Abstract
Near the end of World War II a drastic and unprecedented event occurred to the German populations living in the easternmost sector of the Reich and in other countries in east central and eastern Europe. Nearly fifteen million of these people, almost the entire stock, left their lands in an ever-westward flight to form the most monumental mass migration of modern times. The greater part left their homes in fear of the closing in of the battle zones and the advance of the Red Army. Other millions were expelled under provisions of the Potsdam Agreement by the victorious allies after the end of the war. These refugees and expellees — less some two million who could not survive the hardships of their forced exodus — entered Austria and Germany, concentrating overwhelmingly in what today is West Germany.
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References
Another possible origin of the popular term “Swabian” may be connected with the fact that east central and eastern Europe, in which regions the Danube Germans lived, used to be the classic thoroughfare of the (in great part German) crusaders led by the “Swabian” emperors, the Hohenstauffens. The more precise term Donau-schwabe (Danube Swabian) is relatively new, appearing only after World War I.
Nevertheless, two German language areas enjoyed a kind of autonomy in medieval and early modern Hungary. King Andrew II (1205–1235) gave through the Diploma Andreanum (1224) a charter to the Saxons in Transylvania, which the latter still call the Golden Charter (goldener Freibrief). The rights and privileges of the Saxons were gradually expanded by subsequent Hungarian kings until in 1486 the “University” (universitas Saxonum), the administrative and jurisdictional organization of all the Transylvanian Saxons, was constituted. King Stephen V (1270–1272) gave in 1271 a charter to 24 Cipser (Germ. Zipser) towns and villages in the Szepesség (Germ. Zips, Slovak. Spis) in the north of pre-1918 Hungary, granting them privileges which amounted to a kind of autonomy that was to last for several more centuries. It should be noted that these two autonomies did not apply to the Germans as collective bodies, but, in keeping with the particularism of the Middle Ages, only to certain sections of them.
At the outbreak of World War II, there existed a total of some forty million national minorities of different ethnic stock in the various countries of Europe. To obtain correct data on national minorities is always rather difficult, since the figures given by the two parties concerned invariably differ from each other. The statisticians of the minorities are likely to elevate the numbers of their people, while those of the host country tend to do the opposite. In the case of the German minorities (including the Danube Swabians and the Transylvanian Saxons) the statistical figures of both sides are as follows: (Table) Sources of data regarding Hungary: a) Az 1960 évi népszámlálás adatai, 13 kötet, összefoglaló adatok. Központi Statisztikai Hivatal (Budapest: 1964), p. 27, b) F. Riedl and F. Steiner, Die Ungarndeutschen, Weg einer Volksgruppe (Freilassing: 1962), p. 12; Rumania: a) Recensamantul general al populatiei Romaniei Din 29 Dicembrie 1930 (Bucharest: 1938) Vol. II, p. XXXII, b) Institut für Statistik und Bevölkerungspolitik der Deutschen in Rumänien (Hermannstadt, 1938), p. 5; Yugoslavia: a) Yugoslav State Board of Statistics (Belgrade: 1921), Vol. I, b) M. Annabring, Volksgeschichte der Donauschwaben in Jugoslawien (Stuttgart: 1955), p. 12.
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© 1967 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Paikert, G.C. (1967). Scope and Objectives. In: The Danube Swabians. Studies in Social Life, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9717-5_1
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