Concept
German Hungarians (Ungarndeutsche, magyarországi németek) are the German-speaking minority of Hungary, sometimes also called Danube Swabians (German: Donauschwaben, Hungarian: dunai svábok), many of whom call themselves "Shwoveh" in their own Swabian dialect. There are 131,951 German speakers in Hungary (according to the 2011 census). Danube Swabian is a collective term for a number of German ethnic groups who lived in the former Kingdom of Hungary, including the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia and Vojvodina. Other ethnic German groups previously lived on the territory of both the former Hungarian kingdom as well as on the territory of present-day Hungary since the Middle Ages onwards, most notably in Budapest but not only. Hungarian Germans refers to the descendants of Danube Swabians who immigrated to the Carpathian Basin and surrounding regions, and who are now minorities in those areas. Many Hungarian Germans were expelled from the region between 1946 and 1948, and many now live in Germany or Austria, but also in Australia, Brazil, the United States, and Canada. However, many are still dispersed within present-day Hungary across 9 counties and the capital, Budapest. Ostsiedlung Swabian Turkey The migration of German-speaking groups into present-day Hungary began approximately 1000 ago, when knights in the company of Giselle of Bavaria, the German-born wife of King Stephen I, first King of Hungary, entered the country. Furthermore, three distinct waves of ethnic German migration can be identified in Hungary before the 20th century. The first two waves of settlers arrived in the Kingdom of Hungary during the Middle Ages (more specifically during the High Middle Ages between the 11th and 13th centuries) and formed the core of the citizenry of a few towns in Upper Hungary (i.e. Zipser Germans, "Zipser Sachsen") and southern Transylvania (i.e. Transylvanian Saxons, "Siebenbürger Sachsen"). The third, largest wave of German-speaking immigrants arrived in Hungary as the result of a deliberate settlement policy of the Habsburg government after the Ottoman Empire was driven from Hungarian territory.
