German-speaking minorities

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Under German minorities most often refers to indigenous populations in areas outside of Germany , Austria , the Switzerland , Luxembourg and Liechtenstein . These ethnic minorities emerged in the past centuries, among other things, through German colonization in the east , through targeted emigration movements, through religious or politically motivated flows of refugees, as well as through border shifts and expulsions after wars, especially the two world wars in the 20th century. Members of German-speaking minorities in the narrower sense of the word generally have the nationality of the country in which they live.

Assignment

In Article 32 of the CSCE Declaration of Copenhagen (June 1990) it is expressly emphasized that "belonging to a national minority is a matter of a person's personal decision and as such must not bring him any disadvantage". This means that the people affected decide for themselves whether they want to be viewed in a certain context as citizens of the country in which they live or as members of a (here: the German) minority in the country in which they are permanently hold up.

Geographical distribution

Europe

  • Official language
  • Co-official official language, but not mother tongue of the majority of the population
  • Legally recognized minority language

    • Belgium

    Along with Dutch and French, German is one of the three national languages ​​of Belgium. The more than 77,000 German-speaking citizens of Belgium are likely to be the best-placed German minority in a country with a majority of other languages ​​in terms of their extensive minority rights . Their settlement area, the eastern cantons , was annexed by Belgium in 1920 after the First World War . The German-speaking Belgians make up the majority population there. Although they belong to the predominantly French-speaking region of Wallonia , i.e. without their own region , they have their own German-speaking community alongside the two large communities, the Flemish and the French .

    Beyond the official German-speaking area, there are regions in Belgium with German-speaking minorities. For the Luxembourgish- speaking ( Moselle-Franconian dialect ) population in the Arel region of the predominantly Walloon / French-speaking Belgian province of Luxembourg on the western border of the Grand Duchy, there is no official status as a minority, as they do not belong to the territory of the German-speaking community and thus neither German nor Luxembourgish is protected there . The German language minority in the canton of Malmedy is somewhat better protected, as it enjoys language facilities ( facilities ). For the Low German communities in Montzener country where German and südniederfränkische transition dialects are spoken, voluntary facilities apply.

    Denmark

    Finland

    France

    Alsatian and German-Lorraine in France : Alsace and later Lorraine were gradually annexed by France from the 16th century (the city of Mulhouse belonged to Switzerland until 1798) and since then has switched back and forth between Germany and France four times. From 1919, the attempted centralist government in accordance with the French language policy also towards other regional languages , exacerbated by just after two wars against Germany hostile nationalism, German and regional dialects Alsatian German and Franconian lothringisch to displace in favor of national monolingualism, which for much of the population decided Resistance met. However, this was broken by the events of the Second World War, the impressions of the Nazi rule with bans on everything that appeared French, the liberation with the ensuing guilt complexes. In the meantime, the process of assimilation has become independent, and German and its dialects are threatened with extinction. The passing on to the children is almost completely interrupted, which is also due to the language policy that was common from 1944 to the 1970s to largely displace German from education (even as a foreign language), and initially to ban German or To speak dialect. The former German mother tongue is only spoken extensively today by Alsatians and German-Lorraine people born before 1970, and even then almost only in private, mainly in the country.

    Italy

    Poland

    → Main article: German minority in Poland and the example of Germans in Pabianice

    The German minority in Poland consists primarily of Germans who stayed in the former eastern regions of the German Reich after the end of World War II and the expulsion in 1945 , as well as their descendants who now live there. A peculiarity in the case of Poland is the fact that people live there who were citizens of the German Reich in 1945 , who under German law ( Art. 116 GG ) have never lost their German citizenship and whose descendants therefore live according to the "ius sanguinis" may claim that they are also entitled to German citizenship. Thus 239,300 people in Poland have Polish and German citizenship.

    The former Prussian provinces of Pomerania , East Brandenburg , Silesia , West Prussia , Danzig and northern East Prussia were predominantly populated by Germans after the eastern colonization , while in southern East Prussia it was mainly in Masuria , in the province of Posen , in the southern part of the Prussian province of West Prussia but also in the rural areas of Upper Silesia have always had different proportions of Polish and Slavic populations.

    In the 2011 census, around 45,000 people indicated that they were exclusively German . In addition, there are 103,000 people who stated a German and at the same time another nationality or ethnic group, mostly Polish. Most of them live in the Opole Voivodeship . Around 58,000 people stated that they were native German speakers , and another 38,000 people stated that they spoke German at home.

    Romania

    Spain

    • The Germans in Spain are not a traditional minority; rather, some Germans choose this country as their retirement home or emigrated there from around 1960. About 31,000 Germans live on Mallorca , which makes up 3.5% of the island's population. About 36,000 Germans live in the Canary Islands .

    Slovakia

    • Carpathian Germans , the Germans in Slovakia , settled there since the 13th century. In 1938 there were almost 130,000 Germans in Slovakia, today there are still around 6,000. A prominent representative of this ethnic group is the former Slovak President Rudolf Schuster .

    Czech Republic

    Ukraine

    Other German-speaking minorities in Europe

    Africa

    America

    German-speaking population in the United States, 1872

    Angloamerica

    Latin America

    Asia

    Australia and Oceania

    Ethno-religious minorities

    baptist

    The Mennonites , Amish and Hutterites come from the radical Reformation Anabaptist movement in Central Europe. Since the early 18th century, parts of the Mennonites emigrated to North America as well as to Ukraine and Russia. Here they formed partially closed ethno-religious settlements. The Mennonites who emigrated from northern Germany and the Netherlands to the Ukraine and later to North and South America finally formed the group of Russian mennonites, some of which still use Plautdietschen (a variant of Low German ) as a colloquial language. Some of the Mennonites and Amish who emigrated to America from southern Germany, Alsace and Switzerland still speak Pennsylvania Dutch today (a variant of High German based primarily on Palatine dialects ). The emigrants also in the 19th century to North America Hutterites speak in part to this day Hutterisch (a mainly Bavarian-Austrian dialects constructive version of High German). Larger Mennonite settlements exist in Ukraine , Russia , Canada ( Manitoba ), the USA , Mexico , Belize and Paraguay (in the Chaco ).

    Radical Pietists

    There were also emigration movements to North America from the area of radical Pietism in the 18th and 19th centuries. Particularly noteworthy are the Anabaptist-Pietist Schwarzenau Brethren and the Inspired . The latter founded the Amana Colonies in Iowa , where Amana German (also colony German) is sometimes spoken. The Pietist Moravians also initially founded closed settlements such as the city of Bethlehem in Pennsylvania . Other radical pietists emigrated to the Caucasus .

    research

    German-speaking minorities and German ethnic groups are examined in the context of folklore , Ostforschung and today mainly in contact linguistics and in research on interculturality .

    literature

    • Mathias Beer, Dietrich Beyrau, Cornelia Rauh-Kühne (eds.): Being German as a borderline experience. Minority politics in Europe between 1914 and 1950. Klartext , Essen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8375-0097-4 .
    • Olga Kurilo : The world of Russian Germans in times of upheaval (1917–1991): a contribution to cultural mobility and a change in identity. Klartext, Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8375-0243-5 (=  Migration in the past and present , volume 5).
    • Stefan Rabanus: Varietà alloglotte - tedesco , July 23, 2018 ( online ); in: Thomas Krefeld, Roland Bauer: Lo spazio comunicativo dell'Italia e delle varietà italiane. In: corpus in the text. 2018 (Italian).

    See also

    Individual evidence

    1. ^ Alfons Nossol: Cultural Identity and Confessionality . In: Christoph Bergner, Matthias Weber (eds.): Resettlers and minority policy in Germany. Balance sheet and perspectives . 2009. p. 101 (PDF; 8.2 MB)
    2. ↑ Belgium ( Memento of the original dated August 2, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) 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.alas.be
    3. ↑ Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany Warsaw: Leaflet on the determination of German citizenship http://www.warschau.diplo.de/Vertretung/warschau/de/04/Informationen__Deutsche/download__staatsangehoerigkeit,property=Daten.pdf
    4. ^ "The German Minority in Poland" website of the German Embassy in Warsaw
    5. ↑ Polish Statistics Office: Results of the 2011 census (PDF; 3.5 MB)
    6. ↑ Jewish emigration from Germany. Retrieved June 4, 2018 .
    7. ^ Palestine as a refuge for European Jews until 1945. In: bpb.de. Federal Agency for Civic Education, accessed on June 4, 2018 .