Carpathian Germans
ethnic group
Carpathian Germans (German: Karpatendeutsche or Mantaken, Hungarian: kárpátnémetek or felvidéki németek, Slovak: Karpatskí Nemci, Ukrainian: Карпатські німці, Romanian: Germani carpatini) are a group of ethnic Germans in Central and Eastern Europe. The term was coined by the historian Raimund Friederich Kaindl (1866–1930), originally generally referring to the German-speaking population of the area around the Carpathian Mountains: the Cisleithanian (Austrian) crown lands of Galicia and Bukovina, as well as the Hungarian half of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (including Szepes County), and the northwestern (Maramuresch) region of Romania. Since the First World War, only the Germans of Slovakia (the Slovak Germans or Slowakeideutsche, including the Zipser Germans) and those of Carpathian Ruthenia in Ukraine have commonly been called Carpathian Germans.
Kingdom of Hungary
Germans settled in the northern territory of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary (then called Upper Hungary, today mostly Slovakia) from the 12th to the 15th centuries (see Ostsiedlung), mostly after the 1241 Mongol invasion of Europe. There had probably already been some isolated settlers in the area of Pressburg (Pozsony, today's Bratislava). The Germans were usually attracted by kings seeking specialists in various trades, such as craftsmen and miners. They usually settled in older Slavic market and mining settlements. Until approximately the 15th century, the ruling classes of most cities in present-day Slovakia were almost exclusively composed of Germans.
The main settlement areas were in the vicinity of Pressburg and some language islands in Szepes County (Hungarian: Szepesség; German: Zips; Latin: Scepusium, today Spiš region in Slovakia) and the Hauerland regions. The settlers in the Szepes County were known as Zipser Sachsen (Zipser Saxons, Hungarian: cipszerek).
The public source identifies “Carpathian Germans” as ethnic group. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Carpathian, Germans and ethnic.
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This entry incorporates text from “Carpathian Germans” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.