Banat Swabians

The Banat Swabians are an ethnic German population in the Banat region in Central-Southeast Europe, part of the culturally homogenous but geographically widespread group of Danube Swabians, and of the culturally varied Germans of Romania. They emigrated in the 18th century to what was then the Austrian Empire's Banat of Temeswar province, a province which had been left sparsely populated in the wake of the wars against the Ottoman Empire. At the end of World War I in 1918, the Swabian minority worked together with the Hungarians and Jews to establish an independent multi-ethnic Banat Republic; however, the province was divided by the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, and the Treaty of Trianon of 1920. The greater part was annexed by Romania, a smaller part by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929), with just a small region around Szeged remaining part of Hungary.