The Danube Swabians ( ) are an ethnic German population whose ancestors settled in the middle and lower Danube basin of east-central Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, primarily under the recruitment of the Habsburg monarchy. Settlers came from various southwestern and central regions within the Holy Roman Empire, including Swabia, for which the group is named, as well as Alsace, Austria, Bavaria, Franconia, Hesse, and the Palatinate.
Ethnic Germans first moved to the Kingdom of Hungary in the 12th century, but Danube Swabians moved in high numbers during the 17th and 18th centuries as part of an effort by the Habsburg monarchy to repopulate the valleys around the Danube and restore agriculture after the expulsion of the Ottoman Empire in the Ottoman–Habsburg wars. They were able to keep their language and religion and initially developed strongly German communities in the region which retained the German language, customs, and folklore. After the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918 following World War I, the areas where the Danube Swabians had settled were divided into Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia.
In the 1930s, Nazi Germany promoted its ideology among the Danube Swabians. The regime claimed the right to protect them as Volksdeutsche (as opposed to Reichsdeutsche) as part of its reason for expanding into eastern Europe.gbv.de , Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Johannes Hürther: Rezension: Casagrande, Thomas: Die volksdeutsche SS-Division „Prinz Eugen“ – Die Banater Schwaben und die nationalsozialistischen Kriegsverbrechen. , 18. Dezember 2003, S. 8 After World War II, 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 German population.Mathias Beer: Flucht und Vertreibung der Deutschen. Voraussetzungen, Verlauf, Folgen. München, 2011, , S. 205, hier S. 91. In Yugoslavia, the local German population was collectively blamed for collaboration with Nazi Germany. Many Yugoslav Danube Swabians were executed by partisan forces immediately after the war, and survivors were later confined to labor and internment camps.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 München, Volume 107: Published by Edgar Hösch, Thomas Krefeld und Anton Schwob)
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. In the 21st century, they are made up of ethnic Germans from many former and present-day countries: Germans of Hungary; Satu Mare Swabians; Germans of Croatia, Bačka, the Banat Swabians; and the Vojvodina Germans of Vojvodina and Slavonia, especially those in the Osijek region. However, the Carpathian Germans and Transylvanian Saxons are not included within the Danube Swabian group.
Name The Danube Swabians were given their German name by German ethnographers in the early 20th century. In German they called themselves Schwowe, and "Shwoveh" or "Shwova" (plural) and Shwob (singular first person) in English. 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.
History
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 and 18th centuries, the Ottoman–Habsburg wars 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, who ruled the Archduchy of Austria, Kingdom of Hungary, and Holy Roman Empire at the time, resettled the land with Germanic settlers from the southwestern and central German regions of Swabia, for which the Danube Swabian ethnic group is named, as well as Alsace, Austria, Bavaria, Franconia, Hesse (especially Fulda), the Hunsrück area, the Palatinate, and the Rhön Mountains area. DNA test examples of Danube Swabians from Hungary shows their German ancestry.
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.
Settlement
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 the Austro-Turkish War of 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 1720Geschichte der Gemeinde 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 Hapsburgs unified their possessions as the Austrian Empire in 1804. 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
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.Tomasevich 1975. 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.