Who
Are The Donauschwaben?
By
Hans Kopp
The Danube Swabians are
those German colonists who settled during the three
"Great Swabian Migrations" in Hungary. The
colonization was done by explicit invitation of the
Hungarian administration as mandated in the session of
their congress in 1722-1723 in Pressburg to their King
Karl, during the reign of the Habsburg as Emperors of
the "Holy Roman Empire of German Nation;" to repopulate
the land after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by
forces of the German Nation (1683-1718). They became
first known as the "Ungarländische Deutschen"
(German-Hungarians). After the dismantling of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of WW I by the allied
nations, the regions the Germans had settled in Hungary
were divided among three countries: Hungary, Romania and
the newly created Yugoslavia, thus invaliding the
collective name Ungarländische Deutschen.
The name “Danube
Swabian” was coined in 1920 by Dr. Hermann Rüdiger
(a scientist from Stuttgart) and Robert Sieger (a
geographer from Graz) and validated by the German
Foreign Department in 1930, during the Weimar Republic,
acknowledging the German origin of the Danube Swabians.
The Germans realized that, left unassisted and divided
among Romanians, Yugoslavs and Hungarians, the Danube
Swabians would not be able to resist assimilation
attempts and as an ethnic group would disappear, and
with them a culture and values worth preserving. This
collective name would identify and better describe the
Germans whose ancestors settled in Hungary during the
three "Great Swabian Migrations."
The name
was derived from the German province of Swabia (Schwaben),
and the Danube (Duna/Donau) River. The name Danube derived
from the Celtic word Danubius. However, the name was not
used by the "Danube Swabians" themselves, the
youngest of the German "Volksgruppen" (folks groups),
until after their expulsion by the communist governments of
their respective countries after WW II. The Danube Swabians
are also referred to as "Donaudeutsche" meaning
Danube Germans.
(See
map of Europe before and after WW I)
[Published
at DVHH.org Sep 2006]
