Germans in Kyrgyzstan
Encyclopedia
Migration history
During the 1800s, groups of Mennonites from Germany settled throughout the Russian EmpireRussian Mennonites
The Russian Mennonites are a group of Mennonites descended from Dutch and mainly Germanic Prussian Anabaptists who established colonies in South Russian Empire beginning in 1789. Since the late 19th century, many of them have come to countries throughout the Western Hemisphere...
; they began to come to the territory which is today Kyrgyzstan in the late 19th century. Many other Germans were brought to the country forcibly, as part of the Stalin-era internal deportations
Population transfer in the Soviet Union
Population transfer in the Soviet Union may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population, often classified as "enemies of workers," deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite...
. The 1979 Soviet census showed 101,057 Germans in the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic
Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic
The Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Kirghiz SSR, the Kyrgyz SSR, or even Kirghizia, was one of republics that made up the Soviet Union...
(2.9% of the population), while the 1989 census
Soviet Census (1989)
The 1989 Soviet census, conducted between January 12-19 of that year, was the last one conducted in the former USSR. It resulted in a total population of 286,730,819 inhabitants...
showed 101,309 (2.4%).
After Kyrgyzstan gained independence in 1991, there was a significant outflow of ethnic Germans to Germany, due to the relatively liberal German nationality law
German nationality law
German citizenship is based primarily on the principle of jus sanguinis. In other words one usually acquires German citizenship if a parent is a German citizen, irrespective of place of birth....
which granted citizenship to anyone with proof of German ancestry. A 1993 survey found that 85% of the Germans in Kyrgyzstan intended to emigrate; among those, the most popular destination by far was Germany (80%), with Russia running a distant second at 6%. By the time of Kyrgyzstan's 1999 census, just 21,471 (0.4% of the population) remained. German diplomatic officials in Kyrgyzstan were quoted in 2009 as stating that number has declined even further over the following decade, to perhaps just 10,000. This was supported by the 2009 census, which found just 9,487 Germans remaining (0.18% of the population). However, there are signs that the exodus may be coming to an end. Facing difficulties integrating Russian-speaking Germans from the former Soviet Union
Post-Soviet states
The post-Soviet states, also commonly known as the Former Soviet Union or former Soviet republics, are the 15 independent states that split off from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in its dissolution in December 1991...
, the German government tightened their immigration requirements; furthermore, most ethnic Germans who hope to leave Kyrgyzstan have already done so. In 2007, only 196 Germans in Kyrgyzstan were granted immigration permits by the German embassy; that number fell further to 111 in 2008.
Geographical distribution
The first German settlements in Kyrgyzstan were near TalasTalas, Kyrgyzstan
Talas is a small town in northwestern Kyrgyzstan, located in the Talas River valley between two imposing mountain ranges. Its geographical location is and its population is 32,538 . It is the administrative headquarters of Talas province. The town was founded by East Slavic settlers in 1877...
: Nikolaypol, Keppental, Gradental, Orlovka and Dmitrovskoe. In the late 1920s, they moved towards the Chuy Valley
Chuy Valley
The Chuy Valley is a large valley located in north Tian-Shan. It extends from Boom Gorge in the east to Moyun-Kum desert in the west. It borders Kyrgyz Ala-Too in the south, and Chu-Ili mountains in the north. Through Boom Gorge in the narrow east part Chuy Valley is linked with Issyk-Kul Valley...
, in the vicinity of Frunze (now Bishkek
Bishkek
Bishkek , formerly Pishpek and Frunze, is the capital and the largest city of Kyrgyzstan.Bishkek is also the administrative centre of Chuy Province which surrounds the city, even though the city itself is not part of the province but rather a province-level unit of Kyrgyzstan.The name is thought to...
), where they established a number of new village-suburbs, including Bergtal
Bergtal
Bergtal is a settlement 60 km east of Bishkek in the Chuy Province of Kyrgyzstan, near the border of Kazakhstan. Originally settled by Germans, a significant minority remains.-History:...
(Rotfront), Fridenfeld, and Luxemburg. Others lived in Kant
Kant, Kyrgyzstan
Kant is a city in the Chuy Valley of northern Kyrgyzstan, some 20 km from Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.It is the administrative center of the Ysyk-Ata District ....
and Tokmok
Tokmok
Tokmok ; , Tokmak) is a city of about 53,087 in northern Kyrgyzstan, east of the country's capital of Bishkek. Its geographical location is ; its altitude is 816 m above sea level. From 2004 until 19 April 2006 it served as the administrative seat of Chui Province...
. However, in the exodus of the 1990s, the German villages emptied out, and there are no longer any compact settlements of Germans in the country.
Language
The ethnic Germans of Kyrgyzstan tend to trace their roots to western parts of Germany near the border with the NetherlandsNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, and as such tend to speak varieties of Low German
Low German
Low German or Low Saxon is an Ingvaeonic West Germanic language spoken mainly in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands...
. However, many youth show language shift
Language shift
Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...
towards Russian, which they use for communicating with peers of other ethnicities. There is a Bishkek branch of the Goethe-Institut
Goethe-Institut
The Goethe-Institut is a non-profit German cultural institution operational worldwide, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange and relations. The Goethe-Institut also fosters knowledge about Germany by providing information on German...
, which promotes German culture and the teaching of the German language; the local head of the Institut is herself an ethnic German born in Kyrgyzstan, who emigrated with her parents in 1978 but then returned to the country nearly three decades later to take up her present post. However, the study of the German language as a second language
Second language
A second language or L2 is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue. Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas ....
has been losing popularity even among ethnic German youth, as Chinese and English become of greater economic importance instead.
Organisations
In the southern city of Jalal-AbadJalal-Abad
Jalalabat is the administrative and economic centre of Jalal-Abad Province in southwestern Kyrgyzstan, with a population of about 150,000...
, local ethnic Germans formed the Hope German Cultural Center in 1996. Four Congresses of German Youth of Kyrgyzstan (съезд немецкой молодежи Киргизии) have been held in the country; however, the most recent, in 2010, attracted only 50 participants. The government of Germany provides some monetary support to German organisations in Kyrgyzstan.
Notable people
- Theodore Herzen (Теодор Герцен), artist
- Jakob Wedel (Яков Ведель; see German Wikipedia), sculptor
- Vladimir Fere (Владимир Фере), composer
- Vladimir Vogt (Владимир Фохт), architect
- Gerhard Volter (Герхард Вольтер; see Russian Wikipedia), writer
- Aleksey Strauss (Алексей Штраус), writer and social activist
- Lilli Schwarzkopf, heptathlete