Open Access

Astrid Adler, Heiko F. Marten

• Our paper discusses language questions in censuses as enactments of ideologies which both reflect, and shape, language policies in two nation states in Europe: Latvia and Germany. Both countries largely base their identities on a unifying national language - Latvian and German, respectively. At the same time, both countries display fundamentally different practices regarding active language policy and management, with Latvia having a strong language policy tradition, whereas Germany does not conduct coherent overt language policies. In this vein, the paper first provides an overview of the development of language questions in the censuses of Latvia and Germany under different political constellations since the first censues took place in the nineteenth century. We then discuss language ideologies in most recent census-type investigations in both countries. In this, we focus on the distinction between monolingual state policies and multilingual realities, and on the relation between languages and ethnic affiliation in shaping and analysing censuses. This relates both to migration-induced multilingualism (regarding, e.g. Russian in Latvia and Turkish in Germany), and to the presence of autochthonous or regional languages such as Latgalian and Low German. Thereby, we hope to raise awareness about language policy implications of language censuses in countries where nation-state ideologies are met by far more multilingual realities.