History of the Swabians

Ethnic-Germans (Danube and Banat Swabians) immigrated from Southwest Germany to the Danube river valley as early as the 12th century. This group brought with them, elements of their shared German heritage, religion, and conservative cultural views. The region remained ethnically diverse leading up to the first World War, although many either immigrated back to Germany and quite a bit more to the United States. Dr. Monica Black, a professor at the University of Tennessee, pointed me the University of North Dakota's Eastern European German Heritage Collection. Those who chose to remain in the region, were quickly pulled into and were active participants in the violence that came with World War II.

​

The political violence that followed the war launched legends and folktales alike, not dissimilar to the stories from Legends of Hurricane Katrina, where Carl Lindahl observed legends born from the trauma of those who were affected by displacement and disorder (Lindahl, 2012). In the case of the Swabians, their collective trauma came in the form of Communist revolutionary leader Josip Broz Tito, whose war of reprisals against the Germans and attempt to establish a unified multi-ethnic Yugoslavia under a Partisan ethnicity, or the "Partisan Myth" (Ludanyi, 1979). 

​

​