Croatian Germans

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Croatian Germans are a minority of over 2900 people in Croatia who consider themselves ethnic Germans, most of them see themselves as Danube Swabians .

Germans are officially recognized as a minority in Croatia and therefore have a permanent seat in the Croatian Parliament together with some other small minorities . They are mainly concentrated in the area around Osijek ( German  Esseg ) in eastern Slavonia . There is a German cultural center in Osijek and a small number of German schools.

history

The 1900 census showed a Croatian German population of 85,781. With the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes , the Germans of Croatia became a minority . In 1920 the Croatian-German cultural association founded the Kulturbund . The German Kulturbund was banned on April 11, 1924 by the Minister of the Interior Svetozar Pribicevic . The subsequent government of Ljuba Davidović and the Democratic Party considered the ban lifted.

In 1922 the German Party of Yugoslavia was founded as a party of the Germans . The party existed until 1929 when it was banned under the dictatorship of King Alexander.

The German ethnic group in Croatia was subordinate to the German " ethnic group leader " Branimir Altgayer from 1941 . With the “Legislative Decree on the Provisional Legal Status of the German Ethnic Group” of June 21, 1941, the “German Ethnic Group in the Independent State of Croatia” (DVGK), in which all Germans in the territory of the Independent State of Croatia were combined, became a public legal entity Law declared and received equality in public and private life. A division of the DVGK or its "only and sole political will-bearer", the National Socialist German Followers in Croatia (NSDGK) was the "German Team" (DM), which had its own squadron . In the DM, "genetically healthy, racially and ideologically impeccable men over 21 (in exceptional cases over 18) years for the purpose of team education and physical training" should be summarized. Altgayer was from 1942 together with Ferdinand Gasteiger a member of the Croatian Parliament "Sabor".

At the end of the war, around 90,000 Croatian Germans were able to be evacuated or fled from the “Independent State of Croatia” by the end of October 1944. Around 19,100 people of German origin remained on the territory of Croatia.

The Croatian-German ethnic group was not dealt with in the Potsdam Agreement , which prevented them from being naturalized in Germany. The Allies considered them Yugoslav nationals and tried to send them back there. However, on June 4th, the communist Yugoslav regime issued a decree revoking the Yugoslav citizenship of ethnic Germans. Their movable and immovable property was confiscated in its entirety, and most Croatian Germans settled in Germany and Austria. Some were able to resettle in Yugoslavia, but only a few returned to their original homeland.

Todays situation

Today the Croatian Germans are organized in the Association of Germans and Austrians of Croatia . Since the fall of communism and Croatian independence, the minority has held an annual scientific conference entitled Germans and Austrians in the Croatian Cultural Area. In 1996 Croatia and Germany signed an agreement to facilitate the marking of German graves from the world wars in Croatia. In 2005, the Croatian government passed a comprehensive law on the return of nationalized Austrian property to their rightful owner.

In the Croatian census of 2001, 2,902 people declared themselves as Germans and 247 as Austrians. Most of them are Danube Swabians (Croatian Podunavski Švabe ), whose settlement area is on the outskirts of Osijek (Esseg). The minority “Germans and Austrians” is officially recognized and together with the Roma and nine other small minorities have a permanent seat in the Croatian parliament ( Sabor ). The Croatian-German Nikola Mak from Osijek was the representative in the 2003-2007 election period. The "German Community - Landsmannschaft der Donauschwaben in Croatia" (sometimes " Volksdeutsche Gemeinschaft - Landsmannschaft der Donauschwaben in Croatia") has its seat in Osijek. Since 1995 there has been a class train for the German minority at a primary school in Osijek.

There are numerous German war graves from both world wars in Pula , Split and Zagreb .

distribution

The most important places in Slavonia that were formerly colonized by Germans:

There were many German settlements in the neighboring region of Syrmia ( Serbian Срем, Srem , Croatian Srijem ; Latin Symria ), and in the Croatian part of Syrmia there is still a village called Nijemci which is literally translated as "German". The main locations in the Croatian part of Syrmia, which used to belong to the ethnic Germans, are:

German villages in Slavonia (1910 census):

Germans in Baranja

In the predominantly German-speaking town of Čeminac at that time, the parish church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ was built between 1906 and 1907 . In 1945 the German population in the city was forced to leave it completely by 1945. After democratic changes in Croatia in 1990, former residents of the city, mostly living in Germany, repaired the church. However, on April 10, 1992, the church was burned by Serbian troops during the Croatian War of Independence . From 2001, various levels of the Croatian government contributed to its repair, which was carried out until 2005.

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Emigration of Italians and Germans from Croatia during and immediately after the Second World War
  2. ^ Zoran Janjetović : The integration of ethnic Germans into the political life of Yugoslavia (1918-1941) ( Memento from March 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 140 kB)
  3. ↑ Vladimir Geiger. Njemačka manjina u Kraljevini Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca / Jugoslaviji (1918.-1941.) ( Memento from May 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 69 kB)
  4. ^ Carl Bethke : “No common language?” LIT Verlag Münster, 2013, ISBN 3-643-11754-X , p. 265.
  5. ^ 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. Lang, 2012. ISBN 3-631-63323-8 , p. 15.
  6. ↑ Article 12 of the preliminary statutes of the National Socialist German Followers in Croatia from January 31, 1942
  7. ↑ Item 19 of the provisional organizational provisions of the People's Organization of the German Ethnic Group in Croatia of May 14, 1941 with later changes and additions
  8. ^ Holm Sundhaussen: The Germans in Croatia-Slavonia and Yugoslavia . In: Günther Schödl: German history in Eastern Europe. Land an der Donau Siedler, Berlin 1995. p. 343.
  9. ↑ a b c d Vladimir Geiger, Povratak slavonskih Nijemaca nakon Drugoga svjetskog rata iz izbjeglištva / prognaništva u zavičaj i njihova sudbina
  10. ^ Austrians in Croatia ( Memento from December 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), Croatian Broadcasting
  11. ↑ 16. Znanstveni skup 'Nijemci i Austrijanci u hrvatskom kulturnom krugu'
  12. ↑ Zbirka međunarodnih ugovora
  13. ↑ Diplomate razbjesnio povrat imovine Austrijancima
  14. ↑ Population by nationality, by cities / municipalities, 2001
  15. ↑ a b FUEN: German minority in Croatia ( Memento from November 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  16. ↑ Österreichischer Rundfunk (January 12, 2005): "Austrians" represented in "Sabor". http://volksgruppenv1.orf.at/kroatenungarn/aktuell/stories/24369
  17. ^ Donauschwäbische Kulturstiftung des Landes Baden-Württemberg (2005). http://www.gemeindetag-bw.de/dsks/files/gb2005.pdf  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.gemeindetag-bw.de
  18. ^ Volksdeutsche Gemeinschaft - Landsmannschaft der Donauschwaben in Croatia. http://www.vdg.hr/vdg/ - accessed in 2007, no longer available.
  19. ^ Report from Croatia to the Council of Europe. http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/minorities/3_FCNMdocs/PDF_2nd_SR_Croatia_hr.pdf
  20. ↑ Osnovna škola Svete Ane u Osijeku. http://www.os-svete-ane-os.skole.hr/skola/povijest
  21. ↑ Kratke Vijesti Iz Hrvatske ( Memento of 31 August 2009 at the Internet Archive ), Croatian radio
  22. ↑ a b c Sacred heritage in Čeminac (no longer active address http://www.hd-osijek.hr/bastina_1.htm)