Porr Remains DFDR Chairman - New Election at the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania

The forum is divided into the national forum and several regional forums (Altreich, Banat, Buchenland, Northern Transylvania, Transylvania and the Association of German Youth Organisations) as well as district and local forums. According to the 2022 census, around 23,000 Germans live in Romania, compared to 36,000 in 2011. The DFDR doubts this sharp decline and points out that it was not compulsory to state ethnicity and that filling out the online questionnaires was complicated, which may have distorted the results. In any case, the number of Germans in Romania has fallen dramatically over the last 100 years. According to the 1930 census, there were around 750,000 Germans in the country, making up four per cent of the total population. Although there was no expulsion of Germans after the Second World War, massive emigration gradually began. The reasons for this were the experiences of the deportation of tens of thousands to forced labour in Ukrainian mines and in Siberia after the end of the war, many of whom did not return at all and others returned sick and miserable. The effects of the socialist system also made many people want to leave their homeland. From 1970 onwards, this emigration was encouraged by Germany through the payment of bounties to Romania. In 1989 there were still 200,000 Germans living in Romania, in 2002 there were only 60,000.

The Germans in Romania are not a homogeneous community. There are several groups whose ancestors lived in their respective settlement areas long before the foundation of the Romanian state and moved there at different times and for different reasons. Most Germans live in Transylvania and Banat; these areas belonged to the Hungarian half of the Habsburg monarchy until 1918 and were only then annexed to Romania. These and other territorial gains doubled Romania's area and population; the country was transformed from a relatively homogeneous nation state into a multi-ethnic state.

The Banat Swabians were settled in depopulated areas of the former Hungarian kingdom after the Turks were driven back in the 18th century. They are a subgroup of the Danube Swabians and live in the far west of present-day Romania. At the same time, the Bergland Germans, miners and metallurgists from Styria (Austria), moved into the area. The number of Germans in Banat totalled around 280,000 in 1930.

The Sathmar Swabians were also settled in the north-west of what is now Romania in the 18th century. They were largely Magyarised between 1848 and 1918. In 1930, a good 30,000 people still belonged to this group.

Zipser Saxons can be found in the very north of Romania. From the second half of the 18th century, their ancestors moved from their settlement areas in present-day Slovakia to the Maramures, south-west Bukovina and Carpathian Ukraine, but also to the Banat Mountains. Figures on the size of the community are not known.

In the so-called Old Kingdom, in the old Romanian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia (which have been united as Romania since 1859), there are also merchants, craftsmen and intellectuals who speak German, especially in the cities, including the capital Bucharest, who are connected in church congregations and associations.