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German diaspora

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Ethnic Germans—usually simply called Germans, in German Volksdeutsche, or (less exactly but also less tainted by Nazism) Auslandsdeutsche (lit. abroad-Germans)—are those who are considered, by themselves or others, to be ethnically German, but do not live within the present-day Federal Republic of Germany or hold its citizenship. The English language practice is to refer to the ethnic Germans of a given country as <country name adjective>-Germans, for example, "Brazilian Germans" are ethnic Germans located in Brazil. This practice breaks down when referring to countries that no longer exist ("Kingdom of Hungary" Germans) or regions that that transcend existing country boundaries Black Sea Germans

The concept of ethnic belonging is always problematic; it can relate to:

  • having a connection with German culture
  • speaking the German language
  • having ancestors who were born in Germany or an area that is or was otherwise considered German

The concept of who is an ethnic German has repeatedly changed in history. For example, in contrast to the Swiss Germans and the Dutch, who had already split off and shaped separate national identities, most German-speaking Austrians used to consider themselves as ethnic Germans until the mid-20th century. The first attempts to create a consciousness of the "Austrian nation" took place during the Napoleonic Wars (at which time "Austrian" identity included non-German-speaking subjects of the Austrian Empire) and in the early 1930s, but without major effects. After World War II, Austrians increasingly came to see themselves as a nation distinct from the German nation. A sizeable minority of Austrians (5-10%) still identify themselves as German ("Deutschnational"); this view is especially strong in the southern state of Carinthia.

Distribution

Ethnic Germans are an important minority group in many countries. (See Germans, German language, and German as a minority language for more extensive numbers and a better sense of where Germans maintain German culture and have official recognition.) The following sections briefly detail the historical and present distribution of ethnic Germans by region, but generally exclude modern expatriates, who have a presence in the United States, Scandinavia, the Phillipines (961), the UAE (1,300), Japan, South Africa, and major urban areas worldwide. See Groups at bottom for a list of all ethnic German groups, or continue for a prosaic summary by region.

Anglo-America

  • There are over 60 million Americans of German ancestry in the United States. Of these, 23 million (about 12% of U.S. whites) are of German ancestry alone ("single ancestry"), and another 40 million are of partial German ancestry. Of those who claim partial German ancestry (about 30% of American whites), 22 million identify their primary ancestry ("first ancestry") as German. German Americans are the largest white ethnic group in the northern United States (excluding New England), and form about half the white population in the Upper Midwest. [1] [2]
  • Canada (2.7 million, 9% of the population)

Latin America

Latin America is home to considerable and fairly well-known German groups, mostly originating from Eastern Europe and Austria, who came either before World War II for religious or economic reasons, or who came as refugees following the war. Some, such as Argentine president Nestor Kirchner, are German in name only, but very often ethnic Germans in Latin America have their own fairly independent communities often designed to look like traditional German villages in all their various forms, and prosper by raising wheat or dairy cattle, often without the native manual labor ubiquitous among the very wealthy Latin American elite of European ancestry. Volga Germans and (Plautdietsch-speaking) Mennonites are some of the more prominent such groups. Notable communities are in:

  • Brazil: Mainly in southern Brazil, there are 6 million single-ancestry ethnic Germans, 3% of the national population; 12 million Brazilians are part German, 7% of the national population.
  • Ecuador: 32,000, counting standard German-speakers only
  • Chile: 35,000, counting standard German-speakers only
  • Argentina: 400,000 standard German speakers, more Mennonites and Volga Germans
  • Paraguay: 147,000 standard German and 38,000 Plautdietsch (Mennonites), most of whom also know standard German
  • Uruguay: 28,000 standard German, 1,200 Plautdietsch
  • Bolivia
  • Venezuela (mostly in Colonia Tovar)
  • Mexico, Bolivia, and Belize: 40,000, 28,567, and 5,763 Mennonite German speakers respectively, as well as notable (but more assimilated) public figures from various German groups
  • Puerto Rico: 1,453 speakers
  • Also, some of the ethnic Germans in Texas descend from German settlers who arrived when it was Mexican territory.

Western Europe and the Alpine Nations

In Italy there are two main groups. The 225,000 ethnic Germans of South Tyrol, formerly (before the 1919 annexation) part of Austrian Tyrol, now constitute a growing majority in this autonomous region of Italy. Naturally, their dialects are basically extensions of Austrian German. There also exist some very unique populations of Germans, the Cimbrians, the Móchenos and some groups of Walser, who arrived so long ago that their dialect retains many archaic features heard nowhere else. The Cimbrians, though celebrated since their discovery, are relatively few in number and concentrated in various communities in the Carnic Alps, north of Verona, and eespecially in the Sugana Valley (Valsugana or Suganertal) on the high plateau northwest of Vicenza in the Veneto Region. The Italian Walser (who originated in the Swiss Valais) live in the provinces of Aostatal, Vicelli, and Verbania-Cusio-Ossola. The Móchenos live in the Fersina Valley.

In Switzerland, Swiss Germans constitute the majority of the population. They write formally in Standard German, but in many respects have hewn a separate national identity built upon their long history of stable, alpine, isolationist, multinationalist neutrality and their Swiss German language, which is basically incomprehensible to someone who speaks only Standard German. In Austria and Liechtenstein, both of which are primarily German-speaking countries, the situation is less extreme, but nevertheless, there are very few who would call Swiss, Austrians, or Lichtensteiners Volksdeutsche, if only because it sounds like pan-German nationalism and also because it may offend or belittle them.

In France, the Alsace-Lorraine region and cities such as Strasbourg (with bilingual signs) and Metz were originally German, but since territorial transfers resulting from the world wars, and given the French take on language, ethnicity, and the Republic, assimilation has decimated the Alsatian dialect. The German-speaking population is estimated at 1,500,000, plus another 40,000 for ethnic Luxemburgers.

German-speaking areas of Belgium.

In Belgium, there is also a German minority, who form the majority in their region of 71,000 inhabitants (though Ethnologue puts the national total at 150,000, not including Limburgisch and Luxembourgish). In Luxembourg, Germans constitute the majority, though they speak the Luxemburgish language, which has a separate written standard. In the Netherlands, there are 380,000 Germans, though the Dutch-German language continuum clouds the issue considerably.

In Denmark, the part of Schleswig that is now South Jutland County (or Nordschleswig) has about 23,000 Germans, similar to the Danes south of the border. These Germans mostly speak the Schleswigsch variety of Plattdeutsch.

Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

The great bulk of ethnic Germans outside of the German-speaking countries have historically been concentrated in Central and Eastern Europe, and these Germans are the population to which the term Volksdeutsche is most frequently applied. There are many ethnic Germans in the countries that are now Germany and Austria's neighbors to the east—Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia— but there are or have been significant populations in such areas as Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, and Russia. The German presence in Central and Eastern Europe is rooted in centuries of history, that of Prussia, Austria-Hungary, Bukovina, Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), Bessarabia and of a fractious Germany and eastward parts of Europe made up of many city states, whose royal families ruled over multi-ethnic populations. Every city of even modest size as far east as Russia had a German quarter and a Jewish quarter (though, of course, there were relatively few Jews east of the Pale of Settlement). Travellers along any road would pass through, for example, a German village, then a Czech village, then a Polish village, etc., depending on the region.

Eastward Expansion

See main articles East Colonisation and Ostflucht

Near the end of the Migration Period (300-900 AD) that brought the Germanic and Slavic tribes as well as the Huns, etc., to what is now Central Europe, Slavs expanded westwards at the same time as Germans expanded eastwards. The result was German colonization as far east as Romania, and Slavic colonization as far west as present-day Lübeck (on the Baltic Sea), Hamburg (connected to the North Sea), and along the river Elbe and its tributary Saale further south. After Christianization, the superior organization of the Roman Catholic Church led to further German expansion, known as the medieval Drang nach Osten. By 1100 or so, various rulers were often inviting ethnic Germans to their territories as craftsmen, miners, or farmers.

At the same time, naval innovations led to a German domination of trade in the Baltic Sea and Eastern Central Europe through the Hanseatic League. Along the trade routes, Hanseatic trade stations became centers of Germanness where German urban law (Stadtrecht) was promoted by the presence of large, relatively wealthy German populations and their influence on the worldly powers.

Thus some of the people whom we today often consider "Germans", with a common culture and worldview very different from that of the surrounding rural peoples, colonized as far north of present-day Germany as Bergen (in Norway), Stockholm (in Sweden), and Vyborg (in Russia). At the same time, it is important to note that the Hanseatic League was not exclusively German in any ethnic sense. Many towns who joined the league should not at all be characterized as "German"; they were outside of the Holy Roman Empire, which even in itself was not in any way exclusively German.

German- and Netherlandic-speaking areas in 1937: yellow: Low Germanic languages; blue: Central German; brown: Upper German. The map uses the German names of cities; for example, Hermannstadt is now Sibiu, Romania

It is thus that some groups, such as the Baltic Germans, the Volga Germans, and the Transylvanian Saxons, had very established residence (in some cases extending back to the crusades of Teutonic Knights that resulted in the removal of native populations and their replacement by German settlers) in the eastern Baltic, southern Russia, and what is now Romania, respectively. Over time, other groups like this often either became assimilated by local populations or by later waves of Germans.

By the 1500s, much of Pomerania, Prussia, the Sudetenland, Bessarabia, Galicia, South Tyrol, Carniola, and Lower Styria had many German cities and villages. Numerous transfers and migrations ocurred later: for example, within the Habsburg Monarchy at the end of Ottoman incursion into Europe (which penetrated as far as Vienna). Thus, the Danube Swabians settled in Pannonia and the Bukovina Germans in Bukovina.

The World Wars

By World War I, there were isolated groups of Germans or so-called Schwaben as far southeast as the Bosphorus (Turkey), Georgia, and Azerbaijan. After the war, Germany's and Austria-Hungary's loss of territory and the rise of communism in the Soviet Union meant that more Germans than ever were minorities in various countries, though on the whole they still enjoyed fairly good treatment.

The status of ethnic Germans, and the lack of contiguity resulted in numerous repatriation pacts whereby the German authorities would organize population transfers (especially the Nazi-Soviet population transfers arranged between Adolf Hitler) and Joseph Stalin, and others with Benito Mussolini's Italy) so that both Germany and the other country would increase their homogeneity. However, this was but a drop in the pond, and the Heim ins Reich rhetoric over ther continued disjoint status of enclaves such as Danzig and Königsberg was an agitating factor in the politics leading up to World War II, and is considered by many to be among the major causes of the war.

This aggressiveness on the part of the Nazi regime ultimately had extremely negative consequences for most ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe, who often fought on the side of the Nazi regime - some were drafted, others volunteered or worked through the paramilitary organisation Selbstschutz. In places such as Yugoslavia, Germans were drafted by Yugoslavia, served loyally, and even held as Yugoslav POWs by the Nazis, and yet later found themselves drafted again, this time by the Nazis, after the Nazi takeover. Because it was technically not permissable to draft non-citizens, many ethnic Germans ended up being (oxymoronically) forcibly volunteered for the SS. In general, those closest to Germany were the most involved in fighting for her (as under those borders they were often her citizens), but the Germans in remote places like the Caucasus were likewise accused of collaboration. The territorial changes following World War II can be very roughly understood as the following: Russia became bigger, Germany became smaller, and Poland was forced west. This anecdotal summary (minus the plight of the Poles) can be extended to Germany's borders with France and Czechoslovakia as well.

Post-War Situation

If the ethnic Germans of Eastern Europe survived the fighting, the ethno-politics of the victorious Allies, aimed at removal of German minority from new borders of countries that were freed from Nazi Germany rule. In Poland and Czechoslovakia, about 20 million people fled the Red Army and local governments, mostly on foot and in wagons, but also by ship (see Wilhelm Gustloff). Elsewhere, especially in Russia and Yugoslavia, Germans were treated even more brutally, and often interned in harsh labor camps, to "pay the debts" induced by their nation and the cost of communist liberation. In Hungary, Magyarization was the norm. In Romania, Germans were forcibly transferred within the country, to destroy their cohesion as an ethnic group.

See also:

It was due to such population transfer in the Soviet Union that Germans (along with many other peoples) ended up as far east as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. As recently as 1990, there were 1 million standard German speakers and 100,000 Plautdietsch speakers in Kazakhstan alone, and 38,000, 40,000 and 101,057 standard German speakers in Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, respectively. These Auslandsdeutsche, as they are now generally known, have been streaming out of the whole former Eastern Bloc. Germany grants citizenship to ethnic Germans, even if they do not speak German, as was the case after 45 years in the post-WWII Soviet Union.

More recent figures show 500,000 ethnic Germans in Poland (as of 1998), millions in Hungary, and less than 100,000 in Romania (where there were 700,000 in 1988). There are 1 million in the former Soviet Union, mostly in a band from southernwestern Russia and the Volga valley, through Omsk and Altai Krai to Kazakhstan.

Africa, Oceania, and East Asia

Unlike other major European powers of the 20th century, Germany was not very involved in colonizing Africa, and lost German East Africa and German South-West Africa after World War I. Similarly to those in Latin America, the Germans in Africa tended to isolate themselves and be more self-sufficient than other Europeans. In Namibia there are 150,000 ethnic Germans, 6% of the population, though it is estimated that only a third of those retain the language.

Like North America, Australia has received many German immigrants from Germany and elsewhere. Numbers vary depending on who is counted, but moderate criteria give an estimate of 750,000 (4% of the population).

During the Meiji era (1868-1912), many Germans came to work in Japan as advisors to the new government. Despite Japan's isolationism and geographic distance, there have been a few Germans in Japan, since Germany's and Japan's fairly parallel modernization made Germans ideal O-yatoi gaikokujin.

In China, the German trading colony of Jiaozhou Bay in what is now Qingdao existed until 1914, and did not leave much more than breweries, including Tsingtao Brewery. Communist East Germany had relations with Uganda and Vietnam, but in these cases population movement went mostly to, not from, Germany.

See also: German colonial empire and List of former German colonies

Groupings

Note that many of these groups have since migrated elsewhere. This list simply gives the region with which they are associated, and does not include the Germans from countries with German as an official national language, which are:

In general, it also omits some collective terms in common use defined by political border changes where this is antithetical to the current structure. Such terms include:

Roughly grouped:

In the Americas, one can divide the groups by current nation of residence:

or by ethnic or religious criteria:

In Africa, Oceania, and East Asia

Notes

Most numbers are from the www.ethnologue.com (see See also), apart from a few from German language and Germans, as well as the following in-line citations:

  1. ^ Who's Counting? The l990 Census of German-Americans. On the site of The Tricentennial Foundation German American Community Service. Accessed 12 Feb 2006.
  2. ^ Contents of ANCESTRY Table on the site of the United States Census Bureau. Accessed 12 Feb 2006.

See also

Three similar terms:

Other articles detailing the distribution of German language or people:

German-language Wikipedia entries:

Ethnologue entries:

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