Hello Nick! Wow, My apologies Nick! You have completely misunderstood my messages. I was not, am not "discussing" race. I was differentiating between DNA as a race definition in specifically determined analysis, and Nationality/and/or Citizenship which is geographic and historical and has nothing to do with genes. Anything I have said is NOT about "saving anyone from being German"! Why would I malign myself? As we say here, I are One. :) I apologize again if I try your patience or the "regular readers of this List" by posting on this list. That is certainly not my intention. I am just "Discussing". No one need agree with me, find any validity in what I have to say, or even read me. I thought dialogue was the point here. Your history is completely accurate and I am aware of it, as far as it goes. So I guess that begs the question....Are you telling me that I am not part of this community called Donauschwaben? Are you and the "well-established facts" telling me I do not belong on this list or in this community if I don't fit all of your list of "facts"? I would suggest we all find a way to include here because if there are those who object to inquiry and discovery on DVHH then it isn't where I will spend my time going forward, which I guess would be a good thing from your perspective Nick. 1. In the "well-established" history of the specific 3 waves of Settlers, the answer to #1. is Yes. 2. I do not doubt that wherever you are your neighbors and other nationalities use the word Swabian as part of their language over time. Where I am, and certainly evidenced by this list, very few immigrants to Canada, the US and other places mentioned, were aware of, or considered themselves "Swabians". I have volumes of letters from my Grandmother's siblings and not one time in any letter is the word Swabian used, mentioned or referred to. That is antidotal, but based on the List chatter I would say it is not unique! It seems to me it would be interesting to do some study of that phenomenon for this List. And also, not mentioning it does not mean by me that it is something to be ashamed of. None of that is the point here, and no one is trying to malign anyone else. We are just asking WHY?? 3. Two answers....1. is Yes! 2. The dialects arrived in the Banat, and then they were enhanced and changed again by influences in the Villages from the new environment of people and from intermarriage and integration. 4. Okay, in the towns and villages that were majority DS.....they then were majority German speaking of whatever dialect they used. How about the towns and villages where the DS were not majority, color coded vividly by the DVHH map? Several branches of my family lived in one village and worked in another, lived in villages that were majority Serb, and converted from Catholicism to Lutherans for about 20 years in order to conduct business with Serbs, Croats and Russians in their vicinity as it worked out better for business? And they intermarried. But they considered themselves "Banaters" through and through. 5. Yes.....so isn't that what I described....what am I missing? 6. "Well-established" facts are universal, but your number 6 is not that. In your "opinion" what you state in number 6 is so. I for one would disagree with your opinion on that. Inside each of those homes where mixed families occurred, all the influences of the mixing was indeed passed on to the children of that mixture and the next generation were in fact "different" from the previous. That my friend is well-established Sociology. Perhaps in your village or town outside of those homes you or others were not aware of changes. From a scholarly perspective traditions were sacrosanct, but from a sociologic perspective everything was in upheaval going into the 20th century and change was the order of the day. The participants on this List evidence the change, not the constant traditional you describe. I expected all you describe to be so when I got into this. But as I researched and discovered and then began to really read this List, I began to realize that of course there is no purism. Everything and everyone are always nuanced. And considering the history of the region, frankly it is a wonder any traditions were saved. I salute you Nick and everyone else living through all that to actually come out the other end in one piece. Hope I haven't bored you again. Karen. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Nick Tullius" <ntullius@rogers.com> To: <donauschwaben-villages@rootsweb.net> Sent: Saturday, May 03, 2014 1:36 PM Subject: Re: [DVHH] German-Hungarians - Nationality vs Citizenship My Dupont gggMother from Triebswetter, whose ancestors came from what is today the Belgian province of Luxembourg, will rejoice in heaven, now that she was saved from being German J I participated in this discussion because it was about nationality (today also called ethnicity) versus citizenship. It can be a confusing topic for many readers of this list, because of the many countries that our ancestors lived in, often without moving from their homestead. It can be particularly confusing for those residing in countries where nationality and citizenship mean one and the same thing. I was surprised to see "race" mentioned in a contribution, as I thought that the topic was mercifully buried in the 1940s, and DVHH publishing guidelines seriously discourage or decline to publish material dealing with it. I doubt that many readers of this list are interested in race, even if DNA analysis is involved. With excuses to the regular readers of this list, let me repeat, hopefully for the last time, a few well established facts: 1. It is a well established fact that only a small number came from Swabia, but it is equally well known that German-speakers constituted by far the largest majority of settlers. This fact does in no way diminish the contribution of the settlers speaking other languages. 2. The DS were and are called Swabians (sváb, şvabi, svaba) by their neighbours of other nationalities and over time the name became part of the language(s). The designation "Donauschwaben" came out of academia only around 1922, and was not in general use in the towns and villages inhabited by DS. 3. The village dialects did not just happen, but resulted from a natural mixture of the dialects brought by the settlers from their places of origin. 4. These dialects were German dialects simply because German-speaking settlers and their offspring constituted the majority population in the towns and villages inhabited by DS. The DS used the literary German language as the common language especially for written communication. I can affirm from personal experience that speakers of literary German (Hochdeutsch) could very well understand most Schwowische dialects. 5. The dialects spoken in the Banat villages incorporated a number of loan words from the languages of the surrounding nationalities. And a number of German loan words became part of the languages spoken by the other nationalities. This is normal and happened in all multinational states. 6. There certainly were mixed marriages, but because of different religions and other factors, their number was not large enough to change either the dialect or the validity of the designation as Swabians. I wish that we could respect the decisions made by our ancestors, and by the still-living Danube Swabians all over the world, to be what they were, or what they are. I see no point in invoking either race or DNA to retroactively reassign their nationality. In recent news, the "Swabian migrations" were named as "the most successful settlement action of eighteenth century Europe". Of that all DS descendants can be justifiably proud. Best wishes to all, Nick Tullius -----Original Message----- From: donauschwaben-villages-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:donauschwaben-villages-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of islandkaren Sent: 3-May-14 02:10 To: donauschwaben-villages@rootsweb.net Subject: [DVHH] German-Hungarians To anyone on this subject line discussing the "ethnic German" issue...I just want to say, my particular responses were prompted by two posts in particular in which folks were "surprised" at their DNA results as they thought they were only "German"...ethnic or otherwise. Initially I was trying to point out that "German" is a Nationality or a Citizenship, not a Race. Also, that Donauschwaben is a descriptive term about a very specific emigrating group of people whose same experience on the Danube is now used to classify them. And now, even some others who did not necessarily have the same transportation experience, but became a part of the end result in what history calls the Banat, in some cases are also "German", but may also be from other areas of Europe than just the geographic area known as Swabia. As a result, many of us whose ancestors lived and worked and thrived in the Hungarian Hapsburg Empire for centuries after migrating from lots of places in western Europe, became "Donauschwaben". To discover through DNA analysis or historical searching or genealogy that one's family group are not all "German", either as ethnic practice or common language, should not be a surprise. Of course people who were not German came to the Banat down the Danube. Of course groups of people who may have lived in the area generally described as the Duchy of Swabia were not all from there "forever" and had most certainly arrived there from every other direction and spoke a variety of languages and dialects. Of course there is and always was intermarriage of tribes, and geographic groups, and races, and mixing of languages. "Dialects" in fact are generally considered to occur as the result of the combining of languages in a single geographic area over a time period longer than 2 generations. Actually all one has to do is read this list...there is huge discussion describing how one "German" group can't understand the other, and who spoke High German, who spoke Austrian Schwobish,! and my father spoke German but my mother's native tongue was French.......and on and on. Someone on this thread said that if your native tongue was not German and you were not from the area of Germany now known as Baden-Wurttemberg, you were Not Donauschwaben. I suppose exclusion as a means to describe and then sequester a group of people may seem appropriate from a purist sense, but it is not accurate or helpful in current context. Both my father's maternal and paternal families going back many centuries emigrated to the geographic areas that are included in Donauschwaban territories. Did they all come down the Danube from the Schwarzwald speaking some dialect of German from about 1722 in three waves of specific groups...nope. Did they all speak German and cook only certain foods in a certain way on specific holidays...nope. Did they all remain pure and "German" and never intermarry or integrate other ethnicities...nope. Are they "Donauschwaben"....Yes they are! They shared, as well as most certainly participated in the culture, politics, geography and history of the unique experience in modern history now known as Donauschwaben. I believe the disconnect between us talking about this probably also occurs because you guys seem to be describing perhaps just the most recent 75 years of historical context. My viewpoint includes a much longer context, that is, from the first waves of settlers and actually even farther back for my father's side. Both are of course relevant. And as I just described previously, both appropriately are blended, mixed, included and valued in this Donauschwaben experience, because that is in fact the reality and history of these families....just read this list. Karen. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to DONAUSCHWABEN-VILLAGES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to DONAUSCHWABEN-VILLAGES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message