Daheim an der Donau
The Sultans Trail crosses a large part of Southeastern Europe and guarantees an encounter with different cultures, religions, language groups and with an eventful, still living history.
That part of Europe has a history of frequent migration of population groups between and within the current nation states. This essay highlights migration flows of German speakers, particularly in the Danube river basin.
The starting point of the Trail is Vienna, but even after crossing the Austrian-Slovak border, the influence of the German-speaking community and culture remains visible. On the one hand, because a large part of the area was part of the Habsburg Empire ruled from Vienna for a long time. On the other hand, because there was a large migration flow of German-speaking people to this area that was of great significance for the development of this area.
In this essay, I focus on the background and organization of this migration flow and its influence on the area. Although this migration is interwoven with the Habsburg Empire, it mainly concerns German-speaking residents from areas that are now part of Germany. I focus specifically on the German migration in the 18th century to the heartland along the Danube because this is where the Sultans Trail runs. There have been several other German migrations to Eastern Europe throughout history, but I will not discuss them here.
The current national borders were not established until the end of the First World War. Until then, there were no state borders and it was much easier to travel within the Habsburg Empire and to change residence. In the last century, after that war, there was a shift towards a more homogeneous composition of inhabitants, based on the principle of the nation state.
For example, Bratislava (Pressburg), the capital of Slovakia, was transformed from a city where Germans, Hungarians and Jews formed the majority to a Slovak city with only marginal numbers of those population groups.
The Germans who lived in the area along the Danube consisted of German migrants within the Habsburg Empire, German immigrants from outside that Empire in the 18th century, and Germans who were already living there. In this essay, I focus on the migration flow of Germans from outside the Empire.
Therefore, when one speaks of “German” history, this does not automatically mean that it has to do with this migration. Cities such as Budapest and Bratislava (Pressburg) also have a German history, but immigration in the 18th century has only a very limited connection with this.
Statistics show that German migration in the 18th century to areas along the Danube consisted overwhelmingly of groups from outside the Habsburg Empire and that a majority of these immigrants did not initially move to the cities, but to the countryside.
This immigration was mainly focused on a number of core areas:
- Banat: between Marosch, Theiβ and Danube;
- Batschka: between Danube and Theiβ;
- Syrmien: between Danube and Save;
- Slavonia: between Drau and Save;
- Sathmar: around Satu Mare; in the northwest of Romania;
- Hungarian Central Mountains: southwest of Budapest;
- Schwäbische Türkei: around Pécs (Fünfkirchen);
In the above list I use German geographical names because I am not aware of any Dutch names.
In this essay I have made a trade-off between completeness of historical facts on the one hand and readability and relevance to the text on the other. This means that I have sometimes chosen not to mention certain details. For example, when I mention Hungary, I refer to the current national borders. In doing so, I am aware that the current national borders were only established after the First World War and that Hungary had a much larger territory before that. Modern Germany only came into being at a later date. With the term German I therefore refer to people who have German as their mother tongue and not directly to their geographical origin.
Active welcome policy
German migration was actively supported by both the central government in Vienna and the local authorities in the regions of destination. This support consisted, for example, of promoting and actively recruiting migrants in Germany, organising the journey to the destination and facilitating them at the final destination with tax exemptions and free land. In principle, the exemptions only applied for the first few years after the move, so that the immigrants could build a new life and earn back the moving costs. The method of support varied over time and was determined by the promoter of immigration, partly based on the knowledge and skills of the immigrant.
Why was this flow of immigration actively supported?
In 1524, the Ottomans had won the Battle of Mohacs in the south of Hungary and then quickly brought the rest of Hungary under their power. As a result, not only a large part of the Balkans but also Hungary came under the influence of the Sultan in Istanbul.
The Sultan’s next goal was the conquest of Vienna. That city was attacked several times, but the Ottomans did not succeed in taking it. During the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the Habsburg rulers not only succeeded in defending the city, but also in defeating the Ottoman army and thus breaking the Sultan’s power base. This victory was only possible thanks to military support from other European countries.
After this battle, the Habsburgs were able to push the Ottomans back further, as a result of which a large part of Hungary came under the influence of the Habsburgs. In 1711, the Habsburgs concluded the Peace Treaty of Sathmar with the Hungarian nobility, which recognized the Habsburgs as the new rulers and formalized the new status quo.
The wars and battles between the Habsburgs and Ottomans had led to many deaths, refugees and economic damage. Now that a new status quo had been achieved, the country had to be repopulated and rebuilt, and the help of German immigrants was called upon for this.
The quantitative objective of repopulating the depopulated areas was accompanied by qualitative objectives. With German knowledge, a switch from arable farming to livestock farming had to take place, at the same time as an increase in agricultural yield per hectare through modern agricultural techniques. There was a great need for craft knowledge and experience.
In short, the active welcoming policy for German immigrants was mainly based on self-interest and financial motives. These were, in economic parlance, “pull factors”.
German immigrants
The most important reasons for emigrating were the opportunity to build a better life and to escape the misery in Germany. In the German states there was often overpopulation, wars and crop failures. The consequences were famine, poverty and disease.
“Push factors” therefore.
The immigrants were mainly land-poor or landless Germans. About 2/3 of the migrants had some savings and for relatively little money a farm could be bought or a piece of land leased at their destination. The demands placed on the immigrants differed per region. The welcome policy was aimed at those Germans who wanted to build a new life in the region, by working hard and who met certain cultural and normative requirements.
In a song that was often sung at the time, the high expectations of the migrants themselves were made clear:
Das Ungarnland ist’s reichste Land,
Dort wachst viel Wein und Treid (Getreide)
So hat’s in Günzburg man verkündt,
Die Schiff‘ stehn schon bereit,
Dort gibts viel Vieh und Fisch und G‘flüg (Geflügel)
Und taglang ist die Weid‘,
Wer jetzo zieht ins Ungarland
Dem blüht die gold‘ne Zeit.
An important gathering point in the migration flow was the southern German city of Ulm. From here, the immigrants sailed down the Danube by boat towards Hungary. The migrants came from all parts of Germany but were conveniently referred to as Swabians or Donauschwaben because the city of Ulm is located in the Swabian region. Because only married couples could buy a farm in their new destination, they sometimes had to get married quickly.
Because Ulm was a Protestant city and the active welcoming policy was only aimed at Catholics, the rock-solid faith of the Habsburgs, there were no residents of Ulm itself who left at the beginning of the migration flow. It was only after the Toleranz Edict of 1781 that it was also possible for Protestant residents to do so. For the city of Ulm, the role as a hub was an important economic activity.
Disappointment often followed after arrival at the final destination. Promises made by the promoters of immigration were not always kept. Building a new life was a tough test. Many immigrants therefore returned to Germany disillusioned. But a much larger number stayed and were able to build a new life with new and improved agricultural techniques, but especially by working very hard and being frugal. The cities also flourished due to the increased agricultural yield and the arrival of new craftsmen.
Why did the German immigrants succeed in building an independent life? Why were German immigrants needed and could this revolution not be achieved with inhabitants from the area itself? This question is difficult to answer because the free status of the German immigrants must be compared with the status of serfs of the other population groups. For the German immigrants there was therefore a completely different future perspective. In addition to cultural differences, there were also social differences. The success of the German immigrants will have been a combination of both culture (“Fleiβ, Sparsamkeit”) and social structure (“ausgeprägtes Eigeninterest” due to the free status). In daily practice, the various population groups of Hungarians, Croats, Serbs, Romanians and Germans lived together peacefully but in pillars. Pillarization was based on language, religion, mentality and origin, among other things. The concept of nation state had no meaning in this period.
An estimated 400,000 Germans migrated to the area in the 18th century. As mentioned in the introduction, there were other German migration flows besides the so-called Donauschwaben. Germans played an important role in agricultural development and the flourishing of cities.
Two examples:
- In 1805, the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Empire had a population of approximately 8.75 million, of which 1.1 million -12.5%- were Germans. Hungary then had a much larger geographical area than the current state and covered the area within the Carpathian mountain range.
- The city of Timişoara, now in Romania and then in Hungary, was a flourishing and modern city around 1900 with much trade and culture and in 1884 one of the first cities with electric street lighting. In 1900, a narrow majority of the 60,551 inhabitants were German.
German traces
At the end of the First World War, the Habsburg Empire also collapsed and the national borders were redrawn. The Empire was divided into several independent states, according to the principle of the nation state.
This weakened the position of the Germans. The bond with the central German-speaking power in Vienna disappeared. Instead of being the most important population group within the Habsburg Empire, the Germans now became a small or much smaller minority in new nation states. Of course, Austria was an exception to this.
Of course, the result was not the same for all Germans. Some Germans were more focused on Vienna and were actively involved within the Habsburg Empire. That came to an end. Other Germans had now lived for more than a century in an area far away from the central power, became integrated into the new environment and were busy surviving. This new constellation therefore did not have the same negative meaning for all Germans, but it is clear that it had a negative effect on the fragmented German population group as a whole. During the Second World War, “the Germans” sympathized with the Nazis for various reasons: these were partly ideological motives, but just like with the other inhabitants of this area, the new national borders after the First World War played an important role. Promises about new or restored borders and the associated influence were an important motive to choose the side of the Nazis or the other party. At the end of the Second World War, the Germans in the Danube region were dismissed as Nazi sympathizers, held partly responsible for all the atrocities and were actively expelled or fled as a precaution.
After more than a century, a large number of Germans returned to Germany. The Germans who remained in the area were usually oppressed, shared in the economic decline under communism and would also largely return to Germany in the following decades for economic or ideological motives. The number of Germans who still live in this area is minimal.
What remains are the traces in the area itself and also that there is more interest from Germany for this area than from the Netherlands. The traces in the area are, for example, the architecture of the “German” farms, German texts, German names for places and German influence on the national cuisine. The interest from Germany is of course mainly for the Germans who once lived in this area or their descendants, but that interest has also led to this subject having more significance at universities there than at Dutch universities.
For anyone who wants to know more about this subject, and wants to see more visual background information, I can recommend the Donauschwäbisches Zentralmuseum in Ulm.