German Australian

German Australians constitute one of the largest ethnic groups in Australia, numbering 811,540 or 4.09 percent of respondents in the 2006 Census. It is the sixth most identified ancestry in Australia behind 'Australian', 'English, 'Irish, 'Scottish' and 'Italian'.

The 2006 Census counted 106,524 Australian residents who were born in Germany.^[1] However, 811,541 persons identified themselves as having German ancestry, either alone or in combination with another ancestry.^[2] This number does not include people of German ancestry who selected their ancestry as simply 'Australian'. The 2001 census recorded 103,010 German-born in Australia, although this excludes persons of German ethnicity and culture born elsewhere, such as the Netherlands (1,030), Hungary (660) and Romania (440).

Immigration history

German religious refugees represented the first major wave of German settlement in Australia, arriving in South Australia in 1838. Some were active as missionaries and explorers in Australia from early in the 19th century, and German prospectors were well-represented in the 1850s gold rushes. In the second half of the century German migrants were prominent in settling the Riverina and Queensland, and there were 45,000 Germans recorded present in Australia by the 1891 census. Up until World War I, German Australians constituted the largest non-British European ethnic group in Australia.

During both World Wars Germans were considered an "enemy within" and a number were interned or deported - or both. The persecution of German Australians also included the closure of German schools, the banning of the German language in government schools, and the renaming of many German place names. To avoid persecution and/or to demonstrate that they commit themselves to their new home, many German Australians changed their names into Anglicised or Francophone variants.

After the Second World War, Australia received a large influx of ethnic German displaced persons and was a significant source of Australia's post war immigrants. In the 1950s and 1960s, German immigration continued under assisted migration programs promoted by the Australian Government. Between June 1949 and July 2000, Germany was the fourth most common birthplace for settler arrivals in Australia after United Kingdom and Ireland, Italy and New Zealand.^[3] By 1991, there were 112,000 German-born persons in Australia.

In December 2001, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs estimated that there were 15,000 Australian citizens resident in Germany..^[6] It is not clear what proportion of this number are returned emigrants with Australian citizenship or their German Australian children, and what number is simply other Australians in Germany for business or other reasons.

According to the 2001 Census, the Germany-born are more likely than Australians as a whole to live in South Australia (11.9 per cent to 7.6 per cent) and Victoria (27.0 per cent to 24.7 per cent). They are also more likely to live in rural and regional areas. It is probable their German Australian children share this settlement pattern.

According to census data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2004, German Australians are, by religion, 21.7 per cent Catholic, 16.5 per cent Anglican, 32.8 per cent Other Christian, 4.2 Other Religions and 24.8 No Religion.

In 2001, the German language was spoken at home by 76,400 persons in Australia. German is the eighth most widely spoken language in the country after English, the Chinese languages, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Vietnamese, Spanish and Tagalog.

Notable German Australians