'', from the historic house of the parents of
Stefan Jäger, Hatzfeld (
Jimbolia),
Romanian Banat.
Origins Beginning in the 12th century, German
merchants and
miners began to settle in the
Kingdom of Hungary at the invitation of the Hungarian monarchy (
see Ostsiedlung). Although there were significant colonies of
Carpathian Germans in the
Spiš mountains and
Transylvanian Saxons in
Transylvania, German settlement throughout the rest of the kingdom had not been extensive until this time. During the 17th–18th centuries, warfare between the
Habsburg monarchy and the
Ottoman Empire devastated and depopulated much of the lands of the Danube valley, referred to geographically as the
Pannonian plain. The
Habsburgs ruling
Austria and
Hungary at the time resettled the land with Germanic settlers from
Swabia,
Hesse, especially
Fulda (district),
Palatinate,
Baden,
Franconia,
Bavaria,
Austria,
Alsace-Lorraine and the
Rhön Mountains, and
Hunsrück. Despite differing origins, the new immigrants were all referred as
Swabians by their neighbor Croats, Serbs, Hungarians, and Romanians, because the majority of the first settlers were Swabians. The
Bačka settlers called themselves
Shwoveh, the plural of
Shwobe in the
polyglot language that evolved there. The majority of them boarded boats in
Ulm, Swabia, and traveled to their new destinations down the
Danube River in boats called
Ulmer Schachteln. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had given them funds to build their boats for transport. The total number of German settlers who emigrated from different parts of Germany to Hungary between 1686 and 1829 is estimated at 150,000. The official name Danube Swabians has been used for this population group since 1922. DNA Test examples of Danube Swabians from Hungary shows their German Ancestry.
Settlement , Empress of Austria and Hungary, ruler of the
Habsburg Monarchy from 1740-1780 The first wave of invited resettlement came after the
Ottoman Turks were gradually being forced back after their defeat at the
Battle of Vienna in 1683. The settlement was encouraged by nobility, whose lands had been devastated through warfare, and by military officers including
Prince Eugene of Savoy and
Claudius Mercy. Many Germans settled in the
Bakony (
Bakonywald) and
Vértes (
Schildgebirge) mountains north and west of
Lake Balaton (
Plattensee), as well as around the capital city,
Buda (
Ofen), now part of
Budapest. The area of heaviest German colonization during this period was in the
Swabian Turkey (
Schwäbische Türkei), a triangular region between the Danube River, Lake Balaton, and the
Drava (
Drau) River. Other areas settled during this time by Germans were
Pécs (
Fünfkirchen),
Satu Mare (
Sathmar), and south of
Mukachevo (
Munkatsch). After the Habsburgs annexed the
Banat area from the Ottomans in the
Treaty of Passarowitz (1718), the government made plans to resettle the region to restore farming. It became known as the
Banat of Temesvár (
Temeschwar/
Temeschburg), as well as the
Bačka (
Batschka) region between the Danube and
Tisza (
Theiss) rivers. Fledgling settlements were destroyed during another Austrian-Turkish war (1737–1739), but extensive colonization continued after the suspension of hostilities. The Stifoller or Stiffolder, practitioners of
Folk Catholicism, settled on the Danube in some 25–30 Villages at
Baranya County and 4 villages in
Tolna County of southwest Hungary between 1717 and 1804, mostly in 1720 Their ancestors once came from the
Diocese of Fulda at
Fulda and the surrounding
Rhön Mountains in Germany. After
Maria Theresa of Austria assumed the thrones of
Queen of Hungary,
Archduchess of Austria, and
Queen of Bohemia in 1740, she encouraged vigorous colonization on Hungarian crown lands, especially between Timișoara and the Tisza. The Crown agreed to permit the Germans to retain their language and religion, generally
Roman Catholic. The German farmers steadily redeveloped the land: drained marshes near the Danube and the Tisza, rebuilt farms, and constructed roads and canals. Many Danube Swabians served on Austria's
Military Frontier (
Militärgrenze) against the Ottomans. Between 1740 and 1790, more than 100,000 Germans immigrated to the Kingdom of Hungary. Under the reign of
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor,
Lutheran Germans, mainly from
Hesse,
Palatinate and
Lower Saxony, were also allowed to settle in Hungary and other parts of the Habsburg Empire. In the various Danube Swabian dialects they were locally referred as
Lutherische (Lutheran). Late 18th-century resettlement was accomplished through private and state initiatives. The
Napoleonic Wars ended the large-scale movement of Germans to the Hungarian lands, although the colonial population increased steadily and was self-sustaining through
natural increase. Small daughter-colonies developed in
Slavonia and
Bosnia. After the creation of
Austria-Hungary in 1867, Hungary established a policy of
Magyarization whereby minorities, including the Danube Swabians, were induced by political and economic means to adopt the
Magyar language and culture. Beginning in 1893, Banat Swabians began to move to
Bulgaria, where they settled in the village of
Bardarski Geran,
Vratsa Province, founded by
Banat Bulgarians several years prior to that. Their number later exceeded 90 families. They built a separate Roman Catholic church in 1929 due to conflicts with the Bulgarian Catholics. Some of these Germans later moved to
Tsarev Brod,
Shumen Province, together with a handful of Banat Bulgarian families, as well as to another Banat Bulgarian village,
Gostilya,
Pleven Province. After the treaties of
Saint-Germain (1919) and
Trianon (1920) following
World War I, the Banat was divided between
Romania,
Yugoslavia, and
Hungary; Bačka was divided between
Yugoslavia and
Hungary; and Satu Mare went to Romania. Before
World War II, the biggest populations of Germans in the
Vojvodina were at
Hodschag,
Werbass, and
Apatin. There were approximately two million ethnic Danube Swabians in the region before World War II. In Romania, census of 1930 recorded 745,421 Germans; Hungarian Census of 1933 recorded 477,153; and Yugoslavian Census of 1921, 513,472. German estimations from the interwar period place those estimations at 850,000; 600,000 and 620,000 for Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia respectively.
World War II, expulsion, and post-war house in Hungary , Germany In 1941, much of Yugoslavia was
invaded and occupied by
Nazi Germany as part of the Second World War, and in the German-occupied Banat, they granted the Swabian minority superior status over the other ethnic groups in the Yugoslav population. The
Baranja and
Bačka Swabians reverted to Hungary. The Danube Swabians were already under heavy Nazi influence by that time and served as the
Axis fifth column during the invasion of Yugoslavia, although many served in the royal Yugoslav army in the brief war against the Nazis in April 1941. The
Independent State of Croatia (1941–1945), a fascist
puppet state created within Axis-occupied
Yugoslavia, was home to 182,000 Danube Swabian ethnic Germans (who were called
Folksdojčeri in
Croatian). In addition, the Danube Swabian minority were granted the separate autonomous region of
Banat within German-occupied
Serbia In Backe in 1941, Danube Swabians formed around 20% of the population. Yugoslav Danube Swabians supplied more than 60,000 troops for German military formations, some voluntarily but many more under duress. They actively participated in the sometimes brutal repression of Yugoslav Partisans and their suspected sympathizers, including 69,000 Jews living in Yugoslavia. Guenther Reinecke, chief of the
Hauptamt SS-Gericht (SS legal office) wrote to
Himmler that the
Prinz Eugen was "no longer an organization of volunteers, that on the contrary, the ethnic Germans from Serbian Banat were drafted, to a large extent under threat of punishment by the local German leadership, and later by the SS
Ergänzungsamt." At the end of the war, all POWs captured by the Yugoslav Army were killed as Yugoslav citizens collaborating with the enemy. In 2010, a mass grave of 2,000 summarily executed prisoners from the 7th SS
Prinz Eugen was discovered near the Slovenian village of
Brežice. Between 1941 and 1943, a total of 2,150 ethnic German Bulgarian citizens were transferred to Germany as part of
Adolf Hitler's
Heim ins Reich policy. These included 164 Banat Swabians from Bardarski Geran and 33 from Gostilya. From 1945 to 1948, many ethnic Germans in Hungary were dispossessed and expelled to
Allied-occupied Germany under the
Potsdam agreement. In the
Bačka, which had been part of Hungary from 1941, Shwovish villages were emptied forcibly in March 1945. In 1944, a joint advance of the Yugoslav Partisans, and the Soviet
Red Army saw the liberation of northern areas of German-occupied Yugoslavia, which were home to the Danube Swabian minority. In Yugoslavia in particular, with many exceptions, the Danube Swabian minority "collaborated . . . with the occupation". The AVNOJ Presidium issued a decree that ordered the government confiscation of all property of
Nazi Germany and its citizens in Yugoslavia, persons of ethnic German nationality (regardless of citizenship), and collaborators. The decision acquired the force of law on February 6, 1945. The reasons for this announcement are still debated by historians, but revenge against the ethnic German minority and the expropriation of Swabian agricultural lands to facilitate collectivization in Yugoslavia appears to have been the prime reasons. In addition, approximately 30,000 Danube Swabians, the majority being women, were deported to
Donbas in the Soviet Union as forced laborers in the coal mines of that region. It is estimated that 16% died due to the harsh conditions they faced. In Yugoslavia in 1945, most ethnic Germans had their land confiscated and some were stripped of their citizenship by the new communist government. The old and the young were imprisoned in camps in several villages of Vojvodina (in modern Serbia) including
Gakovo,
Kruševlje,
Rudolfsgnad (Knićanin),
Molidorf (Molin),
Bački Jarak, and
Sremska Mitrovica, and two villages in the Slavonia region of Yugoslavia (now part of Croatia),
Krndija,
Valpovo. This proposal was turned down but provides a good estimate of the number of Shwovish internees. In addition, 35,000–40,000 Swabian children under age sixteen were separated from their parents and forced into prison camps and re-education orphanages. Many were adopted by Serbian Partisan families. Of a pre-war population of about 350,000 ethnic Germans in the
Vojvodina, the 1958 census revealed 32,000 left. Officially, Yugoslavia denied the forcible starvation and killing of their Shwovish populations, but reconstruction of the death camps reveals that of the 170,000 Danube Swabians interned from 1944 to 1948, about 50,000 died of mistreatment.
Emigration Beginning in 1920 and especially after World War II, many Danube Swabians migrated to the United States, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Austria, Australia, and
Argentina. Some of them, descending from French-speaking or linguistically mixed families from
Lorraine, had maintained the French language for some generations, as well as an ethnic identity, later referred to as
Banat French,
Français du Banat. They were resettled in France around 1950. In the 1950s, many of the Lutheranian Danube Swabians went from West Germany and Austria to Canada and USA.
Since 1990 ,
Serbia Many left Romania for
West Germany between 1970 and 1990, and this trend increased in 1990. Many were literally sold to the Federal Republic of Germany, from the 70s until 1990. Since the
fall of communism and the formation of new nations with new borders, the forces for movement of people among European nations have changed.
Hungary joined the
European Union and travel between nations became simpler. From 2001 to 2011, the number of those identifying as German in Hungary increased sharply, comparing the census tables from the two years. Explanations for the increase seem complex, including the willingness of citizens to claim the ethnic identity. == Culture ==