Serbian Germans

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Serbian Germans are the German minority in Serbia . Their official name in the Republic of Serbia is Nemci (German), however they are colloquially - based on the term Donauschwaben - often called Švabe .

From the 18th century, Germans also colonized parts of Serbia as part of the Habsburg settlement policy . In the interwar period they were the largest national minority in what is now Serbia. The Swabian-German Cultural Association , which has represented them since 1920, was captured by the renewal movement in 1939 and converted into a National Socialist mass organization. During the Second World War , Serbian Germans served partly voluntarily in the Waffen-SS , partly they were obliged to serve in team ranks; others resisted National Socialism . After a largely unsuccessful evacuation at the end of the war, the German minority was temporarily without rights and many victims of internment and executions. Most of the survivors left the country from 1951 and their resettlement was largely complete by the end of the 1960s. According to the 2011 census, 4064 Germans still lived in Serbia, 3272 of them in the Vojvodina province .

Population development of the Serbian-German
Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, 2011
year German Share in
percent
1900 336.430 23.5
1910 324.180 21.4
1921 335.902 21.9
1931 328,631 20.2
1948 41,460 0.63
1953 46.228 0.66
1961 14,533 0.19
1971 9,086 0.11
1981 5,302 0.06
1991 5,172 0.07
2002 3,901 0.05
2011 4.064 0.06

history

The history of the Serbian-German minority in the Banat , the Batschka and Syrmia is essentially limited to the area of ​​today's autonomous province of Vojvodina with the urban centers Novi Sad ( German  Neusatz ), Pančevo (German Pantschewo ), Sombor and Zrenjanin (German Großbetschkerek ). In the course of the colonization of these areas, newly conquered by Habsburg in the middle of the 18th century , in several Swabian districts, for example in Zrenjanin, Serbs and Hungarians were settled, mainly Danube Swabians, who came from various parts of Germany; but also French , Italian , Romanians , Slovaks and Spaniards . Since the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, Hungary had been putting pressure on the ethnic groups in the Hungarian part of the dual monarchy through the Magyarization policy . The Trianon Treaty of 1920 divided the Danube Swabian settlement area into three countries , with Batschka, Syrmia, Slavonia , Croatia , Vojvodina and central Serbia falling to the newly founded Kingdom of Yugoslavia . In Zrenjanin, at the beginning of the 20th century, the German population was the third largest after Hungarians and Serbs, and in Pančevo until 1931 the largest population group. In 1931 there were 350,000 Serbian Germans in Vojvodina; this number made up two thirds of the Yugoslav Germans.

In the interwar period , Germans were the largest national minority in what is now Serbia within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, followed by the Hungarians in Vojvodina and the Kosovar Albanians. With the establishment of the kingdom, the rights of the German population of Serbia were increasingly restricted. The largest and most important association of Serbian Germans was the Swabian-German Cultural Association . With the rise of National Socialism in the German Reich , there were clashes between traditionalists with a Catholic background and national socialist-oriented " innovators ". In 1939 the “innovators” under Sepp Janko finally got their way in the Kulturbund. The Bund was expanded into a National Socialist mass organization that was supposed to organize the entire ethnic group. Janko claimed at the end of 1940 that 98 percent of the “ethnic Germans” were members of the Kulturbund. After the occupation of Yugoslavia by the Wehrmacht , the Kulturbund was dissolved and Janko was appointed and “ ethnic group leader ” for the Serbian part of the Banat occupied by German troops.

See also: Serbia in World War II , Danube Swabia # Second World War and post-war period and Danube Swabia # evaluation

In the summer of 1941 the Serbian-German population of the “Reichsfestung Belgrade” and “Remainder of Serbia” was combined in the “Prince Eugen” circle of the German ethnic group in the Banat and Serbia ” “And other groups corresponded to Reich German models. Many Serbian Germans saw themselves in a privileged position due to the German occupation, which had to be preserved. The SS took advantage of this situation and instrumentalized the ethnic contradictions for the national war by forming the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division "Prinz Eugen" from the " Volksdeutsche " in 1942 , which in the homeland of the Danube Swabians against " Slavic partisans " was used and thus seemed to defend “house and yard” and the temporary rise. Despite the designation "Volunteer Division" it was already indicated in the advertisement of March 1, 1942 that the recruitment of volunteers as the sole measure for the recruitment of "ethnic Germans" was also given up in Serbia and soon through the nationwide recruitment of recruits from the German minority should be supplemented. The ranks of the officers and NCOs in the division were almost exclusively occupied by " Reichsdeutsche ", while the soldiers were of "ethnic German" origin. More than half of the approximately 22,000 “volunteers” came from the Pančevo district. The "Prinz Eugen Division" was best known for a large number of war crimes, in which its units proceeded with great brutality.

On the other hand there was also sharp criticism from Serbian Germans up to and including active resistance against National Socialism . According to Carl Bethke , "outside of Switzerland [...] nowhere else in the 'Fortress Europe' could one read so much criticism of the Nazi regime in German" as here. Apatin in the Batschka was considered the stronghold of the Danube Swabian Catholics of Yugoslavia, here Pastor Adam Berenz played an important role as a resistance activist , together with his weekly newspaper "Die Donau", founded in 1935, which existed until it was banned in 1944. Up to 2,000 Germans were active in the partisan movement; in Zemun alone , 30 German families supported the partisans.

When the Red Army advanced quickly westward in early October 1944, the coming defeat of the German Reich in World War II was also visible in Serbia. An initially carefully planned evacuation of the German ethnic group from the Banat failed due to contradicting orders and a lack of organization, only about 15,000 "ethnic Germans" from Vojvodina and Serbia (about 10 percent) were able to reach the territory of the German Reich , while 160,000 remained after the Russian invasion in Vojvodina.

After the Wehrmacht withdrew, around 125,000 Serbian Germans from Vojvodina survived the onslaught of the partisans and escaped deportation to the Soviet Union. On November 21, 1944, the Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia with its AVNOJ resolutions revoked the civil rights of the German minority and confiscated their property. By the summer of 1945 around 90 percent had been interned and experienced a period of heavy forced labor, rape, torture and arbitrary executions. Tens of thousands died of malnutrition and disease, and fewer than 80,000 survived. The measures were a consequence of the close collaboration of numerous Yugoslav Germans with the German occupiers and the resulting superior position of the ethnic group as well as the extremely harsh acts of war.

In 1948 the camps were disbanded and the surviving Germans were formally released from internment, albeit not in freedom, but immediately afterwards transferred directly and without a say in further three years of forced labor in foreign places that they were not allowed to leave. They were mostly used in mines, in agricultural kolkhozes or on construction sites for the reconstruction of facilities destroyed during the war. Identity cards were not issued to the German minority. The work book, which is compulsory for every employee, was only handed out after the “proper fulfillment of the employment contract”.

In 1951, the members of the German minority regained their Yugoslav citizenship and could immediately apply to leave the country if the young men were not fit for military service and had previously completed their two-year military service. The resettlement of most Serbian Germans - mostly to Germany - was largely concluded by the end of the 1960s. In the course of the decade 1950/1960, around 75,000 German citizens legally resettled from Yugoslavia, but de facto the resettlement continued into the 1980s.

Situation today

In 2007 the minority formed a National Council of the German National Minority (Nacionalni savet nemačke nacionalne manjine) on the basis of the Serbian minority legislation , whose members are elected by the Serbian Germans entered in the electoral roll. The term of office of the National Council is four years. The seat of the council was first Novi Sad , after the new election of the council in 2010 the seat was moved to Subotica . According to the 2011 census, 4064 Germans lived in Serbia, 3272 of them in the Vojvodina province.

In the first decade after the turn of the millennium, several grave monuments were erected to commemorate the dead of the German minority. In 2012, the memorial in Gakovo was damaged by strangers. The incident was regretted and condemned by the Serbian public. In 2009, with the support of the Serbian government, a commission to locate and mark unknown graves was set up. The data are continuously updated and are public.

The local young generation primarily speaks the Serbian language , or - as e.g. B. in the northern administrative districts of Vojvodina - also primarily the Hungarian language . It is increasingly facing the past of its German ancestors . On the Serbian side, too, a differentiated dispute with the Germans is slowly beginning. Limited knowledge of the German language often prevents families with German roots from letting their children grow up multilingual.

Periodicals of the Serbian Germans (selection)

Until 1919

  • "Bácskaer Volksblatt" (Sombor, 1889–1906)
  • "Pancsovaer Wochenblatt" (Pančevo, 1868–1871)
  • "Groß-Becskereker Wochenblatt" (Zrenjanin, 1851-1919)
  • "Neusatzer Local Journal" (Novi Sad, 1860–1871)
  • "The Border Messenger" (Zemun, 1869–1871)

Until 1944

  • "People's Call" (Zrenjanin, 1934–1942)
  • "The Danube" (Apatin, 1935–1944)
  • "People and Work" (Pančevo, at least 1937–1939)
  • "The Wasp" (Novi Sad, 1937–1940)
  • "Deutsches Volksblatt" (Novi Sad)
  • "Welfare and Health", also "Woge-Blatt" (Novi Sad, 1932- at least 1936)

See also

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ According to Michael Schwartz , around 40,000 Yugoslav Germans were deported to the Soviet Union, of which 30,000 returned.
    In: Ethnic “cleansing” in the modern age. Global interactions between nationalist and racist politics of violence in the 19th and 20th centuries. Walter de Gruyter, 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-72142-3 , p. 520.
    According to Immo Eberl (et al.), Between 27,000 and 30,000 Yugoslav Germans from the Banat, Batschka and Branau were in labor camps in December 1944 Deported to the Soviet Union. An estimated 16 percent of the deportees died there due to poor nutrition and poor medical care. Sick deportees were deported back to Yugoslavia in 1945, and from 1946 to what was later to become the GDR. After the labor camps were dissolved, the deportees were also brought to the GDR from October / November 1949.
    In: The Danube Swabians. German settlement in Southeast Europe . Exhibition catalog (published by the Ministry of the Interior of Baden-Württemberg), Wiss. Management d. Exhibition Harald Zimmermann, Immo Eberl, employee. Paul Ginder, Sigmaringen, 1987, ISBN 3-7995-4104-7 , pp. 260f.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dragan Vukmirović: Ethnicity Data by municipalities and cities . Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, 2011, p. 14.
  2. ↑ Thomas Casagrande: The Volksdeutsche SS division "Prinz Eugen". The Banat Swabians and the National Socialist war crimes. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-593-37234-7 , p. 114.
  3. ↑ Peter Wassertheurer: History of the German ethnic groups in Southeast Europe. Settlement, national coexistence, displacement, integration. Vienna 2008.
  4. ^ A b c University of Heidelberg : Serbia. Settlement and language history. ( Memento from January 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) p. 1. According to Johann Böhm: The German ethnic group in Yugoslavia 1918–1941. 2009.
  5. ↑ Dušan Biber: Nacizem in Nemci v Jugoslaviji: 1933-1941. Cankarjeva založba, Ljubljana 1966, p. 19; Alfred Bohmann : People and Limits. Population and nationalities in Southeast Europe . Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1969, p. 233. Both cited in Mirna Zakić: Ethnic Germans and National Socialism in Yugoslavia in World War II . Cambridge University Press, 2017, ISBN 978-1-107-17184-8 , p. 32.
  6. ^ A b Zoran Janjetović : The Danube Swabians in Vojvodina and National Socialism. P. 222ff. In: Mariana Hausleitner , Harald Roth : The Influence of National Socialism on Minorities in Eastern Central and Southern Europe. IKS Verlag, Munich 2006.
  7. ^ Johann Böhm : The German ethnic groups in the independent state of Croatia and in the Serbian Banat: their relationship to the Third Reich 1941–1944. Peter Lang, 2012, ISBN 978-3-631-63323-6 , p. 14.
  8. ^ Hans-Ulrich Wehler : Nationality Policy in Yugoslavia. The German minority 1918–1978. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980, ISBN 3-525-01322-1 , p. 51f.
  9. ↑ Mirna Zakić: Ethnic Germans and National Socialism in Yugoslavia in World War II. Cambridge University Press, 2017, ISBN 978-1-316-77306-2 , p. 196.
  10. ↑ a b Johannes Hürter: Abused fighters . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine . December 18, 2003.
  11. ^ Thomas Casagrande: The Volksdeutsche SS-Division "Prinz Eugen". The Banat Swabians and the National Socialist war crimes. Campus, Frankfurt 2003, ISBN 3-593-37234-7 , pp. 194ff.
  12. ^ Carl Kosta Savich: "Prinz Eugen" SS Division, 1941–1945 . 2001.
  13. ^ Immo Eberl , Konrad G. Gündisch, Ute Richter, Annemarie Röder, Harald Zimmermann : Die Donauschwaben. German settlement in Southeast Europe. Exhibition catalog (published by the Ministry of the Interior of Baden-Württemberg), Scientific Director of the. Exhibition Harald Zimmermann, Immo Eberl, colleague Paul Ginder, Sigmaringen, 1987, ISBN 3-7995-4104-7 , p. 177.
  14. ^ A b c Michael Portmann , Arnold Suppan : Serbia and Montenegro in World War II. In: Austrian Institute for East and Southeast Europe: Serbia and Montenegro: Space and Population - History - Language and Literature - Culture - Politics - Society - Economy - Law. LIT Verlag 2006, p. 277 f.
  15. ^ Klaus Schmider: The Yugoslav Theater of War (January 1943 to May 1945). In: Karl-Heinz Frieser (Ed.): The Eastern Front 1943/44 - The War in the East and on the Side Fronts , Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-421-06235-2 , p. 1030.
  16. ^ Martin Seckendorf; Günter Keber; u. a .; Federal Archives (Ed.): The Occupation Policy of German Fascism in Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, Italy and Hungary (1941–1945) Hüthig, Berlin 1992; Decker / Müller, Heidelberg 2000. Series: Europa unterm Hakenkreuz Volume 6, ISBN 3-8226-1892-6 , pp. 59, 320 f.
  17. ↑ Carl Bethke : The Image of the German Resistance to Hitler in (Ex-) Yugoslavia, Society for Serbian-German Cooperation, 1991. ( Memento from February 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  18. ↑ Michael Merkl: Vision of a Danube Swabian. Resistance to National Socialist influences among the Danube Swabians of Yugoslavia and Hungary 1935–1944. Dieterskirch 1968 (→ Life picture of a Danube Swabian fighter against neo-paganism and National Socialism online )
  19. ↑ Slobodan Maričić: Folksdojčeri u Jugoslaviji - Susedi, dželati i žrtve (The ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia - neighbors, perpetrators, victims). Beograd, Pančevo 1995.
  20. ^ Dunica Labović: Zemun na obalama Dunava i Save . SUBNOR Opštine Zemun, Beograd 1983, 64f.
  21. ^ Arnold Suppan: Hitler - Beneš - Tito: Conflict, War and Genocide in East Central and Southeast Europe. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2014, ISBN 978-3-7001-7560-5 , p. 1457.
  22. ^ Zoran Janjetović: The conflicts between Serbs and 'Danube Swabians' . ( Memento from December 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: The Influence of National Socialism on Minorities in Eastern Central and Southern Europe. Editors: Mariana Hausleitner , Harald Roth , IKS Verlag, Munich 2006.
  23. ↑ Michael Portmann: The military administration for the Banat, the Backa and the Baranja. With special consideration of the German and Hungarian speaking minorities. GRIN Verlag, 2006, pp. 105, 107. Quoted in Mirna Zakić: Ethnic Germans and National Socialism in Yugoslavia in World War II . Cambridge University Press, 2017, ISBN 978-1-107-17184-8 , p. 261.
  24. ^ Zoran Janjetović: The Disappearance of the Germans From Yugoslavia: expulsion or emigration? In: Tokovi istorije 1-2, 2003, p. 74, in English.
  25. ^ Johann Böhm : The German ethnic group in Yugoslavia 1918-1941: domestic and foreign policy as symptoms of the relationship between the German minority and the Yugoslav government. Peter Lang, 2009, ISBN 978-3-631-59557-2 .
  26. ^ Marie-Janine Calic : History of Yugoslavia in the 20th Century , CH Beck, Munich, 2010, p. 179.
  27. ^ Arnold Suppan: Yugoslavia and Austria 1918–1938. Bilateral foreign policy in the European environment. Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, Munich 1998. 1347 pp.
  28. ^ Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Nationality Policy in Yugoslavia. The German minority 1918–1978. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980, ISBN 3-525-01322-1 , pp. 59f.
  29. ^ Mariana Hausleitner : The Danube Swabians 1868–1948. Your role in the Romanian and Serbian Banat. Steiner, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-515-10686-3 , p. 294.
  30. ↑ Josef Beer : White Book of Germans from Yugoslavia. Universitas, ISBN 3-8004-1270-5 , p. 131.
  31. ^ Resettlers / late repatriates . In: Online encyclopedia on the culture and history of Germans in Eastern Europe of the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg and the Federal Institute for Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe (BKGE) ,
  32. ↑ Herbert Prokle: The way the German minority in Yugoslavia after the dissolution of the camp 1948 . Publishing house of the Donauschwäbischen Kulturstiftung, Munich 2008, p. 19.
  33. ^ Immo Eberl, Konrad G. Gündisch, Ute Richter, Annemarie Röder, Harald Zimmermann : Die Donauschwaben. German settlement in Southeast Europe. Exhibition catalog (published by the Ministry of the Interior of Baden-Württemberg), Scientific Director of the. Exhibition Harald Zimmermann, Immo Eberl, colleague Paul Ginder, Sigmaringen, 1987, ISBN 3-7995-4104-7 , p. 270.
  34. ^ National Council of Germans founded . In: Deutsche Welle . December 20, 2007.
  35. ^ Adrian Ardelean: New National Council of Germans in Serbia . ( Memento from February 24, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) In: Funkforum, Timișoara 2010.
  36. ^ Dragan Vukmirović: Ethnicity Data by municipalities and cities . Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, 2011, p. 20.
  37. ^ Desecration of monuments in Gakovo . In: Donauschwäbische Kulturstiftung from March 6, 2012.
  38. ↑ Database of victims' places and names . In: Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Serbia, in Serbian.
  39. ↑ Serbian Germans should get their rights . In: Deutsche Welle of September 9, 2011.
  40. ↑ Aleksandar Krel: Do you speak German? German Language and Revitalization of Ethnic Identity of the Germans in Bačka . In: Etnografski institut SANU , Belgrad 2012, OCLC 7181349593 , pp. 171-185. (English)
  41. ^ Alfred Manz: Adam Berenz and his newspaper "Die Donau". Resistance to National Socialist influences in the Batschka, 1935–1944. 1984, OCLC 314777374 .