Most were descended from earlier 18th-century Swabian settlers from Upper Swabia, the Swabian Jura, northern Lake Constance, the upper Danube, the Swabian-Franconian Forest, the Southern Black Forest and the Principality of Fürstenberg, followed by Hessians, Bavarians, Franconians and Lorrainers recruited by Austria to repopulate the area and restore agriculture after the expulsion of the Ottoman Empire.

After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following the First World War, the areas where the Danube Swabians had settled were divided into three parts by the Allied Powers.

In this atmosphere of ethnic nationalism, the Danube Swabians had to fight for legal equality as citizens and for the preservation of their cultural traditions.

In the 1930s, Nazi Germany promoted National Socialist ideas to the Danube Swabians and claimed the right to protect them as part of its reason for expanding into eastern Europe.

[6] The Danube Swabians faced particular challenges in the Second World War, when the Axis powers, including Germany, overran many of the nations where they lived.

Toward the end of the Second World War, tens of thousands of Danube Swabians fled west ahead of the advancing Soviet army.

After the war, the remaining Danube Swabians were disenfranchised, their property seized, and many were deported to labor camps in the Soviet Union.

[7] In Yugoslavia, the local "ethnic Germans" were collectively blamed for the actions of Nazi Germany and branded as war criminals.

[8] Following the dissolution of the camps, the majority of the remaining Yugoslav Danube Swabians left the country, seeking refuge in Germany, other parts of Europe, the United States, and Canada.

Companies like Mercedes-Benz, Bosch, and Porsche are iconic examples of Swabian enterprises that have contributed to the region's wealth and global economic influence.

During the 17th–18th centuries, warfare between the Habsburg monarchy and the Ottoman Empire devastated and depopulated much of the lands of the Danube valley, referred to geographically as the Pannonian plain.

The settlement was encouraged by nobility, whose lands had been devastated through warfare, and by military officers including Prince Eugene of Savoy and Claudius Mercy.

Many Germans settled in the Bakony (Bakonywald) and Vértes (Schildgebirge) mountains north and west of Lake Balaton (Plattensee), as well as around the capital city, Buda (Ofen), now part of Budapest.

After the Habsburgs annexed the Banat area from the Ottomans in the Treaty of Passarowitz (1718), the government made plans to resettle the region to restore farming.

After Maria Theresa of Austria assumed the throne as Queen of Hungary in 1740, she encouraged vigorous colonization on crown lands, especially between Timișoara and the Tisza.

The German farmers steadily redeveloped the land: drained marshes near the Danube and the Tisza, rebuilt farms, and constructed roads and canals.

Under the reign of Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, Lutheran Germans were also allowed to settle in Hungary and other parts of the Habsburg Empire.

[18] Beginning in 1920 and especially after World War II, many Danube Swabians migrated to the United States, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Austria, Australia, and Argentina.

[29][30] Between 1941 and 1943, a total of 2,150 ethnic German Bulgarian citizens were transferred to Germany as part of Adolf Hitler's Heim ins Reich policy.

In 1944, a joint advance of the Yugoslav Partisans, and the Soviet Red Army saw the liberation of northern areas of German-occupied Yugoslavia, which were home to the Danube Swabian minority.

[32] The AVNOJ Presidium issued a decree that ordered the government confiscation of all property of Nazi Germany and its citizens in Yugoslavia, persons of ethnic German nationality (regardless of citizenship), and collaborators.

Officially, Yugoslavia denied the forcible starvation and killing of their Shwovish populations, but reconstruction of the death camps reveals that of the 170,000 Danube Swabians interned from 1944 to 1948, about 50,000 died of mistreatment.

[34] Men between the ages of 16 and 65 were executed while women, children, and the elderly were interned, many succumbing to fatal diseases and malnutrition in Yugoslavia.

[44] Prior to the First World War, the Swabians were the largest ethnic group to assimilate into Hungarian society, seconded by the Galician Jews and the Slovaks.

But a distinct Hungarian Swabian ethno-national consciousness didn't develop until the spread of Romantic Nationalism in the late nineteenth century.

In reality, it contains elements or many dialects of the original German settlers, mainly Swabian, East Franconian, Bavarian, Pfälzisch, Alsatian, and Alemannic, as well as Austro-Hungarian administrative and military jargon.

Other cultures of influence include Serbian and Croatian, Russian (for communist concepts), Romanian, Turkish (Hambar), English (for football), and general Balkan and South Slavic loanwords like Kukuruts (corn).

As is the custom in Hungary (as well as southern Germany), Danube Swabians often put the surname first, especially when writing, for example Butscher Jakob (see photo of memorial).

Popular names for women include: Anna, Barbara, Christina, Elisabeth, Eva, Katharina, Magdalena, Maria, Sophia, Theresia, and many two-name combinations thereof.

Popular names for men include: Adam, Anton, Christian, Franz, Friedrich, Georg, Gottfried, Heinrich, Jakob, Johann, Konrad, Ludwig, Mathias, Martin, Michael, Nikolaus, Peter, Philipp (or Filipp), and Stefan (or Stephan).