Germans of Yugoslavia
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The Germans of Yugoslavia (
History
Due to incursions of the
At the end of the war, in retribution, Partisan bands engaged in massacres of ethnic Germans, primarily in the Province of Vojvodina in present-day Serbia. Villages were wiped out, with the inhabitants either killed or forced into concentration camps, where many died of hunger or disease. As justification for their actions to eliminate the German minority in Yugoslavia, the Partisans applied the principle of collective guilt to the German ethnic group for the atrocities of the Nazi regime.
The provisional government of Tito’s Partisan movement was the AVNOJ (Anti-Fascist Council for the Liberation of Yugoslavia). In its meeting in Belgrade on November 21, 1944, it decreed that all property of ethnic Germans residing in Yugoslavia be confiscated. Their Yugoslav citizenship was revoked, they no longer had any civil rights, and they were declared enemies of the people. Exempted were those ethnic Germans who participated in the partisan national liberation movement, and those who were not members of German ethnic societies such as the “Schwäbisch–Deutsche Kulturbund", nor declared themselves to be members of the ethnic German community.
Of the approximately 524,000 Germans living in pre-war Yugoslavia, about 370,000 escaped to Austria and Germany in the last days of the War or were subsequently expelled by the Yugoslav Government. (At one point, in January 1946, the Yugoslav Government requested the U.S. military authorities’ permission to transfer these ethnic Germans to the U.S. occupation zone of Germany, but it was not granted). Of this number, 30,000 to 40,000 escaped from Yugoslav concentration and work camps, often with the connivance of the authorities, most going either to Hungary or Romania. Those who went to Hungary subsequently fled or were expelled to Austria or Germany, whereas those who fled to Romania generally remained, at least provisionally, in the Swabian communities in the Romanian Banat. About 55,000 people were murdered in the concentration camps, another 31,000 died serving in the German armed forces, and about 31,000 disappeared, mostly likely dead, with another 37,000 still unaccounted for. Thus the total victims of the war and subsequent ethnic cleansing and killings comprised about 30% of the pre-war German population.[2]
Current situation
There are currently approx 8,300 people in former Yugoslavia who acknowledge some German heritage. Many residents actively practice their German cultural heritage, and some still speak the local form of the German dialect,
Geography
Croatia
In
Serbia
The largest German minority in the former Yugoslavia is found in Serbia. The majority of the remaining population of German origin lives in the northern Serbia in Vojvodina, an area that also has a sizeable Hungarian minority. The Hungarian and Serbian populations also refer to them as Swabian as well. They are known as the Danube Swabians or Banat Swabians.
The Serbian census from 2002 records 3,901 Germans in Serbia, of which 3,154 in the province of Vojvodina. In December 2007 they formed their own minority council in Novi Sad, which they were entitled to with 3,000 voter signatures. The president, Andreas Biegermeier, stated that the council will focus on property restitution, and marking of mass graves and camp sites. He estimated the total number of remaining Danube Swabians in Serbia and their descents at 5,000–8,000.[3]
Bosnia and Herzegovina
The first
More recent
Following the collapse of internal security during
Areas formerly settled by Germans include:
- Dubrava(Königsfeld)
- Nova Topola (Windthorst)
- Bosanski Aleksandrovac (Rudolfstal)
- Franzjosefsfeld
- Prosara (Hohenberg / Hindenburg)
- Zenica (Senitza)
- Zepce(Scheptsche)
Slovenia
There are two German-speaking minorities in Slovenia. One consists of around 1,600 people, centred on Maribor (German: Marburg). The other is smaller in size and are the Gottscheer Germans, who live in the Kočevje (German: Gottschee) region. They are both Austrian in origin, and are unrelated to the other German minorities in Yugoslavia.
Notable people
- Đorđe Vajfert or Georg Weifert (1850–1937), Serbian industrialist, Governor of the National Bank of Serbia and later Yugoslavia
- Heinrich Knirr (1862–1944), German painter
- Robert Zollitsch (born 1938), German prelate
- Werner Roth (born 1948), German–American soccer player
See also
- Germans of Croatia
- Germans of Serbia
- Ernst Thälmann Company
- Danube Swabians
- Germans of Hungary
- Germans of Romania
- Germany–Yugoslavia relations
References
- ISBN 978-0-19-885016-8
- ISBN 978-1-4128-4302-7.
- ^ Sretenovic, Stanislav and Prauser, Steffen, The Expulsion of the German-Speaking Minority from Yugoslavia (European University Institute, Florence), p. 56. http://www.iue.it/PUB/HEC04-01.pdf Archived 2009-03-04 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ .Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (1994), pp.24-25.
- ^ Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (1994), pp.142-143.
- ^ Valdis O. Lumans, Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German Minorities of Europe, 1939-1945 (1993)