)

Language skills could provide valuable professional and social opportunities for early modern migrants, but little is known of the actual linguistic strategies they employed. This article analyzes how sixteenth-century migrants from the southern Low Countries acted as linguistic brokers, leveraging their knowledge of French language and literature in their German host societies. Even though French was not their native language, members of the Netherlandish migrant community were responsible for the first French-German grammars and dictionaries, and played a pivotal role in introducing French Renaissance poetry to Germany.