Bulgarians in Germany

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The St. Boris the Baptist Cathedral in Berlin

Bulgarians in Germany are one of the largest communities in the Bulgarian diaspora in Western Europe .

According to official information from 2011, there were 95,956 Bulgarians in Germany . In 2007 around 46,800 Bulgarians were counted. According to unofficial estimates, that number was 80,000–100,000. Estimates by the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs put the number of Bulgarians in Germany at over 90,000, half of whom have acquired German citizenship . In 2015, the number of Bulgarians residing in Germany was over 211,000, according to the Federal Employment Agency.

Around 7 percent of the Bulgarians living in Germany (2011), or 7,997, were students at German universities. They represent the largest group (Great Britain approx. 3000, Austria approx. 2000, USA 1957, Netherlands 1170) of Bulgarians studying abroad.

history

The Bulgarian Empire was in contact with the German-speaking countries as early as the Middle Ages , until the Ottoman conquests of the Balkans in the 14th and 15th centuries severed this bond. Bulgarian Orthodox clergy are known from the 16th century who came into contact with German Lutherans, and in the 18th century Bulgarian merchants in Leipzig were distinguished from merchants of other Balkan Christian denominations.

Detail of the Petar Beron memorial plaque in Heidelberg

However, it was not until the 19th century, when German-Bulgarian relations had intensified again, that there was more cooperation in the field of education. From 1825 to 1831 the Bulgarian enlightener Petar Beron studied at the University of Heidelberg , while from 1845 to 1847 the journalist and linguist Iwan Bogorow was a student at the University of Leipzig. From 1846 to 1847 Bogorow published the first Bulgarian newspaper called Bulgarischer Adler from Leipzig .

After Bulgaria was liberated from five centuries of Turkish rule in 1878, the newly established German Empire continued to be a center of higher education for Bulgarians, and hundreds of Bulgarian students were sent to Germany on state grants from the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia (before 1885). For the Bulgarians, German universities, together with universities in Switzerland, became the most popular in Western Europe, and in terms of the popularity of all foreign educational institutions, they were only second to those of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empire . In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Bulgarian students' clubs were founded in Leipzig, Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Heidelberg, Erlangen, Halle an der Saale and in Freiburg im Breisgau. The University of Leipzig alone had 101 Bulgarian students from 1879 to 1899, and between 1900 and 1918 a total of 194 dissertations were successfully completed by Bulgarian students in Germany.

Relative frequency of Bulgarian citizenship at district level in 2014 in relation to other foreign population groups

The Bulgarian-German Association was founded on February 16, 1918 in Berlin and had branches in many German cities. After the world wars, educational relationships were maintained: in the years 1926 to 1927 alone, 302 people from Bulgaria studied in Germany.

In the GDR , too, close relations with Bulgaria remained, and many Bulgarians studied at East German universities. Some stayed in the GDR afterwards, while after 1990 more people immigrated from Bulgaria and today there are relatively large Bulgarian communities in the new federal states .

Religions

Today there are Bulgarian Orthodox parishes in Berlin, Leipzig, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Bonn, Munich, Stuttgart, Regensburg and Passau, with a bishopric and a cathedral in Berlin. Other Bulgarians visit Protestant and Catholic churches or mosques. There are also three large Bulgarian congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses in Berlin , Frankfurt am Main and Ludwigsburg , as well as over 30 smaller groups.

Bulgarians of Turkish origin in Germany

From the beginning of the 1980s, the repression against the Muslim and Turkish minorities in Bulgaria intensified. In 1986, the Bulgarian authorities forced the Turkish minority to adopt Slavic names and forbade school teaching in Turkish. Around 380,000 ethnic Turks were forced to emigrate to Turkey with drastic measures or were put in labor camps. This lasted until the early 1990s.

From the early 1990s, recruiting began in Western Europe for Bulgarians of Turkish origin, for the first time in their social history. Migration to Germany was initiated in particular by those Bulgarian Turks who, for various reasons, were unable to take part in the first massive waves of migration to Turkey in 1989 or who were part of the subsequent wave of return, which resulted from the lack of social integration prospects in Turkey. The majority of Bulgarians of Turkish origin moved to Germany as asylum seekers in the 1990s, where they should be granted favorable social benefits.

Bulgarians of Turkish origin can be found predominantly in the less secure sectors of the German labor market with ethnic companies that require greater flexibility and tougher working conditions. For employment they seem to rely predominantly on the cooperation of ethnic networks that were founded by German-Turks . The majority of this group of Turks are relatively new to Germany and now often consist of regular migrants. They often legalize their status through marriages of convenience with German citizens, while fewer children give birth in Germany.

Well-known German-Bulgarians

See also

bibliography

  • Michael Peter Smith, John Eade (Eds.): Transnational Ties. Cities, Migrations, and Identities (= Comparative Urban and Community Research. 9). Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick NJ et al. 2008, ISBN 1-4128-0806-5 .
  • Йордан Колев: Българите извън България. 1878-1945 g. (= Библиотека "Българска вечност". Vol. 42). Център за изследвания на Българите Тангра ТанНакРа ИК, София 2005, ISBN 954-9942-73-2 , pp. 257-261, 423-424 (Bulgarian).

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Statistisches Jahrbuch 2008. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Federal Statistical Office, 2008, p. 47 , archived from the original on April 19, 2009 ; Retrieved May 17, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.destatis.de
  2. ↑ Колев: Българите извън България. 2005, p. 423.
  3. ↑ Федерална република Германия: българска общност. Министерство на външните работи, Retrieved September 19, 2009 (Bulgarian).
  4. ^ Immigration Monitor Bulgaria and Romania. (PDF) Institute for Employment Research, 2015, p. 5 , accessed on July 2, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Bulgarians abroad
  6. ↑ a b Колев: Българите извън България. 2005, p. 257.
  7. ↑ Колев: Българите извън България. 2005, p. 258.
  8. ↑ Колев: Българите извън България. 2005, p. 259.
  9. ↑ Архиeрeйско намeстничeство Бeрлин за Австрия, Гeрмания, Швeйцария и Лихтeнщайн. (No longer available online.) Българска православна църква, 2007, archived from the original on April 22, 2009 ; Retrieved May 17, 2009 (Bulgarian). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / bgorthodox.org
  10. ↑ https://apps.jw.org/ui/X/meeting-search.html#/weekly-meetings/search/BL/Deutschland/51.165691,10.451526/@51.5676,13.209523,6z
  11. ↑ BULGARIAN TURKS AND THE EUROPEAN UNION. (PDF; 216 kB) (No longer available online.) BalkanEthnology, archived from the original on July 25, 2011 ; Retrieved June 5, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.balkanethnology.org
  12. ↑ Smith, Eade (Ed.): Transnational Ties. 2008, pp. 166-179.
  13. ↑ See e.g. B. Letter from the state capital Dresden dated November 5, 2003.