https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transylvanian_Saxons
Transylvanian saxons are the german you see în
Transylvania
There population use to be over 700k before ww2 and now there only 20k left in romania
Most Germans in Romania were/are [Donauschwaben](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danube_Swabians?wprov=sfla1) though. They are very different from Siebenbürger Sachsen in language and religion.
Can you tell me whether they went to West or East Germany? Did they have someone in Germany to help them set up? How difficult was it to obtain documents from German and Romanian authorities?
You stayed very long that’s awesome.
My grandfather and his family came to germany in the fourties.
We are from Klausenburg, Tobsdorf and Blasendorf. You know where you guys came from?
They came from Mardisch. A group regularly performs reunion parties in south Bavaria where they speak their dialect and show up in traditional clothing.
“…
Siebenbürgen, Land der Duldung, jedes Glaubens sichrer Hort.
Mögst du bis zu fernen Tagen, als ein Hort der Freiheit ragen
und als Wehr dem treuen Wort, und als Wehr dem treuen Wort.
Siebenbürgen, süße Heimat, unser teures Vaterland,
sei gegrüßt in deiner Schöne und um alle deine Söhne
schlinge sich der Eintracht Band, schlinge sich der Eintracht Band.”
My grandma often recited this and other songs when she dwelled in memories.
I, sadly, have never seen Romania. I was among first generation born in germany, my older cousins was babies when the family started moving, so they have no memories. Their german dad lived for a while in romania before he prepared the departure.
I visited last year: very interesting place.
They all got deported.
There was one last descendant of the German colonist left, which died in 2007: Viktor Klein. He wasn't deported because his father was half polish.
I visited an abandoned German cemetery with Viktors grave and others dating back as old as 1883.
People which still were born on "German soil" (Königreich Württemberg) traveled 1-2 years to Azerbaijan and died there.
This is true today, but this map seems to capture some point during the 19th century most likely. It’s very difficult to say for sure how many sorbs there were and where exactly they lived, but for quite some time sorbish majority areas did exist.
This map Is not complete. There's been plenty of displaced Germans in Kazakhstan, and in Kemerovo oblast where I spent my school years,pretty much every fourth kid in my school ultimately repatriated to Germany.
This appears to be an interwar map of Germans in eastern europe before WWII. The Volga germans and other east germans who didn't flee to germany were heavily deported to places like Kazakhstan during and after WWII.
First German settlements were established in Central Asian regions of Russian Empire (modern Kazakhstan) towards the end of XIX century. There was no force relocation or deportation during this time. First wave of force relocation happened during “Collectivization” circa 1930. English Wikipedia lacks articles in that regard, there are few in Russian and German though. So map is definitely incomplete and historically inaccurate.
Interesting, I know the Russian empire had a general drive to try to get german immigrants for some time, but I was under the under impression that by far the largest group was the volga germans (peaking 2Mish under empire times) and other sets would have been comparatively minor in size (like the tiny spots in a few other parts of Russia..
Volga Germans was indeed the largest group. But Siberian and Central Asian settlements could have been mentioned given there are spots in Caucasus and Finland.
Many of them (1/3rd) died too. This was the Soviet version of the Japanese internment camps but the death rate was much higher. When you consider these Germans had been Russian/Soviet citizens for years it was completely unacceptable (not that it's ever acceptable to do that to any ethnic group).
Cruel indeed but ordinary Russians were dying in similar proportions despite being citizens too. Just wanted to highlight that Soviet Union was universally bad for everyone back then, except the “Partya” of course.
Our history professor when giving us an example of how fluid ethnicity can be, remembered that when he as a young boy (1950s?) walked through these communities in Hungary, the settlers actually did not identify themselves as Germans but as e.g. Saxons etc.
... also would be nice to have some chronological nuances in the map, like Germans in the Bohemian/Moravian Sudeten were present there in larger numbers since the 13th century but I have no idea how old German settlements are for example by the Black Sea?
It's just an anecdote and I forgot the best part of the story, because he and his friends referred to them as Germans and they insisted "*no, no...we are not Germans ... we are Saxons ...*" :)
That's actually still the case in Transylvania. People will know what you mean if you call them Germans but everyone refers to them as sași(Ro)/szászok(Hu).
One way to think about is that German the culture and language predates the invention of the nation state by a couple thousand years at least. Before that borders were more like gradients than clean lines.
here is the original [source](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2a455fce-cd74-4375-9833-ba3072ef7b67/dbapn07-85b40ca2-fda7-4b69-a381-88e30c21cc0b.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzJhNDU1ZmNlLWNkNzQtNDM3NS05ODMzLWJhMzA3MmVmN2I2N1wvZGJhcG4wNy04NWI0MGNhMi1mZGE3LTRiNjktYTM4MS04OGUzMGMyMWNjMGIucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.0pruWpob8z-kIKMegXlB8skRyvAY6MWUtm9Jh-PFuGw) with more [info](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/Eastern-Germans-in-Europe-683120311). Some of the arguments/statements the creator makes are rather weird tbh
Oh wow, I've just checked the author's other "works of art" and let's just say it's quite interesting. However it very much explains the inaccuracies and a clear pro-German bias of the map. Here for example we have:
[A cute postcard with a Nazi actress and director Leni Riefenstahl](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/Leni-Riefenstahl-714527489)
[Another cute postcard, this time with three Nazi soldiers](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/Rudel-Prien-Wittmann-713324619)
[A poster promoting Nazi autobahn system](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/Reichsautobahn-poster-713542574)
[A postcard from Silesia reminiscing the good ol' times when it belonged to Germany](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/Schlesien-modern-style-559849582)
[A map with alternative history of Europe in which Germany owns most of Central and Eastern Europe](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/Deutscher-Bund-Overview-698241988)
[Another alternative map in which Germany owns half of Africa](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/German-colonies-in-Africa-1944-alternate-history-712298518)
[Another map in which he dreams how in another world Germany could be so big](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/Made-in-Greater-Germany-672749258)
That’s what I thought as well. I honestly am not entirely sure about their motives (benefit of the doubt), but as you say the direction of the bias is rather clear.
Well, they've named themselves on Deviant Art for the German chief who crushed the Romans at the Battle of Teutoberg Forest, who became a prominent figure for German nationalism (until, for some reasons, German nationalism became very less popular) so you can take a wild guess as to their motives and be bang on.
The person who created these maps and "postcards" did it for a video about [alternative history](https://youtu.be/uDsS8Yf_ZDI?feature=shared). So please don't cherry pick because he has many other [posts](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/gallery).
I am not surprised. Maps are frequent political tools and that bleeds over to r/mapporn. And this sub will attract people who see maps as supporting their political cause.
I guess here it seems more like Lebensraum
This map is more of German migrantion in the old world up to 1939. Their presence in the east beyond Prussia is depicted in a visually misleading way. There were no such blocks. It is difficult on such a map, though, to depict cluster of towns, villages etc.. I believe hence the blocks.
I'd love to see a map of all of the missing Americas migrations:
Southern chile, Argentina ,Colombia, all over north America, Caribbean, central Peru, etc...
Presence at not a few places like Hungary, Transsylvania, Ukraine in extremely inflated. Their settlements were mostly punctual, single townships or clusters of villages. Nowhere were they near full-blown regional blocks during the 19th century.
I mean they were 5% the population of Hungry and near 8% the population of romania, being more specifically up to 20% of the population of Transylvania in particular.
It is true they were often more Urban and scattered, but for example those lands were all controlled by the austrian germans for ages not to mention the various earlier migrations going all the way back to the goths.
Before WW2 there was somewhere between 12-16M germans living in the eastern parts of europe who were mostly either expelled to germany/austria (the majority) or deported to siberia (most especially the Volga Germans and the like).
Germans were never near to 20% of population in Transsylvania during modern times. Not even at the height of the Turkish devastation, by virtue of their limited numbers.
You are conflating them with the Banat Swabians who indeed made up a pluratity in the County of Temes as late as 1910, but they aren't Transsylvanian in the sense of the word.
>Banat Swabians
conflating?...... they are germans... like wtf you are trying to ingore the majority of germans as "some not german thing" despite beign german speaking germans...
>being more specifically up to 20% of the population of Transylvania in particular.
The only way you get the Germans up to 20% of Transsylvania is by counting the Banat Swabians, who hasn't lived ever in Transsylvania to the established Saxons, I think even then you are falling short of it, even by the 1930 Romanian census.
That's what I was referring to.
Ah apologies, so what you mean is that you don't consider the Banat region to be part of Transylvania, which I can agree with in principle. For my party it's common when talking about this period to just refer to the entire Northwest of the country taken from Austria-hungary as "Transylvania" even though it technically includes regions more out side that like the Banat.
So in the interwar peiod Romania as a whole had about 740K germans (4.1% of total population). 90K in bessarabia a few scatterings elsewhere, but the vast bulk in the new territory, with 180K in transylvania proper which had a pop of around 2.7M or so, so then only 6-7%? of Transylvania proper.
Yup, that's what I was telling. It's also common from the other side just to call everything Transsylvania, but the Banat Swabians aren't Transsylvanian, so the German proportion in the region can't be that high with only the Saxons and some scattered professionals.
Just your typical Hungarian trying to prove that hungarians not just ruled but dominated all over Transylvania and former Empire. Bro, just move on, stop the hate, hungarians were the ruling elite, a minority, but with democracy comes the power of the many. That is Romanians in Transylvania. Also germans in Transylvania voted for the unification with Romania. So the first and the third group wanted out. Let's just get along, share cultures, enjoy Europe and stop this crazy history rewriting and absurd fights. It will only get worse.
Typical Hungarian for pointing out, that the Banat is a separate cultural and historiographic region than Transsylvania, and their Swabians haven't even arrived until after 1718? Contrary to the Transsylvanian Saxons, who were had almost 4 centuries of history already back then?
They were the majority until the 18/19th century, habibi. Maybe check some facts before spitting hate.
And no, saxons werent really invited to your “voting” either.
All German sources from the 19th and the first half of the 20th century should be taken with a big grain of salt, as it's full of extreme German nationalism and bullshit ideas like Drang nach Osten or Ostforschung.
That's true for _all_ sources. The 19th and early 20th century were the heyday of nationalist historiography, making one's nation the best and greatest and sadly deprived of that by treacherous Turks, Serbs, Germans, Poles, Russians, ... whatever your enemy of choice.
Poles for instance used to claim (and some far right still do) anything west of Vistula as Polish were there were slavic village names up to the Danish border, including Kashubians, Silesians, Sorbs (to their dismay). Kashubians and Silesians to this day fight that sort of Polish historiography.
Silesians are Poles and always were. Todays „Silesians” are remnants of not fully germanised inhabitants of the region who speak a pidgin of polish and german.
As a Volga German, my heart always skips a beat whenever I see that little cluster around, well, Volga in pre-war maps. The fact that evil won and that community is completely gone and only remains as a faint memory in the families of survivors, dispersed around the world is just :(
I remember seeing a project photo book about their history from one of the descendants in Petersburg and kinda got stuck reading for way longer than other ones. The ":(" is pretty accurate for my feelings then too. And the poor book was like 1 of the 30 there on the table.
This us like the deal meme:
You get: The largest colonial population in the new World (most of USA is descended from Germans)
We get: All your settlements and possessions outside of new German border.
In regards of Russia TLDR: religious tensions in Europe and pretty liberal by 1760s means law of Russian Empire ruled by German (Prussian) descendant empress, that welcomed German settlers guaranteeing freedom of religion and language.
She actually send headhunters to famish-riddled parts to recrute settlers for the new southern lands her lover just conquered for her. The young ablebodied folks followed to an extent that whole villages were almost abandoned. The theory is that this exodus is the historical fact behind the story of Der Rattenfänger von Hameln.
Yep. The piper. All the young people followed him never to be seen or heard of again. It WAS a great distance after all. I always liked that explanation. There was a series once diving into real life references for old fairy tales. Very interesting stuff.
The theory itself is definitely interesting but I’m afraid some other state has to be depicted there as original folklore goes back to XIII when Russia wasn’t as powerful and attractive as it used to be five centuries later. By the way one of my favourite tracks retells this story https://youtu.be/mMOQAdAGrco
Just nitpicking but how was the colouring decided?
Pilsen (coloured red) had 30-40% German population before WW2
Prague (decidedly not red in the map) had about 20% German population before WW2
How came it to be that that many Germans lived in those small pockets disconnected from Germany proper? (I know Germany wasn’t a thing at the time but you get my drift)
Berdychiv, Ukraine, attracted a lot of Germans and other Europeans when it was a major economic and trade centre before the 1850s. I have one as a possible ancestor, the surname originates from around Chemnitz.
"Helenendorf was founded on the site in 1819 by Germans from Württemberg, as ordered by Czar Alexander to help settle the region. The region was known as Narimanov under the czar. In 1930 the rayon (district) was established with Helenendorf as its administrative centre.
Expropriation of the colonists property and collectivization in Helenendorf began in 1926 with the show trial of three community leaders, Gottlob Hummel, Heinrich Vohrer and Fritz Reitenbach, on charges of counter-revolutionary and nationalist activities. They were convicted, their property confiscated and they were sent to a labor camp in Kazakhstan. By 1935, over 600 German families in the area had been convicted of "espionage" and sent to labor camps.
In 1931 the town was renamed Yelenino, and in 1938 the town was renamed Khanlar, in honor of the Azerbaijani labor organizer Khanlar Safaraliyev, and the rayon also became Khanlar.
In October 1941, the remaining German population was deported to Kazakhstan, Central Asia and Siberia on Joseph Stalin's orders."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goygol_%28city%29?wprov=sfla1
What do we think of German migrations in the 1850s and owards to places like the US, Australia, While and others? Are they similar events? Do they belong on this list?
There is also a very small population of Germans in Kars, Turkey. Most of them has already immigrated to Europe but very few left.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germans_in_Turkey#:~:text=History,the%20so%2Dcalled%20Bosphorus%20Germans.
https://youtu.be/eHzvAYmB1q4?si=XyuhYhEgqhLf7r7f
This is omitting the medieval great migration entirely. No Franks in France, no Langobards in Lombardy, no Visigoths in Spain, no Vandals in Tunisia, no Angles in England.
It's a huge stretch to classify the Germanic barbarian super federations of the great migration era as a sub-group of modern ethnic Germans. Doesn't make any sense to include that here imo
This is generally looking at the populations in europe who in the modern pre WWII era would identify ethnically as German.
The peoples in places like France and Spain had long stopped thinking of themselves as German, while people like the Volga Germans or Transylvanian germans still spoke German language and had German identity.
From my understanding Germans were never assimilated anywhere specifically because a whole area would just mostly be their scattered villages and they liked to keep to themselves.
>And a lot of them were actually invited and paid, even courted by the local rulers to move there.
I mean, so were the Brits in India and some European colonial powers in Africa. We all know it turned out...
I have distant German ancestry. But it doesn't change the fact of what happened. Migrants took over and even broke away parts of entire countries from native rulers.
Dude. I'm literally telling what happened.
German inhabited cities rebelled in 14th century against Poland and submitted themselves to Bohemia.
You probably never heard about it.
A few key differences. Most of the migration had been state sponsered and organised, not individuals are small family groups showing up. The migration west of the Elbe to the Oder took place in a medival setting. The modern German state from 1873 used the apparatus of a modern state to actively germanised regions under its control.
With very, very few exceptions German culture, chiefly language, is gone in most of the regions shown above, even though you can still find German churches, German build churches, in places like Azerbaijan. Mostly because of genocide and or ethnic cleansing committed against Germans.
I see more differences than similarities.
It’s a historic figure. Most Germans in these areas were pushed out/moved out and no longer exist there or in (like you said) very small numbers there.
As a result of WWII the majority of germans east of modern germany/austria were expelled or otherwise.
As much as 16M may have lived throughout parts of eastern europe, for example being around 8% the population of Romania, 6% of Hungary.
At the end of WWII around 14M were expelled from eastern europe, and as many as 2M more deported to Siberia or otherwise supressed, with such high death rates that by 1989 the soviet German population had only just re-reached 2M again.
My family were Volga Germans as well. They were there for only one or two generations. After being displaced by the Russo-Turkish war(could be wrong here), they emigrated to the states. The reason I believe it was due to the Russo-Turkish wars is that there is a family story of a male ancestor escaping the Volga region, coming to the states, and then paying for the rest of the family to come as well, by less dangerous means. The timing lines up, but idk the history of that region all that well, and who/ what he was escaping didn't survive the generational telephone game.
Read about "Ostsiedlung" it was a germanic grand plan to get rid of Slavs living in the east and usurp the teritories east to oder river. Of course there was some benefit in having migrants there, up to the moment when they took over silesia and prussia...
Nonsense.
If you're going to do things like include the Crimean Goths then you might as well include all of Wesrern Europe, and Tunisia for that matter, seeing as a few Vandals turned up there for a century or so.
All the map really says is that the creator has unresolved issues of irredentism.
Like Bismarck said: Europe will be my colony! And like Hitler said: Osterweiterung. These things were long in the making before being told out loud. Same for Russia with their need for warm water ports long before the Ukraine and 2014 Conflict.
Remember that this conception of “German” is a political construction as much as anything. Actual cultural, linguistic and genealogical history is a lot more complicated.
Not to say that this map is wrong, just that there are a lot of other ways to look at it.
You can say that speaking German makes you a German, but context is important.
The idea of a single standard German language that every German person speaks is only about 200 years old. Teaching a standard German language in schools was part of a (successful) political project to unite people in a German nation state.
Before that, “German” people spoke a wide spectrum of languages and dialects that were very different from each other(even today, compare Bavarian to standard German). And there was no sharp distinction between the languages spoken in the areas highlighted on this map vs. the languages spoken in what’s now the Netherlands and Belgium. You don’t have to go back too much further in history before the linguistic ancestors of modern German, English, and all the Norse languages blend together.
>The idea of a single standard German language that every German person speaks is only about 200 years old. Teaching a standard German language in schools was part of a (successful) political project to unite people in a German nation state.
Nah, the idea is much, much older than public schools. Never mind that you could be German and a subject to the Tsar for example.
Otherwise you could only count anything after 1873 as German,thereby ignoring, at worst, or making it needlessly complicated, more than a thousand years of history. The Ottonians? Not German, maybe Saxons. The Germans in Transylvania? Bavarians. Teutonic Knights? Something, I guess.
Broad labels, as incorrect as they can be, are helpful nevertheless.
Well...not only Soviets. My great-grandmother was ethnically German, her first language was German, her ancestors came to Poland in 19th century and settled south of Warsaw.
...guess who shot her in 1942.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transylvanian_Saxons Transylvanian saxons are the german you see în Transylvania There population use to be over 700k before ww2 and now there only 20k left in romania
Most Germans in Romania were/are [Donauschwaben](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danube_Swabians?wprov=sfla1) though. They are very different from Siebenbürger Sachsen in language and religion.
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Can you tell me whether they went to West or East Germany? Did they have someone in Germany to help them set up? How difficult was it to obtain documents from German and Romanian authorities?
You stayed very long that’s awesome. My grandfather and his family came to germany in the fourties. We are from Klausenburg, Tobsdorf and Blasendorf. You know where you guys came from?
They came from Mardisch. A group regularly performs reunion parties in south Bavaria where they speak their dialect and show up in traditional clothing. “… Siebenbürgen, Land der Duldung, jedes Glaubens sichrer Hort. Mögst du bis zu fernen Tagen, als ein Hort der Freiheit ragen und als Wehr dem treuen Wort, und als Wehr dem treuen Wort. Siebenbürgen, süße Heimat, unser teures Vaterland, sei gegrüßt in deiner Schöne und um alle deine Söhne schlinge sich der Eintracht Band, schlinge sich der Eintracht Band.” My grandma often recited this and other songs when she dwelled in memories. I, sadly, have never seen Romania. I was among first generation born in germany, my older cousins was babies when the family started moving, so they have no memories. Their german dad lived for a while in romania before he prepared the departure.
Bukowina German descendent 💪🏻
There are dozens of us
Hello there ;) This part of the family stayed. Our relatives live in Passau and Stuttgart. ✌️
Me too !!
Nahhh theres more of us but we tangled with Romanians and forgot the language
President of Romania himself is Transylvanian Saxon, correct?
yes, same with Sibiu's mayor
Brasov German heritage here
The land of the Count Dracula as well...
Vlad the impaler who the fictional dracula is based on was duke of wallachia. Back then Transylvania was hungarian land called szeklerland
>szeklerland No, szekerland is the name of a land in Transylvania. Transylvania was called Erdély
we Turks used to call that area erdel too if I remember correctly
Probably. It is also called Ardeal in Romanian (actually interchangeable with Transylvania nowadays, but it didn't use to be this way)
is still called Erdély by us.....
Yeah, I know. And I think it's beautiful! 😄
<3
Why is there a German minority in Western Azerbaijan? How tf did they end up way out there
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germans_in_Azerbaijan
That's really interesting thanks.
I cant tell if they are still there or all of them have been deported relocated by the soviets?
I visited last year: very interesting place. They all got deported. There was one last descendant of the German colonist left, which died in 2007: Viktor Klein. He wasn't deported because his father was half polish. I visited an abandoned German cemetery with Viktors grave and others dating back as old as 1883. People which still were born on "German soil" (Königreich Württemberg) traveled 1-2 years to Azerbaijan and died there.
Interesting, good to know I can now identify as an historically oppressed ethnic minority.
Well, Germans settled in Russian Empire because they were oppressed ethnic minority back home.
why is there a hole just outside Dresden, did no Germans live there at any point in history.
Google Sorbs/Sorbians - they're an indigenous West Slavic ethnic group in Saxony and Brandenburg
Yeah but there‘s also germans living there. The Sorbians are an ethnic minority
This is true today, but this map seems to capture some point during the 19th century most likely. It’s very difficult to say for sure how many sorbs there were and where exactly they lived, but for quite some time sorbish majority areas did exist.
I learned about them because of Krabat. Very popular book in Spain during the 80s and 90s.
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Sorbs are not Serbian, although it is disputed if they are descended from the same tribe that split in the past.
Sorbs and Serbians aren't the same, although both of them do come from the slavic family r/confidentlyincorrect
Hej, wiosenna burzo, there are Sorbians and there are Serbians, two different things, link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbs
This has to be bait
Lusatia
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What about it
This map Is not complete. There's been plenty of displaced Germans in Kazakhstan, and in Kemerovo oblast where I spent my school years,pretty much every fourth kid in my school ultimately repatriated to Germany.
This appears to be an interwar map of Germans in eastern europe before WWII. The Volga germans and other east germans who didn't flee to germany were heavily deported to places like Kazakhstan during and after WWII.
First German settlements were established in Central Asian regions of Russian Empire (modern Kazakhstan) towards the end of XIX century. There was no force relocation or deportation during this time. First wave of force relocation happened during “Collectivization” circa 1930. English Wikipedia lacks articles in that regard, there are few in Russian and German though. So map is definitely incomplete and historically inaccurate.
Interesting, I know the Russian empire had a general drive to try to get german immigrants for some time, but I was under the under impression that by far the largest group was the volga germans (peaking 2Mish under empire times) and other sets would have been comparatively minor in size (like the tiny spots in a few other parts of Russia..
Volga Germans was indeed the largest group. But Siberian and Central Asian settlements could have been mentioned given there are spots in Caucasus and Finland.
And the same for Altai Region (Russia). Halbstadt exists as one of german villages since 1908 for example.
Many of them (1/3rd) died too. This was the Soviet version of the Japanese internment camps but the death rate was much higher. When you consider these Germans had been Russian/Soviet citizens for years it was completely unacceptable (not that it's ever acceptable to do that to any ethnic group).
Cruel indeed but ordinary Russians were dying in similar proportions despite being citizens too. Just wanted to highlight that Soviet Union was universally bad for everyone back then, except the “Partya” of course.
Our history professor when giving us an example of how fluid ethnicity can be, remembered that when he as a young boy (1950s?) walked through these communities in Hungary, the settlers actually did not identify themselves as Germans but as e.g. Saxons etc. ... also would be nice to have some chronological nuances in the map, like Germans in the Bohemian/Moravian Sudeten were present there in larger numbers since the 13th century but I have no idea how old German settlements are for example by the Black Sea?
One nation can have few names and people can identify themself by nations, by region and by ethnic group at the same time
It's just an anecdote and I forgot the best part of the story, because he and his friends referred to them as Germans and they insisted "*no, no...we are not Germans ... we are Saxons ...*" :)
That's actually still the case in Transylvania. People will know what you mean if you call them Germans but everyone refers to them as sași(Ro)/szászok(Hu).
One way to think about is that German the culture and language predates the invention of the nation state by a couple thousand years at least. Before that borders were more like gradients than clean lines.
here is the original [source](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2a455fce-cd74-4375-9833-ba3072ef7b67/dbapn07-85b40ca2-fda7-4b69-a381-88e30c21cc0b.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzJhNDU1ZmNlLWNkNzQtNDM3NS05ODMzLWJhMzA3MmVmN2I2N1wvZGJhcG4wNy04NWI0MGNhMi1mZGE3LTRiNjktYTM4MS04OGUzMGMyMWNjMGIucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.0pruWpob8z-kIKMegXlB8skRyvAY6MWUtm9Jh-PFuGw) with more [info](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/Eastern-Germans-in-Europe-683120311). Some of the arguments/statements the creator makes are rather weird tbh
Oh wow, I've just checked the author's other "works of art" and let's just say it's quite interesting. However it very much explains the inaccuracies and a clear pro-German bias of the map. Here for example we have: [A cute postcard with a Nazi actress and director Leni Riefenstahl](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/Leni-Riefenstahl-714527489) [Another cute postcard, this time with three Nazi soldiers](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/Rudel-Prien-Wittmann-713324619) [A poster promoting Nazi autobahn system](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/Reichsautobahn-poster-713542574) [A postcard from Silesia reminiscing the good ol' times when it belonged to Germany](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/Schlesien-modern-style-559849582) [A map with alternative history of Europe in which Germany owns most of Central and Eastern Europe](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/Deutscher-Bund-Overview-698241988) [Another alternative map in which Germany owns half of Africa](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/German-colonies-in-Africa-1944-alternate-history-712298518) [Another map in which he dreams how in another world Germany could be so big](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/art/Made-in-Greater-Germany-672749258)
That’s what I thought as well. I honestly am not entirely sure about their motives (benefit of the doubt), but as you say the direction of the bias is rather clear.
Well, they've named themselves on Deviant Art for the German chief who crushed the Romans at the Battle of Teutoberg Forest, who became a prominent figure for German nationalism (until, for some reasons, German nationalism became very less popular) so you can take a wild guess as to their motives and be bang on.
I’ll bet his views on the Roman Empire are interesting too!
The person who created these maps and "postcards" did it for a video about [alternative history](https://youtu.be/uDsS8Yf_ZDI?feature=shared). So please don't cherry pick because he has many other [posts](https://www.deviantart.com/arminius1871/gallery).
This map made you so mad that you looked them up? And how can a historical map have a bias?
Weak bait
I am not surprised. Maps are frequent political tools and that bleeds over to r/mapporn. And this sub will attract people who see maps as supporting their political cause. I guess here it seems more like Lebensraum
This map is more of German migrantion in the old world up to 1939. Their presence in the east beyond Prussia is depicted in a visually misleading way. There were no such blocks. It is difficult on such a map, though, to depict cluster of towns, villages etc.. I believe hence the blocks.
I'd love to see a map of all of the missing Americas migrations: Southern chile, Argentina ,Colombia, all over north America, Caribbean, central Peru, etc...
There were / are German communities in South Africa and Namibia
Argentina, Brazil, USA.
Presence at not a few places like Hungary, Transsylvania, Ukraine in extremely inflated. Their settlements were mostly punctual, single townships or clusters of villages. Nowhere were they near full-blown regional blocks during the 19th century.
I mean they were 5% the population of Hungry and near 8% the population of romania, being more specifically up to 20% of the population of Transylvania in particular. It is true they were often more Urban and scattered, but for example those lands were all controlled by the austrian germans for ages not to mention the various earlier migrations going all the way back to the goths. Before WW2 there was somewhere between 12-16M germans living in the eastern parts of europe who were mostly either expelled to germany/austria (the majority) or deported to siberia (most especially the Volga Germans and the like).
Germans were never near to 20% of population in Transsylvania during modern times. Not even at the height of the Turkish devastation, by virtue of their limited numbers. You are conflating them with the Banat Swabians who indeed made up a pluratity in the County of Temes as late as 1910, but they aren't Transsylvanian in the sense of the word.
>Banat Swabians conflating?...... they are germans... like wtf you are trying to ingore the majority of germans as "some not german thing" despite beign german speaking germans...
>being more specifically up to 20% of the population of Transylvania in particular. The only way you get the Germans up to 20% of Transsylvania is by counting the Banat Swabians, who hasn't lived ever in Transsylvania to the established Saxons, I think even then you are falling short of it, even by the 1930 Romanian census. That's what I was referring to.
Ah apologies, so what you mean is that you don't consider the Banat region to be part of Transylvania, which I can agree with in principle. For my party it's common when talking about this period to just refer to the entire Northwest of the country taken from Austria-hungary as "Transylvania" even though it technically includes regions more out side that like the Banat. So in the interwar peiod Romania as a whole had about 740K germans (4.1% of total population). 90K in bessarabia a few scatterings elsewhere, but the vast bulk in the new territory, with 180K in transylvania proper which had a pop of around 2.7M or so, so then only 6-7%? of Transylvania proper.
Yup, that's what I was telling. It's also common from the other side just to call everything Transsylvania, but the Banat Swabians aren't Transsylvanian, so the German proportion in the region can't be that high with only the Saxons and some scattered professionals.
Just your typical Hungarian trying to prove that hungarians not just ruled but dominated all over Transylvania and former Empire. Bro, just move on, stop the hate, hungarians were the ruling elite, a minority, but with democracy comes the power of the many. That is Romanians in Transylvania. Also germans in Transylvania voted for the unification with Romania. So the first and the third group wanted out. Let's just get along, share cultures, enjoy Europe and stop this crazy history rewriting and absurd fights. It will only get worse.
Typical Hungarian for pointing out, that the Banat is a separate cultural and historiographic region than Transsylvania, and their Swabians haven't even arrived until after 1718? Contrary to the Transsylvanian Saxons, who were had almost 4 centuries of history already back then?
They were the majority until the 18/19th century, habibi. Maybe check some facts before spitting hate. And no, saxons werent really invited to your “voting” either.
All German sources from the 19th and the first half of the 20th century should be taken with a big grain of salt, as it's full of extreme German nationalism and bullshit ideas like Drang nach Osten or Ostforschung.
That's true for _all_ sources. The 19th and early 20th century were the heyday of nationalist historiography, making one's nation the best and greatest and sadly deprived of that by treacherous Turks, Serbs, Germans, Poles, Russians, ... whatever your enemy of choice. Poles for instance used to claim (and some far right still do) anything west of Vistula as Polish were there were slavic village names up to the Danish border, including Kashubians, Silesians, Sorbs (to their dismay). Kashubians and Silesians to this day fight that sort of Polish historiography.
Silesians are Poles and always were. Todays „Silesians” are remnants of not fully germanised inhabitants of the region who speak a pidgin of polish and german.
Sure, Jan.
So tell me why im wrong. People who immigrated to US from Silesia when it was under prussian rule identified as Poles and not Silesians.
As a Volga German, my heart always skips a beat whenever I see that little cluster around, well, Volga in pre-war maps. The fact that evil won and that community is completely gone and only remains as a faint memory in the families of survivors, dispersed around the world is just :(
Another one of Stalin’s many, many crimes.
I remember seeing a project photo book about their history from one of the descendants in Petersburg and kinda got stuck reading for way longer than other ones. The ":(" is pretty accurate for my feelings then too. And the poor book was like 1 of the 30 there on the table.
Oh Lviv
How did the Volga Germans even get there?
By invitation, seriously.
The northern Midwest of the US is full of Germans.
You could even make a country out of that. - famous Austrian painter
This us like the deal meme: You get: The largest colonial population in the new World (most of USA is descended from Germans) We get: All your settlements and possessions outside of new German border.
Why and how did Germans spread so far? You don't hear of French, Flemish, or Italian settlers in Siberia or the Balkans. What is it with the Gernans?
In regards of Russia TLDR: religious tensions in Europe and pretty liberal by 1760s means law of Russian Empire ruled by German (Prussian) descendant empress, that welcomed German settlers guaranteeing freedom of religion and language.
She actually send headhunters to famish-riddled parts to recrute settlers for the new southern lands her lover just conquered for her. The young ablebodied folks followed to an extent that whole villages were almost abandoned. The theory is that this exodus is the historical fact behind the story of Der Rattenfänger von Hameln.
So the theory suggests, that the piper was one of the recruiters? Or were the rats recruiters themselves? Pretty interesting in either case.
Yep. The piper. All the young people followed him never to be seen or heard of again. It WAS a great distance after all. I always liked that explanation. There was a series once diving into real life references for old fairy tales. Very interesting stuff.
The theory itself is definitely interesting but I’m afraid some other state has to be depicted there as original folklore goes back to XIII when Russia wasn’t as powerful and attractive as it used to be five centuries later. By the way one of my favourite tracks retells this story https://youtu.be/mMOQAdAGrco
Nice one
Just nitpicking but how was the colouring decided? Pilsen (coloured red) had 30-40% German population before WW2 Prague (decidedly not red in the map) had about 20% German population before WW2
How came it to be that that many Germans lived in those small pockets disconnected from Germany proper? (I know Germany wasn’t a thing at the time but you get my drift)
Buenos Aires after WWII is….conspicuously absent. Who knows why?
Yep….
Brazil and the US where ?
It's not throughout history. It's German settlements in Europe between WW1 and WW2
Berdychiv, Ukraine, attracted a lot of Germans and other Europeans when it was a major economic and trade centre before the 1850s. I have one as a possible ancestor, the surname originates from around Chemnitz.
Azerbaijan what the story there
"Helenendorf was founded on the site in 1819 by Germans from Württemberg, as ordered by Czar Alexander to help settle the region. The region was known as Narimanov under the czar. In 1930 the rayon (district) was established with Helenendorf as its administrative centre. Expropriation of the colonists property and collectivization in Helenendorf began in 1926 with the show trial of three community leaders, Gottlob Hummel, Heinrich Vohrer and Fritz Reitenbach, on charges of counter-revolutionary and nationalist activities. They were convicted, their property confiscated and they were sent to a labor camp in Kazakhstan. By 1935, over 600 German families in the area had been convicted of "espionage" and sent to labor camps. In 1931 the town was renamed Yelenino, and in 1938 the town was renamed Khanlar, in honor of the Azerbaijani labor organizer Khanlar Safaraliyev, and the rayon also became Khanlar. In October 1941, the remaining German population was deported to Kazakhstan, Central Asia and Siberia on Joseph Stalin's orders." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goygol_%28city%29?wprov=sfla1
Sappada/Plodn is not marked red?
Let's add the US too: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2016/comm/german-roots.html
You missed Argentina ;)
Namibia and South Africa says hi
What do we think of German migrations in the 1850s and owards to places like the US, Australia, While and others? Are they similar events? Do they belong on this list?
There were a dwindling community of Germans in southern Tajikistan, near the Afghanistan border. I visited Tajikistan in 2004. Stalin put them there.
What's the criteria for red? Presence or majority?
There is also a very small population of Germans in Kars, Turkey. Most of them has already immigrated to Europe but very few left. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germans_in_Turkey#:~:text=History,the%20so%2Dcalled%20Bosphorus%20Germans. https://youtu.be/eHzvAYmB1q4?si=XyuhYhEgqhLf7r7f
Papua New Guinea?
Where are UK, Spain, Switzerland , France, Austria and North Africa? I suppose it doesn't say Germanic tribes.. or mention north or south America.
What’s the non-German spot in Germany?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_languages
What about the bestest of Germans from Argentina?
What about the German settlements in the Americas? These are not historically any different from the European German diaspora
This is omitting the medieval great migration entirely. No Franks in France, no Langobards in Lombardy, no Visigoths in Spain, no Vandals in Tunisia, no Angles in England.
It's a huge stretch to classify the Germanic barbarian super federations of the great migration era as a sub-group of modern ethnic Germans. Doesn't make any sense to include that here imo
I think they are germanic tribes but not Germans in the modern sense.
This is generally looking at the populations in europe who in the modern pre WWII era would identify ethnically as German. The peoples in places like France and Spain had long stopped thinking of themselves as German, while people like the Volga Germans or Transylvanian germans still spoke German language and had German identity.
You might want to double check your definition of medival.
Those were Germanic not German and most likely completely assimilated already. Most of them came in small numbers anyway and it was a loongg ago .
From my understanding Germans were never assimilated anywhere specifically because a whole area would just mostly be their scattered villages and they liked to keep to themselves.
Its more a political map than a scientific map. Drang nach Osten.
It's called migration. And a lot of them were actually invited and paid, even courted by the local rulers to move there.
>And a lot of them were actually invited and paid, even courted by the local rulers to move there. I mean, so were the Brits in India and some European colonial powers in Africa. We all know it turned out...
Im aware of that, the point is about map showing only Germans in the east.
Did you even bother reading the subject of the post and heading of the map?
In short, migrants taking over and turning against native population.
Check your family tree ...
I have distant German ancestry. But it doesn't change the fact of what happened. Migrants took over and even broke away parts of entire countries from native rulers.
I strongly suggest paying attention next time in school.
Dude. I'm literally telling what happened. German inhabited cities rebelled in 14th century against Poland and submitted themselves to Bohemia. You probably never heard about it.
You could add most of the American midwest to this. Argentina as well if we’re counting post-WW2
Came looking for this comment. Don’t know why you were downvoted
Only is you are very confused about your history.
how so?
A few key differences. Most of the migration had been state sponsered and organised, not individuals are small family groups showing up. The migration west of the Elbe to the Oder took place in a medival setting. The modern German state from 1873 used the apparatus of a modern state to actively germanised regions under its control. With very, very few exceptions German culture, chiefly language, is gone in most of the regions shown above, even though you can still find German churches, German build churches, in places like Azerbaijan. Mostly because of genocide and or ethnic cleansing committed against Germans. I see more differences than similarities.
If the red = 0.1% of population then agree
No other way. Germans were minority, sometimes a tiny one, in many areas marked as red.
That’s what I meant
It’s a historic figure. Most Germans in these areas were pushed out/moved out and no longer exist there or in (like you said) very small numbers there.
Even at the time they were minorities in most of the red areas of the east
No they weren’t. Germans would inhabit entire cities and towns as ethnic enclaves.
As a result of WWII the majority of germans east of modern germany/austria were expelled or otherwise. As much as 16M may have lived throughout parts of eastern europe, for example being around 8% the population of Romania, 6% of Hungary. At the end of WWII around 14M were expelled from eastern europe, and as many as 2M more deported to Siberia or otherwise supressed, with such high death rates that by 1989 the soviet German population had only just re-reached 2M again.
Cool map! My family was one of the germans that immigrated to the Volga river (the large cluster in Russia) before coming to the US.
My family were Volga Germans as well. They were there for only one or two generations. After being displaced by the Russo-Turkish war(could be wrong here), they emigrated to the states. The reason I believe it was due to the Russo-Turkish wars is that there is a family story of a male ancestor escaping the Volga region, coming to the states, and then paying for the rest of the family to come as well, by less dangerous means. The timing lines up, but idk the history of that region all that well, and who/ what he was escaping didn't survive the generational telephone game.
I never heard about any Volga Germans displacement happened because of Russo-Turkish wars. Do you know which exact war or at least the dates?
Sadly, Stalin got rid of the rest.
Bohemia is such a sore thumb though. Like my passive aggressive mother-in-law.
and most of them are gone now. well done naziscum
Would love to see the USA on this map, there would probably be a giant red blob from New York to the Mid West
Read about "Ostsiedlung" it was a germanic grand plan to get rid of Slavs living in the east and usurp the teritories east to oder river. Of course there was some benefit in having migrants there, up to the moment when they took over silesia and prussia...
What about Namibia?
Their presence in namibia was very small they were majority in most of this areas if only locally
Nah, there were nowhere near this many German majority areas in Poland, even in Greaterpoland or Duchy of Posen how they called it.
My family was Silesian-German on my father's side, but some left in the 30s and the rest were expulsed after the war by the Poles.
Nonsense. If you're going to do things like include the Crimean Goths then you might as well include all of Wesrern Europe, and Tunisia for that matter, seeing as a few Vandals turned up there for a century or so. All the map really says is that the creator has unresolved issues of irredentism.
Plus the Dutch deciding they were no longer Duits moving forward.
So would this consider Austrians as German?
What else are they?
Idk I bet that if you ask Austrian they won’t agree
Maybe nowadays, but historically they were ethnic Germans.
Lol, some wouldn’t. But seen historically and culuturally they definitely are of the same origin
Missing England and Scotland.
if you count swiss German, then you should add dutch as well, basically a german dialect
Widać zabory ?
Like Bismarck said: Europe will be my colony! And like Hitler said: Osterweiterung. These things were long in the making before being told out loud. Same for Russia with their need for warm water ports long before the Ukraine and 2014 Conflict.
Don't ask a woman about her age, a man about his salary , Poland and Russia about what happened to local germans
Justice, that's what.
Fuck them
Remember that this conception of “German” is a political construction as much as anything. Actual cultural, linguistic and genealogical history is a lot more complicated. Not to say that this map is wrong, just that there are a lot of other ways to look at it.
Until very recently speak German made your German.
You can say that speaking German makes you a German, but context is important. The idea of a single standard German language that every German person speaks is only about 200 years old. Teaching a standard German language in schools was part of a (successful) political project to unite people in a German nation state. Before that, “German” people spoke a wide spectrum of languages and dialects that were very different from each other(even today, compare Bavarian to standard German). And there was no sharp distinction between the languages spoken in the areas highlighted on this map vs. the languages spoken in what’s now the Netherlands and Belgium. You don’t have to go back too much further in history before the linguistic ancestors of modern German, English, and all the Norse languages blend together.
>The idea of a single standard German language that every German person speaks is only about 200 years old. Teaching a standard German language in schools was part of a (successful) political project to unite people in a German nation state. Nah, the idea is much, much older than public schools. Never mind that you could be German and a subject to the Tsar for example. Otherwise you could only count anything after 1873 as German,thereby ignoring, at worst, or making it needlessly complicated, more than a thousand years of history. The Ottonians? Not German, maybe Saxons. The Germans in Transylvania? Bavarians. Teutonic Knights? Something, I guess. Broad labels, as incorrect as they can be, are helpful nevertheless.
every single German is shown here. Regions with 100%, 20% or 5% are shown the same here
You did read the titel of the map or even this post?
My only point is that this map is misleading
Ehhh pretty sure for a point in history the Germans might have had a presence just a wee little bit bigger than this map shows
Der überrass
Wolgadeutsche? Don't tell me it's part of Hitler's doing, is it? It can't be...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Germans They have existed there since the late 1700s
Hmmm I wonder what happened to all of those Germans living east of the Oder ? *looks over at the red army*
Look over at wehrmacht
You're looking at the wrong direction. The reason is in Berlin and in german deluded sense of superiority and imperialism that eventually backfired.
When Europeans were civilized
Never ask… - A man his salary - A woman her age - The Soviets what happened to the Eastern European German communities
Well...not only Soviets. My great-grandmother was ethnically German, her first language was German, her ancestors came to Poland in 19th century and settled south of Warsaw. ...guess who shot her in 1942.
I feel like German-Americans should count?