March 2020
Dobrudja
German Settlers between the Danube and the Black Sea
by Josef Sallanz
The historical region between the Danube delta and the mountainous landscape Ludogorie today is structured as a result of the demarcation of 1940 which divided the region into the North Dobrudja in Romania and the South Dobrudja in Bulgaria. Since ancient times, people have roamed the steppes at the Black Sea towards the south and left a mixture of languages, denominations and everyday culture. From the 7th century BC Greek sailors founded trading colonies on the coast such as Tomis, the present day Constanta, Romanian Constanţa. After 500 years under Ottoman rule in the middle of the 19th century the first Germans came from Bessarabia, bordering the Danube to the north, from the governorate Kherson, from Poland, Volhynia, Galicia and the Caucasus. Reasons were land scarcity, loss of privileges and a intensified russification policy. Today in the Dobrudja live Tatars, Bulgarians, Turks, Lipovans, Ukrainians, Greeks, Germans and Roma next to more than ninety percent Romanians. The historian Josef Sallanz shows which cultural traditions still today shape the region.
