Hello Karen! You have not bored me and it is certainly not my intention to discourage you or anybody else from participating in the discussion or to have their own private opinion about nationality and citizenship. It just looks to me like your "sociologic perspective"(and DNA analysis?) leads you to a radical reclassification of the Danube Swabian identity. You can obviously produce a dissertation on the subject but "cui bono?" as the Latins used to say. But first to our points of disagreement. Yes, the DS were also called Germans (germani, nemţi, németek, nemci) by their neighbouring nationalities, and they frequently used that term for their own self-description. That has indeed been my personal experience, based on 25 years of living in a German Banat village (96 percent German population) and in multiethnic Temeswar/Timişoara. I remain in contact with a number of Banat Swabians currently living in Germany and Austria and I have read a fair number of Banat-Swabian literature, from history to poetry and prose, research papers and newspapers. I can assure that the group identity of the Donauschwaben as an ethnic German group is very well established and rests on a solid foundation, developed over their 250-year history. In my 53 years in Canada, I have yet to meet a single DS immigrant who was not aware of his nationality, or did not consider himself both a Swabian and an (ethnic) German. I do not have the statistics about the number or proportion of mixed marriages in the old country, but my experience in a few Banat villages indicates that until the end of WWII there were very few. The objective of DVHH is Remembering Our Danube Swabian Ancestors. It seems clear to me that our ancestors would not want to be remembered as something other than Germans, and certainly not as some amorphous multiethnic entity. Finally, given that the vast majority of our DS compatriots are now living in Germany and Austria, would it not be just a bit presumptuous for any one of us "North American DS" to redefine their nationality? Cheers, Nick Tullius -----Original Message----- From: islandkaren [mailto:islandkaren@bellsouth.net] Sent: 3-May-14 15:42 To: Nick Tullius; donauschwaben-villages@rootsweb.net Subject: Re: [DVHH] German-Hungarians - Nationality vs Citizenship 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.

Hello Nick... I agree with most of what you say except for one small part. I feel that there needs to be made a distinction between the settlements in mainland Banat and the settlements along the Military Frontier (southern Banat along the border of the then Ottoman Empire). In the villages in this large swath of land, there were many nationalities. Some were from Germany. But, there was also a fair amount of Hungarians, Croatians, Romanians, Czechs, Serbians, and even a few Italians. These are people that wanted to take advantage of the perks (free land, etc...) that came with military service. The area I am specifically referring to is from Belgrade eastward along the Danube River. In the various villages my ancestors are from in that region, there was a good bit of inter-ethnic marriage. In that early time, they were still dealing with the occasional incursions of the Turks. The borders at that time also occasionally fluctuated. So, in addition to the usual causes of death in early Banat (malaria, typhus....), you had to add causalities of war to the mix. This limited the amount of same-ethnic group spouses available, so inter ethnic marriages were common in that part of Banat. Many had numerous spouses (not at the same time, of course). I know this differs greatly from inland Banat, where cities were ethnically segregated by design. And, stayed that way. I have reseached my family tree and many others in that region. The Donauschwaben from there will definitely say that they are German. They spoke German and had German customs. But, there broad heritage is much more "colorful". RitaColorado and Jabuka > From: ntullius@rogers.com > To: donauschwaben-villages@rootsweb.com > Date: Sun, 4 May 2014 09:34:06 -0400 > Subject: [DVHH] FW: German-Hungarians - Nationality vs Citizenship > > Hello Karen! > > > > You have not bored me and it is certainly not my intention to discourage you > or anybody else from participating in the discussion or to have their own > private opinion about nationality and citizenship. > > It just looks to me like your "sociologic perspective"(and DNA analysis?) > leads you to a radical reclassification of the Danube Swabian identity. You > can obviously produce a dissertation on the subject but "cui bono?" as the > Latins used to say. > > But first to our points of disagreement. Yes, the DS were also called > Germans (germani, nemţi, németek, nemci) by their neighbouring > nationalities, and they frequently used that term for their own > self-description. That has indeed been my personal experience, based on 25 > years of living in a German Banat village (96 percent German population) and > in multiethnic Temeswar/Timişoara. I remain in contact with a number of > Banat Swabians currently living in Germany and Austria and I have read a > fair number of Banat-Swabian literature, from history to poetry and prose, > research papers and newspapers. I can assure that the group identity of the > Donauschwaben as an ethnic German group is very well established and rests > on a solid foundation, developed over their 250-year history. > > In my 53 years in Canada, I have yet to meet a single DS immigrant who was > not aware of his nationality, or did not consider himself both a Swabian and > an (ethnic) German. I do not have the statistics about the number or > proportion of mixed marriages in the old country, but my experience in a few > Banat villages indicates that until the end of WWII there were very few. > > The objective of DVHH is Remembering Our Danube Swabian Ancestors. It seems > clear to me that our ancestors would not want to be remembered as something > other than Germans, and certainly not as some amorphous multiethnic entity. > > Finally, given that the vast majority of our DS compatriots are now living > in Germany and Austria, would it not be just a bit presumptuous for any one > of us "North American DS" to redefine their nationality? > > > > Cheers, > > Nick Tullius > > > > > ------------------------------- > 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