poppy image  An Introduction to the Danube Swabians poppy image

This is the largely unknown story of the peaceful settlement of German pioneers on the crown lands of Habsburg Hungary from 1683 to 1990, their incalculable contribution to the development of the region, the dismemberment of their settlement areas by the victors of World War I who arbitrarily awarded them to the successor states of Romania and Yugoslavia in 1919-1920.

In the aftermath of World War II, solely because of their German origin, and not because of any wrongdoing , they were deported from Hungary, dispossessed in Romania and eventually sold to Germany. In Tito's Communist Yugoslavia they became victims of a state-sponsored genocide secretly sanctioned by the victors.  Those who survived and their descendants now live mainly in Germany, Austria, and the U.S.A., Canada, Brazil, Argentina and Australia.

This is a capsule history of an upright, industrious, albeit ill-fated people who bear no animosity toward anyone, including their former tormentors. They are law-abiding citizens everywhere they have settled and their only wish is to live in peace to enjoy the fruits of their labor which they richly deserve, that was denied them in their former homelands.

By Frank Schmidt


Danube Swabians the indigenous ethnic Germans of Hungary, Romania and the former Yugoslavia, are sometimes referred to as the newest German ethnic group. That's probably because they did not exist as an ethno cultural entity before the latter half of the 17th century. The primal event in history that led to their formation was an epic battle fought at the gates of Vienna on September 12th, 1683.

On that fateful day, the combined forces from the southern principalities of the German Reich, troops under King Jan Sobiesky of Poland, as well as small Hungarian and Croatian contingents defeated the invading armies of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. This put an end to the gradual encroachment of Islam into Christian Europe.

In the subsequent four decades German forces under the brilliant leadership of Prince Eugene of Savoy, a Frenchman in the service of the Austrian Crown, drove the Turks out of the Habsburg territory they had occupied for over 150 years.

Turkish misrule had turned much of the countryside into a vast wasteland, mainly inhabited by nomadic herdsmen who lived in dugouts on the plain. There were also no roads or permanent bridges. Unbelievable as it may seem today, this part of Europe was as undeveloped as many regions of North America were at that time.

After a final peace treaty was signed between the Austrian and Ottoman Empires, at Karlowitz in 1722 it became obvious to the Imperial War Council in Vienna that the territory could not be held unless it was populated by loyal subjects of the Habsburg crown. At the behest of Prince Eugene, the German/Austrian emperor, who was also King of Hungary, promulgated an "impopulation" edict to colonize and develop the depopulated regions of Hungary.

Imperial heralds were sent to the southwestern German principalities of Europe, to the Palatinate, Lorraine, Alsace, Luxembourg, Württemberg, as well as other areas to induce would-be colonists to settle in the Habsburg crown lands in Hungary with promises of personal freedom, land grants, establishment credits, and tax exemptions of up to ten years. This offer by the respected house of Habsburg fell on receptive ears in an area where recurrent French invasions and recent crop failures had caused much suffering. Thousands pulled up stakes and headed for embarkation points along the Danube, such as Ulm, Donauwörth and Regensburg, where they boarded specially built barges (called Ulm crates) to float to their promised land along the Middle Danube, with a required stop at Vienna to be assigned to their settlement areas and to receive their travel and land grant documents. The trip took about two weeks. Since the motive power of the barges was the current of the river - and it flowed only one way - there was no turning back ! Besides the barges were dismantled upon arrival because the timbers from the forests of Germany provided valuable building material on the treeless plain.

From 1683 to 1790 three major German migrations were sponsored by the Habsburgs. The first took place under Emperor Charles VI, the second from 1740to 1780 under Empress Maria Theresia and the third under the enlightened Emperor Joseph II from 1780 to 1790.

Left to themselves, and communications not being what they are today, the settlers soon lost contact with their places of origin and adapted to their new surroundings. In the following centuries they developed their own customs, culture and unique language, an amalgam of various southwestern dialects. The German settlers founded over 1000 unique agricultural villages which were purposefully located among those of other nationalities so that the expertise and work ethics of the Germans would be emulated by others.

The houses were all designed in Vienna and in most cases were erected before the arrival of the colonists. They in turn had to help build houses for later arrivals. No one was displaced and the colonization of the Habsburg crown lands was probably the most orderly and peaceful settlement of virgin land to have occurred anywhere, in any age.

Although favored as artisans and farmers, the Germans invariably received the worst land, more often than not swampy areas endemic to malaria. More than half of the original settlers perished from this disease. In Germany, Hungary became known as the graveyard of the Germans. But the survivors were a tough lot and prevailed over the elements. They built levees along the great rivers to prevent them from overflowing, drained marshes, introduced the steel plough to the virgin soil of Hungary, planted orchards and vineyards, mulberry trees along village streets to sustain a thriving silk industry, and used the remaining drained marsh lands to grow hemp to make rope and linen. They also introduced crop rotation and selective livestock breeding to the region.

Not only in agriculture did the Danube Swabians excel, but they also helped develop the cities of Hungary which until the middle of the 19th century were decidedly more German than Hungarian in character. In Budapest, for instance, the beautiful classical buildings such as the Parliament Buildings, the Nathional Theater, the Bourse, the former Royal Palace, the Millennium Monument and the original bridges across the Danube, that are shown with pride to tourists from all over the world as Hungarian achievements are mainly the creation of German-Hungarian architects and engineers.
Danube Swabians throughout the world have every right to take pride in these achievements of their compatriots in a land whose Communist rulers deprived them of their legacy in 1945 by deporting them and covering up their achievements.

Royal Hungary's pre-eminence in mathematics, medicine, and the arts and sciences , education, etc. was mainly due to people of German origin. German-Hungarians such as Franz Liszt in music, Ignaz Semmelweis, the Saviour of Mothers in medicine, the architects Emmerich Steindl, Haussmann and many others in every imaginable field of endeavor brought honor and renown to the name of Hungary.

In the wake of the Hungarian Revolution the young emperor Franz Josef feared that the Habsburgs might loose Hungary altogether. So, in 1867 a compromise was reached, the so-called Ausgleich, (Equalization) the union of two major Habsburg realms to form Austria-Hungary. In the process Hungary became virtually independent, united with Austria only in the person of the emperor/king.

Franz Josef I was forced to accept a union which gave the Magyars (48% of the population) predominance over all other nationalities in the country. In the process he signed away some of the rights Emperor Charles VI had granted the German colonists. By 1905 German, which had been the language of instruction in German communities, was replaced with Hungarian. No one could get a job with the government, the railways, or other national institutions, nor take part in the Olympic Games without adopting a Hungarian name. Consequently the Danube Swabian community lost many of its more educated members.

From 1867 to 1918 Greater Hungary made enormous strides in agriculture and industry. Largely due to the Danube Swabians, this former backwater of Europe became a Western-oriented society, a major breadbasket of the world and an emerging industrial power.

Prior to 1918 the story of the Danube Swabians was intertwined with the history of Hungary. However, Hungary was on the loosing side in World War I and lost 2/3 of it's territory which was arbitrarily awarded to the newly created successor states of Romania and a royal dictatorship called Yugoslavia after 1929.

The partitioning of Hungary split the Danube Swabian settlements among three mutually antagonistic states. 700,000 remained in Hungary, 350,000 became "Romanian" and the remaining 550,000 became the German national minority in Yugoslavia. This was a heavy blow to the cohesion of the Danube Swabian communities which caused enourmous social as well as economic upheavals - not to speak of having to owe allegiance to alien powers with which Austria-Hungary had only been recently at war.

Farmers found that their fields were across the border and not readily accessible. In some villages the border ran through the middle of the main street and people could no longer attend their parish church or school because these were now in another country. But, Danube Swabians are adaptable, and in time people adjusted and life went on, albeit not always to everyone's liking.

The biggest blow to the existence of the Danube Swabians came in the latter part of and in the aftermath of World War II. At the Potsdam Conference Allied leaders sanctioned the expulsion of the Danube Swabians from Communist Hungary to war-ravaged Germany. Only about 250,000 remain in Hungary today and there is some hope that they may survive as a national minority in their ancestral homeland.

In Yugoslavia, those who had not fled before the arrival of the Red Army were exterminated by Tito's Partisans in about a dozen major death camps of which the world still knows nothing. Without it's most provident minority Yugoslavia became a beggar nation, and as we know, eventually disintegrated from within.

In Romania in the 1980's in Banat the land generations of Danube Swabians made arable was expropriated by the state and collectivized. The greatest "slave trade" in European history took place when dictator Ciaucescu sold his Danube Swabians to the Bonn Government for 8000 to 14,000 Deutsche Mark a piece. The slave trade stopped when Ciaucescu was overthrown and killed. Of the 350,000 Danube Swabians in Romania after the war less than 20,000 remain today, mostly the aged and the sick. In a few years they, too, will be gone and the once flourishing Banat, the agricultural jewel of Austria-Hungary, will have died a slow death. Without its industrious Germans Romania has become a social and economic basket case.

That the Germans, i.e. Danube Swabians could live for centuries in peace and harmony among the most volatile people in Europe, is an attestation of their boundless tolerance and humanity. The thankless "state people" in former home countries who would not share the earth with their Danube Swabian neighbors after World War II should be reminded that had it not been for the Germans who liberated them from the Turks, there might still be a Turkish Empire in Europe today, but no Hungary, Romania or Yugoslavia. In other words had it not been for the Germans there would be no Hungarians, Romanians or Yugoslavs today. That they exist is the legacy their Germans, i.e. Danube Swabians, bestowed on them.

Danube Swabians are now scattered over four continents and have become good citizens of at least a dozen countries including the United States of America and Canada. They are, of course, not newcomers to America. German-Hungarians, as they were called before 1919, have been coming to America from 1882 to the turn of the century, between the World Wars, and after World War II. They settled in the cities of New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin and later in California, as well as Southern Ontario, Montreal and the western Provinces of Canada. They were among the early settlers in the Canadian West and founded several villages on the prairies. In major cities they established cultural centers where they try to keep their customs, traditions and language alive. Since the roots to their native soil have been severed this is not an easy task.

Counting the descendants of the pre-WWII immigrants, as well as those who came to these shores in the early 1950's, the Danube Swabian community in America is estimated to number about 400,000 honest souls. Since there has been no immigration for over six decades the majority of Danube Swabians in North America are native-born.

All those who came to this country have had to adapt their lives to new situations. They have learned a lot in the process, but no one has had to teach them anything about decency, tolerance, multiculturalism and peaceful coexistence. Those who came after World War II had lost all their material possessions, but no one has been able to deprive them of their basic virtues. It is not within them to seek revenge, nor do they bear grudges or hatred - even against their tormentors. They only wish to live in peace and harmony and hope that others would do the same for the well-being of everyone.




Frank Schmidt
Heimat Publishers

Published with permission from the Author

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