Baden-Württemberg Honors Dialectology Pioneer Hubert Klausmann with Staufer Medal

Baden-Württemberg's Premier Awards Professor Hubert Klausmann the Staufer Medal in Gold

Premier Winfried Kretschmann has awarded the Staufer Medal in Gold to Professor Dr. Hubert Klausmann, a renowned expert in dialectology who until his retirement served as Professor of Folk Dialectology at the University of Tübingen. Klausmann has dedicated his career to documenting, researching, and preserving regional dialects, with a particular focus on those of southwestern Germany.

When it comes to dialects in Baden-Württemberg, Professor Dr. Hubert Klausmann is the preeminent linguist. For decades, he has studied how and where people across the region "gschwätz"—listening closely to their speech, collecting data, and analyzing linguistic patterns.

"Professor Klausmann is the leading authority on dialects in Baden-Württemberg. He truly 'listens to how people speak' and has spent decades documenting and interpreting the way we communicate in this region," said Premier Kretschmann on March 18, 2026, at Villa Reitzenstein. "He has made an invaluable contribution to preserving the linguistic diversity and authenticity of Baden-Württemberg. Professor Klausmann has a remarkable ability to explain how we speak—and why."

Kretschmann emphasized that Klausmann has consistently highlighted the naturalness of dialect and regional speech. His research has centered on Alemannic dialects in Baden-Württemberg, Vorarlberg, Liechtenstein, and Bavaria, as well as the previously understudied Franconian dialects in northern Baden-Württemberg. He has also explored the origins of local surnames, publishing extensively and delivering lectures on these topics. A standout achievement is the "Spoken Language Atlas of Baden-Württemberg", an online resource developed by Tübingen's "Language in Southwestern Germany" research unit, which Klausmann led.

"Through his engaging and accessible approach, Professor Klausmann makes complex linguistic research understandable to a broad, non-academic audience," the premier noted. "I am deeply grateful for his outstanding commitment to Baden-Württemberg's dialects, his role in our Dialect Initiative, and his contributions as an advisor on dialect policy."

Born and raised in Breisach am Rhein, Klausmann studied Romance and Germanic philology at the University of Freiburg. His passion for linguistics and language geography was sparked during a study abroad program in Grenoble, in the French Alps. He later focused his doctoral research on the Breisgau dialects of his home region.

From 1980 to 2000, Klausmann contributed to the Vorarlberg Language Atlas. Alongside his career as a German and French teacher at a grammar school in Ellwangen (1985–2018), he earned his postdoctoral qualification (Habilitation) in 2000 at the University of Bayreuth and was appointed extraordinary professor of linguistics in 2006. In 2009, he joined Tübingen's Ludwig Uhland Institute for Empirical Cultural Studies in a part-time capacity, where he later became extraordinary professor of folk dialectology in 2014. There, he served as academic director of the "Language in Southwestern Germany" research unit.

In April 2025, Klausmann and Premier Kretschmann unveiled Baden-Württemberg's Dialect Strategy. He is also a member of the state government's Dialect Advisory Council.

In the "Linguistic Everyday Life II" project, Professor Klausmann focused on digitizing the Arno Ruoff Archive. The archive houses well over 1,000 historic reel-to-reel recordings along with their transcripts. Dating back to the 1950s, the recordings preserve the voices of speakers from more than 500 locations across Baden-Württemberg, Bavarian Swabia, Vorarlberg, and Liechtenstein. Among the project's key objectives were the online publication of the five-volume Linguistic Atlas and a digital, "spoken" dialect atlas of Baden-Württemberg. "It's fascinating to listen or look up the different expressions and words used across our region for the very same thing," emphasized the state premier. Additionally, the project produced an audiobook publication, serving as a dialect-spoken testament to the era.