Danube Swabians
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Donauschwaben | |
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Roman Catholicism, Lutheran | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Germans of Hungary, Germans of Romania, Germans of Serbia, Germans of Croatia, Banat Swabians, Satu Mare Swabians |
The Danube Swabians (German: Donauschwaben [ˈdoːnaʊʃvaːbm̩] ⓘ) is a collective term for the ethnic German-speaking population who lived in Kingdom of Hungary of east-central Europe, especially in the Danube River valley, first in the 12th century, and in greater numbers in the 17th and 18th centuries. Most were descended from earlier 18th-century Swabian settlers from Upper Swabia, the Swabian Jura, northern Lake Constance, the upper Danube, the Swabian-Franconian Forest, the Southern Black Forest and the Principality of Fürstenberg, followed by Hessians, Bavarians, Franconians and Lorrainers recruited by Austria to repopulate the area and restore agriculture after the expulsion of the Ottoman Empire. They were able to keep their language and religion and initially developed strongly German communities in the region with German folklore.
The Danube Swabians were given their German name by German ethnographers in the early 20th century. region. They called themselves Schwowe in a Germanized spelling, or "Shwoveh" or "Shwova" in an English spelling; in the singular first person, a Danube Swabian identified as a Shwob.
In Serbo-Croatian, Danube Swabians, alongside the local populace would refer to themselves as Švabo (Serbo-Croatian for "of Swabia") or Nijemci / Nemci (Serbo-Croatian for "Germans"), referring to their ethnic origin. However, the Carpathian Germans and Transylvanian Saxons are not included within the Danube Swabian group.
After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following the First World War, the areas where the Danube Swabians had settled were divided into three parts by the Allied Powers. One part remained with Hungary, the second part was allocated to Romania, and the third part fell to the newly established state of Yugoslavia. In this atmosphere of ethnic nationalism, the Danube Swabians had to fight for legal equality as citizens and for the preservation of their cultural traditions. In the 1930s, Nazi Germany promoted National Socialist ideas to the Danube Swabians and claimed the right to protect them as part of its reason for expanding into eastern Europe.[6]
The Danube Swabians faced particular challenges in the Second World War, when the Axis powers, including Germany, overran many of the nations where they lived. While they were initially favored by the occupiers, some were moved from their homes. As the war progressed and Germany needed more soldiers, the men were conscripted. Many atrocities took place during and after the war, as a result of the complicated allegiances, brutality of the Nazis, and partisan reaction to it.
Toward the end of the Second World War, tens of thousands of Danube Swabians fled west ahead of the advancing Soviet army. After the war, the remaining Danube Swabians were disenfranchised, their property seized, and many were deported to labor camps in the Soviet Union. Hungary expelled half of its ethnic Germans.[7] In Yugoslavia, the local "ethnic Germans" were collectively blamed for the actions of Nazi Germany and branded as war criminals. Immediately after the end of the war, partisan troops conducted mass executions of numerous Yugoslav Danube Swabians. Survivors were later confined to labor and internment camps by the Yugoslavian authorities.[8] Following the dissolution of the camps, the majority of the remaining Yugoslav Danube Swabians left the country, seeking refuge in Germany, other parts of Europe, the United States, and Canada.
Of the 1.4 to 1.5 million pre-war population of Danube Swabians, the overwhelming majority of the survivors resettled in German-speaking countries: about 660,000 in Germany and about 150,000 in Austria. Danube Swabians also resettled in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia.[9] The diaspora communities of Danube Swabians maintain their language and customs in numerous societies and clubs. The number of organizations is shrinking as the generations that lived in the Danube Swabian homelands die.
History
Origins
Beginning in the 12th century, German
During the 17th–18th centuries, warfare between the
DNA Test examples of Danube Swabians from Hungary shows their German Ancestry.[15]
Settlement
The first wave of invited resettlement came after the Ottoman Turks were gradually being forced back after their defeat at the
After the Habsburgs annexed the
The late 18th-century resettlement was accomplished through private and state initiatives. After
The
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
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.[17]
World War II, expulsion, and post-war
Beginning in 1920 and especially after World War II, many Danube Swabians migrated to the United States, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Austria, Australia, and
In 1941 much of Yugoslavia was
The local collaborationist authorities were forced to make it illegal to draft Danube Swabians. However, of the approximately 500,000-strong Danube Swabian minority in occupied Yugoslavia (182,000 in the NDH, 350,000 in Vojvodina), 500,000 in Romania and 500,000 in Hungary, approximately 100,000 eventually entered service in various German and Axis military organizations, most notably in the two locally formed Waffen-SS volunteer divisions, the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen, and the 22nd SS Volunteer Cavalry Division Maria Theresa (which was made-up of Hungarian Danube Swabians).
Although these military units were initially formed as volunteer units,
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.[30] 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
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
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.[33] Men between the ages of 16 and 65 were executed while women, children, and the elderly were interned, many succumbing to fatal diseases and malnutrition in Yugoslavia. Some of the Germans in Romania were deported, others were dispersed within Romania. Austrian historian Arnold Suppan considers the destruction of the Danube Swabians to be genocide.[37]
Since 1990
Many left Romania for
Stiffoller
The Stifoller or Stiffolder are a subgroup of the Danube Swabians who practise Folk Catholicism, settled in some 25–30 Villages at Baranya County and 4 villages in Tolna County of southwest Hungary between 1717 and 1804,[38] mostly in 1720[39] Their ancestors once came from the Diocese of Fulda at Fulda and the surrounding Rhön Mountains in Germany.[40]
Stiffoller kept their German tradition and a special dialect until today, called Stiffollerisch, resembling the South Hessian dialect of Schlüchtern in Germany,[13] example: Mir rede unsri Shwowish Moddersproch. As can be seen in the title, they refer to themselves as Shwovish.[41][42] A street in Petersberg, Hesse near Fulda is given the name, Stiffollerweg.[43]
Culture
Prior to the First World War, the Swabians were the largest ethnic group to assimilate into Hungarian society, seconded by the Galician Jews and the Slovaks. They were first and foremost Catholics, peasants thereafter, and thirdly loyal subjects to Kaiser Franz Joseph. But a distinct Hungarian Swabian ethno-national consciousness didn't develop until the spread of Romantic Nationalism in the late nineteenth century.
For the greater portion of their history, the Danube Swabian did not share a cultural identity. The term Swabian has its roots in the first wave a German-speaking immigrants from Swabia to re-settle southern Hungary after the expulsion of the Ottomans in 1689. However, it came to encompass all German-speaking people who followed in migrations from across the Holy Roman Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The term Swabian was not originally a self-proclaimed identity of a singular people but a term ascribed by Magyar lords to refer to German-speaking Catholic peasants, tavern keepers, and poor artisans. For the most part Swabians lived in villages, had few privileges, and no developed intellectual layer.[44] In 1930 Hungary 55.4% of the total Swabian population were engaged in agriculture; 28.8% in industry, crafts, commerce, or transport; and 3.1% were in state administration. The rest were employed in the service sector.[45]
The Danube Swabian culture is a melting pot of southern German regional
Language
The Danube Swabian language is only nominally
In Baranya the Stiffolderish Shwovish is its own Dialect.
Many German words used by speakers of Danube Swabian dialects may sound archaic. To the ear of a Standard German speaker, the Danube Swabian dialect sounds like what it is: a mix of southwestern German dialects from the 18th century with many strange words from other languages. Due to relative isolation and differing proximities to nearby German speakers (
Cuisine
Danube Swabian cuisine includes recipes brought with them from Germany but also includes regional dishes that were adopted into the Danube Swabian repertoire. Common foods include chicken paprikasch,[49] goulash,[49] spätzle,[49] kipfel,[49] caramel and walnut wafers called Oblaten,[49] sarma,[49] apple strudel,[49] pumpkin strudel,[50] cheese strudel,[49] schaum rolle,[49] djuvec,[51] stuffed peppers and plumb dumplings[52] among others.
Naming
As is the custom in Hungary (as well as southern Germany), Danube Swabians often put the surname first, especially when writing, for example Butscher Jakob (see photo of memorial). Danube Swabian villages tend to have relatively few family names as the villagers stem from only a few families, but usually the same family name does not appear in more than a couple of villages, meaning that there are many Danube Swabian family names. The names come from throughout southern Germany, from assimilated Hungarians, and occasionally from Balkan and Italian origins. There are usually no middle names, but often double first names, if a distinction can be made. The variety of first names is few, since children were usually named after grandparents or godparents. Popular names for women include: Anna, Barbara, Christina, Elisabeth, Eva, Katharina, Magdalena, Maria, Sophia, Theresia, and many two-name combinations thereof. Popular names for men include: Adam, Anton, Christian, Franz, Friedrich, Georg, Gottfried, Heinrich, Jakob, Johann, Konrad, Ludwig, Mathias, Martin, Michael, Nikolaus, Peter, Philipp (or Filipp), and Stefan (or Stephan). With so few names in villages, other modifiers or nicknames were almost always used to distinguish people. The modifiers were often size related (e.g., "Kleinjohann" or "Little Johann"), occupation related ("Tischler Stefan" or the "carpenter Stefan"), or location related (usually by prefixing the streetname).
Coat of arms
A coat of arms designed in 1950 by Hans Diplich has been adopted by many Danube Swabian cultural organizations. Its blazon is "Parti per fess wavy 1 Or, an eagle displayed couped Sable langued Gules; 2 parti per fess Argent and Vert, a fortress Argent roofed and turreted Gules surmounted with Sun and Crescent waning Or; chief wavy Azure".
It depicts:
- a black eagle representing the protection of the Emperor of Austria;
- a blue ribbon representing the Danube River;
- a crescent moon representing the waning of Islamic influence through the withdrawal of the Ottoman Turks;
- the Sun representing both Prince Eugene of Savoy and the light of Christianity; and
- a fortress representing the fortified city of Temeschburg (Timișoara).
Resources for genealogical research
Germany
- Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen Stuttgart; (institute of foreign relations); church records (microfilm) of villages in the banat
Austria
- Theresianischer Kataster, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Finanz- und Hofkammerarchiv; Austrian archive
Luxembourg
- Institut Grand-Ducal, Section de Linguistique, d’Ethnologie et d’Onomastique, village chronics and family records
- Centre de Documentation sur les Migrations Humaines
- Nationalarchiv Luxemburg, Microfilms, notary records, church records
See also
- Expulsion of Germans after World War II
- Germans of Hungary#Expulsion
- Wehrbauer
- Banat Swabians
- Ethnic German
- Volksdeutsche
- Carpathian Germans
- Baltic Germans
- Transylvanian Saxons
- Volga Germans
- Georg Weifert
- German World Alliance
References
- ISBN 978-963-235-355-5. Retrieved 22 May 2017.)
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ignored (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ^ Tabelul 2. Populaţia stabilă după etnie, pe judeţe [Table 2. Stable population by ethnicity by counties] (PDF) (in Romanian). 2 February 2012. p. 10.
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- ^ "Stanovništvo prema narodnosti, popisi 1971. – 2011" (in Croatian). Retrieved 21 December 2012.
- ^ Senz, Josef Volkmar (1987). Geschichte der Donau-Schaeben: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Munich: Amalthea. p. dust jacket.
- ISBN 3-593-37234-7, 18. Dezember 2003, S. 8
- ISBN 978-3-406-61406-4, S. 205, hier S. 91.
- ^ Zoran Janjetović, Die Konflikte zwischen Serben und Donauschwaben, S. 162 In „Der Einfluss von Nationalsozialismus auf Minderheiten in Ostmittel- und Südeuropa“, Published by Mariana Hausleitner and Harald Roth, IKS Verlag, Munich, 2006 (Wissenschaftliche Reihe „Geschichte und Zeitgeschichte“ der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Volume 107: Published by Edgar Hösch, Thomas Krefeld und Anton Schwob)
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- ^ "Research square" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 May 2022. Retrieved 6 June 2022.
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- ^ Vultur, Smaranda (2001). De l'Ouest à l'Est et de l'Est à l'Ouest : les avatars identitaires des Français du Banat [From West to East and From East to West: the identity avatars of the French of Banat]. la conférence d'histoire orale "Visibles mais pas nombreuses : les circulations migratoires roumaines" (in French). Paris. Retrieved 18 May 2017.
- ^ Tomasevich 1975.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8047-3615-2.
- ^ "Independent State of Croatia – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Retrieved 22 December 2023.
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- ^ Stein, George H. (1966). The Waffen-SS, Hitler's Elite Guard at War 1939–1945. Cornell University Press. p. 171.
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- ^ Schwarz, Karl-Peter. "Massengrab in Slowenien entdeckt: Eine eineinhalb Meter starke Schicht von Skeletten". Faz.net – via www.faz.net.
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- ^ Ramet 2006, p. 159.
- ^ Tomasevich 1969, p. 115, 337.
- ^ ISBN 978-8690681105.
- ^ Kupka, Horst Werner (1963). "The Fate of Yugoslavia's Germans". Sudeten Bulletin. 11–12: 360.
- ^ Lt.-Gen. Avsich, Yugoslav Military Mission, Berlin to the Allied Control Commission. Foreign Office 1032/2284.
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- ^ "Ich weiß noch aus Erzählungen meiner Mutter, was von Generation zu Generation überliefert wurde, dass die Einwanderer es sehr schwer hatten".
- ^ Stiffollerweg meinestadt.de Archived 9 October 2022 at the Wayback Machine
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- ^ Kovacs, Alajos (1936). "The Statistical Situation of the Germans in the Trianon Treaty Reduced Territories of Hungary". Budapest.
- ^ Bentz, Michaela (2008). Kokkonidis, Miltiadis (ed.). German as a Minority Language: The "Swabians" in the Danubian States and their Language(s) (PDF). Proceedings of LingO 2007. University of Oxford. pp. 20–26.
- ^ Hess, Michael, personal experience with native speakers from each town
- ^ Ruediger, H. (1931) Die Donauschwaben in der südslawischen Bačka, Schriften des Deutschen Ausland-Instituts Stuttgart. Reihe A. Bd. 28. Stuttgart, 1931
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Duhatschek, Katharina; Duhatschek, Monica (2019). The Danube Swabian Cookbook (2nd ed.).
- ^ "Cooking Donauschwaben Style! Recipe Index". www.dvhh.org. Retrieved 15 September 2023.
- ^ "Cooking Donauschwaben Style! Recipe Index". www.dvhh.org. Retrieved 15 September 2023.
- ^ "Donauschwaben Kochbuch – Donauschwaben Kochbuch" (in German). Retrieved 15 September 2023.
Further reading
- G.C. Paikert (2012). The Danube Swabians: German Populations in Hungary, Rumania and Yugoslavia, and Hitler's impact on their Patterns. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-94-011-9717-5.
- Valentina Glajar (2004). The German Legacy in East Central Europe as Recorded in Recent German-language Literature. Camden House. ISBN 978-1-57113-256-7.
- Ulrich Merten (2017). Forgotten Voices: The Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Europe After World War II. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-351-51954-0.
- Katherine Stenger Frey (1982). The Danube Swabians: A People with Portable Roots. Mika Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-919303-61-4.
- Bresser, M., 1983. The Danube Swabians: Biography of a People from Inception to Dispersal. Danube Swabian Association.
- Wieden, F. and Benzinger, M., 1992. Canada's Danube Swabians. St. Michael's Church.
- Hubbard, K. J. (2013). "The Danube Swabians: A Post-war Extermination" (PDF).
- Glajar, V., 1997. Banat-Swabian, Romanian, and German: Conflicting Identities in Herta Müller's" Herztier". Monatshefte, pp. 521–540.
- Krallert, Wilfried (1958). Atlas zur Geschichte der deutschen Ostsiedlung. Bielefeld: Velhagen & Klasing.
- Valdis O. Lumans, Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National minorities of Europe, 1939–1945 (University of North Carolina Press, 1993), page 235.