Jump to content

Germans

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 24.107.226.49 (talk) at 18:05, 25 November 2008 (erased vandalism). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

For the term "Germans" as used in a context of antiquity (pre AD 500), see Germanic tribes.
German people
Deutsche

Total population
~75 million[1] (~160 million[2]
) ~160 million[2]
(including those of ancestral descent)
Regions with significant populations
 Germany        67 - 75 million [3][4]
 United States51 million[5]
 Brazil12 million[6]
 Canada3 million[7]
 Argentina2.8 million[8]
 France (mainly Alsace and Moselle)1.5 million[9][10]
The  CIS (mainly  Russia and  Kazakhstan)1 million[11]
 Australia8,000,000[12]
 Peru600,000[13]
 Netherlands320,000[14]
 Italy290,000[15][16]
 United Kingdom266,136[17]
 Chile250,000 - 300,000[18] [19]
 Spain208,349[20]
 Paraguay200,000 - 450,000[21]
  Switzerland164,000[22]
 Poland153,000[23]
 Venezuela110,000 [citation needed]
 Mexico100,000[24]
 South Africa80,000-160,000[25]
 Austria74,000 [26]
 Belgium70,000[27]
 Israel70,000[28]
 Hungary62,233-220,000[29]
 Romania60,000[30]
 Uruguay46,000[31]
 Czech Republic40,000[32]
 Bolivia40,000[33]
 Ecuador33,000[34]
 Dominican Republic25,000[35]
 Namibia20,000[36]
 Denmark15-20,000[37]
 Ireland11,797[38]
 Philippines961
 Slovakia5-10,000[39]
Languages
German: High German (Upper German, Central German), Low German (see German dialects)
Religion
Roman Catholic, Protestant (chiefly Lutheran), secular, others
Related ethnic groups
other Germanic peoples

The German people (German: Deutsche) are an ethnic group, in the sense of sharing a common German culture, descent, and speaking the German language as a mother tongue. Within Germany, Germans are defined by citizenship (Federal Germans, Bundesdeutsche), distinguished from people of German ancestry (Deutschstämmige). Historically, in the context of the German Empire (1871-1918), German citizens (Imperial Germans, Reichsdeutsche) were distinguished from ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche).

Out of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, about 75 million consider themselves Germans. There are an additional 80 million people of German ancestry (mainly in the USA, Brazil, Argentina, France and Canada) who are not native speakers of German.

Thus, the total number of Germans worldwide lies between 75 and 160 million, depending on the criteria applied (native speakers, single-ancestry ethnic Germans, partial German ancestry, etc.). In the U.S., 43 Million or 15.2% of citizens identify as German American according to the United States Census of 2000[40]. Although the percentage has declined, it is still more than any other group.[41] According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 2006 American Community Survey, approximately 51 Million citizens identify themselves as having German ancestry.[42]

Ethnic Germans

File:Historisches deutsches Sprachgebiet.PNG
German language area in 1910–11
Main article: Ethnic Germans

The term Ethnic Germans may be used in several ways. It may serve to distinguish Germans from those who may have citizenship in the German state but are not Germans; or it may indicate Germans living as minorities in other nations. In English usage, but less often in German, Ethnic Germans may be used for assimilated descendants of German emigrants.

Ethnic Germans form an important minority group in several countries in central and eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, Romania, Russia) as well as in Namibia, southern Brazil (German-Brazilian) and Argentina.

Some groups may be classified as Ethnic Germans despite no longer having German as their mother tongue or belonging to a distinct German culture. Until the 1990s, two million Ethnic Germans lived throughout the former Soviet Union, particularly in Russia and Kazakhstan.

In the United States 1990 census, 57 million people are fully or partly of German ancestry, forming the largest single ethnic group in the country. Most Americans of German descent live in the northern Midwest (especially in Wisconsin, North Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, southern Michigan and eastern Missouri), and the Mid-Atlantic states (especially Pennsylvania). But historically Germanic immigrant enclaves can be found in many other states (e.g., the German Texans and the Denver, Colorado area) and to a lesser extent, the Pacific Northwest (i.e. Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington state).

Notable Ethnic German minorities also exist in other Anglosphere countries such as Canada (approx. 9% of the population) and Australia (approx. 4% of the population). As in the United States, most people of German descent in Canada and Australia have almost completely assimilated, culturally and linguistically, into the English-speaking mainstream.

History

The Germans are a Germanic people which as an ethnicity emerged during the post-medieval Unification of Germany. From the multi-ethnic Holy Roman Empire, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) left a core territory that was to become Germany, already to the exclusion of Switzerland, the Netherlands and Flanders. "German" ethnogenesis was complete by the time of the German Empire in 1871.

Origins

Further information: Germanic peoples and Theodiscus
Germanic tribes from ca. 100 AD until 400 AD.

The area of modern-day Germany in the European Iron Age was divided into the (Celtic) La Tène horizon in Southern Germany and the (Germanic) Jastorf culture in Northern Germany. The predominant Y-chromosome haplogroup in Germans is R1b, followed by I and R1a; the predominant mitochondrial haplogroup is H, followed by U and T.[43]

The Germanic peoples during the Migrations Period came into contact with other peoples, in the case of the populations settling in the territory of modern Germany, Celts to the south and Balts and Slavs towards the east.

The Limes Germanicus was breached in AD 260, and migrating Germanic tribes commingled with the local Gallo-Roman populations in what is now Swabia and Bavaria.

The migration period peoples that would coalesce into a "German" ethnicity are the Saxones, Frisii, Franci, Thuringii, Alamanni and Bavarii. By the 800s, the territory of modern Germany had been united under the rule of Charlemagne, although much of what is now Eastern Germany remained Slavonic-speaking (Sorbs, Veleti).

Medieval history

Main articles: Ostsiedlung and History of German settlement in Eastern Europe
File:HRR 10Jh.png
The Holy Roman Empire around AD 1000. The sphere of German influence (Regnum Teutonicorum) is marked in blue.
Further information: Kingdom of Germany, Stem duchy, Medieval demography, and Holy Roman Empire

A "German" as opposed to generically "Germanic" ethnicity emerges in the course of the Middle Ages, under the influence of the unity of Eastern Francia from the 9th century. The process is gradual and lacks any clear definition.

After Christianization, the Roman Catholic Church and local rulers lent the upper hand for a German expansion and settlement in areas inhabited by Slavs and Balts (Ostsiedlung). Massive German settlement led to the assimilation of Baltic (Old Prussians) and Slavic (Wends) populations, in part exhausted by previous warfare.

At the same time, naval innovations led to a German domination of trade in the Baltic Sea and parts of Eastern Europe through the Hanseatic League. Along the trade routes, Hanseatic trade stations became centers of Germanness where German town law (Stadtrecht) was promoted by the presence of large, relatively wealthy German populations and their influence on the worldly powers.

This means that people whom we today often consider "Germans", with a common culture and worldview very different from that of the surrounding rural peoples, colonized as far north of present-day Germany as Bergen (in Norway), Stockholm (in Sweden), and Vyborg (now in Russia). The Hanseatic League was not exclusively German in any ethnic sense: many towns who joined the league were outside the Holy Roman Empire, which was not entirely German itself, and a number of them may only loosely be characterized as German.

Early Modern period

Further information: Volksdeutsche and Reichsdeutsche
The Holy Roman Empire after the Peace of Westphalia, 1648

It was only in the late fifteenth century that the Holy Roman Empire came to be called the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, and even this was not exclusively German, notably including a sizeable Slavic minority. The Thirty Years' War, a series of conflicts fought mainly in modern Germany, confirmed the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Napoleonic Wars gave it its coup de grâce.

Since the Peace of Westphalia, Germany has been "one nation split in many countries" (Kleinstaaterei). The Austrian–Prussian split, confirmed when Austria remained outside of the 1871 created Imperial Germany, was only the most prominent example. Most recently, the division between East Germany and West Germany kept the idea alive.

In the nineteenth century, after the Napoleonic Wars and the fall of the Holy Roman Empire (of the German nation), Austria and Prussia would emerge as two opposite poles in Germany, trying to re-establish the divided German nation. Austria, trying to remain the dominant power in Central Europe, led the way in the terms of the Congress of Vienna. The Congress of Vienna was a very conservative act assuring that little would change in Europe and would prevent Germany from uniting. The terms of the Congress of Vienna would come to a sudden halt following the Crimean War in 1856. This paved the way for German unification in the 1860s. In 1870, Prussia attracted even Bavaria (the old ally of France) in the Franco-Prussian War and the creation of the German Empire as a German nation-state, effectively excluding the multi-ethnic Austrian Habsburg monarchy.

The concept of a separate Austrian nation emerges in the nineteenth century, following the Napoleonic wars, but German speaking Austrians continued to consider themselves Germans until 1919, when "German Austria" was dissolved following the Treaty of Saint-Germain.

During the 19th century in the German territories, rapid population growth due to lower death rates, combined with poverty, spurred millions of Germans to emigrate, chiefly to the United States. Today, roughly 30% of the White American population is of mainly German background, and in fact there will likely be more people of German background in the United States than Germany itself in the next several decades due to population decline in Germany and differential birth rates (1.3-1.4 children per woman in Germany versus 1.8-1.9 per non-Hispanic white woman in the United States).

20th century

The dissolution of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire after World War I led to a strong desire of the population of the new Republic of Austria to be integrated into Germany. This was, however, prevented by the Treaty of Versailles.

The Nazis attempted to unite "all Germans" into one realm. This idea was initially welcomed by many ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, Danzig and Western Lithuania, but met with significant resistance among the Swiss, who saw themselves as separate nations at least since the Peace of Westphalia of 1648.

After World War II, 12 million Germans were expelled from areas annexed by the Soviet Union and Poland as well as territories of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia.[44]

The Austrians increasingly saw themselves as a nation distinct from the other German-speaking areas of Europe; today, some polls[citation needed] have indicated that no more than 10% of the German-speaking Austrians see themselves as part of a larger German nation linked by ancestry or language. This phenomenon became commonplace shortly after the Second World War, when Austrian identity was emphasized along with the "first-victim of Nazism" theory.[45]

Between 1950 and 1987, about 1.4 million ethnic Germans and their dependents, mostly from Poland and Romania, arrived in Germany under special provisions (right of return).[46] With the collapse of the Iron Curtain, "Aussiedler" — ethnic Germans, mainly from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union — took advantage of Germany's liberal law of return to leave the harsh conditions of Eastern Europe. Approximately 2 million have resettled in Germany since the late 1980s.[47]

Subgroups

Further information: German dialects

The Germans are divided into sub-nationalities, some of which form dialectal unities with groups outside Germany that are not considered "Germans". The southern Upper German groups retain a pronounced identity, in the case of the Swabians historically even the cause of a limited movement of Alemannic separatism. The Low German Platt speakers also retain a certain ethnic identity, while the Central German majority has largely abandoned individual nationalisms.

Ethnic nationalism

Main article: Völkisch movement

The reaction evoked in the decades after the Napoleonic Wars was a strong ethnic nationalism that emphasized, and sometimes overemphasized, the cultural bond between Germans. Later alloyed with the high standing and worldwide influence of German science at the end of the nineteenth century, and to some degree enhanced by Bismarck's military successes and the following 40 years of almost perpetual economic boom (the Gründerzeit), it gave the Germans an impression of cultural supremacy, particularly compared to the Slavs.

Ethnic nationalism has essentially been a taboo in German society since World War II, but it has seen a limited comeback since German reunification, with the ethnic nationalist National Democratic Party of Germany receiving 1.6% of the popular vote in the 2005 federal election.

Religion

Today, Germans include both Protestants and Catholics, with each group about equally represented in Germany. Historically, Protestants formed the majority, but with the loss of traditionally Protestant regions after World War II and many Protestants turning to agnosticism and atheism, especially in the former East Germany, the two groups are about equally represented. Today, non-Christians constitute a majority in certain regions of Germany, both in urban as well as in rural (eastern) regions.[48][full citation needed] Also some large groups of immigrants were or are mostly Catholics (e.g., Poles, Italians and Croatians).

The Protestant Reformation started in the German cultural sphere, when in 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses to the door of the Schlosskirche ("castle church") in Wittenberg. Among Protestant denominations, the Lutherans are well represented among Germans, while Calvinists are historically to be found primarily near the Dutch border and in a few cities like Worms and Speyer. The late nineteenth century saw a strong movement among the Jews in Germany and Austria to assimilate and define themselves as Germans, i.e., as Jewish Germans (a similar movement occurred in Hungary). In conservative circles, this was not always embraced, and for the Nazis, it was unacceptable. The Nazi rule led to the death or exile of almost all of the relatively small number of domestic Jews. Today Germany attempts to successfully integrate the Gastarbeiter and later arrived refugees from ex-Yugoslavia, especially Bosnian Muslims.

Minorities

In recent years, the German-speaking countries of Europe have been confronted with demographic changes resulting from decades of immigration. These changes have led to renewed debates (especially in the Federal Republic of Germany) about who should be considered German. Non-ethnic Germans now make up more than 8% of the German population, mostly the descendants of guest workers who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s. The Poles, Turks, Moroccans, Italians, Greeks, Portuguese and people from the Balkans in southeast Europe form the largest groups of non-ethnic Germans in the country.

As of December 2004, about seven million foreign citizens were registered in Germany, and 19% of the country's residents were of foreign or partially foreign descent. The young are more likely to be of foreign descent than the old. 30% of Germans aged 15 years and younger have at least one parent born abroad.[49] In the big cities 60% of children aged 5 years and younger have at least one parent born abroad.[50] The largest group (2.7 million) is from Turkey.[51]

In addition, a significant number of German citizens (close to 5%),[citation needed] although traditionally considered ethnic Germans, are in fact foreign-born and retain cultural identities and languages from their native countries, a fact that sets them apart from ethnic Germans. Of course, the idea of foreign-born repatriates is not unique to Germany. The English and British equivalent legal term is lex sanguinis, which is exactly the same principle- that citizenship is inherited by the child from his/her parents. It has nothing to do with ethnicity.

Ethnic German repatriates from the former Soviet Union are a separate case and constitute by far the largest such group and the second largest ethno-national minority group in Germany.[citation needed] The repatriation provisions made for ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe are unique and have historical basis, since these were areas where Germans traditionally lived. A controversial example of repatriation involves the Volga Germans, descendants of ethnic Germans who settled in Russia during the eighteenth century, who have been able to claim German citizenship even though neither they nor their ancestors for several generations have ever been to Germany. In contrast, persons of German descent in North America, South America, Africa, etc. do not have an automatic right of return and must actually prove their eligibility for German citizenship according to the clauses pertaining to the German nationality law. Other countries with post-Soviet Union repatriation programs include Greece, Israel and South Korea.

Unlike these ethnic German repatriates, some non-German ethnic minorities in the country, including some who were born and raised in the Federal Republic, choose to remain non-citizens. Although citizenship laws have been recently relaxed to allow such individuals to become nationalized citizens, many choose not to give up allegiance to the countries of their ethnic roots and continue to live in Germany under an ambiguous status of an alien resident or a guest worker, especially since this status, though lacking certain political rights, often does not impede one's ability to work, get free public higher education and travel abroad.

As a result, close to 10 million people permanently living in the Federal Republic today distinctly differ from the majority of the population in a variety of ways such as race, ethnicity, religion, language and culture,[citation needed] yet often fail to be recognized as minorities in official statistical sources because such sources traditionally survey only German citizens, and under the so called jus sanguinis system, that has been in effect in Germany since the nineteenth century, and has only recently been partially replaced by the alternative jus soli system. This situation contributes to the invisibility of Germany's minorities, making Germany technically one of the most ethnically homogeneous nations in the world, whereas in all practicality the Federal Republic is today one of the most ethnically diverse countries in Europe.[citation needed]

References

  1. ^ 75 million is the minimal estimate, counting 67 million ethnic Germans in Germany, plus some 5-10 million primary ancestry, (native) German-speaking ethnic Germans worldwide (not including Alemannic Swiss and Austrians). Deutsche Welle: 2005 German Census figures;Languages spoken in the US;Ethnologue: German
  2. ^ 160 is the maximal estimate, counting all people claiming ethnic German ancestry in the U.S., Brazil and elsewhere as well as Alemannic Swiss and Austrians
  3. ^ Deutsche Welle: 2005 German Census figures
  4. ^ CIA World Factbook - Germany: People
  5. ^ 49.2 million German Americans as of 2005 according to the "US demographic census". Retrieved 2007-08-02. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); see also Languages in the United States#German.
  6. ^ The [1] reports 12 millions Brazilians with German ancestry. See German-Brazilian
  7. ^ 2001 Canadian Census gives 2,742,765 total respondents stating their ethnic origin as partly German, with 705,600 stating "single-ancestry", see List of Canadians by ethnicity.
  8. ^ German settlement in Argentina
  9. ^ France
  10. ^ Alsatians
  11. ^ a result of population transfer in the Soviet Union; see ethnologue
  12. ^ The Template:PDFlink reports 742,212 people of German ancestry in the 2001 Census. German is spoken by ca. 135,000 [2], about 105,000 of them Germany-born, see Demographics of Australia
  13. ^ [3]
  14. ^ CBS, as of 2006
  15. ^ Microsoft Word - Siz_2006-eng
  16. ^ German in Italy
  17. ^ German born only; United Kingdom: Stock of foreign-born population by country of birth, 2001
  18. ^ Deutscher als die Deutschen [4]
  19. ^ Die soziolinguistische Situation von Chilenen deutscher Abstammung [5]
  20. ^ INE(2006)
  21. ^ It is estimated that ethnic Germans make up 3.3% of the population.
  22. ^ 163 923 resident aliens (nationals or citizens) in 2004 (2.2% of total population), compared to 112,348 as of 2000. 2005 report of the Swiss Federal Office of Statistics. 4.6 million including Alemannic Swiss: CIA World Fact Book, identifies the 65% (4.9 million) Swiss German speakers as "ethnic Germans".
  23. ^ 2002 census; mainly in Opole Voivodeship, see German minority in Poland.
  24. ^ Expat Events in Mexico
  25. ^ Germans in South Africa
  26. ^ 0.9% of the population (German nationals or citizens only) Statistik Austria - Census 2001, CIA World Factbook; see also Demographics of Austria; 7.9 million including Austrians, if Austrians are regarded as Germans: Austrians are ethnically also included under "Germans" by the US Department of State
  27. ^ German-speaking Community
  28. ^ [6]
  29. ^ German in Hungary
  30. ^ German minority
  31. ^ There are 6,000 Germans living in Uruguay today and 40,000 descendants of Germans
  32. ^ Ethnic German Minorities in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia
  33. ^ Land reform worries Bolivia's Mennonites
  34. ^ Ethnic groups around the world
  35. ^ Dominican Republic
  36. ^ Amid Namibia's White Opulence, Majority Rule Isn't So Scary Now
  37. ^ in the German-Danish border region; see Bund Deutscher Nordschleswiger
  38. ^ [7]
  39. ^ Slovakia
  40. ^ [8] "Nearly 43 million people in the United States identify German as their primary ancestry, the US Census Bureau reported in July 2004"
  41. ^ This figure accounts for self-reported ancestry rather than race or ethnicity. See demographics of the United States and European American for more information.
  42. ^ [9] "Ancestry - German = 50,764,352"
  43. ^ Template:PDFlink
  44. ^ refugee -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
  45. ^ Peter Utgaard, Remembering and Forgetting Nazism (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), 188-189. Frederick C. Engelmann, "The Austro-German Relationship: One Language, One and One- Half Histories, Two States," in Unequal Partners, ed. Harald von Riekhoff and Hanspeter Neuhold (San Francisco: Westview Press, 1993), 53-54.
  46. ^ Fewer Ethnic Germans Immigrating to Ancestral Homeland
  47. ^ External causes of death in a cohort of Aussiedler from the former Soviet Union, 1990-2002
  48. ^ Template:PDF
  49. ^ Turks in Germany | Two unamalgamated worlds, The Economist, April 3, 2008
  50. ^ BiBB: Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund - neue Definition, alte Probleme retrieved 25 of May 2008
  51. ^ Poll: Most Turks in Germany Feel Unwelcome, Deutsche Welle, March 13, 2008

See also

German Americans are common in the US. Light blue indicates counties that are predominantly German ancestry.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Germans&oldid=254051319"