Dobruja Germans

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Map with settlement areas of the Dobruja Germans.

The Dobrudscha Germans are a German population group who lived in northern Dobrudscha on the western shore of the Black Sea for about 100 years . The ethnic group was formed from 1840 when settlers of German descent immigrated to the approximately 23,000 km² area. In 1940 they left again when they were resettled in the German Reich .

German settlement periods

Ethnic groups in the Romanian Dobrudscha around 1903, blue = Dobrudscha Germans

The first settlers of German descent came to Dobruja from the south of the Russian Empire in 1841 . They were peasant families from the neighboring governorate of Bessarabia . They settled in the Turkish-inhabited village of Akpunar. The reasons for emigration were economic setbacks in the area of ​​origin and the search for land. The first wave of immigration, which began in 1841 and brought people of German origin from the Russian governorate of Cherson , lasted until 1856. At that time, until it was annexed to Romania in 1878, the Dobruja belonged to the Ottoman Empire . The settlers submitted to its colonization regulations. The Dobrudschadeutschen were the only German ethnic group that were temporarily Ottoman subjects. They contributed to the agricultural development on the fertile steppe soil. From 1873, the second wave of immigration began, which also included Swabian immigrants. It was due to the abolition of the colonist privileges in Russia in 1871 and lasted until 1883. The third period of immigration was in 1890/91, which was due to the state takeover of German schools in the Tsarist Empire.

Country population

According to the 1930 census, the Romanians with 40% and the Bulgarians with 25% made up the largest population groups in Dobruja. The German ethnic group was one of the many minorities in the area with around 13,000 people and 1.5% of the population . Tatars , Russians, Greeks, Jews and Circassians . Almost all Dobruja Germans settled in the northern part, which came to Romania after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877/78. Only a few hundred Germans lived in the southern part, which then came to Bulgaria.

German places and place foundations

Dobruja Germans in Culelia around 1909

There were only a few villages in Dobruja that were inhabited exclusively by settlers of German origin. On the other hand, they lived in a single neighborhood within a village. At the beginning of the 20th century there were around 40 settlements in which around 9,000 people of German descent lived. Shortly before the resettlement in 1940, there were 67 places inhabited by Dobruja Germans, among which there was German community life in 28 places and German-language school lessons in 20 places.

The first settlement of German immigrants took place in 1842 in the Turkish village of Akpunar. The first independent colony was Malkotsch , the founders of which came from Kherson , Russia . The second oldest German settlement became Atmagea in 1848 . It was an important Protestant center that can be reached today via Ciucurova (formerly Chukurowa). The settlements Kataloi and Ciucurova emerged around 1850. Later workers and craftsmen who were involved in Danube shipping settled in Tultscha .

The newcomers of the second wave of immigration from 1873 settled mainly in the south of the Dobruja. This resulted in around 1875 Kogealak, Tari Verde and Fachria in Constanta . From 1868, 30 families from Bessarabia settled in the Tatar village of Karamurat , which they renamed Ferdinand I after the Romanian king. Around 1880, about 30 km further north, the Colelia colony was created by newcomers from Kherson . Anadolchoi was built near Constana in 1878 and Horoslar in 1880 in a village abandoned by the Tatars. In 1881 the German colony of Cogealia was established in a Tatar village by Swabian settlers from Cherson.

During the third wave of immigration around 1890/91, the villages of Kobadin (today: Cobadin ) and Sarighiol arose in Dobruja. As the last German colony of immigrants from Russia, New Vineyards was founded in 1892 as a suburb of Constanta. The other German local foundations were daughter colonies that people already established in the country.

The largest Catholic village was Karamurat. " Buffalo Fountain " ( Mangear Punar ), which is now called Costineşti and continues to serve as a bathing resort, became known as the holiday resort of the Transylvanian Saxons . In Murfatlar viticulture ( see: Viticulture in Romania ) was intensified, which is still continued today.

Other places were Cogealac and Malkotsch , Karatai, Alakap, Sofular, Agemler, Mangeapunar, Techirghiol , Palazu Mare (Groß-Pallas), Bratianu, Ciobancuis, Ali-Anife, Bazargic and Karali. Colelia became deserted but was rebuilt as an Orthodox monastery in 2009.

Economic basis

The Dobrudscha Germans lived mainly from agriculture, in which about 80% of them worked. Horse trading and breeding were also carried out as additional income . The second largest occupational group were craftsmen with around 14% share. Important professions were miller and wagner , i.e. trades that immediately followed on from agriculture. Although the arable land was fertile, there was sometimes no favorable economic development among the German ethnic group. Like other minorities in the Romanian state, they were not allowed to acquire land in Dobruja. Basic land acquisitions often took place in the Ottoman period. Only a quarter of the farmers owned arable land, which was rarely more than five hectares. In 1940, around 40%, the share of landless people who hired themselves as day laborers in agriculture was very high. In some villages there were beginnings for a simple type of industrialization, e.g. B. industrial building material production, electricity etc.

The ethnic group settled mainly in villages because of their agricultural orientation. In urban areas there were residents of German origin only in Konstanza (in the suburb of “New Vineyards”) and in Tultscha .

religion

The majority of the Dobruja Germans were Protestants. There were four parishes of the Evangelical Church in Atmagea with the first church from 1861, Kodschalak and Tariverde, Cobadin and Konstanza with a church from 1896. In Karamurat there was a strong Catholic group with West German and Polish roots.

Resettlement in the German Reich

In the autumn of 1940 Bulgarian troops occupied southern Dobruja. On the basis of a resettlement agreement between the German Empire and Romania, the population of German origin was given the opportunity to resettle . 14,000 Dobruja Germans joined them, only 2% stayed behind. There were similar resettlements in neighboring areas among the Bessarabian Germans and the Bukowina Germans . The desire for resettlement under the motto Home in the Reich met with approval from some Dobrudscha Germans, especially the landless. This was mainly due to the unfavorable economic and cultural situation. Promises were made (and broken) to wealthy farmers; B. taking along the sometimes quite large horse population. National Socialist propaganda had only partial effect that, according to Adolf Hitler's Reichstag speech of October 6, 1939, they were an “unsustainable splinter of German nationality” in southeastern Europe. This was supported by the military dictatorship of Romania, allied with Germany. B. through the discriminatory treatment of German-speaking conscripts who were almost fully drafted, who were then "voluntarily" incorporated into the Waffen SS with their resettlement.

In preparation for resettlement, a land register was sometimes created for the first time, which led to problems with the division of common property. Good conclusions about the economic situation can be drawn from these files.

In practice, the resettlement was identical to that of the Bessarabian Germans that had taken place immediately before. However, the Danube port of Cernavodă , located in Dobruja, was chosen as the port of departure, but in some cases also rail transport. On excursion steamers of the Danube Fleet it went 1000 km up the Danube towards Germany. The ships' destination was Prahovo and Semlin near Belgrade . From there the resettlers traveled by train to the German Reich after a short stay in assembly camps. Many ethnic Germans living in what was then Yugoslavia had volunteered to help. On November 27, 1940, the last resettler left the country. However, some German-speaking families stayed in Dobruja.

The Dobrudscha-German resettlers were initially housed in about 100 camps in the Gau Mainfranken and in the Gau Niederdonau , where they were naturalized in the German Reich. The residents of the village of Malkotsch refused naturalization because they were not guaranteed to settle in the old village community. As a result, 88 people were sent to the Flossenbürg concentration camp for three months . From 1942 onwards, the Dobrudscha Germans, with around 9,000 people, were mainly settled in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia as farmers. Around 4500 people were settled in what was formerly Poland in the Wartheland . Further settlement areas were Lorraine , Galicia and southern Styria . Many families, for whom no settlement areas were available due to the war, remained in fenced camps in Yugoslavia and later Bohemia until spring 1945.

Escape and Integration

Towards the end of the Second World War in 1944/45, most of the Dobrudscha Germans fled to the west from the eastern settlement areas of the German Empire and Poland. They arrived as refugees in the four Allied occupation zones in Germany. Around 2000 to 3000 Dobruja Germans failed to flee the Red Army in 1944/45 . They were sent back to their home area in Dobruja . Years later, 1,600 people were deported to Dresden . Sections of the German-speaking population remained in a socially and legally very discriminated position until the fall of the Iron Curtain in Dobruja.

A statistical analysis of the hometown index in 1964 showed that around 13,500 people were still living out of around 15,700 people resettled from Dobruja. The armed forces losses of the ethnic group amounted to about 400 people. About 8500 members of the ethnic group lived in 1964 in what was then the Federal Republic of Germany and around 2300 in what was then the German Democratic Republic . Many settled in northern Württemberg and Heilbronn . 1500 people emigrated overseas, including Canada and the USA, by 1955.

Since the Dobrudscha Germans had left their property in the Dobrudscha in 1940 and had received no compensation during the Third Reich, they took part in the burden sharing from 1952 . That offered a partial financial replacement.

today

Former German Protestant school in Constanța, today a meeting place for the Dobrudscha Germans

In the Federal Republic of Germany, the Dobrudscha Germans founded the country team of Dobrudscha and Bulgarian Germans after the Second World War . Although Dobrudscha Germans also lived in the GDR, national organization was prohibited there for political reasons. The country team chose the Dobruja coat of arms. It consists of two golden dolphins on a blue background facing each other. It is also found in the coat of arms of Romania . The coat of arms was created after the Berlin Congress in 1878, when Romania was awarded the Dobrudscha.

Gertrud Knopp-Rüb was the long-time chairman of the country team. She published the regularly published publication Dobrudscha Bote . In 2009 the Landsmannschaft merged with the Bessarabiendeutscher Verein because of the disintegration .

After the political change in Romania in 1989, the "Association of Germans in Dobruja" was founded in Constanța . She opened a meeting place with a German kindergarten in the building of the old "Evangelical School" in Strada Sarmizegetusa. The association published a Romanian-language book about the ethnic group of the Dobruja Germans and put together a traveling exhibition about their former settlements.

According to the 2002 Romanian census, there are around 400 Germans in Dobruja. They live mainly in Tulcea and Constanța and are mainly from the Banat and Transylvania .

memory

Identical memorial stones were erected and consecrated in 9 places in Dobruja between 2002 and 2007

  • Ciucurova / Tschukurowa, in place
  • Cobadin / Kobadin, in the Protestant cemetery
  • Cogealac / Kodschalak, in front of the former Protestant church
  • Făclia / Fachria, in front of the former Protestant prayer house
  • Lumina / Kodschalie, in front of the former Protestant church
  • Malcoci / Malkotsch, in front of the Catholic church ruins
  • Mihail Kogălniceanu / Karamurat, in front of the Catholic Church
  • Schitu / Klein-Manschapunar, in place
  • Tariverde, in front of the former Protestant church

They bear the German and Romanian inscriptions:

LORD GOD YOU ARE OUR REFUGE FOR AND FOR, PSALM 90. IN MEMORY OF THE GERMAN SETTLEMERS WHO FOUND THEIR LAST REST HERE FROM 1881–1940.

The year information on the memorial stones has been adapted to the conditions of the respective location. The text on the base of the memorial stones serves to inform the local population and is therefore only in Romanian.

See also

literature

  • Dobruja. In: Concise dictionary for border and foreign Germanism. Volume 2, Breslau, pp. 278-290.
  • Margrit von Helms: The songs of the Dobrudschadeutschen. Dissertation. Goettingen 1966.
  • Dirk Jachomowski: The resettlement of the Bessarabia, Bukovina and Dobruja Germans. From the ethnic group in Romania to the “settlement bridge” on the imperial border. Book series of the Southeast German Historical Commission, Volume 32. Oldenbourg, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-486-52471-2 .
  • Johannes Künzig: From the songs of the Dobrudscha-German singer Paul Ruscheinski Freiburg im Breisgau 1977.
  • Johannes Florian Müller: East German fate on the Black Sea. Regensburg 1981, 652 pp.
  • Johannes Niermann, Monika Niermann (eds.): Bibliography of the Dobrudscha Germans 1945–1993. Tectum Verlag, Marburg 1999, ISBN 3-8288-5053-7 .
  • Monika Niermann: German childhood in the Dobrudscha , NGElwert Verlag Marburg 1996. Series of publications of the Commission for German and Eastern European Folklore in the German Society for Folklore, Volume 74. ISBN 3-7708-1073-2 .
  • Hans Petri : History of the German settlements in the Dobrudscha. A hundred years of German life on the Black Sea. Munich 1956.
  • Josef Sallanz: Dobruja. German settlers between the Danube and the Black Sea (= Potsdam Library Eastern Europe). Potsdam 2020. ISBN 978-3-936168-73-0 .
  • Gertrud Stephani-Klein : Memories of "Manscha" and Manschapunar. In: Otto Klett (Ed.): Yearbook of the Dobrudschadeutschen. Heilbronn 1976, pp. 146-148.
  • Willibald Teutschländer: History of the Protestant communities in Romania. Leipzig 1891, p. 240f. (Digitized in archive.org )
  • Paul Träger: The Germans in Dobruja. In: Writings of the German Foreign Institute in Stuttgart. (= Cultural history series. Volume 6). Stuttgart 1922. Reprint. 2012, ISBN 978-3-7357-9155-9 .

Cinematic processing

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ crestinortodox.ro
  2. ↑ Heimatbuch der Dobrudschadeutschen, p. 46.
  3. ^ Bulletin of the Bessarabiendeutschen Verein e. V. issue 9, September 2009.
  4. ^ Bulletin of the Bessarabiendeutschen Verein e. V. issue 2, February 2009.
  5. ^ Bulletin of the Bessarabiendeutschen Verein e. V. issue 11, November 2009.
  6. ^ Memorial stones in the Dobrudscha, Landsmannschaft der Dobrudschadeutschen 2002/2003
  7. ↑ Malkotsch
  8. ↑ a b Remembrance sites outside the Federal Republic of Germany at the Federation of Expellees, p. 19