Their main demographic presence lasted from the last quarter of the 18th century, when Bukovina was annexed by the Habsburg Empire, until 1940, when nearly all Bukovina Germans (or approximately 100,000 people)[5] were forcefully resettled into either Nazi Germany or Nazi-occupied regions in Central-Eastern Europe as a part of the Heim ins Reich national socialist population transfer policy.

[17][18][19][20] Lastly, another interesting aspect on the German presence in Bukovina is the fact that the historical/geographic region as a whole has been previously sometimes labeled as 'Switzerland of the East'.

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

[26] It is also possible that the German community in Baia could have stemmed from Galicia (Romanian: Galiția; a historical region nowadays situated between southeastern Poland and western Ukraine), being thus represented by a group of medieval Walddeutsche.

[27] In the medieval town of Suceava (German: Suczawa), one of the former capitals of the Principality of Moldavia, the Magdeburg law held sway for a certain period of time.

[28][29][30][31] So it is that on the current territorial extent of Suceava County, a small but influent community of Transylvanian Saxons lived during medieval times, their main occupations being trade and craftsmanship.

[33][34] The town of Suceava is referred to as Sotschen (an Old High German name) in one of the works of Abraham Ortelius on European geography for the 15th and 16th centuries.

While they collectively formed a new community of this former Austrian-annexed territory, the Bukovina Germans had various regional identities, according to their initial place of origin (e.g. clear through the spoken dialect).

Population growth and a shortage of land led to the establishment of daughter settlements in Galicia, Bessarabia, and Dobruja.

After 1840, a shortage of land caused the decline into poverty of the German rural lower classes; in the late 19th century parts of the German rural population alongside a few Romanians emigrated to the Americas, mainly to the United States (most notably to Ellis and Hays, both located in Kansas) but also to Canada.

However, at this time, in comparison with other Austrian crown lands, Bukovina remained a relatively underdeveloped region on the periphery of the realm, primarily supplying raw materials.

This did not prevent it from being called '[the] Switzerland of the Orient' (i.e., of Eastern Europe) or 'Europe in miniature', due to its ethnic and cultural diversity spread over such a small territory.

Beginning in 1938 however, due to the poor economic situation and powerful national socialist propaganda, a pro-Third Reich mentality developed within the Bukovina German community.

[64] The documents of the Romanian communist secret police showcased the fact that many remaining Bukovina Germans expressed their interest to flee the country and immigrate to West Germany.

Furthermore, only a few of them had been suspected on the grounds of anti-national sentiment alongside some Ukrainians, as shown by the same reports of the communist Romanian secret police.

However, after 1989, very few Bukovina Germans (including those from mixed families) remained in the county of Suceava, most of them immigrating to West Germany.

Some of the towns and municipalities of Suceava County, most notably the county seat Suceava, are still home to a larger community of native ethnic Germans compared to the countryside which had been nearly completely deserted by the Bukovina Germans in the wake of World War II and after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

On the verge of World War II, the vast majority Bukovina Germans were re-settled by Nazi Germany to areas occupied by it in Eastern-Central Europe.

When they firstly immigrated to the Midwestern United States during the 1880s, the Bukovina Germans were both Roman Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran settlers.

The flag encloses the coat of arms of the historical region of Bukovina as it was conceived and official during imperial Austrian times.

[80] In terms of Bukovina German literature, Gregor von Rezzori and Ludwig Adolf Staufe-Simiginowicz are the most well known writers.

Simiginowicz wrote Volkssagen aus der Bukowina (a compilation of folk songs from the entire region of Bucovina).

The regional president of FDGR/DFDR Bucovina/Buchenland is Josef-Otto Exner, who is also in charge of the ACI Bukowina Stiftung, a cultural foundation/association aiming to enhance ties between Romania and Germany.