| Total population |
|---|
| Estimates: 60,000 |
| Regions with significant populations |
| Central and West Romania |
| Languages |
| Religion |
|
Lutheran and Roman Catholic |
The Germans of Romania or Rumäniendeutsche were 782,246 strong in Greater Romania in 1939[1], a number that had fallen to 59,764 in the modern state of Romania by 2002. They are not a single group; thus, to understand their language, culture, and history, one must view them as independent groups:
See ethnic Germans for the complete list.
See Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania for their official representation.
Contents |
After Romania acquired parts of Soviet Ukraine, the Germans there came under the authority of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, which deployed SS personnel to several settlements. They eventually contained German mayors, farms, schools and ethnic German paramilitary groups functioning as police called Selbstschutz.
Those German colonists and Selbstschutz forces engaged in ethnic cleansing, massacring Jewish and Roma population near their settlements. In the German colony Shonfeld gypsies were burned on farms, and during the winter 1941/1942 German Selbstschutz units participated in shooting (together with Ukrainian militia and Romanian gendarmes) 18,000 Jews. In the camp of Bogdanovka tens of thousands of Jews were subject to mass shootings, barn burnings and killing by hand grenades. Heinrich Himmler was most impressed by the Volksdeutsche communities and the work of the Selbstschutz and ordered to these methods be copied in Ukraine.[2]
| Historical populations | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year | Pop. | ±% |
| 1887 | 50,000 | — |
| 1930 | 745,421 | +1390.8% |
| 1948 | 343,913 | −53.9% |
| 1956 | 384,708 | +11.9% |
| 1966 | 382,595 | −0.5% |
| 1977 | 359,109 | −6.1% |
| 1992 | 119,436 | −66.7% |
| 2002 | 59,764 | −50.0% |
| Starting with the 1930 figures, the reference is to all German-speaking groups in Romania. | ||
Expulsion of Germans from Romania after World War II
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