German diaspora

The German diaspora (German: Deutschstämmige) consists of German people and their descendants who live outside of Germany. The term is used in particular to refer to the aspects of migration of German speakers from Central Europe to different countries around the world. This definition describes the "German" term as a sociolinguistic group as opposed to the national one since the emigrant groups came from different regions with diverse cultural practices and different varieties of German. For instance, the Alsatians and Hessians were often simply called "Germans" once they set foot in their new homelands.

: 5,763 Mennonite Low-German speakers.

Belize

Canada (3.3 million, 9,6% of the population), see also .

German Canadians

Mexico: See , 22% of Mennonites also speak Low German which is not Standard German but derived from Old Saxon, 30% speak Spanish, 5% speak English and 5% speak Russian as a second language.^[94] Sources estimate that there are around 15,000 German citizens and Mexicans of German-citizen origin account for about 75,000 today.^[95] Also of note, the 'Colegio Alemán Alexander von Humboldt', or Alexander von Humboldt school in Mexico City is the largest German school outside Germany.

German immigration to Mexico

In the United States, has been the largest self-identified ancestry group since 1990. There are around 50 million Americans of at least partial German ancestry in the United States, or 17% of the U.S. population, the country's largest self-reported ancestral group.^[96] including various groups such as the Pennsylvania Dutch. Of these, 23 million are of German ancestry alone ("single ancestry"), and another 27 million are of partial German ancestry, making them the largest group in the United States, followed by the Irish. Of those who claim partial ancestry, 22 million identify their primary ancestry ("first ancestry") as German. The 22 million Americans of primarily German ancestry are by far the largest part of the German diaspora, a figure equal to over a quarter of the population of Germany itself. Germans form just under half the population in the Upper Midwest.^[97]^[98]

"German"

: In 1940, there were 16,000 Germans living in Central America; half of them in Guatemala, and most of the remainder were established in Costa Rica.^[99]

Central America

/ Germans of Hungary (of the Austria-Hungary empire, 1867–1918).

Ungarndeutsche

Serbiendeutsche / (former Yugoslavia).

Germans of Serbia

/ Germans of Romania (one of Many Eastern European German settlements extending from Belarus to Slovakia to Ukraine).

Rumäniendeutsche

Note that many of these groups have since migrated elsewhere. This list simply gives the region with which they are associated, and does not include people from countries with German as an official national language. In general, it also omits some collective terms in common use defined by political border changes where this is antithetical to the current structure. Such terms include:

Roughly grouped:

In the Americas, one can divide the groups by current nation of residence:

Heavy concentration of German, Austrian and Swiss descendants in Southern Chile. (German Chileans).

...or by ethnic or religious criteria:

In Africa, Oceania, and East/Southeast Asia

and List of German-language newspapers published in the United States

List of newspapers in Germany

List of magazines in Germany

and List of German-language television channels

List of television stations in Germany

and List of German-language radio stations

List of radio stations in Germany

[ˈɡøːtə ʔɪnstiˌtuːt] (a non-profit German cultural association operational worldwide with 159 institutes, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange and relations.)

Goethe-Institut

A visible sign of the geographical extension of the German language is the German-language media outside the German-speaking countries. German is the second most commonly used scientific language^[132] as well as the third most widely used language on websites after English and Russian.^[133]

Deutsche Welle (German pronunciation: [ˈdɔʏtʃə ˈvɛlə]; "German Wave" in German), or DW, is Germany's public international broadcaster. The service is available in 30 languages. DW's satellite television service consists of channels in German, English, Spanish, and Arabic.

German-speaking people living abroad (and people wanting to learn German) can visit the websites of German-language newspapers and TV- and radio stations. The free software MediathekView allows the downloading of videos from the websites of some public German, Austrian, and Swiss TV stations and of the public Franco-German TV network ARTE. With the webpage "onlinetvrecorder.com," it is possible to record programs of many German and some international TV stations.

Note that some material is region-restricted due to legal reasons and cannot be accessed from everywhere in the world. Some websites have a paywall or limit the access for free/unregistered users.

See also:

Geographical distribution of German speakers

German dialects

German language in Europe

German question

Germanic peoples

Imperial Germans

Pan-Germanism

Unification of Germany

Völkisch movement

References and notes[edit]

References[edit]

Most numbers are from the www.ethnologue.com, apart from a few from German language and Germans, as well as the following: