GERMANS

Background

The German colonization of Galicia occurred basically in two distinct waves. After the Tatar invasion and devastation of large parts of eastern Europe in 1241, the Polish Kingdom was anxious to have its southeastern borders strengthened with new settlers.

This led to the first influx of German settlers (priests, soldiers, artisans, traders), who eventually followed Poland’s expansion and incorporation of the Galician-Volhynian principality in the fourteenth century. The German colonists were welcomed for their more advanced trading, artisan, and agricultural skills, and, like the Armenians, they were granted special privileges, especially within cities under Magdeburg Law. During the early period, most German colonists settled in western rather than eastern Galicia, and those that did live in the latter area became largely assimilated to Polish culture by the sixteenth century.

The second wave of German colonists arrived after Galicia became part of the Habsburg Empire in 1772. Anxious to improve the economic status of Galicia and to secure Austrian control of the new province, Emperor Joseph II brought (between 1781 and 1785) more than 15,000 colonists and (between 1802 and 1805) Franz II about 4000 more from the Palatinate and other southwest German states. During the first half of the nineteenth century, another 2000 Germans arrived from the Sudetenland. In contrast to the medieval wave of colonists, these Germans settled in small villages in eastern Galicia, most especially in a belt stretching from Kaminka Strumylova and Zhovkva in the north, then past L’viv to Drohobych, Boryslav, and Stryi in the south. Also, in contrast to their medieval predecessors, the new colonists were able to avoid assimilation. This was due in part to their relatively more isolated rural settlement pattern as well as to numerous cultural societies, agricultural cooperatives, schools (some supported by the Protestant church), and publications, all of which contributed to maintenance of a German identity.

By 1910, they had numbered about 65,000, but extensive emigration to Germany and to the New World reduced their numbers to less than 50,000 in the 1930s. Finally, with the outbreak of World War II and Poland’s destruction at the hands of Germany and the Soviet Union, the Soviet government (which held eastern Galicia) agreed to the return of Germans to their “true

druzhba ukrainskogo i armianskogo narodov [vol. II] (Kiev: Naukova dumka 1965), pp. 140-144; la.S. Mel’nichuk, ‘‘Armianskoe poselenie v Brodakh,” in ibid., vol. Ill (Erevan: AN Annianskoi SSR 1971), pp. 250-254; V.V. Grabovetskii, “Armianskoe poselenie v Kutakh,” in ibid., pp. 255-260.

homeland.” Thus, between 1939 and 1940, Hitler’s government resettled en masse the Germans from eastern Galicia into the “purer” German soil of the so- called Warthegau in West Prussia.

Bibliographies, historical surveys, specific problems

The historical literature on Germans in Galicia is very well developed, as evidenced in a relatively recent bibliography of the subject that includes more than 2000 studies dealing with the history, religion, culture, economic life, legal status, ethnography, and deportation of the group.⁸⁹ The first comprehensive works were produced by Raimund Friedrich Kaindl, who wrote a history of Germans in Galicia and Bukovina and also devoted much attention to them in his three-volume history of Germans in the Carpathian lands.⁹⁰ More recent scholarly studies that focus on the period 1772 to 1940 include solid histories by Sepp Miiller and a collection of essays on all aspects of the group’s life edited by Julius Krämer.⁹¹ These works derive from a small group of researchers in West Germany, who have also set up a Galician German archive in a suburb (Weende) near

89 Sepp Müller, Schrifttum über Galizien und sein Deutschtum, Wissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Geschichte und Landeskunde Ost-Mitteleuropas, vol. LX1II (Marburg / Lahn: Johann- Gottfried-Herder Institut 1962).

90 Raimund Friedrich Kaindl, Die Deutschen in Galizien und in der Bukowina (Frankfurt-am- Main: Heinrich Keller 1916); idem, Geschichte der Deutschen in den Karpathenländern, 3 vols (Gotha: Friedrich Andreas Perthes 1907-11), especially vols I and III; and his study of German law in Galicia, which is a kind of addendum to his three-volume history: idem, Beiträge zur Geschichte des deutschen Rechtes in Galizien, Archiv für osterreichische Geschichte, vol. C, pt 2 (Vienna 1909).

See also the popular works: Das Deutschtum in Galizien: seine geschichtliche Entwicklung und gegenwärtige Lage (L’viv: Bund der christlichen Deutschen in Galizien 1914); Fritz Seefeldt, Der Deutsche in Galizien, Der Deutsche im Auslande, vol. IX (Berlin-Leipzig: Vlg. Julius Beltz 1937); Gedenkbuch zur Erinnerung an die Einwanderung der Deutschen in Galizien vor 150 Jahren (Poznan: Ausschuss der Gedenkfeier 1931); the annual Zeitweiser der Galiziendeutschen (Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Hilfskomitee der Galiziendeutschen, 1954-present); and the introductory encyclopedic article: Ludomil German, “Die deutsche Colonisation [in Galizien],” Die osterreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild, vol. XII: Galizien (Vienna: K.K. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei 1898), pp. 463-474.

91 Sepp Müller, Von der Ansiedlung bis zur Umsiedlung: das Deutschtum Galiziens, insbesondere Lembergs 1772-1940, Wissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Geschichte und Landeskunde Ost-Mitteleuropas, vol. LIV (Marburg / Lahn: Johann Gottfried Herder Institut 1961); idem, Das deutsche Genossenschaftswesen in Galizien, Wolhynien und im Cholm- Lubliner Gebiet, Quellen und Studien des Instituts für Genossenschaftswesen an der Universität Münster, vol. VII (Karlsruhe: C.F. Müller 1954); Julius Krämer, ed., Heimat Galizien: ein Gedenkbuch (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Hilfskomitee der Galiziendeutschen 1965).

Gottingen: the archive’s holdings have been described in an essay by Johann Hennig.⁹²

Several studies are devoted to specific periods or areas.

The best of these include two collections of documents and monographs by Henryk Lepucki and Ludwig Schneider on the colonization organized under Joseph II.⁹³There are also solid analyses of settlement patterns,⁹⁴ demography during the interwar years,⁹⁵ and descriptions of individual communities.⁹⁶ Finally, there are several works describing the voluntary deportations in 1939-1940. Most of these are contempo-

92 Johann Hennig, “Das Galiziendeutsche Heimatarchiv,” in Aufbruch und Neubeginn: Heimatbuch der Galiziendeutschen, vol. II (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Hilfskomitee der Galiziendeutschen 1977), pp. 613-616.

93 Fritz Seefeldt, Quellenbuch zur deutschen Ansiedlung in Galizien unter Kaiser Joseph II, Ostdeutsche Forschungen, vol. III (Plauen im Vogtlande 1935); Franz Wilhelm and Josef Kalibrunner, Quellen zur deutschen Siedlungsgeschichte in Südosteuropa, Schriften der Deutschen Akademie, vol. XI (Munich: Ernest Reinhardt 1936), especially pp. 160-215; Henryk Lepucki, Dziaialnosc kolonizacyjna Marii Teresy i Jozefa II w Galicji 1772 -1790, Badania z Dziejow Spotecznych i Gospodarczych, vol. XXIX (L’viv 1938); Ludwig Schneider, Das Kolonisationswerk Josefs II. in Galizien: Darstellung und Namenlisten, Ostdeutsche Forschungen, vol. IX (Poznan and Leipzig: Historische Gesellschaft für Polen 1939).

94 Walter Kuhn, Die jungen deutschen Sprachinseln in Galizien, Deutschtum und Ausland, vol. 26-27 (Münster in Westfalen: Aschendorffsche Vlg. 1930).

95 Walter Kuhn, Bevolkerungsstatistik des Deutschtums in Galizien, Schriften des Instituts für Statistik der Minderheitsvolker an der Universität Wien, vol. VII (Vienna 1930); Sepp Müller, Das Deutschtum in Galizien zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen im Lichte der Statistik (Stuttgart: Hilfskomitee der Galiziendeutschen 1954).

96 Josef Schmidt, “Das Deutschtum in den ost-galizischen Berzirken Dolina und Kahisz,” Kalender des Bundes der christlichen Deutschen in Galizien, III (L’viv 1911), pp. 129-146; Heinrich Czerwenzel [Siegfried], ‘ ‘Zur Geschichte des Deutschtums in den Bezirken Stanislau, Bohorodczany und Nadworna,” ibid., IV (L’viv 1912), pp. 137-154, also separately (L’viv: Vlg. des Bundes der christlichen Deutschen in Galizien 1912); Walter Kuhn, “Die deutschen Siedlungen bei Kamionka Strumilowa,” Dornfelder Blätter, V, 11-12 (Dornfeld 1928), pp. 508-523; Fritz Seefeldt, Dornfelds Chronik: 150 Jahre Ausland- Deutschen-Schicksal (Leipzig: S. Hirzel 1936); idem, Pfälzer wandern, Kolonisation, Umsiedlung, Vertreibung, Heimkehr: 150 Jahre Auslanddeutschen-Schicksal: Dornfelds Chronik II (Kaiserslautern 1959); idem, So war es in Galizien, 2 vols (Eutin: Struve’s Buchdruckerei und Vlg. 1965-66).

гагу propagandistic tracts put out by the German government^[653] or memoirs of those who participated in the exodus.^[654]

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Source: Magocsi P.R.. The roots of Ukrainian nationalism. Galicia as Ukraine's Piedmont. University of Toronto Press,2002. — 214 p.. 2002

GERMANS

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