German Genealogical Research in Eastern Europe

Historical Background

By the end of the Middle Ages, ethnic Germans constituted a signficant minority of most Eastern European countries (the areas now known as Poland, the Baltics, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania). Russia's Germany minority arrived in later centuries and Bulgaria's German population was negligible.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the second wave of Germanic emigration into Eastern Europe and Russia occurred. Some of the reasons for this is that the 150 year Turkish occupation in Hungary gradually ended around 1700 and the Austrian emperors imported settlers of many nationalities to make empty villages productive again. Additionally, German expansion into Russia, outlying areas of Romania, and elsewhere occurred at the end of the 1700s and was the result of a general increase in European population.

The first emigration of Germanic speakers toward Eastern Europe took place before and during the Crusades (beginning in 1095). Many of the emigrants were from northern Germany, where an agricultural revoltuion had taken place; the invention of a more effective plow and the adoption of the three-field method for crop rotation increased the food supply and generated a population explosion. This caused land in western Europe to be colonized and new towns founded, which was followed by Germanic colonization in Eastern Europe where very fertile, and previously untilled, soil was available to satisfy the hunger for land. This emigration began in the mid-1100s.

At the end of World War II almost all these ethnic Germans were expelled from various Eastern European countries. Other countries, such as Romania, kept a good number of its Germans. In addition to expelling the Germans, some of their churches were destroyed. Some expelled Germans founded homeland organizations with active publishing programs which include newspaper, quarterly periodicals, and "homeland" books (Heimatbuecher).