Danube Swabians

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Danube Swabians

Donauschwaben
Total population
230,509
Regions with significant populations
Hungary	186,596[1]
Romania	36,884[2]
Serbia	4,064[3]
Croatia	2,965[4]
Languages
Hungarian, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, German
Religion
Roman Catholicism, Lutheran
Related ethnic groups
Germans of Hungary, Germans of Romania, Germans of Serbia, Germans of Croatia, Banat Swabians, Satu Mare Swabians

The Danube Swabians (German: Donauschwaben [ˈdoːnaʊʃvaːbm̩] ^ⓘ) is a collective term for the ethnic German-speaking population who lived in Kingdom of Hungary of east-central Europe, especially in the Danube River valley, first in the 12th century, and in greater numbers in the 17th and 18th centuries. Most were descended from earlier 18th-century Swabian settlers from Upper Swabia, the Swabian Jura, northern Lake Constance, the upper Danube, the Swabian-Franconian Forest, the Southern Black Forest and the Principality of Fürstenberg, followed by Hessians, Bavarians, Franconians and Lorrainers recruited by Austria to repopulate the area and restore agriculture after the expulsion of the Ottoman Empire. They were able to keep their language and religion and initially developed strongly German communities in the region with German folklore.

The Danube Swabians were given their German name by German ethnographers in the early 20th century.^[5] 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 Serbia's Vojvodina and Croatia's Slavonia, especially those in the Osijek region. They called themselves Schwowe in a Germanized spelling, or "Shwoveh" or "Shwova" in an English spelling; in the singular first person, a Danube Swabian identified as a Shwob.

In Serbo-Croatian, Danube Swabians, alongside the local populace would refer to themselves as Švabo (Serbo-Croatian for "of Swabia") or Nijemci / Nemci (Serbo-Croatian for "Germans"), referring to their ethnic origin. However, the Carpathian Germans and Transylvanian Saxons are not included within the Danube Swabian group.

After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following the First World War, the areas where the Danube Swabians had settled were divided into three parts by the Allied Powers. One part remained with Hungary, the second part was allocated to Romania, and the third part fell to the newly established state of Yugoslavia. In this atmosphere of ethnic nationalism, the Danube Swabians had to fight for legal equality as citizens and for the preservation of their cultural traditions. In the 1930s, Nazi Germany promoted National Socialist ideas to the Danube Swabians and claimed the right to protect them as part of its reason for expanding into eastern Europe.^[6]

The Danube Swabians faced particular challenges in the Second World War, when the Axis powers, including Germany, overran many of the nations where they lived. While they were initially favored by the occupiers, some were moved from their homes. As the war progressed and Germany needed more soldiers, the men were conscripted. Many atrocities took place during and after the war, as a result of the complicated allegiances, brutality of the Nazis, and partisan reaction to it.

Toward the end of the Second World War, tens of thousands of Danube Swabians fled west ahead of the advancing Soviet army. After the war, the remaining Danube Swabians were disenfranchised, their property seized, and many were deported to labor camps in the Soviet Union. Hungary expelled half of its ethnic Germans.^[7] In Yugoslavia, the local "ethnic Germans" were collectively blamed for the actions of Nazi Germany and branded as war criminals. Immediately after the end of the war, partisan troops conducted mass executions of numerous Yugoslav Danube Swabians. Survivors were later confined to labor and internment camps by the Yugoslavian authorities.^[8] Following the dissolution of the camps, the majority of the remaining Yugoslav Danube Swabians left the country, seeking refuge in Germany, other parts of Europe, the United States, and Canada.

Of the 1.4 to 1.5 million pre-war population of Danube Swabians, the overwhelming majority of the survivors resettled in German-speaking countries: about 660,000 in Germany and about 150,000 in Austria. Danube Swabians also resettled in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia.^[9] The diaspora communities of Danube Swabians maintain their language and customs in numerous societies and clubs. The number of organizations is shrinking as the generations that lived in the Danube Swabian homelands die.