German diaspora

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from Ethnic German)
Jump to: navigation, search
Part of a series on the
History of Germany
Coat of arms of the Federal Republic of Germany since 1950
Portal icon Germany portal

German diaspora (German: Deutschstämmige, historically also Volksdeutsche), are Germans and their descendants living outside of Germany.


Ethnic Germans in Hungary and parts of adjacent Austrian territories, census 1890

Volksdeutsche "ethnic Germans" is a historical term which arose in the early 20th century and was used by the Nazis to describe ethnic Germans living outside of the German Empire, although many had been in other areas for centuries.

Auslandsdeutsche (adj. auslandsdeutsch) is a concept that connotes German citizens living abroad, or alternatively ethnic Germans entering Germany from abroad. Today, this means citizen of Germany living more or less permanently in another country (including long-term academic exchange lecturers and the like), who are allowed to vote in the Republic's elections, but who usually do not pay taxes to Germany. In a looser but still valid sense, and in general discourse, the word is frequently used in lieu of the ideologically tainted term Volksdeutsche, denoting persons living abroad without German citizenship but defining themselves as Germans (culturally or ethnically speaking).


Ethnic Germans are a 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 and major urban areas worldwide. See Groups at bottom for a list of all ethnic German groups, or continue for a summary by region.

Distribution of native German speakers in the world today


German language area in 1910–11, the boundaries of states are in red. Pan-German nationalists wanted to unite much of the green areas into one German nation-state.

Alpine nations[edit]

Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein each have a German-speaking majority, though the vast majority of the population do not identify themselves as German. Austrians historically were identified and considered themselves Germans until after the defeat of the Third Reich and the end of World War II. Post-1945 a broader Austrian national identity began to emerge and currently over 90% of the Austrians see themselves as an independent nation.[1][2][3]

Baltic states[edit]


The Netherlands[edit]

Up to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia the entire Netherlands were part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.[4] As a matter of fact English speaking people refer to the people of the Netherlands as Dutch (deutsch), because the Netherlandish part (including the Belgian Southern Netherlands) of the feudal German Empire was the part closest to England.[5] The new Kingdom of the Netherlands borders on Germany with 5 out of the 12 provinces: Groningen, Drenthe, Overijssel, Gelderland (named after the German town of Geldern) and Limburg. Part of the province of Limburg was a part of the German Confederation from 1839 until it ceased to exist in 1866.[6]


In Belgium, there is an ethnic German minority. It is the majority in its region of 71,000 inhabitants. Ethnologue puts the national total of German speakers at 150,000, not including Limburgish and Luxembourgish.


Though their language (Luxembourgish) is closely related to the German language, Luxembourgers do not consider themselves ethnic Germans. In a 1941 referendum held in Luxembourg by ethnic German residents, more than 90% proclaimed themselves Luxembourgish by nationality, mother tongue and ethnicity.[7]


Czech Republic and Slovakia[edit]

Before World War II, some 30% of the population in the Czech lands (historically known as Bohemia and Moravia) were ethnic Germans, and in the border regions and certain other areas they were even in the majority.[8] There are about 40,000 Germans in the Czech Republic (number of Czechs who have at least partly German ancestry probably runs into the hundreds of thousands).[9] Their number has been consistently decreasing since World War II. According to the 2001 census there remain 13 municipalities and settlements in the Czech Republic with more than 10% Germans.

The situation in Slovakia was different from that in the Czech lands, in that the number of Germans was considerably lower and that the Germans from Slovakia were almost completely evacuated to German states as the Soviet army was moving west through Slovakia, and only a fraction of those who returned to Slovakia after the end of the war were deported with the Germans from the Czech lands.

Many representatives of expellee organizations support the erection of bilingual signs in all formerly German-speaking territory as a visible sign of the bilingual linguistic and cultural heritage of the region. The erection of bilingual signs is permitted if a minority constitutes 10% of the population.


In Denmark, the part of Schleswig that is now South Jutland County (or Northern Schleswig) is inhabited by about 12,000–20,000 ethnic Germans [10] They speak mainly Standard German and the South Jutlandic. A few speak Schleswigsch, a Northern Low Saxon dialect.


Prior to World War II, approximately 1.5 million Danube Swabians lived in Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia.[11] Today the German minority in Hungary have minority rights, organisations, schools and local councils, but spontaneous assimilation is well under way. Many of the deportees visited their old homes after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990.


Map of Austria-Hungary in 1911, showing areas inhabited by ethnic Germans in pink

There are smaller, unique populations of Germans who arrived so long ago that their dialect retains many archaic features heard nowhere else:

Smaller German-speaking communities also exist in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region: the Carinthians in the Canale Valley (municipalities of Tarvisio, Malborghetto Valbruna and Pontebba) and the Zahren and Timau Germans in Carnia.

Contrarily to the before-mentioned minorities, the German-speaking population of the province of South Tyrol cannot be categorized as "ethnic German" according to the definition of this article, but as Austrian minority.[12] The province formerly was part of the Austrian County of Tyrol before the 1919 dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. South Tyrolians were part of the over 3-million German speaking Austrians who in 1918 found themselves living outside of the newborn Austrian Republic as minorities in the newly formed or enlarged respective states of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Italy. Their dialect is Austro-Bavarian German. Both standard German and dialect are used in schooling and media. German enjoys co-official status with the national language of Italian throughout this region.


The remaining German minority in Poland (109,000 people were registered in the 2011 census[13]) enjoys minority rights according to Polish minority law. There are German speakers throughout Poland, and most of the Germans live in the Opole Voivodship in Silesia. Bilingual signs are posted in some towns of the region. In addition, there are bilingual schools and German can be used instead of Polish in dealings with officials in several towns.


United Kingdom[edit]

In the United Kingdom, a German-Briton ethnic group of around 300,000 exists. Some are descended from nineteenth-century immigrants. Others are 20th-century immigrants and their descendants: German-Jews who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s (who are unlikely to identify as ethnic Germans), and World War II prisoners of war held in Great Britain who decided to stay there. Others arrived as spouses of British soldiers from post-war marriages in Germany, when the British were occupying forces. Many of the more recent immigrants have settled in the London and southeast part of the United Kingdom, in particular, Richmond (South West London).

The British Royal Family are partially descended from German monarchs.

The Anglo-Saxons were the population in Britain partly descended from the Germanic tribes who migrated from continental Europe and settled the south and east of the island beginning in the early 5th century. The Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period of English history after their initial settlement through their creation of the English nation, up to the Norman conquest; that is, between about 550 and 1066.[1][2] The term Anglo-Saxon is also used for the language, today more correctly called Old English, that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons in England (and parts of south-eastern Scotland) between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century, after which it is known as Middle English.[3]


Examples of German language in Namibia's everyday life.

During the long decline of the Roman Empire and the ensuing great migrations German tribes such as the Vandals (who sacked Rome) migrated into North Africa and settled mainly in the lands corresponding to modern Tunisia and northeastern Algeria.

Germany was not as involved in colonizing Africa as other major European powers of the 20th century (principally because Germany was not a unified country prior to 1871), and lost its overseas colonies, including 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 were more self-sufficient than other Europeans. In Namibia there are 30,000 ethnic Germans, though it is estimated that only a third of those retain the language. Most German-speakers live in the capital, Windhoek, and in smaller towns such as Swakopmund and Lüderitz, where German architecture is highly visible.

In South Africa, a number of Afrikaners and Boers are of partial German ancestry, being the descendants of German immigrants who intermarried with Dutch settlers and adopted Afrikaans as their mother tongue. Professor JA Heese in his book Die Herkoms van die Afrikaner (The Origins of Afrikaners) claims the modern Afrikaners (who total around 3.5 million) have 34.4% German ancestry.[14] {Germans also emigrated to South Africa during the 1850s and 1860s, and settled in the Eastern Cape area around Stutterheim, and in Kwazulu-Natal in the Wartburg area, where there is still a large German-speaking community.[15]

North America[edit]

Ancestry according to the U.S. 2000 census: Counties with plurality of German ancestry in light blue
  • Belize: 5,763 Mennonite Low-German speakers.
  • Canada (3.2 million, 10% of the population), see also German Canadians.
  • Mexico: 100,000 Mennonite Low German-speakers;[16] 22% of Mennonites also speaks Low German which is not Standard German but derived from Old Saxon, 30% speaks Spanish, 5% speaks English and 5% speaks Russian as second language.[17]
The German embassy estimates in 15 000—40 000 German citizens and Mexicans of German-citizen origin.[18]
Also of note, the 'Colegio Alemán Alexander von Humboldt', or Alexander von Humboldt school in Mexico City is the largest German school outside Germany.
  • In the United States, German Americans are the largest ethnic group. There are over 50 million Americans of at least partial German ancestry in the United States, or 17% of the U.S. population, the country's largest self-reported ancestral group.[19] including various groups such as the Pennsylvania Dutch. Of these, 23 million are of German ancestry alone ("single ancestry"), and another 40 million are of partial German ancestry, making them the largest group in the United States, followed by the Irish. Of those who claim partial ancestry, 22 million identify their primary ancestry ("first ancestry") as German. The 22 million Americans of primarily German ancestry are by far the largest part of the German diaspora, a figure equal to over a quarter of the population of Germany itself. Germans form just under half the population in the Upper Midwest.[20][21]

South America[edit]

German population in Southern Brazil.
  Less than 1% of population (Uruguay)
  Between 1 - 5 % of population (State of São Paulo)
  Between 5 - 10 % of population (State of Paraná)
  Between 10 - 25 % of population (State of Rio Grande do Sul)
  Around 35 % of population (State of Santa Catarina)
Mennonites in San Ignacio, Paraguay
  • Argentina: Those of German ancestry constitute about 7.5% of the Argentine population —over 3 million—, most of them Volga Germans alone —about 2 million—.[22] There are more than 400,000 of other German ancestries including Mennonites and German Swiss. These two groups are more common in Southern Argentina, and also in Santa Fe, Entre Rios and Cordoba provinces. A notable example is the town of Villa General Belgrano, founded by Germans in the 1930s. In the 1960s it became the site of the Fiesta Nacional de la Cerveza, or Oktoberfest, which has become a major attraction in Argentina.[23]
The German embassy in Argentina estimates that 660,000 Argentines, or 1.5% of the total population, are descendants of Germans who emigrated directly from Germany (It means that it doesn't includes other ethnic Germans who emigrated from Austria, Switzerland, Russia/USSR, etc.).[24][25] Currently 50,000 German citizens lives in Argentina.[24]
Nazi Minister Walther Darré was born in Argentina. After the Second World War, almost a thousand prominent Nazi leaders and politicians fled to Argentina. Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele were among them. Kurt Tank, who developed some of the greatest WWII aircraft fighters also entered Argentina in the late 1940s.[26]
There are about 500,000 German-speakers in Argentina,[27] slightly over 1% of population.
  • Bolivia: There are 2 different German groups, the descendants of those who emigrated from Germany and Brazil (estimated in about a quarter of million, 2.0% of Bolivian population[28]), and the descendants of Mennonites that emigrated from Canada and Mexico (at least 85,000 of them lives in agrarian communities).[29][30]
Germans are 375,000 or 3% of Bolivian population.[31]
There are over 20,000 Standard German-speakers,[28] plus 85,000 Mennonite Low German-speakers.[29]
  • Brazil: Mostly living in Southern Brazil. Brazil received 250,000 Germans between 19th and 20th Century; there are 5 million ethnic Germans, 2.5% of the national population;[32] and 12 million people who claim to have German ancestors; 6.4% of the national population.[33] Nearly 3 million people of German-descent live in Rio Grande do Sul state, and 500 000 speak or understand the German language.[32] Hunsrückisch and Pomeranian are some of the most prominent groups.[32]
There are 3 million German-speakers in Brazil,[27] slightly over 1.5% of population.
  • Chile: The German-Chilean Chamber of Commerce estimated at 500,000 the descendants of Germans, about 3% of the total population of Chile estimated at 16 million (in the same source).[34] There are 40,000 Standard German-speakers.[27]
Those of German ancestry are 290,000 or 4.4% of Paraguayan population.[37]


In Japan, during the Meiji period (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. (See also Germany–Japan relations)

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.

Smaller numbers of ethnic Germans settled in the former Asian territories of Malaysia (British), Indonesia (Dutch) and the Philippines (American) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[citation needed] In Indonesia, some of them became well-known figures in history, such as C.G.C. Reinwardt (founder and first director of Bogor Botanical Garden), Walter Spies (German of Russian origin, who became the artist that made Bali known to the world), and Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn (owner of a big plantation in the south of Bandung and dubbed "the Humboldt of the East" because of his ethno-geographical notes).

Members of the German religious group known as Templers settled in Palestine in the late 19th century and lived there for several generations, but were expelled by the British from Mandatory Palestine during World War II, due to pro-Nazi sympathies expressed by many of them.

Communist East Germany had relations with Vietnam and Uganda in Africa, but in these cases population movement went mostly to, not from, Germany. After the German reunification, a large percentage of "guest workers" from Communist nations sent to East Germany returned to their home countries.

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


  • Australia has received a significant number of ethnic-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). The first wave of German immigration to Australia began in 1838, with the arrival of Prussian Lutheran settlers in South Australia (see German settlement in Australia). After the Second World War, Australia received a large influx of displaced ethnic Germans. In the 1950s and 1960s, German immigration continued as part of a large post-war wave of European immigration to Australia.

There have been ethnic Germans in Australia since the founding of the New South Wales colony in 1788, Governor Arthur Phillip (the first Governor of New South Wales) had a German father. But, the first significant wave of German immigration was in 1838. These Germans, mostly Prussian immigrants (but also winegrowers from the Hesse-Nassau state and the Rheingau). From there after, thousands of Germans emigrated to Australia until World War I. Also, German Australian was the most identified ethnicity behind English and Irish in Australia until World War I.

After World War II, a huge number of Germans emigrated to Australia to escape the war-torn Europe.

  • New Zealand has received modest, but steady, ethnic German immigration from the mid-19th century. Today the number of New Zealanders with German ancestry is estimated to be approximately 200,000 (5% of the population). Many German New Zealanders anglicized their names during the 20th century due to the negative perception of Germans fostered by World War I and World War II. New Zealanders of German descent include the late former Prime Minister David Lange (/ˈlɒŋi/ LONG-ee). The vast majority of Germans in New Zealand settled in the North Island, with a couple settling in the Christchurch area. Cities such as Tauranga, Nelson and, to a lesser extent, Auckland have been somewhat influenced by German culture and values.


From Celtic times the early Germans settled from the Baltic all the way to the Black Sea until the great migrations of the 4-6th century AD. Germans migrated again eastwards during the medieval period Ostsiedlung until the expulsion of Germans after World War II; many areas in Central and Eastern Europe had an ethnic German population. In the Middle Age, Germans were invited to migrate to Poland and the central and eastern regions of the German Holy Roman Empire and also the Kingdom of Hungary following the Mongol invasions of the 12th century, and then once again during the late 17th century after the Austrian-Ottoman wars to set up farms and repopulate the eastern regions of the Austrian Empire and Balkans.

The Nazi government termed such ethnic Germans Volksdeutsche, regardless of how long they had been residents of other countries. (Now they would be considered Auslandsdeutsche). During World War II, Nazi Germany classified ethnic Germans as Ubermenschen, while Jews, Gypsies, Slavic peoples, mainly ethnic Poles and Serbs, along with Black and mixed-race people were called Untermenschen. After the war, central European nations such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, as well as the Soviet Union in eastern Europe,and Yugoslavia in the Balkan region of southern Europe, expelled most of the ethnic Germans living in their territories.

There were significant ethnic-German populations in such areas as Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine at one time. As recently as 1990, there were one million standard German speakers and 100,000 Plautdietsch speakers in Kazakhstan alone[citation needed], and 38,000, 40,000 and 101,057 standard German speakers in Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, respectively.[citation needed]

There were reportedly 500,000 ethnic Germans in Poland in 1998.[42] Recent official figures show 147,000 (as of 2002).[43] Of the 745,421 Germans in Romania in 1930,[44] only about 60,000 remain.[45] In Hungary the situation is quite similar, with only about 220,000.[46] There are up to one million Germans in the former Soviet Union, mostly in a band from southwestern Russia and the Volga valley, through Omsk and Altai Krai (597,212 Germans in Russia, 2002 Russian census) to Kazakhstan (353,441 Germans in Kazakhstan, 1999 Kazakhstan census). Germany admitted approximately 1.63 million ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union between 1990 and 1999.[47]

These Auslandsdeutsche, as they are now generally known, have been streaming out of the former Eastern Bloc since the early 1990s. For example, many ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union have taken advantage of the German Law of Return, a policy which grants citizenship to all those who can prove to be a refugee or expellee of German ethnic origin or the spouse or descendant of such a person. This exodus has occurred despite the fact that many of the ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union were highly assimilated and spoke little or no German.

Historical countries[edit]

Former Soviet Union[edit]

Former Yugoslavia[edit]

According to the 1921 census, the German community was the largest minority group in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (505,790 inhabitants or 4.22%).[48]


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 people 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


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

  1. ^ [1][dead link]
  2. ^ "Österreicher fühlen sich heute als Nation - 1938 - " Wissenschaft". Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  3. ^ H. Lohninger (6 December 2010). "Austrian National Identity". Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  4. ^ Karel Davids, Jan Lucassen, A Miracle Mirrored: The Dutch Republic in European Perspective, Cambridge University Press, 1995, page 135.
  5. ^ Helmut Glück, Deutsch als Fremdsprache in Europa vom Mittelalter bis zur Barockzeit, Walter de Gruyter, 2002, page 33.
  6. ^ H. W. Koch, A Constitutional history of Germany: in the 19th and 20th centuries, Longman, Limited, 1984, page 114.
  7. ^ cf. the article on the Luxemburgish language on the German Wikipedia
  8. ^ "Liberation - Post War Changes". Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  9. ^ "Ethnic German Minorities in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia". Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  10. ^ "Universitat Oberta de Catalunya". Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  11. ^ ""History of German Settlements in Southern Hungary" by Sue Clarkson". Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  12. ^ "Südtirol: Neue Initiative für Doppel-Staatsbürgerschaft «". Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  13. ^ "Results of the National Census of 2011, GUS, p. 18" (in (Polish)). Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  14. ^ "How 'Pure' was the Average Afrikaner?". 13 April 2012. Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  15. ^ Deutsche Wanderung nach Südafrika im 19. Jahrhundert by Werner Schmidt-Pretoria.
  17. ^ International Encyclopedia of Linguistics: 4-Volume Set, Volumen 1 Page 94
  18. ^ Horst Kopp Area Studies, Business and Culture: Results of the Bavarian Research Network Forarea (2003)
  19. ^ From Census Bureau, "S0201. Selected Population Profile in the United State" 2006-2008 data
  20. ^ Who's Counting? The 1990 Census of German-Americans. On the site of The Tricentennial Foundation German American Community Service. Accessed 12 February 2006.
  21. ^ Contents of ANCESTRY Table on the site of the United States Census Bureau. Accessed 12 February 2006.
  22. ^ Centro Argentino Cultural Wolgadeutsche[dead link]
  23. ^ "Fiesta de La Cerveza - Oktoberfest Argentina - Vill". Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  24. ^ a b "FUNCIONES DEL DEPARTAMENTO CULTURAL". 13 February 2010. Archived from the original on 13 February 2010. Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  25. ^ "Obsevatorio de Colectividades – Comunidad Alemana". Retrieved 28 September 2011. 
  26. ^ NATHANIEL C. NASH (14 December 1993). "Argentine Files Show Huge Effort to Harbor Nazis". Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  27. ^ a b c Handwörterbuch des politischen Systems der Bundesrepublik (in German). Source lists "German expatriate citizens" only for Namibia and South Africa!
  28. ^ a b c d "Composición Étnica de las Tres Áreas Culturales del Continente Americano al Comienzo del Siglo XXI" (PDF) (in Spanish). p. 188. Retrieved 12 June 2012. 
  29. ^ a b Bolivian Reforms Raise Anxiety on Mennonite Frontier, New York Times(subscription required)
  30. ^ Los Menonitas en Bolivia CNN en Español
  32. ^ a b c "A Imigração Alemã no Brasil" (in Portuguese). Deustche Welle. 25 July 2004. Retrieved 7 October 2012. 
  33. ^ Akstinat, Simon (August 2007). "German Roots - Gisele Bündchen". 
  34. ^ Luna Bolivar Manaut (31 March 2011). "Alemanes en Chile: entre el pasado colono y el presente empresarial" (in Spanish). Deustche-Welle. Retrieved 11 November 2012. 
  35. ^ "The Mennonite Old Colony Vision: Under siege in Mexico and the Canadian Connection" (PDF). Retrieved 2007-05-30. 
  36. ^ a b Rosenberg, Peter. "Deutsche Minderheiten in Lateinamerika". Retrieved 2012-11-11. 
  37. ^ "Paraguay". WorldStatesMen. Retrieved 16 June 2013. "Ethnic groups: mestizo (mixed white and Amerindian) 85.6%, white 9.3% (of which German 4.4%, Latin American 3.4%), Amerindian 1.8%, black 1%, other 2.3% (2000)" 
  38. ^ Erwin Dopf. "Peruano-alemán". Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  39. ^ "POZUZO. Historia - caractersiticas generales - Antecedentes Caminos y vias :: antecedentes historicos clima flora y fauna posuso pozuso posuzo". Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  40. ^ [2]
  41. ^ "Deutsche-in-Peru / Inmigración Alemana al Perú". 
  42. ^ "Ethnologue report for Poland". Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  43. ^ "Ministerstwo Spraw Wewnętrznych". Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  44. ^ German Population of Romania, 1930-1948
  45. ^ "German minority" (in (German)). Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  46. ^ German in Hungary
  47. ^ "German and Jewish migration from the former Soviet Union to Germany". 1 October 2000. Retrieved 2012-08-25. 
  48. ^ "UNDP Human Development Report for Serbia 2005" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-08-25. 

See also[edit]

This article incorporates information from the German Wikipedia.

External links[edit]

Ethnologue entries:

History of German London with objects and images