Bukovina Germans

The Bukovina Germans were a German ethnic group who lived from about 1780 to 1940 in the historic Bukovina region, part of present-day western Ukraine and northeastern Romania. They were a minority group of approximately 21 percent of the multiethnic population according to a 1910 census (with more Jews than Christians), until the Holocaust and the resettlement of the Christian population into the German Reich after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in autumn 1940.

Ethnic Germans known as Transylvanian Saxons (who were mainly craftsmen and merchants stemming from present-day Luxembourg and Rhine-Moselle areas of Western Europe), had sparsely settled in the western mountainous regions of the Principality of Moldavia over the course of the late medieval Ostsiedlung migration (which, in this particular case, took place throughout the 13th and 14th centuries).

These settlers encouraged trade and urban development. Additionally, they founded (and were also briefly in charge under the title of Schultheiß) of some notable medieval settlements such as Baia (Stadt Molde/Moldenmarkt), the first capital of the Principality of Moldavia, or Târgu Neamț (Niamtz). Subsequently, they were assimilated in these local cultures.

Following the Russo-Turkish War, in 1774–75 the Habsburg Monarchy annexed northwestern Moldavia which was predominantly inhabited by Romanians (85 percent), with smaller numbers of Ukrainians (including Hutsuls and Ruthenians), Armenians, Poles, and Jews.

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