German diaspora


German diaspora are ethnic Germans and their descendants living outside Germany. It also refers to the aspects of migration of German speakers from central Europe to different countries around the world. This definition describes the "German" term as a sociolinguistic group as opposed to the national one since the emigrant groups came from different regions with diverse cultural practices and different varieties of German. For instance, the Alsatians and Hessians were simply called Germans once they set foot in their new homelands.

Terminology

Volksdeutsche is a historical term which arose in the early 20th century and was used by the Nazis to describe ethnic Germans without German citizenship living outside of the Third Reich, although many had been in other areas for centuries. During World War II, Hitler forbade the use of the term because it was being used in a derogatory way against the many ethnic Germans in the SS. It is used by many historians who either deliberately or innocently are unaware of its Nazi history.
Auslandsdeutsche is a concept that connotes German citizens, regardless of which ethnicity, living abroad, or alternatively ethnic Germans entering Germany from abroad. Today, this means a citizen of Germany living more or less permanently in another country, who are allowed to vote in the Republic's elections, but who usually do not pay taxes to Germany but in their resident states. 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.

Distribution

Ethnic Germans are a minority group in many countries. 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.
In the United States census of 1990, 57 million people were fully or partly of German ancestry, forming the largest single ethnic group in the country as well as the largest population of Germans outside of Germany. According to the United States Ancestry Census of 2009, there were 50,764,352 people of German descent in the U.S. People of German ancestry form an important minority group in several countries, including Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, Chile, Namibia, and in central and eastern Europe—.
Distribution of German citizens and people claiming German ancestry :
CountryGerman ancestryGerman citizensComments
USA46,882,727 see German American; the largest German population outside Germany.
Brazil12,000,000 see German Brazilian; the second largest German population outside Germany.
Argentina3,500,000 50,000see German Argentine.
Canada3,203,330 see German Canadian.
Mexico2,000,000 see German Mexicans
South Africa1,200,000 see Afrikaners.
France1,000,000 204,000see Alsace and Lorraine.
Australia898,700 see German Australian.
Chile500,0008,515see German Chilean.
Russia394,138 see Germans in Russia, Volga Germans, Caucasus Germans, Black Sea Germans and Crimea Germans.
Bolivia375,000 see Ethnic Germans in Bolivia.
Netherlands372,720 179,000
Italy314,604 see German-Italian relations
United Kingdom273,654 92,000see German migration to the United Kingdom.
Paraguay290,000
Switzerlandsee note266,000see German immigration to Switzerland and Swiss people.
Peru240,000see German Peruvian
Kazakhstan178,409
see Germans in Kazakhstan.
Spain138,917 see Germany-Spain relations
Poland148,000 see German minority in Poland.
Hungary131,951 see Germans of Hungary.
Austriasee note170,475see Austrians.
Israel100,000see Sarona, German Colony, Haifa and German Colony, Jerusalem
Belgium73,000 see German-speaking Community of Belgium.
Romania36,884 see Germans of Romania, Transylvanian Saxons, Zipser Germans.
Uruguay40,000 6,000
Czech Republic18,772 see Germans in the Czech Republic.
Norway25,000 see Germany-Norway relations
Ecuador
Ukraine33,302 see Black Sea Germans and Crimea Germans.
Namibia30,000 see German Namibian.
Dominican Republic25,0001,792
Denmark15,000see North Schleswig Germans.
Greece15,498see Greece-Germany relations.
Cuba12,387see German Cuban
Ireland10,000 11,305
Belize10,865 see Mennonites in Belize.
Slovakia5,000–10,000see Carpathian Germans, Zipser Germans
Kyrgyzstan8,563 see Germans in Kyrgyzstan.
Philippines6,400see German settlement in the Philippines.
Ghana
Serbia4,064 850 see Germans of Serbia.
Croatia2,965 see Germans of Croatia.
Turkmenistan
Tajikistan
Estonia1,544
Liechtensteinsee notesee Liechtensteiners.
Luxembourgsee notesee Luxembourgers.
Latvia4,975
Lithuania2,418
Finland8,894 4,102 Germans in Finland
Iceland842
Portugal10,030
Sweden115,550 29,213 see Germany–Sweden relations
Panama
New Zealand12,810 see German New Zealander.
Costa RicaUnknown number of individuals of German descent
Venezuelasee German Venezuelan.-
GuatemalaUnknown number of individuals of German descent7,000-10,000 see German Guatemalan
NicaraguaUnknown number of individuals of German descentsee German Nicaraguan.
ColombiaUnknown number of individuals of German descent9,668 see German Colombian.
JamaicaUnknown number of individuals of German descentsee Germans in Jamaica.

Europe

Alpine nations

, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein each have a German-speaking majority, though the vast majority of the population do not identify themselves as German anymore. 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 over 90% of the Austrians now see themselves as an independent nation.

East-Central Europe

Aside from the Germans who migrated to other parts of Europe, the German diaspora also covered the Eastern and Central European states such as Croatia, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, along with several post-Soviet states. There has been a continued historical presence of Germans in these regions due to the interrelated processes of conquest and colonization as well as migration and border changes. During the periods of colonization, for instance, there was an influx of Germans who came to Bohemia and parts of Romania as colonizers. Settlements due to border changes were largely 20th century developments caused by the new political order after the two world wars.

Baltic states

Belgium

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.

Luxembourg

Though the Luxembourgish language 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.

Bulgaria

Czech Republic and Slovakia

Before World War II, some 30% of the population in Czech Republic were ethnic Germans, and in the border regions and certain other areas they were in the majority. There are about 40,000 Germans in the Czech Republic. Their number has been consistently decreasing since World War II. According to the 2001 census there remain 13 municipalities and settlements in Czech Republic with more than 10% Germans.
The situation in Slovakia was different from that in Czech Republic, 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.

Denmark

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

Hungary

Prior to World War II, approximately 1.5 million Danube Swabians lived in Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. 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.

Italy

There are smaller, unique populations of Germans who arrived so long ago that their dialect retains many archaic features heard nowhere else: the Cimbrians are concentrated in various communities in the Carnic Alps, north of Verona, and especially in the Sugana Valley on the high plateau northwest of Vicenza in the Veneto region; the Walsers, who originated in the Swiss Wallis, live in the provinces of Aostatal, Vercelli, and Verbano-Cusio-Ossola; the Mòchenos live in the Fersina Valley. Smaller German-speaking communities also exist in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region: the Carinthians in the Canale Valley 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. However, as Austrian saw themselves as ethnic Germans until the end of World War II they can technically also be called Germans. The province 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.
Germans have been present in the Iglesiente mining region in the south west of Sardinia since the 13th century. Successively since 1850 groups of specialised workers from Styria, Austria, followed by German miners from Freiburg settled in the same area. Some Germans influenced building and toponym is still visible in this area.

Norway

In Norway, there are 27,770 Germans making Germans the ninth largest ethnic minority in the country, making up 0.52% of Norway's total population, and 2.94% of all foreign residents in Norway. Imigration from Germany to Norway has been going on since the Middle Ages. There was many Germans that migrated to Bergen during the Middel Ages and during Norway`s union with Denmark. During the Union with Denmark alot of German miners migrated to the town of Kongsberg. As of 2020 there is 1,446 Germans in the city of Bergen making up 0.51% of the total population, and in the town of Kongsberg there are 114 Germans making up 0.41% of the total population. The city with the biggest population of Germans is Oslo. 3,743 Germans lives in the city making up 0.55% of the total population.
Germany is also the country that sends the most foreign exchange students to Norway, in 2016, 1,570 exchange students came to Norway from Germany.

Poland

The remaining German minority in Poland 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.

Romania

Since the High Middle Ages, the territory of present-day Romania has been continuously inhabited by German-speaking groups, firstly by Transylvanian Saxons then, gradually, by other immigrant groups of ethnic German origin. They are all politically represented by the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania.

France

In France over 100,000 German nationals residing in the French country There, the Germans live mainly in the northeastern area of France, i.e., in regions close to the Franco-German border, and the sunny island of Corsica, similarly like many German tourists in the coastal resorts of Spain.
German tourists are the most frequent visitors of France in the year 2013.

United Kingdom

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:, and World War II prisoners of war held in Great Britain who decided to stay there. Others arrived as spouses of English 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 England, in particular, Richmond.
The British Royal Family are partially descended from German monarchs.
The Anglo-Saxon tribe were the population in Britain 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. 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 between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century, after which it is known as Middle English.

Africa

During the long decline of the Roman Empire and the ensuing great migrations Germanic tribes such as the Vandals migrated into North Africa and settled mainly in the lands corresponding to modern Tunisia and northeastern Algeria. While it is likely that some of the people living there at present are descended from these Germanic peoples, they did not leave visible cultural traces.

Cameroon

The first German trading post in the Duala area on the Kamerun River delta was established in 1868 by the Hamburg trading company :de:Carl Woermann|C. Woermann. The firm's agent in Gabon, Johannes Thormählen, expanded activities to the Kamerun River delta. In 1874, together with the Woermann agent in Liberia, Wilhelm Jantzen, the two merchants founded their own company, Jantzen & Thormählen there. At the outbreak of World War I, French, Belgian and British troops invaded the German colony in 1914 and fully occupied it during the Kamerun campaign. The last German fort to surrender was the one at Mora in the north of the colony in 1916. Following Germany's defeat, the Treaty of Versailles divided the territory into two League of Nations mandates under the administration of Great Britain and France. French Cameroun and part of British Cameroons reunified in 1961 as Cameroon, though some Germans still remain in Cameroon.

Namibia

Germany was not as involved in colonizing Africa as other major European powers of the 20th century, 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.

South Africa

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 claims the modern Afrikaners have 34.4% German ancestry.
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. Mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries, an estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa. Germans settled quite extensively in South Africa, with many Calvinists immigrating from Northern Europe. Later on, more Germans settled in the KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere. Here, one of the largest communities are the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German, who are concentrated in and around Wartburg. German is slowly disappearing elsewhere, but a number of communities still have a large number of speakers and some even have German language schools.

Tanzania

The country was organised when the German military was asked to put down a revolt. There are a small community of Germans remaining in Tanzania. Tanzania was sold to the British after the German colonization as well as Rwanda and Burundi being sold to the Belgians.

North America


By 1940, the German diaspora in Brazil amounted about a million.
In Japan, during the Meiji period, 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 :Category:German expatriates in Japan|Germans in Japan, since Germany's and Japan's fairly parallel modernization made Germans ideal O-yatoi gaikokujin.
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.
In Indonesia, some of them became well-known figures in history, such as C.G.C. Reinwardt, Walter Spies, and Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn.
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

Oceania

There have been ethnic Germans in Australia since the founding of the New South Wales colony in 1788, Governor Arthur Phillip had a German father. But, the first significant wave of German immigration was in 1838. These Germans, mostly Prussian immigrants. 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, large numbers of Germans emigrated to Australia to escape war-torn Europe.
From Celtic times the early Germanic tribes settled from the Baltic all the way to the Black Sea until the great migrations of the 4-6th century AD.
Medieval Germans migrated eastwards during the medieval period Ostsiedlung until the flight, evacuation and 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.. During World War II, Nazi Germany classified ethnic Germans as Übermenschen, 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, and 38,000, 40,000 and 101,057 standard German speakers in Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, respectively.
There were reportedly 500,000 ethnic Germans in Poland in 1998. Recent official figures show 147,000. Of the 745,421 Germans in Romania in 1930, only about 60,000 remain. In Hungary the situation is quite similar, with only about 220,000. 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 to Kazakhstan. Germany admitted approximately 1.63 million ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union between 1990 and 1999.
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

Former Soviet Union

Former Yugoslavia

According to the 1921 census, the German community was the largest minority group in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

Groupings

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:
Heavy concentration of German, Austrian and Swiss descendants in Southern Chile..
...or by ethnic or religious criteria:
In Africa, Oceania, and East/Southeast Asia
A visible sign of the geographical extension of the German language is the German-language media outside the German-speaking countries.
German is the second most commonly used scientific language as well as the third most widely used language on websites after English and Russian.
Deutsche Welle, or DW, is Germany's public international broadcaster. The service is available in 30 languages. DW's satellite television service consists of channels in German, English, Spanish, and Arabic.
German-speaking people living abroad can visit the websites of German-language newspapers and TV- and radio stations. The free software MediathekView allows the downloading of videos from the websites of some public German, Austrian, and Swiss TV stations and of the public Franco-German TV network ARTE. With the webpage "onlinetvrecorder.com," it is possible to record programs of many German and some international TV stations.
Note that some material is region-restricted due to legal reasons and cannot be accessed from everywhere in the world. Some websites have a paywall or limit the access for free/unregistered users.
See also:
allows dual citizenship with other EU countries and Switzerland; with other countries, it is possible in some cases:
  1. With special permission, for which German citizens must apply before taking the other citizenship. Non-EU and non-Swiss citizens wanting to be naturalized in Germany must usually renounce their old citizenship, but may keep it if their country does not allow the renunciation of citizenship, or if the renunciation process is too difficult/humiliating/expensive, or, rarely, in individual cases if the renunciation of the old citizenship means enormous disadvantages for the concerned person.
  2. If dual citizenship was obtained at birth. Some countries do not accept the "dual-citizenship-by-birth principle," so the concerned person must later choose one citizenship and renounce the other.
  3. Under Article 116 par. 2 of the Basic Law, former German citizens who between January 30, 1933, and May 8, 1945, were deprived of their German citizenship on political, racial, or religious grounds may re-invoke their citizenship and the same applies to their descendants, and are permitted to hold dual citizenship.
A law adopted in June 2019 allows the revocation of the German citizenship of dual citizens who have joined or supported a terror militia such as the Islamic State and are at least 18 years old.
Naturalized Germans can lose their German citizenship if it is found out that they got it by willful deceit / bribery / menacing / giving intentionally false or incomplete information that had been important for the naturalization process. In June 2019, it was decided to prolong the deadline from 5 to 10 years after naturalization.

Visa requirements

As of 7 January 2020, German citizens can visit 189 countries without a visa or with visa on arrival. The Henley Passport Index ranks the German passport third in the world in terms of travel freedom.

Freedom of movement within other EU countries and the EFTA countries

As EU citizens, Germans can live and work indefinitely in other EU countries and the EFTA countries; however, the right to vote and work in certain sensitive fields might in some cases be restricted to the local citizens only. The EU/EFTA countries can exclude immigrants from getting welfare for a certain time period to avoid "welfare tourism," and they can refuse welfare completely if the immigrants do not have a job after a certain period of time and do not try to get one. Immigrants convicted of welfare fraud can be deported and be refused the re-entry of the country.

Right to consular protection in non-EU countries

When in a non-EU country where there is no German embassy, Germans as EU citizens have the right to get consular protection from the embassy of any other EU country present in that country. See List of diplomatic missions of Germany and List of diplomatic missions in Germany.
German citizens can be extradited only to other EU countries or to international courts of justice, and only if a law allows this. Before the introduction of the European Arrest Warrant, the extradition of German citizens was generally prohibited by the German Basic Law.
Germany regularly publishes travel warnings on the website of the Auswärtiges Amt to its citizens. The Office allows German citizens to register online in a special list, the Krisenvorsorgeliste before they travel abroad. With a password, the registered persons can change or update their data. The registration is voluntary and free of charge. It can be used for longer stays, but also for a vacation of only two weeks. The earliest date of registration is 10 days before the planned trip.

Worldwide travel warning in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic

On April 17, 2020, the German Auswärtiges Amt published a worldwide travel warning on its website and advised German citizens not to take unnecessary trips abroad.
Meanwhile, the warning has been revoked for other EU countries, the EFTA countries, and the microstates.
The German Government advises its citizens against traveling to Ireland, Malta, and the United Kingdom because of their strict quarantine prescriptions.
On its website, the Auswärtiges Amt will regularly update travel information.

Footnotes