During the 17th-18th centuries, warfare between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire devastated and depopulated much of the lands of the valley, referred to geographically as the Pannonian plain. The Habsburgs ruling Austria and Hungary at the time resettled the land with people of various ethnicities including Magyars, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Romanians, Ukrainians, and Germans. The Germans came at this time from Swabia, Hesse, Franconia, Bavaria, Austria, and Alsace-Lorraine. However, despite their origin, they were all referred to as Swabians. The most of them went on board in Ulm (Swabia) and came to their new destination on the Danube with a kind of boats called "Ulmer Schachteln".
After the Banat area of Central Europe was annexed from the Ottomans by the Habsburgs in the Treaty of Passarowitz (1718), plans were made to resettle the region, which became known as the Banat of Temesvár (Temeschwar / Temeschburg), as well as the Bačka (Batschka) region between the Danube and Tisza (Theiss) rivers. Fledgling settlements were destroyed during another Austrian-Turkish war (1737-1739), but extensive colonization continued after the suspension of hostilities. The resettlement was accomplished through private and state initiatives. After Maria Theresa of Austria assumed the throne as Queen of Hungary in 1740, she encouraged vigorous colonization on crown lands, especially between Timişoara and the Tisza. The land steadily rejuvenated: marshes near the Danube and the Tisza were drained, farms were rebuilt, and roads and canals were constructed. Many Danube Swabians served on Austria's Military Frontier (Militärgrenze) against the Ottomans. Between 1740 and 1790 more than 100,000 Germans immigrated to the Kingdom of Hungary.
The Napoleonic Wars ended the large-scale movement of Germans to the Hungarian lands, although the colonial population grew steadily and was self-sustaining. Small daughter-colonies developed in Slavonia and Bosnia. After the creation of Austria-Hungary in 1867, Hungary established a policy of Magyarization whereby minorities, including the Danube Swabians, were induced by political and economic means to adopt the Magyar language and culture.
Beginning in 1893, Banat Swabians began to move to Bulgaria, where they settled in the village of Bardarski Geran, Vratsa Province, founded by Banat Bulgarians several years prior to that. Their number later exceeded 90 families and they built a separate Roman Catholic church in 1929 due to conflicts with the Bulgarian Catholics. Some of these Germans later moved to Tsarev Brod, Shumen Province together with a handful of Banat Bulgarian families, as well as to another Banat Bulgarian village, Gostilya, Pleven Province. Between 1941 and 1943, a total of 2,150 ethnic German Bulgarian citizens were transferred to Germany as part of Hitler's Heim ins Reich policy. These included 164 Banat Swabians from Bardarski Geran and 33 from Gostilya.
After the treaties of Saint-Germain (1919) and Trianon (1920) following World War I, the Banat was divided between Romania, Yugoslavia, and Hungary; Bačka was divided between Yugoslavia and Hungary; and Satu Mare went to Romania. Before World War II, the biggest populations of Germans in the Vojvodina were Hodschag, Werbass, and Abthausen.
In 1945, the Soviet Red Army marched into the Danube Swabian-populated lands beginning the exodus of Germans from Eastern Europe. After the war, many of the Germans of Yugoslavia, who by this point were mostly women, children, or elderly, were held in inhuman conditions in camps made out of their former towns, such as the ones at Knićanin and Molin, or they were killed outright. From 1945-48, many Germans in Hungary were dispossessed and forced to "return" to Germany, although it was not their birthplace. The Germans in Romania were not deported but were instead dispersed within Romania. Many left Romania for West Germany between 1970-90, and this stream became a flood after 1990. Beginning in 1920 and especially after World War II, many Danube Swabians migrated to the United States, Brazil, Canada, Austria, Australia, and Argentina. Some of them, descending from French-speaking or linguistically mixed families from Lorraine, had maintained for some generations the French language, and a specific ethnic identity, later labelled as Banat French, Français du Banat, and were resettled in France around 1950.
Many German words used by speakers of Danube Swabian dialects may sound archaic. To the ear of a Standard German speaker, the Danube Swabian dialect sounds like what it is: a mix of southwestern German dialects from the 1700s. Due to relative isolation and differing proximities to nearby German speakers (Austrians and Transylvanian Saxons), the language varies considerably, with speakers able to distinguish inhabitants of neighboring villages by the words they use for such things as marmalade (Schleckle being one variant), or by how many (usually Hungarian) loanwords they employ.
As is the custom in Hungary, Danube Swabians often put the surname first, especially when writing, for example Butscher Jakob (see photo of memorial). Danube Swabian villages tend to have relatively few family names as the villagers stem from only a few families, but usually the same family name does not appear in more than a couple of villages, meaning that there are many Danube Swabian family names. The names come from throughout southern Germany, from assimilated Hungarians, and occasionally from Balkan and Italian origins. There are usually no middle names, but often double first names, if a distinction can be made. The variety of first names is few, since children were usually named after grandparents or godparents. Popular names for women include: Anna, Barbara, Christina, Katharina, Magdalena, Maria, Sophia, Theresia, and many two-name combinations thereof. Popular names for men include: Adam, Christian, Friedrich, Georg, Gottfried, Heinrich, Jakob, Johann, Konrad, Ludwig, Mathias, Nikolaus, Peter, Philipp (or Filipp), and Stefan (or Stephan). With so few names in villages, other modifiers or nicknames were almost always used to distinguish people. The modifiers were often size related (e.g., "Kleinjohann" or "Little Johann"), occupation related, or location related (usually by prefixing the streetname).
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