...taking into account, of course, that these are only snapshots of a dynamic and changing social context, in which overall historical developments weigh heavier than the policies reflecting them. Nevertheless, a summary of main events.
Let's start with the history up until the fall of Napoleon. The following is all scraped together from Wikipedia and I promise it won't appear in any sort of final project. Frankly, all Wikipedia pages I read have made different selections of events. It seems a fair summary to say Luxembourg passed through a lot of noble hands from different origins: the Bourbons, Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns and the French. From this information you can't really tell how the everyday life of people in Luxembourg was affected, though.
963 Count Siegfried acquires the region and builds the first fortifications of what is now the Casemates.
1345 Luxembourg becomes a Duchy. ("The House of Luxemburg ... became one of the most important political forces in the 14th century, contending with the House of Habsburg for supremacy in Central Europe")
1411 Some dick (Sigismund of Luxembourg) loses Luxembourg because he defaulted on a loan
1451 Luxembourg is further sold on and eventually declared part of the Burgundian Netherlands
1547 and now it's part of the Habsburg Netherlands
At this time, as before and after, Luxembourg was pretty catholic; there were few Calvinists and so they had no problems with iconoclasm. During the 80 years war (1568-1648), they (whoever they is in this case) supported the Spanish king.
1648 Now it's part of the Spanish Netherlands, also known as Southern Netherlands
1684 Invasion by Louis XIV of France during the Nine Years' War of the Grand Alliance.
1697 Treaty of Ryswick - Luxembourg given back to Habsburgers.
1714 End of the Spanish War of Succession (after the last Spanish king died childless). Now Luxembourg becomes part of the Austrian Netherlands (I never knew that there were so many Netherlands through the course of history. Wikipedia notes: Luxembourg wasn't connected to the other Netherlands (Liège sat in between) and so Luxembourg "had a sense of own identity and was turned inwards".)
1795 French rule ("Forêts") because of the Napoleonic wars
1815 Congress of Vienna - Luxembourg gets formal independence and status as a Grand Duchy. Yet it's not really de facto independent because they also gave it to king Willem I of the Netherlands and it's also in the German Confederation.
Now we move on to the more language focused part of the timeline, based mainly on Horner & Weber (2013) but also on some things we heard in class.
1839 Independence of Luxembourg
18.. Law on education
1912 Werner/Engelmann develop an ortography for Luxembourgish that is largely based on German spelling
1914-18 WWI
1940-45 WWII. The Nazis oppress Luxembourgish because it is a "dialect" and enforce Hochdeutsch only. They hold a threefold referendum on Luxembourgish language and identity to which the Luxembourgish protest by voting dräimol Nee!
As a backlash to the Nazi policies, Luxembourgish language-nationalism inflares and French language gains in prestige considerably. German language loses a lot of status for a number of decades.
1948 Ortography that is as differentiated from German spelling as possible and based purely on phonetic principles
1950s-70s Luxembourgish steel industry creates need for a lot of additional labour. Guest workers are brought in from mainly Portugal and Italy, bringing their languages with them. French is closer to Portuguese and Italian than German is. This means that the children of the guest workers later struggle in schools, where teaching is traditionally first in Luxembourgish and German before it switches to French around age 12. It may also (over the next few decades) contribute to an increase of prestige for Luxembourgish as a marker of nativeness.
1984 Language law
1999 CPLL spelling reform
2001 New law on applications for naturalisation stipulate a test of Luxembourgish proficiency for those who want to acquire citizenship
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For more on this, a book I can recommend is Language Planning in Multilingual Contexts: Policies, communities and schools in Luxembourg, by Kathryn Anne Davis, written in 1994. Here it is on Google Books.
