German minority in Lithuania

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
German street in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius ( lit.Vokiečių gatvė , jidd.Deitsche Straße)

The German minority in Lithuania ( Lithuania German ) is a native , for centuries in Lithuania resident population and a small minority in the population of the largest Baltic state . According to censuses, around 3235 people in Lithuania identified themselves as Germans. This corresponds to a percentage of about 0.11% of the total Lithuanian population.

history

Members of the German minority in Lithuania are not counted among the Baltic Germans . The settlement history of the Lithuanian Germans was different from that of the Germans in Estonia and Latvia . They were neither of a comparable size nor their historical, political and cultural significance.

The first settlement of Germans in medieval Lithuania did not go back to a conquest by a religious knightly order , but to recruitment by the Lithuanian princes Mindaugas and Gediminas . It was limited to Vilnius , Trakai and Kaunas , the cityscape of which shaped brick Gothic buildings in the Middle Ages , and where in 1440 the Hanseatic League opened an office. During the introduction of the Reformation in Poland-Lithuania in the 16th century, Lithuanian magnates invited Protestant Germans to settle on their property.

As a result of the partitions of Poland , the Russian Kovno governorate emerged towards the end of the 18th century , which was about the size of the later Republic of Lithuania. Around 1.4% of Germans lived there in 1897.

The vast majority of the Lithuanian Germans had been farmers who had immigrated from the eastern border districts of East Prussia since the beginning of the 19th century and who could not get beyond small holdings. Many had Salzburg ancestors. The German minority had no political or organizational cohesion. She defined herself as belonging to the Evangelical Church, which also attended school for the children, stayed to herself and lived in scattered villages near the border, especially in the areas around Kybartai and Tauroggen . The minority lacked an intellectual leadership class.

It was not until the Republic of Lithuania, which became independent in 1920, that a “Cultural Association of the Germans of Lithuania” came into being. The German minority numbered around 45,000 members, 65% of whom lived from agriculture or rural handicrafts. There was a German workforce in Kaunas and other cities. Only a few Lithuanian Germans had an academic education , were wealthy, or practiced liberal professions . The Lithuanian chauvinism that set the tone in the Republic of Lithuania did not allow the formal rights of the German minority to come into play. "Doubtful census results and incorrect passport entries" reduced the number of Lithuanian Germans so that over 60% of their children could not attend a German school. According to the Lithuanian census of 1923, of the 2,029,000 inhabitants, only 28,400 were Lithuanian Germans (1.4%, not including Memelland ). After the seizure of power of Hitler's Cultural Association received increasing financial support from Germany and came under the influence of Nazism .

In Memelland, which was German until 1920 and annexed by Lithuania from 1923 to March 1939, which historically did not belong to Lithuania, 72.5% of the approximately 140,000 inhabitants described themselves as Germans or "cultural Germans" (bilingual, 16%) and 27.5 % than Lithuanians. The Germans in the Memel region and the Lithuanians had hardly any points of contact.

Eydtkau (Eydtkuhnen) on February 28, 1941: Moving in of resettled ethnic Germans from the Lithuanian Soviet Republic

The secret additional protocol of the German-Soviet border and friendship treaty of September 28, 1939 had put Lithuania under the Soviet sphere of influence and at the same time enabled the Lithuanians to resettle in Germany . The relevant negotiations extended beyond the occupation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union in July 1940 and the resettlement of the Lithuanian Germans could only take place between January and March 1941. Among the 50,000 resettlers were thousands of Lithuanians who had pretended to be Protestants and thus Germans in order to be able to leave the Soviet Union in this way. All resettlers came to camps in western Germany, where the " racially valuable " ones were selected as future "eastern settlers". The others got jobs in the arms industry. After the conquest of Lithuania in the German-Soviet War , the resettlement of 20,000 Lithuanian Germans from the camps to the now German-occupied Lithuania began, according to the General Plan East . They were not allowed to return to their property, but the settlement took place in the course of the bowling alley project to control the conquered area and was accompanied by the expulsion of Lithuanians, Poles and Belarusians . In the summer of 1944, the settlers fled into inner Germany from the approaching front. Anyone who was run over by the Red Army while fleeing had to return to the Soviet Union. These Lithuanian Germans came to Germany as late repatriates after years . Most of the Lithuanian Germans settled in West Germany after the Second World War, and many emigrated overseas.

In Memelland, which was again Lithuanian at the end of World War II, there are still some Lithuanians and Germans who speak German in Klaipėda (Memel) and on the Curonian Spit .

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Population statistics 2011
  2. ↑ The information in the History section is based, unless otherwise stated, on Harry Stossun: Deutsche aus Litauen (Lit.)
  3. ^ "Lithuania". In: Der Große Brockhaus, 15th edition , vol. 11, 1932, p. 481 u. Card 60a
  4. ^ "Memel area". In: Der Große Brockhaus, 15th edition , Vol. 12, 1932, p. 382