Total population | |
---|---|
c. 100–150 million worldwide[1]
![]() | |
Regions with significant populations | |
![]() | 62,482,000[2] |
![]() | 46,000,000 (descent)[3] |
![]() | 12,000,000 (descent)[4][5] |
![]() | 3,500,000 (descent)[6] |
![]() | 3,300,000 (descent)[7] |
![]() | 500,000 (descent)[8] |
![]() | 437,000[9] |
![]() | 402,000[10] |
![]() | 368,512[11] |
![]() | 310,900[12] |
![]() | 301,000[10] |
![]() | 300,000 (descent)[13] |
![]() | 237,000 (descent)[10] |
![]() | 204,000[14] |
![]() | 181,958[15] |
![]() | 178,837[16] |
![]() | 148,000[17] |
![]() | 167,771[18] |
![]() | 50,863 [citation needed] |
![]() | 15,000–40,000[19] |
![]() | 40,000[20] |
![]() | 36,000[21] |
![]() | 33,302[22] |
![]() | 27,593[23][24] |
![]() | 25,000[25] |
![]() | 21,216[26] |
![]() | 10,030 (2016)[27] |
Languages | |
German | |
Religion | |
Predominantly Christianity, Historically: 2/3rds Protestant[note 1] 1/3rd Roman Catholic Nowadays:[28] 1/3rd Roman Catholic 1/3rd Protestant[note 2][29] 1/3rd Irreligion | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Other Germanic peoples |
The Germans (German: Deutsche) are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe[30][31][32][33][34] who share a common German ancestry, culture, and history. German is the shared mother tongue of a vast majority of the ethnic Germans. Any person who has German citizenship may also be regarded as a German, including the immigrant population of Germany.[35][36][37][38]
The English term Germans has been the name for the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages.[note 3] Ever since the onset of the Protestant Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th century, German society has been characterized by a Catholic-Protestant divide.[39]
Of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world,[40] between 66-75 million consider themselves Germans.[41] There are an additional 80 million people of German ancestry mainly in the United States, Brazil (mainly in the South Region of the country), Argentina, Canada, South Africa, the post-Soviet states (mainly in Russia and Kazakhstan), and France, each accounting for at least 1 million.[note 4] Thus, the total number of Germans lies somewhere between 100 and more than 150 million, depending on the criteria applied[1] (native speakers, single-ancestry ethnic Germans, partial German ancestry, etc.).
Today, people from countries with German-speaking majorities which were earlier part of the Holy Roman Empire, (such as Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and other historically-tied countries like Luxembourg), most often subscribe to their own national identities and may or may not also self-identify as ethnically German.[42]
Etymology
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Germanic_limes.jpg/220px-Germanic_limes.jpg)
The German term Deutsche originates from the Old High German word diutisc (from diot "people"), referring to the Germanic "language of the people". It is not clear how commonly, if at all, the word was used as an ethnonym in Old High German.
Used as a noun, ein diutscher in the sense of "a German" emerges in Middle High German, attested from the second half of the 12th century.[43]
The Old French term alemans is taken from the name of the Alamanni. It was loaned into Middle English as almains in the early 14th century. The word Dutch is attested in English from the 14th century, denoting continental West Germanic ("Dutch" and "German") dialects and their speakers.[44]
While in most Romance languages the Germans have been named from the Alamanni (in what became Swabia) (some, like standard Italian tedeschi, retain an older borrowing of the endonym, while the Romanian 'germani' stems from the historical correlation with the ancient region of Germania), the Old Norse, Finnish, and Estonian names for the Germans were taken from that of the Saxons. In Slavic languages, the Germans were given the name of němьci (singular němьcь), originally meaning "mute."
The English term Germans is only attested from the mid-16th century, based on the classical Latin term Germani used by Julius Caesar and later Tacitus. It gradually replaced Almain, the most common term found in Middle English and late-15th century texts, by the 18th century; the latter having already marginalised the less common medieval variants of the modern word "Dutch".[45][46][47]
History
The Germans are a Germanic people, who as an ethnicity emerged during the Middle Ages. Originally part of the Holy Roman Empire, around 300 independent German states emerged during its decline after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending the Thirty Years War, with Austria and Prussia-Brandenburg being the largest. These states, except for Austria and the Czech lands which it controlled, the Spanish Netherlands (most of which eventually became Belgium), Liechtenstein, and lands west of the Upper Rhine River (over time added to France) eventually formed into modern Germany in the 19th century.[48]
Origins
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/West_Germanic_Kingdoms_460.jpg/220px-West_Germanic_Kingdoms_460.jpg)
Although there is little substantial proof, the concept of a German ethnicity is linked to Germanic tribes of antiquity in central Europe.[49] The early Germans originated on the North German Plain as well as southern Scandinavia.[49] By the 2nd century BC, the number of Germans[citation needed] was significantly increasing and they began expanding into eastern Europe and southward into Celtic territory.[49] During antiquity these Germanic tribes remained separate from each other and did not have writing systems at that time.[50]
In the European Iron Age the area that is now Germany was divided into the (Celtic) La Tène horizon in Southern Germany and the (Germanic) Jastorf culture in Northern Germany. By 55 BC, the Germans[citation needed] had reached the Danube river and had either assimilated or otherwise driven out the Celts who had lived there, and had spread west into what is now Belgium and France.[50]
Conflict between the Germanic tribes and the forces of Rome under Julius Caesar forced major Germanic tribes to retreat to the east bank of the Rhine.[51] Roman emperor Augustus in 12 BC ordered the conquest of the Germans[citation needed], but the catastrophic Roman defeat at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest resulted in the Roman Empire abandoning its plans to completely conquer Germania.[49] Germanic peoples in Roman territory were culturally Romanized, and although much of Germania remained free of direct Roman rule, Rome deeply influenced the development of German society, especially the adoption of Christianity by the Germans who obtained it from the Romans.[51] In Roman-held territories with Germanic populations, the Germanic and Roman peoples intermarried, and Roman, Germanic, and Christian traditions intermingled.[52] The adoption of Christianity would later become a major influence in the development of a common German identity.[50]
The first major public figure to speak of a German[citation needed] people in general, was the Roman figure Tacitus in his work Germania around 100 AD.[53] However an actual united German identity and ethnicity did not exist then, and it would take centuries of development of German culture until the concept of a German ethnicity began to become a popular identity.[54]
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, they encountered Celts to the south, and Balts and Slavs towards the east. The Limes Germanicus was breached in AD 260. Migrating Germanic tribes commingled with the local Gallo-Roman populations in what is now Swabia and Bavaria. The arrival of the Huns in Europe resulted in Hun conquest of large parts of Eastern Europe, the Huns initially were allies of the Roman Empire who fought against Germanic tribes, but later the Huns cooperated with the Germanic tribe of the Ostrogoths, and large numbers of Germans lived within the lands of the Hunnic Empire of Attila.[55] Attila had both Hunnic and Germanic families and prominent Germanic chiefs amongst his close entourage in Europe.[55] The Huns living in Germanic territories in Eastern Europe adopted an East Germanic language as their lingua franca.[56] A major part of Attila's army were Germans, during the Huns' campaign against the Roman Empire.[57] After Attila's unexpected death, the Hunnic Empire collapsed with the Huns disappearing as a people in Europe–who either escaped into Asia or otherwise blended in amongst Europeans.[58]
The migration-period peoples who later coalesced into a "German" ethnicity were the Germanic tribes of the Saxons, Franci, Thuringii, Alamanni and many of the Bavarii. These five tribes, sometimes with inclusion of the Frisians, are considered as the major groups to take part in the formation of the Germans.[citation needed] By the 9th century, the large tribes which lived on the territory of modern Germany had been united under the rule of the Frankish king Charlemagne, known in German as Karl der Große.[59][60][61][62] Much of what is now Eastern Germany became Slavonic-speaking (Sorbs and Veleti), after these areas were vacated by Germanic tribes (Vandals, Lombards, Burgundians, and Suebi amongst others) which had migrated into the former areas of the Roman Empire.
Medieval period
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/HRR_10Jh.jpg/170px-HRR_10Jh.jpg)
A German ethnicity emerged in the course of the Middle Ages, ultimately as a result of the formation of the Kingdom of Germany within East Francia and later the Holy Roman Empire, beginning in the 9th century. The process was gradual and lacked any clear definition, and the use of exonyms designating "the Germans" develops only during the High Middle Ages. The title of rex teutonicum "King of the Germans" is first used in the late 11th century, by the chancery of Pope Gregory VII, to describe the future Holy Roman Emperor of the German nation Henry IV.[63] Natively, the term diutscher (German) was used for the people of Germany beginning in the 12th century.
After Christianization, the Roman Catholic Church and local rulers led German expansion and settlement in areas inhabited by Slavs and Balts, known as Ostsiedlung. During the wars waged in the Baltic by the Catholic German Teutonic Knights; the lands inhabited by the ethnic group of the Old Prussians (known then simply as "Prussians"), were conquered by the Germans. The Old Prussians were an ethnic group related to the Latvian and Lithuanian Baltic peoples.[64] The former German state of Prussia took its name from the Baltic Prussians, although it was led by Germans who had assimilated the Old Prussians; the Old Prussian language was extinct by the 17th or early 18th century.[65] The Slavic people of the Teutonic-controlled Baltic were assimilated into German culture and eventually there were many intermarriages of Slavic and German families, including into Prussia's aristocracy known as the Junkers.[66] Prussian military strategist Karl von Clausewitz is a famous German whose surname is of Slavic origin.[66] Massive German settlement led to the assimilation of Baltic (Old Prussians) and Slavic (Wends) populations, who were 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 the German culture. German town law (Stadtrecht) was promoted by the presence of large, relatively wealthy German populations, their influence and political power. Thus people who would be considered "Germans", with a common culture, language, and worldview different from that of the surrounding rural peoples, colonized trading towns 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 and a number of them may only loosely be characterized as German. The Empire itself was not entirely German either. It had a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual structure, some of the smaller ethnicities existing and languages used at different times in certain areas were Dutch (also a West Germanic language which was similar to German dialects spoken to the east of it), Italian, French, Czech, and Polish.[67]
By the Middle Ages, large numbers of Jews lived in the Holy Roman Empire and had assimilated into German culture, including many Jews who had previously assimilated into French culture and had spoken a mixed Judeo-French language.[68] Upon assimilating into German culture, the Jewish German peoples incorporated major parts of the German language and elements of other European languages into a mixed language known as Yiddish.[68] However, tolerance and assimilation of Jews in German society suddenly ended during the Crusades with many Jews being forcefully expelled from Germany and Western Yiddish disappeared as a language in Germany over the centuries, with German Jewish people fully adopting the German language.[68]
Early Modern period
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Holy_Roman_Empire_1648.svg/220px-Holy_Roman_Empire_1648.svg.png)
From the late 15th century, the Holy Roman Empire came to be known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. The Thirty Years' War, a series of conflicts fought mainly in the territory of modern Germany, weakened the coherence of the Holy Roman Empire, leading to the emergence of different, smaller German states known as Kleinstaaterei in 18th-century Germany.
The Napoleonic Wars were the cause of the final dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, and ultimately the cause for the quest for a German nation state in 19th-century German nationalism. After the Congress of Vienna, Austria and Prussia emerged as two competitors within the German realm. 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 essentially conservative, assuring that little would change in Europe and preventing Germany from uniting.[69] These terms came to a sudden halt following the Revolutions of 1848 and the Crimean War in 1856, paving the way for the unification of most of Germany in the 1860s. By the 1820s, large numbers of Jewish German women had intermarried with Christian German men and had converted to Christianity.[70] Jewish German Eduard Lasker was a prominent German nationalist figure who promoted the unification of Germany in the mid-19th century.[71]
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/72/A_v_Werner_-_Kaiserproklamation_am_18_Januar_1871_%283._Fassung_1885%29.jpg/220px-A_v_Werner_-_Kaiserproklamation_am_18_Januar_1871_%283._Fassung_1885%29.jpg)
German nationalism became the sole focus of the German Question which was the question of how Germany was going to be best unified into a nation-state. The idea of unifying all German-speakers into one state was known as the Großdeutsche Lösung ("Greater German solution") and was propagated mostly by the Austrian Empire and the German Austrians. The other option, the Kleindeutsche Lösung ("Little German solution") only advocated unifying the northern German states without Austria and the German Austrians was supported predominantly in the Kingdom of Prussia.[72] The idea of including the Austrian Empire into a German nation-state was a problem because it included many non-German ethnic groups and many areas which had never been part of the Holy Roman Empire or the later German Federations and did not want to become part of a German nation-state.[73] In 1866, the feud between Austria and Prussia finally came to a head. In the final battle of the German war (Battle of Königgrätz) the Prussians defeated the Austrians and proceeded to create the North German Confederation with some south German states, including Austria, remaining independent.[74]
In 1870, after France attacked Prussia, Prussia and its new allies in Southern Germany (among them Bavaria but excluding Austria) were victorious in the Franco-Prussian War. Prussia created the German Empire in 1871 as a German nation-state, excluding the multi-ethnic Austrian Habsburg monarchy and Liechtenstein. Integrating the Austrian Germans, including Germans in the Czech Kingdom ruled by the Austrian Empire, into the German nation-state nevertheless remained a strong desire for many people of Germany and Austria, especially among the liberals, the social democrats and also the Catholics who were a minority within the Protestant Germany.
During the 19th century, rapid population growth due to lower death rates in Germany, combined with poverty, spurred millions of Germans to emigrate, chiefly to the United States. Today, roughly 17% of the United States' population (23% of the white population) is of mainly German ancestry.[75][76][77]
Twentieth century
![Political map of central Europe showing the 26 areas that became part of the united German Empire in 1891. Germany based in the northeast, dominates in size, occupying about 40% of the new empire.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Deutsches_Reich_%281871-1918%29-en.png/220px-Deutsches_Reich_%281871-1918%29-en.png)
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/Lange_diercke_sachsen_deutschtum_erde.jpg/220px-Lange_diercke_sachsen_deutschtum_erde.jpg)
The dissolution of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire after World War I led to a strong desire of the population of the new Republic of German Austria to be integrated into Germany or Switzerland.[78] This was, however, prevented by the Treaty of Saint Germain and the Treaty of Versailles.[79][80] In 1930, three years before the Nazi era, there were roughly 94 million people all over the world claiming German ancestry, or about 4.5% of the world population at the time.[81][82][note 5]
During the Third Reich, the Nazis, led by Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, attempted to unite all the people they claimed were "Germans" (Volksdeutsche) under the slogan Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer ("One People, One Empire, One Leader"). This policy began in 1938 with Hitler's foreign policy Heim ins Reich ("back home to the Reich") which aimed to persuade all Germans living outside of the Reich to return "home" either as individuals or regions to a Greater Germany.[83] This idea was initially welcomed by many ethnic Germans during the annexation with Austria (Anschluss)[84] and the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938,[85] and in 1939 the annexation of western Lithuania, Klaipeda (Memel) and after World War II began the annexation of the Free City of Danzig and other former Polish territories where a substantial amount of ethnic Germans lived. The Swiss resisted the idea; they had viewed themselves as a distinctly separate nation since the Peace of Westphalia of 1648.[86]
During World War II, Heinrich Himmler who was issued with the policy of "strengthening of ethnic Germandom" created a Volksliste ("German People's List") which was used to classify all those living in the German occupied territories into different categories according to criteria by Himmler.[87] The policy of uniting all Germans included ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe,[88] many of whom had emigrated more than one hundred fifty years before and developed separate cultures in their new lands.
After World War II, Eastern European countries such as the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia expelled the ethnic Germans from their territories. Many of those had inhabited these lands for centuries, developing a unique culture. Germans were also forced to leave the former eastern territories of Germany, which were annexed by Poland (Silesia, eastern Pomerania, parts of Brandenburg and the southern part of East Prussia) and the Soviet Union (northern part of East Prussia). Between 12 and 16.5 million ethnic Germans and German citizens were expelled westwards to allied-occupied Germany or Austria.
After World War II, Austrians increasingly saw themselves as a separate nation from the German nation. In 1966, 47% people in Austria viewed themselves as Austrians. In 1990, the number increased to 79%.[89] Recent polls show that no more than 6% of the German-speaking Austrians consider themselves as "Germans".[90] An Austrian identity was vastly emphasized along with the "first-victim of Nazism theory."[91] Today over 80 percent of the Austrians see themselves as an independent nation.[92]
1945 to present
Before the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany in 1990, Germans constituted the largest divided nation in Europe by far.[93][94][note 6] Between 1950 and 1987, about 1.4 million ethnic Germans and their dependents, mostly from Poland and Romania, arrived in Germany under special provisions of right of return. With the collapse of the Iron Curtain since 1987, 3 million "Aussiedler" – ethnic Germans, mainly from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union – took advantage of Germany's law of return to leave the "land of their birth" for Germany.[95]
Approximately 2 million, just from the territories of the former Soviet Union, have resettled in Germany since the late 1980s.[96] On the other hand, significant numbers of ethnic Germans have moved from Germany to other European countries, especially Switzerland, the Netherlands, Britain, Spain, and Portugal.
In its State of World Population 2006 report, the United Nations Population Fund lists Germany with hosting the third-highest percentage of the main international migrants worldwide, about 5% or 10 million of all 191 million migrants.[97]
Language
The native language of Germans is German, a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch, and sharing many similarities with the North Germanic and Scandinavian languages. Spoken by approximately 100 million native speakers,[98] German is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. German has been replaced by English as the dominant language of science-related Nobel Prize laureates during the second half of the 20th century.[99] It was a lingua franca in the Holy Roman Empire.
Dialects
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Legal_status_of_German_in_the_world.svg/220px-Legal_status_of_German_in_the_world.svg.png)
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Legal_status_of_German_in_Europe.svg/220px-Legal_status_of_German_in_Europe.svg.png)
- High German
- Upper German
- Bavarians (c. 10 million) form the Austro-Bavarian linguistic group, together with those Austrians who speak German and do not live in Vorarlberg and the western Tyrol district of Reutte. Swabians (ca. 10 million) form the Alemannic group, together with the Alemannic Swiss, Liechtensteiners, Alsatians and Vorarlbergians.
- Central German dialect group (c. 45 million)
- West Central German
- Central Franconian (Ripuarian, Kölsch), forms a dialectal unity with Luxembourgish, Rhine Franconian (Hessian)
- East Central German
- West Central German
- Yiddish, a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages.[101][102]
- Upper German
- Low German (c. 3–10 million), forms a dialectal unity with Dutch Low Saxon
Native speakers
Global distribution of native speakers of the German language:
Country | German-speaking population (outside German-speaking countries) |
---|---|
![]() |
5,000,000[103] |
![]() |
3,000,000[103] |
![]() |
2,000,000[103] |
![]() |
500,000[103] |
![]() |
450,000[103]–620,000[104] |
![]() |
250,000[103] |
![]() |
220,000[103] |
![]() |
148,000[105] |
![]() |
110,000[103] |
![]() |
100,000 (Mennonites)[106] |
![]() |
75,000 (German expatriate citizens)[103] |
![]() |
72,000[107] |
![]() |
66,000[103] |
![]() |
56,000[108] |
![]() |
40,000[103] |
![]() |
36,000[103] |
![]() |
35,000[109] |
![]() |
30,000 (German expatriate citizens)[103] |
![]() |
20,000[103] |
![]() |
15,000[103] |
![]() |
10,000[103] |
![]() |
4,206[110] |
Geographic distribution
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Map_of_the_German_Diaspora_in_the_World.svg/250px-Map_of_the_German_Diaspora_in_the_World.svg.png)
People of German origin are found in various places around the globe. United States is home to approximately 50 million German Americans or one third of the German diaspora, making it the largest centre of German-descended people outside Germany. Brazil is the second largest with 5 million people claiming German ancestry. Other significant centres are Canada, Argentina, South Africa and France each accounting for at least 1 million. While the exact number of German-descended people is difficult to calculate, the available data makes it safe to claim the number is exceeding 100 million people.[1]
Culture
Identity
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Image_Germania_%28painting%29.jpg/170px-Image_Germania_%28painting%29.jpg)
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Herder_by_K%C3%BCgelgen.jpg/220px-Herder_by_K%C3%BCgelgen.jpg)
The event of the Protestant Reformation and the politics that ensued has been cited as the origins of German identity that arose in response to the spread of a common German language and literature.[54] Early German national culture was developed through literary and religious figures including Martin Luther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller.[111] The concept of a German nation was developed by German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder.[112] The popularity of German identity arose in the aftermath of the French Revolution.[53]
Pan-Germanism's origins began in the early 19th century following the Napoleonic Wars. The wars launched a new movement that was born in France itself during the French Revolution. Nationalism during the 19th century threatened the old aristocratic regimes. Many ethnic groups of Central and Eastern Europe had been divided for centuries, ruled over by the old Monarchies of the Romanovs and the Habsburgs. Germans, for the most part, had been a loose and disunited people since the Reformation when the Holy Roman Empire was shattered into a patchwork of states. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the independent German states were loosely united in the German Confederation. Despite the rhetoric from German nationalists, there was no universal agreement on the existence of one German nation (Volk).[113]
Starting in the early 1800s, German nationalists from Austria and Prussia, sought to unite all Germans into one nation-state.
Although German Jews had been assimilated into German society for centuries, some German nationalists were antisemitic and regarded the Jews as a “biological threat” and “foreign” to the German people. For example in 1814, the German nationalist Ernst Moritz Arndt wrote that Jews should not be allowed to enter Germany because “they are a thoroughly foreign Volk and because I wish to preserve as much as possible the purity of the German tribes from alien-type elements”.[114]
1871–1918
The creation of the multi-ethnic Austria-Hungary empire created strong ethnic conflict between the different ethnicities of the empire. German nationalism in Austria grew among all social circles of the empire, many wanted to be unified with the German Reich to form a Greater Germany and wanted policies to be carried out to enforce their German ethnic identity rejecting any Austrian pan-ethnic identity.[115] Many German Austrians felt annoyed that they were excluded from the German Empire since it included various non-German ethnic groups.[116]
The exclusion of some Germans from the German Empire resulted in the emergence of the Völkisch movement which was inspired the the racialist blood and soil concept and aimed to bring about the unification of all Germans into one nation-state. Around this time, biological sciences became very common in Germany. [117] Racialist thinkers like Arthur de Gobineau, Georges Vacher de Lapouge, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Ludwig Woltmann and Alexis Carrel were inspired by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and applied it to a “race struggle” in which the German Aryans were at the top of the white race and had to rid Germany of foreign elements, in particular Jews. Concepts like Social Darwinism and survival of the fittest were widespread by a variety of political and social theorists.[118] Many of the theorists associated class with race.[118] German nationalist movements at the turn of the 20th century the movement took on an overtly anti-Semitic stance.[119]
During the German Empire, scientific racism was used as a way to promote pseudoscientific racial theories by linking class with race to marginalise and exclude ethnic minorities such as Jews and Romani people from being considered to be Germans and exclude them from German society.[120]
Prominent Austrian pan-Germans such as Georg Ritter von Schönerer created pan-German movements which demanded the annexation of all ethnic German territories. Members of such movements often wore blue cornflowers, known to be the favourite flower of German Emperor William I, in their buttonholes, along with cockades in the German national colours (black, red, and yellow).[121] Both symbols were temporarily banned in Austrian schools.[122] Populists such as the Viennese major Karl Lueger used anti-semitism and pan-Germanism for their own political purposes.[123] Despite Bismarck's victory over Austria in 1866 which ultimately excluded Austria and the German Austrians from the Reich, many Austrian pan-Germans idolized him.[124]
There was also a rejection of Roman Catholicism with the Away from Rome! movement calling for German speakers to identify with Lutheran or Old Catholic churches.[125]
Around this time, German nationalists in Austria and Germany used antisemitism as part a tool in politics. In Vienna, antisemitic political parties gained significant support from the public. Combining left-wing and right-wing ideas, one common element was that getting rid of Jews would solve the problems in Austria and Germany.[114] Racial antisemitism became a popular theme and the political parties spoke of Jews having negative “racial characteristics” and the need to solve the “Jewish Problem” by a “racial purification” solution. [119] Racial antisemitic ideas were popularised by Wilhelm Marr’s book The Way to Victory of Germanism over Judaism (1879) and Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s book Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899).[119]
The German nationalists adopted Gregor Mendel’s laws and eugenics for their cause and the first genealogical journal Archiv fur Rassen und Gesellschaftsbiologie (Archive for Racial and Social Biology) was opened in 1904 and the first eugenics organisation Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene (German Society for Racial Hygiene) was opened in 1905.[118] Although genealogical research had been used in Germany since at least the sixth century, by the early twentieth century it became to be used as a way to justify antisemitic and racist ideas.[126] Genealogical journals began to discuss eugenics and race with many of them advocating racial antisemitism by claiming that Germans should socially unify with one another whilst excluding Jews.[119] Antisemite and German nationalist Bernhard Koerner was occasionally allowed to spread racially antisemitic ideas in the more prominent and mainstream genealogical journals. In the course of a 1910 German Heraldbook review, for example, Koerner asked rhetorically, “When will the time come that the Germans recognize their strength and not need to wait for the black-locked Oriental?”[119]
However, the most common idea to be found in the genealogical journals was that Jews were racially “foreign”. Genealogical journals which had Völkisch undertones described the Jews as “non-Aryans”.[119]
Despite antisemitism being widespread, the vast majority of Jews considered themselves Germans and were patriotic. In order to try and combat antisemitism, the assimilated Jewish community in Germany often described themselves as, “More German than the Germans”.
1918–1933
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Stab-in-the-back_postcard.jpg/220px-Stab-in-the-back_postcard.jpg)
After World War I had ended an antisemitic conspiracy theory known as the Stab-in-the-back myth began to be widely circulated and believed by right-wing circles that Germany had not lost the war, but was instead betrayed by the civilians on the home front who were predominantly Jews. Advocates of the conspiracy theory denounced those who signed the Armistice on 11 November 1918 as the “November criminals”.
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/1920_poster_12000_Jewish_soldiers_KIA_for_the_fatherland.jpg/220px-1920_poster_12000_Jewish_soldiers_KIA_for_the_fatherland.jpg)
The aftermath of the war also saw the emergence of right-wing political parties in the Weimar Republic such as the German Social Party, German People's Party, German Workers' Party, Nazi Party and other political parties. A common theme amongst all of the parties and their followers was the idea that the definition of “Germans” was a racial concept which excluded Jews. In 1919, the first German translation of the fabricated text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which propagated an antisemitic conspiracy theory of a Jewish plan to obtain world domination was widely circulated and continued to do so throughout the 1920s amongst right-wing and Völkisch circles in Germany.[127]
Some prominent genealogists thought that the problems of the Weimar Republic could be solved by getting rid of inferior people from society.[128] The literature on genealogy advocated the unity of Germans and the “racial cleansing” of the racially inferior.[128] By the end of the Weimar Republic, there were hundreds of “family associations” (Familienverbande) which helped to trace back people’s ancestry for a sum of money.[129]
Many leading anthropologists and biologists began in the early 1920s to advocate for racial hygiene whoo argued that the “German race” was under threat by the Jews who were “aliens” and “unassimilable”.[130] American eugenicist Madison Grant’s book The Passing of the Great Race which argued that the Nordic race was superior and for a eugenics programme to be implemented to stop the decline of it and to sterilise inferior races was met with great approval amongst eugenicists in Germany.[131] The works of Grant and Lothrop Stoddard greatly influenced Nordicism in Germany during the 1920s.[131]
The German writer Hans F. K. Günther, who later became a member of the Nazi Party, wrote about scientific racism and eugenics and had a profound influence on right-wing circles in Austria and Germany and helped to cement the idea of “Germans” being a racial idea that specifically excluded Jews. In 1922 he published his book Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (Racial Science of the German People) in which he identified the Germans as belonging to the five sub-races Nordic, Mediterranean, Alpine, East Baltic and the Dinaric.[132][133] In contrast, he regarded Jewish people as belonging predominantly to the “Near Eastern Race“.[133] Günther also wrote that Jewish people were so racially mixed that Ashkenazi Jews belonged to the Eastern, Oriental, East Baltic, Inner-Asian, Nordic, Hamite, and Negro, and Sephardic Jews as being mixed of Oriental, Near Eastern, Western, Hamite, Nordic, and Negro.[133] Günther believed overall that Jews had different physical characteristics to Europeans.[133] In 1925, Günther published his book Rassenkunde Europas (The Racial Elements of European History) and described the Jews as a people of non-European origin living amongst the European peoples.[134] Günther was also a Nordicist, believing that the Nordic race was a superior race and his works helped to further develop this idea in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.[132] Günther‘s book Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes influenced Nazi leader Adolf Hitler so much that he kept several editions of the book and included it on a reading list for all members of the Nazi Party to read.[135]
In 1926, the Bavarian authorities enacted the “Law for the Fight Against Gypsies, Vagrants and the Workshy” which aimed to stop Gypsies from travelling around Bavaria freely and keep them under control due to alleged fears of security. The Weimar Republic government attempted to stop Gypsies from living by their nomadic lifestyle and settle them in a specific region isolated from Germans.[136] Following the law, Germans all over Germany began to racially discriminate against Gypsies. In 1927, Prussia passed a law which required self-identified Gypsies to carry identification cards; this resulted in 8,000 Gypsies to be processed this way and subjected to mandatory fingerprinting and photographing.[137] In 1929, the racial discrimination against Gypsies was more explicit when the German state Hessen proposed the “Law for the Fight Against the Gypsy Menace”. The same year the Centre for the Fight Against Gypsies in Germany was opened. This organisation enforced restrictions on travel for undocumented Roma and "allowed for the arbitrary arrest and detention of gypsies as a means of crime prevention“.[138]
1933-1945
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Ahnenpass-axb02.jpg/200px-Ahnenpass-axb02.jpg)
As early as the Nazi Party’s 25-point Program which was announced by Hitler on 24 February 1920, the Nazis had declared on point 4 that, “None but members of the nation may be citizens of the state. None but those of German blood, whatever their creed may be. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation”.
Whilst prior to the Nazis, outside of German nationalist circles the concept of “Germans” generally referred to culture and language, the Nazis argued that a people (Volk) was associated with a particular race (Rasse) and beginning in 1925 published material in a monthly magazine titled Volk und Rasse (People and Race) to promote their racial theories.[139]
Although most Germans did not think the same way as the Nazis did when it came to the definition of “Germans”, by 1933 many Germans had already researched their family trees so once the Nazis came to power it was fairly easy for them to implement racial policies under the pretext of genealogical research and why so many Germans accepted racial policies.[140] Similarly, the Nazi claim that Jewish people were a “biological threat” to non-Jewish Germans was not an ideological shock for most Germans.[141] Similarly, eugenic ideas with racist overtones had been widespread in German society.[142]
Soon after coming to power, the Nazis passed the racist Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service which made it legal for only Germans of “Aryan” descent to serve as a civil servants and the retirement of Jews and others considered to be non-Aryan.[143] In 1934, the Nazis published a pamphlet titled “Warum Arierparagraph” (“Why the Aryan Law?”) was aimed to explain their justifications to remove non-Aryans from all professions as a way to solve the Jewish Question.[144] In 1935, the Nazis passed the racist Nuremberg Laws which stated that only people of “German or related blood” could be Reich citizens and stripped Jews and other non-Aryans of their citizenship.[145]
The Nazis used the popularity of genealogy research as a way to be intrusive towards every German citizen to the point that in 1940 a commentator for the Nazi eugenic programme remarked, “there is scarcely a German today who will not be required to obtain the proof of his ancestry at least once in life“.[146] German children were taught the importance of their ancestors.[147]
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Bundesarchiv_R_49_Bild-0705%2C_Polen%2C_Herkunft_der_Umsiedler%2C_Karte.jpg/260px-Bundesarchiv_R_49_Bild-0705%2C_Polen%2C_Herkunft_der_Umsiedler%2C_Karte.jpg)
The Heim ins Reich initiative (German: literally Home into the Reich, meaning Back to Reich, see Reich) was a policy pursued by Nazi Germany which attempted to convince people of German descent living outside of Germany (such as Sudetenland) that they should strive to bring these regions "home" into a greater Germany, but also relocate from territories that were not under German control, following the conquest of Poland in accordance with the Nazi-Soviet pact. This policy began in 1938 on 12 March when Hitler annexed Austria to the Third Reich.
Shortly after the beginning of the Second World War on 7 October 1939 Hitler appointed Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler as the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood with the aims of returning ethnic Germans back to the Reich, preventing any harm to the German Volkstum by foreign alien populations and creating new territories for returning ethnic Germans to settle.
During the war, the Nazis created the Deutsche Volksliste (“German People’s List”) as a way to classify the inhabitants of Nazi-occupied Europe. Himmler created four categories:
- Category I: Volksdeutsche ("Ethnically German") — Persons of German descent who had engaged themselves in favour of the Reich before 1939.[148]
- Category II: Deutschstämmige ("of German Descent") — Persons of German descent who had remained passive.[148]
- Category III: Eingedeutschte ("Voluntarily Germanised") — Indigenous persons considered by the Nazis as partly Polonised (mainly Silesians and Kashubs); refusal to join this list often led to deportation to a concentration camp.[148]
- Category IV: Rückgedeutschte ("Forcibly Germanised") — Persons of Polish nationality considered "racially valuable", but who resisted Germanisation.[148]
The Volga Germans living in the Soviet Union were interned in gulags or forcibly relocated during the Second World War.[149]
1945–1990
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/West_and_East_Germans_at_the_Brandenburg_Gate_in_1989.jpg/220px-West_and_East_Germans_at_the_Brandenburg_Gate_in_1989.jpg)
World War II brought about the decline of Pan-Germanism, much as World War I had led to the demise of Pan-Slavism. The Germans in Central and Eastern Europe fled[150] or were expelled,[151] parts of Germany itself were devastated, and the country was divided, firstly into Russian, French, American, and British zones and then into West Germany and East Germany.
Germany suffered even larger territorial losses than it did in the First World War, with huge portions of eastern Germany directly annexed by the Soviet Union[152] and Poland.[153][154] The scale of the Germans' defeat was unprecedented. Nationalism and Pan-Germanism became almost taboo because they had been used so destructively by the Nazis. Indeed, the word "Volksdeutscher" in reference to ethnic Germans naturalized during WWII later developed into a mild epithet.
From the 1960s, Germany also saw increasing immigration, especially from Turkey, under an official programme aimed at encouraging "Gastarbeiter" or guestworkers to the country to provide labour during the post-war economic boom years. Although it had been expected that such workers would return home, many settled in Germany, with their descendants becoming German citizens.[155]
1990–present
However, German reunification in 1990 revived the old debates. The fear of nationalistic misuse of Pan-Germanism nevertheless remains strong. But the overwhelming majority of Germans today are not chauvinistic in nationalism, but in 2006 and again in 2010, the German National Football Team won third place in the 2006 and 2010 FIFA World Cups, ignited a positive scene of German pride, enhanced by success in sport.
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bild-F074398-0021%2C_Bonn%2C_Pressekonferenz_Bundestagswahlkampf%2C_Kohl.jpg/220px-Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bild-F074398-0021%2C_Bonn%2C_Pressekonferenz_Bundestagswahlkampf%2C_Kohl.jpg)
For decades after the Second World War, any national symbol or expression was a taboo.[156] However, the Germans are becoming increasingly patriotic.[156][157] During a study in 2009, in which some 2,000 German citizens age 14 and upwards filled out a questionnaire, nearly 60% of those surveyed agreed with the sentiment "I'm proud to be German." And 78%, if free to choose their nation, would opt for German nationality with "near or absolute certainty".[158] Another study in 2009, carried out by the Identity Foundation in Düsseldorf, showed that 73% of the Germans were proud of their country, twice more than 8 years earlier. According to Eugen Buss, a sociology professor at the University of Hohenheim, more and more Germans are becoming openly proud of their country.[157]
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fd/Angela_Merkel_%282008%29.jpg/170px-Angela_Merkel_%282008%29.jpg)
In the midst of the European sovereign-debt crisis, Radek Sikorski, Poland's Foreign Minister, stated in November 2011, "I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity. You have become Europe's indispensable nation."[159] According to Jacob Heilbrunn, a senior editor at The National Interest, such a statement is unprecedented when taking into consideration Germany's history. "This was an extraordinary statement from a top official of a nation that was ravaged by Germany during World War II. And it reflects a profound shift taking place throughout Germany and Europe about Berlin's position at the center of the Continent."[159] Heilbrunn believes that the adage, "what was good for Germany was bad for the European Union" has been supplanted by a new mentality—what is in the interest of Germany is also in the interest of its neighbors. The evolution in Germany's national identity stems from focusing less on its Nazi past and more on its Prussian history, which many Germans believe was betrayed—and not represented—by Nazism.[159] The evolution is further precipitated by Germany's conspicuous position as Europe's strongest economy. Indeed, this German sphere of influence has been welcomed by the countries that border it, as demonstrated by Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski's effusive praise for his country's western neighbor.[159] This shift in thinking is boosted by a newer generation of Germans who see World War II as a distant memory.
See also
- Demographics of Germany
- Anti-German sentiment
- Die Deutschen, ZDF's documentary television series
- Ethnic groups in Europe
- Genetic history of Europe
- German eastward expansion
- List of Alsatians and Lorrainians
- List of Austrians
- List of ancient Germanic peoples
- List of Swiss people
- List of terms used for Germans
- Names for the German language
- Organised persecution of ethnic Germans
Notes
- ^ Above all Lutheranism, Calvinism, and United Protestant (Lutheran & Reformed); further details: Prussian Union of churches
- ^ Above all Lutheranism, Calvinism, and United Protestant (Lutheran & Reformed); further details: Evangelical Church in Germany
- ^ Alongside the slightly earlier term Almayns; John of Trevisa's 1387 translation of Ranulf Higdon's Polychronicon has: Þe empere passede from þe Grees to þe Frenschemen and to þe Germans, þat beeþ Almayns. During the 15th and 16th centuries, Dutch was the adjective used in the sense "pertaining to Germans". Use of German as an adjective dates to ca. 1550. The adjective Dutch narrowed its sense to "of the Netherlands" during the 17th century.
- ^ In these countries, the number of people claiming German ancestry exceeds 1,000,000 and a significant percentage of the population claim German ancestry. For sources: see table in German diaspora main article.
- ^ Here is used the estimate of the United Nations (2,07 billion people in the world, 1930), and all the populations from the map combined. 2,07 billion is taken as 100%, and 93,379,200 is taken as x. 2,700,000,000 - 100%, 93,379,200 - x. x=93,379,200*100%/2,070,000,000=4,5110724637681=4,5%
- ^ Divided refers to relatively strong regionalism among the Germans within the Federal Republic of Germany. The events of the 20th century also affected the nation. As a result, the German people remain divided in the 21st century, though the degree of division is one much diminished after two world wars, the Cold War, and the German reunification.
References
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Argentina has an estimated 2017 population of 44.27 million ... about 8% are descended from German immigrants
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Spanish: Hoy, el perfil de los alemanes residentes aquí es distinto y ya no tienen el peso numérico que alguna vez alcanzaron. En los años 40 y 50 eran en Chile el segundo mayor grupo de extranjeros, representando el 13% (13.000 alemanes). Según el último censo de 2002, en cambio, están en el octavo lugar: son sólo 5.500 personas, lo que equivale al 5% de los foráneos. Sin embargo, la colonia formada por familias de origen alemán es activa y numerosa. Según explica Karla Berndt, gerente de comunicaciones de la Cámara Chileno-Alemana de Comercio (Camchal), los descendientes suman 500.000. Concentrados en el sur y centro del país, donde encuentran un clima más afín, su red de instituciones es amplia. 'Hay clínicas, clubes, una Liga Chileno-Alemana, compañías de bomberos y un periódico semanal en alemán llamado Cóndor. Chile es el lugar en el que se concentra el mayor número de colegios alemanes, 24, lo que es mucho para un país tan chico de sólo 16 millones de habitantes', relata Berndt.
English: Today, the profile of the Germans living here is different and no longer have the numerical weight they once reached. In the 1940s and 1950s they were in Chile's second largest foreign group, accounting for 13% (13,000 Germans). According to the last census in 2002, however, they are in eighth place: they are only 5,500 people, equivalent to 3% of foreigners. However, the colony of families of German origin is active and numerous. According to Karla Berndt, communications manager for the German-Chilean Chamber of Commerce (Camchal), descendants totaled 500,000. Concentrated in the south and center of the country, where they find a more congenial climate, its network of institutions is wide. 'There are clinics, clubs, a Chilean-German League, fire companies and a German weekly newspaper called Condor. Chile is the place in which the largest number of German schools, 24 which is a lot for such a small country of only 16 million people', says Berndt. - ^ "Une estimation des populations d'origine étrangère en France en 2011".
Immigrés : 78 000 ; 1ère génération née en France : 129 000 ; 2ème génération née en France : 230 000 ; Total : 437 000
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90 000 svenskar bor i Norge
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- ^ Minahan 2000, p. 288. "The Germans are an ancient ethnic group, the basic stock in the composition of the peoples of Germany... The Germans include a number of important national groups, including the Bavarians, Rhinelanders, Saxons, and Swabians. The standard language of the Germans, called Deutsch or Hochdeutsch (High German), is spoken as the first or second language by all the German peoples in Europe except some of the Volga Germans in Russia."
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The Germanic [peoples] still include: Englishmen, Dutchmen, Germans, Danes, Swedes, Saxons. Therefore, [in the same way] as Poles, Russians, Czechs, Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians belong to the Slavic [peoples]...
; >van der Sijs, Nicoline (2003). Cookies, Coleslaw, and Stoops: The Influence of Dutch on the North American Languages. Amsterdam University Press. p. 58. ISBN 9089641246. Retrieved 26 March 2019.Dutch quite often refers to German (because of the similarity in sound between Dutch and Deutsch) and sometimes even Scandinavians and other Germanic people.
; Heather, Peter. "Germany: Ancient History". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 21 November 2020.Within the boundaries of present-day Germany... Germanic peoples such as the eastern Franks, Frisians, Saxons, Thuringians, Alemanni, and Bavarians—all speaking West Germanic dialects—had merged Germanic and borrowed Roman cultural features. It was among these groups that a German language and ethnic identity would gradually develop during the Middle Ages.
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- Ozment, Steven (2005), A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People, Harper Collins, pp. 120–121, 161, 212, ISBN 0-06-093483-2
- Segarra, Eda (1977), A Social History of Germany, 1648–1914, Taylor & Francis, pp. 5, 15, 183, ISBN 0-416-77620-5
- Whaley, Joachim (2011), Germany and the Holy Roman Empire: Volume II: The Peace of Westphalia to the Dissolution of the Reich, 1648–1806, Oxford History of Early Modern Europe, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-969307-8
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- ^ a b Jeffrey E. Cole. Ethnic Groups of Europe: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, 2011. Pp. 172.
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