The Baltic Germans, calling themselves Balts and occasionally referred to as German Balts (Baltendeutsche, Balten, and Deutschbalten respectively), were the ethnically German inhabitants of that area on the Eastern shore of the Baltic Sea which forms today the countries of Estonia and Latvia. A juxtaposition to Baltic Germans is Imperial Germans (Reichsdeutsche), which refers, from the Baltic German perspective, both to Germans living within Germany (the German Reich), and Germans from Germany living and working in, or just visiting, the Baltics.
In Baltic German settlement patterns, the Baltic area was formed into the territories of Estonia (not to be mixed up with today's Estonia; the ancient one only covered the northern half of today's country) with the capital of Reval (now Tallinn), Livonia with the capital of Riga and the University of Tartu city of Dorpat (now Tartu), and Couronia (German: Estland, Livland, and Kurland). It included the two large islands of Ösel (now Saaremaa) and Dagö (now Hiiumaa).
Ethnic Germans started to come to the Baltic region as traders and missionaries who first in the 12th century, then already inhabited by vatrious finno-ugric and indo-germanic peoples. A systematic settlement (as the dominating class) by Germans dates from 1199, when Albert von Buxhoeveden from Bremen became Bishop of Livonia. Two years later, he founded Riga and also the Order of the Sword Brothers, a German Knights' order to protect the mission against the local "heathen" and to administer the territory. The Sword Brothers, in 1236, became part of the Teutonic Order. For 200 years, the Order State in the Baltics was part of the Holy Roman Empire.
The area was in the following century governed variously by Poland, Denmark, and Sweden, as well was by the Bishops of Riga and Dorpat, and by the Order. The latter became Protestant during the Reformation, and the land was split up among the knights. These form part of the German aristocracy. Between 1710 and 1795, following Russia's success in the Great Northern War, all Baltic areas became provinces of Russia.
However, the Baltic provinces remained dominated, and self-governed, by the local German-speaking aristocracy, which was based on the former knights but included several newcomers from Continental Germany as well. Originally German people also formed most of the professional classes in the region, the literati. Government, however, was in the hand of the Ritterschaft of each of the provinces, in which only members of the matriculated nobility held membership. Autonomy was guaranteed by the various rulers, especially during Russian times. The German-language University of Dorpat, the only one in the Baltic region for centuries, was the intellectual focus of the Baltic Germans, both nobility and literati. Germans, other than the estate-owners, mainly settled in the cities, such as Reval, Riga, Dorpat, and Pärnu, often German foundations and as late as in the mid-19th century still with a minority Estonian or Latvian population.
Local (indigenous) rural people from the Baltic region enjoyed no comparable rights under the Baltic German nobility to those of their brethren in Germany, Sweden or even Poland, rather was their fate comparable with that of the serfs in Russia. Harsh treatment resulted in some uprisings that were brutally suppressed. The situation in the cities was in some cases better.
German cultural autonomy ceased in the 1880s, when Russification precluded much schooling in German, German-language university instruction, etc. Already the Revolution of 1905 led to attacks against the Germans, burning of manors, and killing and torturing of members of the nobility, if usually not by the local inhabitants but by outside revolutionary bands. During World War I, the Baltic Germans as ethnic Germans were seen as the enemy by many Russians (and as traitors by the Germans), and so had a very difficult stand. In connection with the Russian Revolution and the subsequent Russian Civil War, many of the Baltic Germans fled to Germany.
When the Republics of Estonia and Latvia were founded in 1918/1919, the Baltic German estate owners were largely expropriated in a land reform, though they eventually regained some cultural autonomy. However, they were quite poor by then and had lost their influence, and even more emigrated. Finally, in 1939, the pact between Hitler and Stalin, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which gave Estonia and Latvia "back" to Russia (the Soviet Union), the remaining Baltic Germans were, by Germany and with German ships, evacuated and resettled, for some part, into the Warthegau and other areas that are parts of Poland today, so that they had to flee again towards the end of World War II.
A number of Baltic Germans, such as Karl Ernst von Baer, Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz, and Adam Johann von Krusenstern became famous as explorers or scientists.