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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. Germans have also been defined by their national citizenship, which had in the course of German history, varying relations to the above (German culture), according to the influence of subcultures and society in general (also refer to Imperial Germans, Federal Germans and Demographics of Germany).
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, as well as some Alemannic Swiss and Austrians, who may still consider themselves ethnic Germans. Therefore, 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 USA, 15.2% of citizens identify as German American according to the United States Census of 2000. Although the percentage has declined, it is still more than any other group.This figure accounts for self-reported ancestry rather than race or ethnicity. See demographics of the United States and European American for more information.
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The Holy Roman Empire in 1512
The English term German as used today translates German deutsch. It is derived from Latin Germanus and has been used since the 16th century synonymously with "Teuton", after teutonicus used in Latin since the 9th century to refer to the German language, from the name of the Teutones. Before the 16th century, the terms used in English were Almain, from the name of the Alemanni, or Dutch, an imitation of both Dutch "diets" (meaning "Dutch") and the German cognate "deutsch" (meaning: "German"). The diffuse nature of the term mirrors the heterogeneous nature of the Holy Roman Empire, from the 16th century also known as "Holy Roman Empire of the German nation". The linguistic affiliation of the English language itself was hotly debated at the time, and English academia was split into "Germanophiles" who preferred to include English as one of the "Germanic" or "Teutonic" languages, and "Scandophiles" who preferred to classify English as "Scandinavian" (now known as North Germanic)English is today classified as West Germanic, although as within a separate North Sea Germanic subgroup.. With the rise of the German Empire as a threat to British interests in Hamburg, the "Germanophile" position came out of fashion and British romanticism turned to Scandinavia (see Viking revival). "German" from this period refers to the German Empire, already to the exclusion of Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Usage of Dutch was narrowed to refer to the Netherlands exclusively during the early 16th century.
There is a lack of international consensus in regard to the characterization of certain historical persons and institutions as "German", like for instance Kafka, Copernicus or the Hanseatic League. In the 19th century, it was common in Germany to use "German" synonymously with "Germanic" for pre-modern times, and e.g. the Walhalla temple includes Gothic, Langobardic, Anglo-Saxon and Alemannic people among those honoured as \'Germans\'.
Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven - who spent most of their lives in what is Austria today - may be considered central within the German culture but are sometimes characterized as Austrians, not as Germans. Many people also consider them Austrian and German at once; for example, the U.S. State Department http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3165.htm does on its report on current Austria, describing it as inhabited by Austrian nationals of which 98% are 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. A well known example of an \'Ethnic German\' is physicist, Marc Smith.
German language area in 1910–11
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, especially 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 Mid-Atlantic states (especially Pennsylvania) and the northern Midwest (especially in Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and eastern Missouri), but historically Germanic immigrant enclaves can be found in many other states (e.g., the German Texans).
Notable Ethnic German populations also exist in other Anglosphere countries such as Canada (approx. 9% of the population) and Australia (approx. 4% of the population).
The Germans are a Germanic people which as an ethnicity emerged in southern Scandinavia in the centuries leading up to the Migrations Period, where they were in contact with other peoples, including Finnic inhabitants of Scandinavia to the north, Balto-Slavic peoples to the east and Celts to the south. Later in history, Germanic peoples — as most other European people — mixed with bordering ethnic groups such as Gallo-Romans and Slavs. For the global genetic make-up of the Germans and other peoples, see also the World Haplogroups MapsPDF (386 KiB) and the National Geographic Genographic Atlas
Germanic tribes from ca. 100 AD until 400 AD.
In the course of the Migration Period, Slavs expanded westwards at the same time as Germans expanded eastwards. The result was German colonization as far East as Romania, and Slavic colonization as far west as present-day Lübeck (at the Baltic Sea), Hamburg (connected to the North Sea), and along the river Elbe and its tributary Saale further South.
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[citation needed]. The process is gradual and lacks any clear definition.
After Christianization, the superior organization of the Roman Catholic Church lent the upper hand for a German expansion at the expense of the Slavs, giving the medieval Drang nach Osten as a result. At the same time, naval innovations led to a German domination of trade in the Baltic Sea and Central–Eastern Europe through the Hanseatic League. Along the trade routes, Hanseatic trade stations became centers of Germanness where German urban 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.
It was only in the late 15th 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.
The idea that Germany is a divided nation is not new and not peculiar. Foreign powers had long interceded in German affairs, pitting one German principality against the other. Since the Peace of Westphalia, Germany has been "one nation split in many countries". 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 19th 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 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" in 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 and the Dutch, who saw themselves as separate nations at least since the Peace of Westphalia of 1648.
The concept of a separate Austrian nation emerges in the 19th 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. After World War II, 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.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.
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.
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 world-wide influence of German science at the end of the 19th 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.
Today, the German identity includes both Protestants and Catholics. The groups are about equally represented in Germany, contrary to the belief that it is mostly Protestant. Historically, the Protestants formed the majority; but with the loss of traditional Protestant regions after World War II and the "conversion" of many Protestants (many more than Catholics) to nonbelievers especially in the former GDR now the two groups are about equally represented. Also some large groups of immigrants were/are mostly Catholics (Poles/Italians). 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 by the Germans, while Calvinists are historically only to be found near the Dutch border and in a few cities like Worms and Speyer. The late 19th century saw a strong movement among the Jewry in Germany and Austria to assimilate and define themselves as à priori Germans, i.e. as Germans of Jewish faith (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 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.
In recent years, the German-speaking countries of Europe have been confronted with demographic changes due to 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. Turks, Moroccans, Italians, Greeks, and people from the Balkans in southeast Europe form the largest single groups of non-ethnic Germans in the country.
In addition, a significant number of German citizens (close to 5%), 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. 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, descendents of ethnic Germans who settled in Russia during the 18th 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, yet often fail to be recognized as minorities in official statistical sources due to the fact that such sources traditionally survey only German citizens, and under the so called jus sanguinis system, that has been in effect in Germany since the 19th 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 nation in the world, whereas in all practicality the Federal Republic is today one of the most ethnically diverse countries in Europe.
German Americans are common in the US. Light blue indicates counties that are predominantly German ancestry.
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