History, though, was unkind: it stands at the border of the French and the Teutonic worlds — and it sucks to be stuck in between (just ask Belgium). French, German, and the local Letzeburgisch (a bit Dutch, a bit German, mostly Letzeburgisch) are all spoken less on the grounds of "ethnicity" than by everyone at different times and situations.
Luxembourg was part of the Holy Roman Empire, then Napoléon Bonaparte's First French Empire, and finally the Kingdom of the Netherlands (and simultaneously the German Confederation). When Belgium left the Netherlands, Luxembourg stayed, but now it was stranded and it integrated its economy with that of Germany. Nevertheless, it was a poor country and many people headed for the United States.
Then Otto von Bismarck took over in Germany, and his Germany was anything but lame-duck. He had no interest in allowing the Dutch king to participate and he kicked Luxembourg out. The French offered to buy it up and the Dutch said yes. Bismarck said no, demanding a neutral country (so the French couldn't invade Germany that way). Four years later, France learned that you don't cross a chessmaster extraordinaire.
Forty years later, Luxembourg learned once again that being where it is sucks when Germany invaded (and had they not, the French, documents show, would have done so instead). But Luxembourg got off better than Belgium: their comically miniscule army was captured without loss of life by the Germans before war could be declared, and so the Germans legitimized their position by claiming that absolutely nothing had happened, allowing the civilian government to continue. Yeah right. In practice, Luxembourg was ruled as a German rear garrison with a permanent population, with all effective power being held by the military. Luxembourg was to be asked to join Germany (at gunpoint) after the expected German victory. Thankfully for Luxembourg, this was not to be, especially since — in large part because of German high-handedness — Luxembourg became culturally and politically estranged from Germany while defining itself as a free, independent, constitutional monarchy.
The Nazis weren't so civil and didn't like this one bit. Luckily, they lost, too. Since then, Luxembourg has been independent and filthy rich, having the highest GDP per capita in the world at around $108,000, compared to the United States' $47,000 (though the cost of living is a bit high, so by purchasing power, it's actually second after Qatar at $80,000, but still ridiculously high). And with France and Germany having sorted their thing out, today it's actually a real nice place to be. It was a founder member of The European Union, and uses the euro as its currency.
Luxembourg is a constitutional monarchy: the Grand Duke is currently Henri I. The Prime Minister is currently Xavier Bettel.
Ever since the emergence of parties in 1918, Luxembourg has been governed by coalitions (except for a period between 1921-1925), making it one of the most stable democracies. The CSV (Christian Social People's Party) and its predecessor the PD (Party of the Right) probably deserve some sort of record for being in charge between 1918-1925, 1926-1974 (during which the PD became the CSV) and 1979-present. Prime Ministers tend to have quite long mandates, like the most recent Pierre Werner (1959-1974 and 1979-1984), Jacques Santer (1984-1995) and Jean-Claude Juncker (1995-2013).
It has no navy (the no coast thing is a bit of a problem) and an army of c.450 people. Its air force consists of 17 AWACS planes, three trainers and a cargo plane, all bar the last NATO aircraft registered with the country for convenience purposes. That said, it does do peacekeeping a fair bit (when you're surrounded by allies, you don't need to worry too much about keeping troops at home).
Low taxes on alcohol, wink-wink nudge-nudge. Also, free public transport, with just a flat three euro charge for first class.
Radio Luxembourg (RTL- Radio Television Luxembourg- for non-English listeners)
One of the most famous things from the country is a long-wave (later medium-wave) radio station called Radio Luxembourg. This began in 1933, during a mini-boom in European stations that broadcast commercial programmes to the United Kingdom in defiance of the BBC's non-commercial monopoly. During World War II the station fell under Nazi control, but an engineer had hidden some transmitter parts to prevent it broadcasting at full power.
After the war ended there was some discussion about potentially using the Luxembourg transmitter to relay anti-communist programming from London, but this plan was foiled by the change of British government and in 1946 Radio Luxembourg resumed commercial operations.
From 1946 until 1973, Radio Luxembourg was the only English-language non-BBC radio station (not counting Radio Caroline and other pirate stations) that could be picked up in the UK. In the mid-1950s it switched to medium-wave and could only be heard at night. Its pop music station, Luxembourg 208, played on the fact the BBC Radio One only broadcast "part-time" and surrendered its airwaves to the far less hip Radio Two at seven p.m. every day. 208 started broadcasting at 6:45 every evening. Many shows were pre-recorded in London.
By the early 1960s, most of the station's programming consisted of record shows sponsored by various labels (all of them owned by just four companies), but the advent of pirate radio forced Luxembourg to adopt a more conventional top 40 format.
Luxembourg briefly operated on satellite as well as medium-wave from 1989 and added a 24-hour satellite service, but the medium-wave service closed at the end of 1991 and the satellite service a year later. A partly-owned companion station, Atlantic 252, operated on long-wave out of Ireland from 1989 until 2002 before being briefly replaced by a sport station.
The parent company, RTL Group, today owns two British production companies (Fremantle Media, which in turn owns the remnants of Thames Television), as well as several other European networks, these often using the RTL name.
Notable people from Luxembourg:
- Stéphane Bern, French-Luxembourgish TV host. Born in France, one branch of his family is Luxembourgish and he has dual citizenship.
- Jean-Claude Juncker, politician and statesman, Minister of Finances (1989-2009), Prime Minister (1995-2013) and President of the European Commission (2014-2019).
- Vicky Krieps, actress.
- Désirée Nosbusch, actress and TV host.
- Robert Schuman, politician and statesman, one of the founders of the European Communities, the Council of Europe and NATO. His background is a bit complicated as, although Schuman was born in Luxembourg, his father was actually from just across the border in France, in Moselle, the part of Lorraine that became part of Imperial Germany along with Alsace after the Franco-Prussian War and thus, he was born a German citizen and was educated (from secondary school on) mostly in Germany. He became a French citizen after World War I, after Alsace and Moselle became French again, and entered politics there, eventually rising to the position of Prime Minister by early 1950s when European Coal and Steel Community (ESCS), the precursor to the EU, was formed. Supposedly, Schuman never lost his "German" accent even after decades in French politics, although his native language would have been Luxembourgish (besides his Luxembourgish birth, the Germanic dialect of the Moselle region, is basically the same as Luxembourgish and whether Luxembourgish is a dialect of German or its own language was not a sure thing before World War I).
Luxembourg and Luxembourgers in fiction:
- M*A*S*H, oddly enough, features an episode with a missing Luxembourger. Luxembourg participated in The Korean War, with two deaths and two injuries. The concern expressed by the Luxemburgouis officer for one missing soldier was there to emphasise how a country so much smaller than the USA would consider the loss of one man to be a tragedy that affected everybody - this at a time when the US Army was routinely feeding whole regiments into the meat-grinder.
- In Resistance: Retribution, Luxembourg is the home of the Maquis and one of the few the free countries in Europe. Predictably, it is attacked and destroyed by the Chimera halfway through the game.
- In Swarm on the Somme, Luxembourg gets invaded and trashed severely by the Grex, but it has enough survivors (taking shelter in Germany) to potentially renew the country once the conflict ends. They are also determined to help the German (and later Entente) militaries with the reclamation of their homeland.
- In the music video for 16 Military Wives by The Decemberists, where every person is representing a country, America (Colin Meloy) declares war on Luxembourg (Chris Funk).
- In the Discworld, as the series and the concepts evolved, including one-for-one mapping of Discworld states with "Roundworld" equivalents, it is strongly hinted that the Grand Duchy of Sto Helit, a "pocket state" relatively close to Ankh-Morpork (England) is the Discworld Luxembourg.
- In Tada Never Falls in Love, the fictional European country of Larsenberg where the main heroine, Teresa Wagner came from was pretty obviously based on Luxembourg, down to their national flag below.
- Volume 12 of Infinite Stratos reveals that Luxembourg is the sole source of "time crystals" which are an essential component in the manufacturing of IS cores. It also introduces a New Transfer Student, Princess Iris of Luxembourg and her personal IS "Seventh Princess."
Luxembourgish Media
The Luxembourger flag
Coat of arms of Luxembourg
The Luxembourger national anthem
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Government
- Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy
- Monarch: Henri
- Prime Minister: Luc Frieden
- Deputy Prime Minister: Xavier Bettel
Miscellaneous
- Capital and largest city: Luxembourg City
- Population: 633,622
- Area: 2,586.4 km
- Currency: Euro (€) (EUR)
- ISO-3166-1 Code: LU
- Country calling code: 352
- Highest point: Kneiff (560 m/1,837 ft) (177th)
- Lowest point: Moselle River (133 m/436 ft) (58th)
