Demographics of Germany - Population - Ethnic Groups

Ethnic Groups

Total population = 81.8 million

• German citizens = 73.62 million (90% of total population)
• German citizens of no migrant background: 65.44 million (80% of total population)
• German citizens of immigrant background (including people of partial immigrant background): 8.18 million (10%)
• "Foreigners" (persons without German citizenship): (8%)

In 2010, 2.3 million families with children under 18 years were living in Germany, in which at least one parent had foreign roots. They represented 29% of the total of 8.1 million families with minor children. Compared with 2005 – the year when the microcensus started to collect detailed information on the population with a migrant background – the proportion of migrant families has risen by 2 percentage points.

Most of the families with a migrant background live in the western part of Germany. In 2010, the proportion of migrant families in all families was 32% in the former territory of the Federal Republic. This figure was more than double that in the new Länder (incl. Berlin) where it stood at 15%.

Families with a migrant background more often have three or more minor children in the household than families without a migrant background. In 2010, about 15% of the families with a migrant background contained three or more minor children, as compared with just 9% of the families without a migrant background.

In 2009, 3.0 million of the persons of immigrant background had Turkish roots, 2.9 million had their roots in the successor states of the former Soviet Union, 1.5 million had their roots in the successor states of former Yugoslavia and 1.5 million had Polish roots.

In 2008, 18.4% of Germans of any age group and 30% of German children had at least one parent born abroad. Median age for Germans with at least one parent born abroad was 33.8 years, while that for Germans, who had two parents born in Germany was 44.6 years.

Ethnic makeup as of 2010:

Four other sizable groups of people are referred to as "national minorities" (nationale Minderheiten) because they have lived in their respective regions for centuries: Danes, Frisians, Roma and Sinti, and Sorbs. There is a Danish minority (about 50,000, according to government sources) in the northern-most state of Schleswig-Holstein. Eastern and Northern Frisians live at Schleswig-Holstein's western coast, and in the north-western part of Lower Saxony. They are part of a wider community (Frisia) stretching from Germany to the northern Netherlands. The Sorbs, a Slavic people with about 60,000 members (according to government sources), are in the Lusatia region of Saxony and Brandenburg. They are the last remnants of the Slavs that lived in central and eastern Germany since the 7th century to have kept their traditions and not been completely integrated into the wider German nation.

Until World War II the Poles were recognized as one of the national minorities. In 1924 the Union of Poles in Germany had initiated cooperation between all national minorities in Germany under the umbrella organization Association of National Minorities in Germany. Some of the union members wanted the Polish communities in easternmost Germany (now Poland) to join the newly established Polish nation after World War I. Even before the German invasion of Poland, leading anti-Nazi members of the Polish minority were deported to concentration camps; some were executed at the Piaśnica murder site. Minority rights for Poles in Germany were revoked by Hermann Göring's World War II decree of 27 February 1940, and their property was confiscated. Adolf Hitler was known to also disliked Polish and Slavic peoples and even considered Polish-Germans alike to be Untermenschen along side with Jews and Roma people.

After the war ended, the German government did not re-implement national minority rights for ethnic Poles. The reason for this is that the areas of Germany which formerly had a native Polish minority were annexed to Poland and the Soviet Union, while almost all of the native German populations (formerly the ethnic majority) in these areas subsequently fled or were expelled by force. With the mixed German-Polish territories now lost, the German government subsequently regarded ethnic Poles residing in what remained of Germany as immigrants, just like any other ethnic population with a recent history of arrival. In contrast, Germans living in Poland are recognized as national minority and have granted seats in Polish Parliament. It must be said, however, that an overwhelming amount of Germans in Poland have centuries-old historical ties to the lands they now inhabit, whether from living in territory that once belonged to the German state, or from centuries-old communities. In contrast, most Poles in present-day Germany are recent immigrants, though there are some communities which have been present since the 19th and perhaps even the 18th centuries. Despite protests by some in the older Polish-German communities, and despite Germany being now a signatory to the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, Germany has so far refused to re-implement minority rights for ethnic Poles, based on the fact that almost all areas of historically mixed German-Polish heritage (where the minority rights formerly existed) are no longer part of Germany and because the vast majority of ethnic Poles now residing in Germany are recent immigrants.

Roma people have been in Germany since the Middle Ages. They were persecuted by the Nazis, and thousands of Roma living in Germany were killed by the Nazi regime. Nowadays, they are spread all over Germany, mostly living in major cities. It is difficult to estimate their exact number, as the German government counts them as "persons without immigration background" in their statistics. There are also many assimilated Sinti and Roma. A vague figure given by the German Department of the Interior is about 70,000. In the late 1990s, many Roma moved to Germany from Kosovo. In contrast to the old-established Roma population, the majority of them do not have German citizenship, they are classified as immigrants or refugees.

After World War II, 14 million ethnic Germans were expelled from the eastern territories of Germany and homelands outside former German Empire. The accommodation and integration of these Heimatvertriebene in the remaining part of Germany, in which many cities and millions of apartments had been destroyed, was a major effort in the post-war occupation zones and later states of Germany.

Since the 1960s, ethnic Germans from the People's Republic of Poland and Soviet Union (especially from Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine), have come to Germany. During the time of Perestroika, and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the number of immigrants increased heavily. Some of these immigrants are of mixed ancestry. During the 10 year period between 1987 and 2001, a total of 1,981,732 ethnic Germans from the FSU immigrated to Germany, along with more than a million of their non-German relatives. After 1997, however Ethnic Slavs or those belonging to Slavic-Germanic mixed origins outnumbered these with only Germanic descent amongst the immigrants. The total number of people currently living in Germany having FSU connection is around 4 to 4.5 million (Including Germans, Slavs, Jews and those of mixed origins), out of that more than 50% is of German descent.

Germany now has Europe's third-largest Jewish population. In 2004, twice as many Jews from former Soviet republics settled in Germany as in Israel, bringing the total inflow to more than 200,000 since 1991. Jews have a voice in German public life through the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland. Some Jews from the former Soviet Union are of mixed heritage.

In 2000 there were also around 300,000-500,000 Afro-Germans (those who have German citizenship) and 150,000+ African nationals. Most of them live in Berlin and Hamburg. Numerous persons from Tunisia and Morocco live in Germany, which in most cases do not considers themselves "Afro-Germans" and are not considered "Afro-Germans" by the German public despite the fact they come from Northern Africa, because they are not Black African looking. However, Germany does not keep any statistics regarding ethnicity or race. Hence, the exact number of Blacks or Afro-Germans in particular, is unknown.

Germany's biggest East Asian minority are the Vietnamese people in Germany. About 40,000 Vietnamese live in Berlin and surroundings. Also there are about 20,000 to 25,000 Japanese people residing in Germany. Some South Asian and Southeast Asian immigration has took place. Nearly 50,000 Indians live in Germany. As of 2008, there were 68,000 Filipino residents and an unknown number of Indonesians residing in Germany.

Numerous descendants of the so-called Gastarbeiter live in Germany. The Gastarbeiter mostly came from Chile, Greece, Southern Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey (the most numerous non-European and non-Western nationality) and the former Yugoslavia. Also included were Vietnam, Mongolia, North Korea, Angola, Mozambique and Cuba when the former East Germany existed until reunification in 1990. The (socialist) German democratic republic (East Germany) however had their guest-worker stay in single sex dormitories Female guest workers had to sign treaties saying that they were not allowed to fall pregnant during their stay in. If they fell pregnant nevertheless they faced forced abortion or deportion. This is one of the reasons why the vast majority of ethnic minorities today lives in western Germany and also one of the reasons why minorities such as the Vietnamese have the most unusual population pyramid, with nearly all second generation Vietnamese Germans born after 1989.

In German statistics a person, who has at least one parent born abroad will be counted as a person with immigrant background. That is also the case if the other parent is German and the person himself or herself has been born in Germany and holds the German citizenship. If a person born in Germany holding the German citizenship, for example, has one German and one Korean parent, he or she will be counted "German with Korean immigrant background", "German with (East-)Asian immigrant background" or "Eurasian". Another category used is "East Asian including Eurasian".