The Fate of the Danube Swabian Minority in Southeastern Europe with special regard to the German Minority in Yugoslavia after World War II

Abstract

The 18^th century in Europe can be understood as a period of frequent and substantial German emigrations. The Austrian-Hungarian and the Russian Empire looked for colonists to increase fairly unpopulated areas of their realms. Young and enterprising people from the South-West of the then existing Holy Roman Empire were attracted and used the opportunity to emigrate to fairly empty regions of the Kingdom of Hungaria, among different ethnic groups. Over the centuries, they increased in number and in prosperity. Since then peoples, states and nations of that part of Europe underwent considerable changes in extension and political structure, and the German minorities, with them the later so-called Danube Swabian population, were separated several times and added to various national states with their majorities, so that the ethnic Germans had to struggle for their ethnic heritage among different national languages and political creeds. Finally, the Second World War with the strong influence of the German National Socialists and ultimately, the total change of the Southeastern European countries to communism brought expropriation, execution, deportation, internment, torture, starvation. The highest death rate was among the German minority in Yugoslavia, especially among the Danube Swabians. After these historical reports, this essay focuses on the various historical perspectives of the history of the Danube Swabian group after WWII and develops the view of the author as a historian and witness of the times of the 1940es in Yugoslavia and Serbia.