Donauschwaben
| Donauschwaben | |
|---|---|
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Hungary
|
131,951 |
 Romania
|
13,510 |
 Serbia
|
4,064 |
 Croatia
|
2,965 |
| Languages | |
| Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian, Croatian, German | |
| Religion | |
| Roman Catholicism, Lutheran | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Germans of Hungary, Germans of Romania, Germans of Serbia, Germans of Croatia, Banat Swabians, Satu Mare Swabians | |
The Danube Swabians (German: 
Donauschwaben ) is a collective term for the German-speaking population who lived in various countries of southeastern Europe, especially in the Danube River valley. Most were descended from 18th-century immigrants recruited as colonists to repopulate the area after the expulsion of the Ottoman Empire.
The Danube Swabians are the most recently formed distinct line of ethnic German people. They are made up of ethnic Germans from many former and present-day countries: Germans of Hungary; Satu Mare Swabians; the Banat Swabians; and the Vojvodina Germans in Serbia's Vojvodina, who called themselves Schwowe in a Germanized spelling or "Shwoveh" in an English spelling; and Croatia's Slavonia (especially in the Osijek region). The Carpathian Germans and Transylvanian Saxons are not included within the Danube Swabian group. In the singular first person, they identified as a Schwob or a Shwobe.
Beginning in the 12th century, German merchants and miners began to settle in the Kingdom of Hungary at the invitation of the Hungarian monarchy (see Ostsiedlung). Although there were significant colonies of Carpathian Germans in the Spiš mountains and Transylvanian Saxons in Transylvania, German settlement throughout the rest of the kingdom had not been extensive until this time.
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Wikipedia