# Humanities & Anthropology > History & Civilisations >  German communities in Eastern Europe

## Tomenable

> I've always been a bit surprised how separate the German communities in Eastern Europe remained.


Where do you have this info from?

Eastern Germans usually do not plot anywhere close to West Germans in PCA graphs. They have mixed a lot.

One known exception are Volga Germans, but it was a late migration, they settled in Russia in the 1700s. Most of them still plot close to South Germans (which is where most of Volga Germans originally came from in the 1700s).

It is also said that Baltic Germans in Latvia and Estonia remained separate, but I haven't seen their results.

In East Prussia for example it was a different situation than in Latvia, and huge mixing/assimilation took place.

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## davef

Droit de soignur, watz dat now u said? (Googling...)

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## davef

Droit du seigneur, also known as jus primae noctis, refers to a supposed legal right in medieval Europe, allowing feudal lords to have sexual relations with subordinate women, in particular, on their wedding nights. Some scholars believe the "right" might have existed in medieval Europe. Wikipedia

Oh uh....never learned that in school

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## Tomenable

> Droit du seigneur, also known as jus primae noctis, refers to a *supposed* legal right in medieval Europe, allowing feudal lords to have sexual relations with subordinate women, in particular, on their wedding nights. Some scholars believe the "right" might have existed in medieval Europe. Wikipedia
> 
> *Oh uh....never learned that in school*


Congrats, it means you had good, no BS type of teachers.

Ius primae noctis is a myth, no such thing ever existed, at least not apart from some isolated cases.

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## Angela

> Where do you have this info from?
> 
> Eastern Germans usually do not plot anywhere close to West Germans in PCA graphs. They have mixed a lot.
> 
> One known exception are Volga Germans, but it was a late migration, they settled in Russia in the 1700s. Most of them still plot close to South Germans (which is where most of Volga Germans originally came from in the 1700s).
> 
> It is also said that Baltic Germans in Latvia and Estonia remained separate, but I haven't seen their results.
> 
> In East Prussia for example it was a different situation than in Latvia, and huge mixing/assimilation took place.


A little cognitive dissonance perhaps? You're skeptical that they remained separate and then point out two situations where they remained separate. You can add the German communities in the Balkans. 

One of my closest friends comes from a family which lived in the former Yugoslavia for generations, and they are pretty vehement they never admixed, maintaining their own language, press, churches, etc. and never intermarried. According to the grandmother, after World War II they were terrorized and forced to leave, walking all the way back to Germany. They then went to the U.S., settling in Chicago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germans_of_Yugoslavia

Another friend (I seem to have a plethora of German descent friends, in addition to Italian and Jewish descent friends, now that I think about it) descends from a family that settled in Galicia, but again, she's insistent that they remained German and didn't intermarry. Again, they went to German schools apparently, had their own churches, etc. 

There are other groups in Eastern Europe you might want to investigate, including, of course, the Sudetenland Germans.

"
Sudetenland (Sudeten Germans)Transylvania (Transylvanian Saxons)Carpathian Mountains (Carpathian Germans)Memelland, Estonia and Latvia (Baltic Germans)Poland (_see History of Poland (966–1385)_)
Walddeutsche
Bulgaria (_see Germans in Bulgaria_)Slovenia"

"

"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_German_settlement_in_Central_and_Easter n_Europe

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## Angela

> Congrats, it means you had good, no BS type of teachers.
> 
> Ius primae noctis is a myth, no such thing ever existed, at least not apart from some isolated cases.


You have some nerve taking that tone and that position when it is still very much supported by certain scholars. Perhaps you should try not substituting agendas, pre-conceived ideas and sloppy scholarship for painstaking analysis and logical reflection.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_du_seigneur

You don't bother passing laws abolishing customs which never existed. 

For goodness' sakes, as if powerful men demanding sexual favors from women over whom they have power is a surprising occurrence!

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## bicicleur

> You have some nerve taking that tone and that position when it is still very much supported by certain scholars. Perhaps you should try not substituting agendas, pre-conceived ideas and sloppy scholarship for painstaking analysis and logical reflection.
> 
> See:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_du_seigneur
> 
> You don't bother passing laws abolishing customs which never existed. 
> 
> For goodness' sakes, as if powerful men demanding sexual favors from women over whom they have power is a surprising occurrence!


It is something from anciant times or even before.
I don't think it was a widespread practice.
Powerfull men had acces to many women anyway.

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## davef

> Congrats, it means you had good, no BS type of teachers.
> 
> Ius primae noctis is a myth, no such thing ever existed, at least not apart from some isolated cases.


Or it means I never had history courses beyond basic 101 back in college. Never got far in terms of history, and most of what I retained from school has to do with math and teh codez (programming)

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## Ailchu

> I think you're missing the obvious point that for most of recorded human history people really didn't have much choice when it came to mating. Until very recently in western Europe and I would bet in eastern Europe as well, if your family had any property whatsoever you married whom you were told to marry, where it would do the most good for your family. Nobody cared about your personal inclinations and whom you found attractive. 
> 
> Haven't you read Romeo and Juliet? That's only one example. A prime stock character in much of European comedy is the elderly, disgustingly lecherous rich old man married to a pretty teen age girl. You think she found him attractive? Chaucer is full of stories like that. 
> 
> As for the serfs, their choices were limited to the people on their lord's estate, and they had to get his permission to marry. In some benighted places the lord had the droit de seigneur and could sleep with any young girl he chose on her wedding night. You think anyone asked her if she was in agreement? 
> 
> Forty years ago, one of my distant cousins was told by her parents she couldn't marry the young man of her choice for absurd reasons. She almost had what used to be called a nervous breakdown before they relented. They didn't relent with her brother. He was married to a distant cousin, a very plain widow almost eight years older than he was in order to consolidate family holdings.
> 
> The problem with a lot of analysis that is done on topics like this is that young people, in particular, who don't have a very good grasp of the history of even a half century to a century ago, create these theories which never applied to life as it was actually lived, and is barely even a reflection of what goes on nowadays. 
> ...


well i also think there is a difference in sexual behaviour that was never the question. especially in the last few hundred years a man who had enough money just didn't care that much because he is not the one getting pregnant and it wont financially hurt him. though i do not want to generalize. and i don't think that this is just the way it is.

but why do we have sexual preferences? why did this develop and what is the evolutionary explanation? if men alwasy just mated with everything and did not have to decide it would make no sense. and i'm not talking about the last 500 years also not about the last 6000 years. more like the last 300000 years and beyond and not only with humans but also with other hominis. you can see similar things in other species that are way further away from us. birds, mammals and fish will pick mates that look similar to their parents. a sheep adopted by a goat mother will try to mate with goats when it is adult.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...-a6897006.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/6885270

"If different species are hybridizing, both sexual imprinting and learning to avoid heterospecifics during adulthood promote assortative mating and hence speciation."

"The role of behaviour and learning in completing the speciation process is relatively overlooked. In particular the evolution of sexual imprinting as a result of selection against hybridization warrants more study."

though its probably hard to show the reasons for assortative mating and if, when assortative mating exists, it is caused because individuals with favorable traits mate with individuals with similar traits while individuals with less favorable traits are left out and have no other choice than to mate with individuals with less favorable traits and not because they actually want to do so. when populations mix it would also be important to know if these traits are considered favorable not only inside a specific population but also inside many other populations. and if those traits have a similar distribution among populations. with humans, if traits are considered favorable just because of social imprinting.

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## Angela

I never meant to imply that people don't have sexual preferences. However, there are no rigid rules as to how it operates. While many people, me included, may find people of their own "genetic cluster" more attractive, some people are attracted to the exotic. Some "white" men are attracted to east Asian women, for example, while some women might be attracted to African men. Ever heard of "Othello"? :) They might not be the majority, but they exist. 

Likewise, yes, certain studies suggest people may be more attracted to people who have some resemblance to their opposite sex parent, although the replication crisis in social science studies should make everyone wary of relying too much on those studies. However, other people, me included again, seem to shy away from people who look too much like their opposite sex parent, while still having a very close bond with that parent. That's probably why I've never been very attracted to blonde men. 

You can't put people in boxes like this.

What I'm also saying is that when you look within a society, for example, for most of recorded history women, and even men in certain circumstances didn't have much choice. Economic considerations or familial concerns were often the priority. So how much was sexual selection a factor in selection in general?

Also, as I pointed out above, regardless of men's specific sexual preferences, many of the instances of mass admixture in human history involved predominantly male mediated migrations. (Women have never had a choice.) That's why you have such changes in the y chromosome while the mtDna remains the same. Look at the example of Latin America. In the beginning it was often just men. Therefore, they mated with the Amerindian women. Once Spanish and Portuguese women arrived, they were chosen for "marriage". How much of that was a "sexual" preference, and how much was an elite maintaining their elite status is difficult to disentangle. Regardless, the result was that even the "whitest" looking Latin Americans often have Native American mtDna, and some degree of autosomal Amerindian ancestry as well. However, do you think that stopped the more elite men with more European ancestry from mating with women of Amerindian or African descent? Have you ever looked at a crowd of Brazilians? How do you think African Americans wound up about 20% European? 

This is all much more complicated than you understand or want to understand. There is no biological imperative to keep races "pure", no matter what uneducated people might have told you, and even if there were, it is often overridden. Otherwise, there wouldn't be Uighurs, or North Africans, or South Asians or Mexicans or many other similar groups. 

If you think people from different countries are different species, there's nothing more to be said. 

I'm out.

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## Tomenable

*Angela,*




> There is no biological imperative to keep races "pure"



John R. Baker in his book "Race" wrote that in the animal kingdom races within the same species almost never mix, they are always attracted to their own race. Baker claimed that any attraction to "exotic" is cultural, not natural. This study seems to confirm:

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/...showall%3Dtrue

http://www.pulseheadlines.com/beauty...es-study/7387/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...1001125637.htm

Mixing disrupts the process of speciation/adaptation, it disrupts fine-tuned networks of genes.

For example if you mix a Congo Pygmy with a Nunavut Inuit, you will get offspring that is neither well adapted to tropical jungle environment, nor to arctic wasteland environment. Their mixed offspring will be poorly adapted to both parental environments.

Also for example not everyone can live at high altitudes in places like Tibet or Peru.

At high altitudes, it is not just about oxygen, also risk of skin cancer is much higher.

Mixed individuals report more health problems, more mental issues, can have difficulty with finding bone marrow donors, etc.

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## Tomenable

> One of my closest friends comes from a family which lived in the former Yugoslavia for generations, and they are pretty vehement they never admixed, maintaining their own language, press, churches, etc. and never intermarried.


Good. Tell them to buy a DNA test and we will see how much of their family legend is true.

For example I was also pretty vehement that I have R1a haplogroup, until I took DNA tests.

Autosomal tests for myself and my parents had some surprises as well.

Now I'm planning to test my maternal grandfather's brother. Wanna bet what will his Y-DNA be?

His surname is Meller. I suppose he will be R1a (since my surname is Slavic and I got R1b-DF27). :)

=====

*Edit:*

That said, it is far more likely - considering deep subclades and close matches - that my R1b is Scottish (there were plenty of Scots in Poland-Lithuania) or ancient Celtic (there was Celtic presence in Iron Age Poland), than that it is German.

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## Tomenable

> descends from a family that settled in Galicia, but again, she's insistent that they remained German and didn't intermarry


Here is a book about Albigowa (one of towns established by German settlers in Galicia in the late 1300s and 1400s, they were invited there by Polish King Casimir III, who wanted to increase population in sparsely populated areas such as the Jasło-Sanok Basin):

http://www.jerzy-ulman.neostrada.pl/...eusz_Ulman.pdf

By the 1500s they were all Polonized and forgot how to speak German, but surnames of German origin are still common among inhabitants.

The book written by Tadeusz Ulman. Many of the most common Polish (but of German origin) surnames among the town's population are mentioned (Ulman, Inglot, Cwynar, Nycz, Groelle, Szpunar, Lonc, Uchman, Bartman, Reizer, Rejman, Pelc, Kluz, Szajer, Szmuc, Preisner, Rydel, Falger, Bem, Tejchman, Bytnar, Ladenberger, etc.).

However you will notice that they have Polish given names (Stanisław Tejchman, Jerzy Ulman, Tadeusz Ulman, Józef Bem, etc.).

Another one (Nycz = Polonized Nitz) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_Nycz

Some of them also changed their surnames to more Polish-sounding ones, like Tadeusz Ładogórski (born Ladenberger):

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeus...adog%C3%B3rski

Sometimes surnames are clearly Slavic but Y-DNA not, because during most of the Middle Ages, surnames were not yet commonly used in this part of Europe (unlike for example in Ireland, where surnames were in common usage already back during the Dark Ages). So someone might be paternally descended from a German settler whose descendants became assimilated and later adopted a Slavic surname. This works the other way around as well - there are East Germans with super Germanic surnames, but typically Balto-Slavic Y-DNA subclades.

Many towns and villages in Galicia have names with German etymology. For example Łańcut (Landshut), Grybów (Grynberg), Albigowa (Helwigau), etc. On the other hand in East Germany you have many towns with names of Slavic origin (Rostock, Berlin, Neustrelitz, Krakow am See, etc.).

==========

Later - after 1772 - there was another wave of German settlers, so called Josephine colonization:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_colonization

Of those late settlers, some could indeed remain German and unmixed until emigration to the US.

But these are Germans who came in the late 1700s and 1800s, just like Volga Germans in Russia.

Bear in mind, that early settlers (1200s-1400s and later) came invited by the Poles (and only those who accepted the invitation moved to Poland), while those after 1772 came uninvited, as occupiers, after the Austrian partition of Poland. That said - at least to my knowledge - many of those late settlers also became Polonized over time.

Generally Galicia had a very low percentage of German-speakers according to the last census before WW1 (in 1910). There were far more Germans even in the Congress Kingdom, in the regions of Lublin (in what is now Eastern Poland) and Łódź (Central Poland), than in Galicia. In *Harvard's Human Origins dataset*, they have Lublin Polish samples, and some of them have recent German admixture, based on their results. Łódź Germans also have mixed with Poles (and maybe with Jews too).

On Eupedia there is one Polish user with substantial Galician German ancestry (I won't tell which one, but not me and not LeBrok).

On Anthrogenca there is one Polish user with 3/16 Łódź German ancestry, as well as one German user with some Łódź German ancestors and with one ethnically Polish great-grandfather, also from the same area.

By the way Łódź Germans came to that area mostly from Lower Silesia, so autosomally they were East Germans.

Someone who is 3/16 East German and 13/16 Polish still plots firmly with Poles in a PCA graph.

Someone 3/16 West German and 13/16 Polish would probably be more visibly western-shifted.

==========

Also *Angela Merkel* has both ethnically Prussian German ancestors, and ethnically Prussian Polish ancestors (including her grandfaher, whose original surname was Kaźmierczak, but he later Germanized it to Kasner after emigrating from Poznań to Berlin).

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## Tomenable

That book about the history of Albigowa is only in Polish.

Here is a book about Kargowa, which was also an ethnically mixed place. The difference is that Albigowa was a German community established deep inside continuous ethnically Polish and Polish-ruled territory (which is why it became assimilated so fast), while Kargowa was typical ethnic borderland. But this book is in German (and in Polish - each chapter in both languages) so more users will be able to read:

http://www.kargowa.pl/sites/default/...iony_19_03.pdf

The owners of Kargowa were the von Unruh family (link):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Unrug

^^^ 
Which is why another name of this town was Unruhstadt:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kargowa

The town had a Jewish community too (apart from German and Polish).

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## Tomenable

BONUS:

Some East Prussian WW1 casualties with "purely Germanic" blood:





Every town in the German Empire had a memorial to the fallen in WW1.

So you can check what surnames people typically had in which region.

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## Angela

> Here is a book about Albigowa (one of towns established by German settlers in Galicia in the late 1300s and 1400s, they were invited there by Polish King Casimir III, who wanted to increase population in sparsely populated areas such as the Jasło-Sanok Basin):
> 
> http://www.jerzy-ulman.neostrada.pl/...eusz_Ulman.pdf
> 
> By the 1500s they were all Polonized and forgot how to speak German, but surnames of German origin are still common among inhabitants.
> 
> The book written by Tadeusz Ulman. Many of the most common Polish (but of German origin) surnames among the town's population are mentioned (Ulman, Inglot, Cwynar, Nycz, Groelle, Szpunar, Lonc, Uchman, Bartman, Reizer, Rejman, Pelc, Kluz, Szajer, Szmuc, Preisner, Rydel, Falger, Bem, Tejchman, Bytnar, Ladenberger, etc.).
> 
> However you will notice that they have Polish given names (Stanisław Tejchman, Jerzy Ulman, Tadeusz Ulman, Józef Bem, etc.).
> ...


I'm going to try to explain my reasoning one more time. I don't know if there was actually more intermarriage in some of these German communities than they know or are willing to admit. The point is that for upwards of at least 250 years there were groups of "ethnic" Germans in Eastern European countries who spoke German as their primary language, sent their children to German language schools, had their own German language press, went to their own German language churches, in many cases Lutheran churches in contrast to the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Catholic people around them. Most importantly, they self-identified as "German", so much so that in Poland:

"After Nazi Germany's invasion of the Second Polish Republic in September 1939, many members of the German minority (around 25%[14]) joined the ethnic German paramilitary organisation _Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz. When the German occupation of Polandbegan, the Selbstschutz took an active part in Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles. Due to their pre-war interactions with the Polish majority, they were able to prepare lists of Polish intellectuals and civil servants whom the Nazis selected for extermination. The organisation actively participated and was responsible for the deaths of about 50,000 Poles.[15]"

"During the Nazi German occupation many citizens of German descent in Poland registered with the Deutsche Volksliste. Some were given important positions in the hierarchy of the Nazi administration, and some participated in Nazi atrocities, causing resentment towards German speakers in general. These facts were later used by the Allied politicians as one of the justifications for expulsion of the Germans.[35] The contemporary position of the German government is that, while the Nazi-era war crimes resulted in the expulsion of the Germans, the deaths due to the expulsions were an injustice.[36]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944%E2%80%9350)# View_of_German_minorities_as_potential_fifth_colum ns

_In the Sudetenland, many of them agitated to have it rejoined to Germany. The same was true in other areas.

I by no means approve of this attitude of the older people that intermarrying with the Slavs was somehow demeaning and that it never happened in their families. My friends, their grandchildren, also have an issue with it, but the attitudes existed whether it was to some extent hypocritical or not because there might have been some admixture in their own families. I also think that if there was admixture, the people involved would move out of the sphere of the German community and become part of the larger community.

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## Tomenable

*Angela,*

Czechs are actually hard to distinguish from East Germans (including Sudetenland Germans) in terms of autosomal DNA. How do you explain this? I'm not suggesting this must be due to recent mixture. After all RISE569 (labeled as "Early Czech Slav") already plots with modern Czechs, even though this sample is older than any German immigration to Bohemia (which started few centuries later).

Between Poles and Germans there is generally more autosomal difference.

But I've seen also Prussian* Germans on GEDmatch who overlap with Poles, often despite having all 16 great-great-grandparents with German surnames (this person has GEDCOM going back several generations - there are a few Polish surnames but they appear further back than great-great-grandparents).

*By Prussian I don't mean East Prussian, just anywhere from the 1800s Kingdom of Prussia.

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## Tomenable

> I by no means approve of this attitude of the older people


I'm more worried that many modern researchers also share this bias, and that it will have negative impact on genetic research about Slavic origins and migrations in the Early Midle Ages, and about the extent of Slavic ancestry in European populations, including East Germans. You can already see this attitude in genetic companies - 23andMe describes R1a as "Ashkenazi Jewish" rather than "Slavic" (even though it is only common among Ashkenazi Levites, and only one subclade of R1a, while among Europeans many subclades of R1a correlate with Slavic and Baltic ancestry much better). Living DNA counts East Germany as part of "Germanic" cluster, even though it is known that the area was Slavic in the Early Middle Ages, and Germans east of the Elbe harbour substantial Slavic admixture (we don't know exactly how much).

Just like there is a lot of interest in testing Migration Period and other ancient Germanic DNA, I don't see as much interest in testing Migration Period and Early Medieval Slavic samples, to determine what the Early Slavic genetics really was. And there is no shortage of ancient bones to collect DNA from.

For example in Germany they discovered this 800s-1000s Slavic cemetery with fully preserved skeletons:

https://www.wochenspiegel-web.de/aut...slawisches.jpg



Radiocarbon-dating showed that these graves date back to the 800s-1000s:



The location of burials is Niederwünsch near Leipzig, in Saxony-Anhalt:



======

Polish and Czech scientists are showing more interest in this subject.

They started testing 11th century Slavic samples from Czech Republic:

https://i.imgur.com/Lw48eyR.jpg

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## Tomenable

Account from a voyage by a Greek traveller - Laskaros Kananou - to Northern Germany *in years 1438-39:*





He wrote that near Lübeck there was a land where people spoke Slavic and it was called *Σθλαβουνία (Slavonia)*. How did he recognize that it was Slavic language? Well, he knew how Slavic languages sound, because he was Greek, and in parts of Greece there also lived Slavic-speakers.

Indeed, in parts of Holstein and of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Slavic continued to be used until the 1600s.

In Hanoverian Wendland (part of Lower Saxony), Polabian language died out in the late 1700s-1800s:

http://www.sharedlist.org/writing/Th...ny-589/?i=1963

In Lusatia (divided between Brandenburg and Saxony) you have Sorbs who still speak Slavic today.

==========

Extent of Polabian Slavic (in the north) and Sorbian Slavic (in the south) languages during the 1500s:



In the 1600s the area of Mecklenburgische Seenplatte (in Central Mecklenburg) was still Slavic-speaking:



After the war of 1618-1648 only Wendland continued to speak Polabian Slavic.

Wendland & Lusatia (where Sorbs live) suffered very low casualties in that war:

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## Tomenable

> "After Nazi Germany's invasion of the Second Polish Republic in September 1939, many members of the German minority (around 25%[14]) joined the ethnic German paramilitary organisation _Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz. When the German occupation of Poland began, the Selbstschutz took an active part in Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles. Due to their pre-war interactions with the Polish majority, they were able to prepare lists of Polish intellectuals and civil servants whom the Nazis selected for extermination. The organisation actively participated and was responsible for the deaths of about 50,000 Poles.[15]"_


This is very true, and one of my close relatives was also on that list, and was murdered in Piaśnica Wielka:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion_Pommern




But not just the Volksdeutsche were responsible, also German Abwehr which had agents (spies) in Poland.




> During the Nazi German occupation many citizens of German descent in Poland registered with the Deutsche Volksliste.


In some regions of Poland, many Polish people were forced to register with the Deutsche Volksliste.

For example Donald Tusk's grandfather was forcibly registered, even though he did not want to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Tusk

He was also later foricbly conscripted to the Wehrmacht. 

The Polish Army in the West was reinforced by thousands of Polish Wehrmacht deserters later on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish...es_in_the_West

1st Polish Armoured Division (gen. Maczek) recruited thousands of Afrika Korps veterans in 1943...

Poles served in the Wehrmacht, but not in the SS. There is even this "Band of Brothers" scene:  :Smile: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOSvLWK5Z2A#t=2m50s

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## Tomenable

> In the Sudetenland, many of them agitated to have it rejoined to Germany. The same was true in other areas.


Indeed (on the other hand, not all of Sudeten Germans agitated for that, and not all were happy about being "reunited" - I'm not even sure if the majority did). After WW1, American experts recommended that Sudetenland should be part of Czechoslovakia (and indeed it became part of it, because Great Britain had a Pro-Czechoslovak stance, just like the USA and France, in contrast to Britain's Anti-Polish attitude):

Here is their reasoning:

https://archive.org/stream/MyDiaryAt...n247/mode/2up/

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## Tomenable

And here is how American experts wanted to draw the border of independent Poland after 1918 (they wanted to give Poland *more favourable* borders than Poland got in reality, unfortunately Great Britain had a very Anti-Polish stance, and it opposed American and French opinions about Polish borders):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inquiry







Map (Danzig, all of Upper Silesia and parts of East Prussia with Polish-speaking population were to become Polish):



^^^
*Gdańsk*-Malbork-Iława-Działdowo-Mława-*Warsaw railway line* was to become Polish:



As was the Masurian Lake District which provides a border which is easy to defend:

The impact of the glacier on the evolution of terrain in Warmia-Masuria

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## Angela

Tomenable, I'm not an expert on Prussians. However, my impression has always been that the people of Prussia were always quite close to East Europeans genetically. They then were "Germanized", which included a genetic element, but also involved a pronounced cultural imposition. The same thing happened in the case of populations close to France, in parts of Switzerland, etc.

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## Joey37

I'm the opposite of Tomenable...I have a R1a-M458 Y haplogroup and zero Eastern Europe autosomal...also have a Polish last name, since my biological grandfather left the family when my Dad was six and Nana made her three sons take their new stepdad's last name. Looking at that Thirty Years' War map, the area where my male line comes from (northern Wurttemberg), my God, 66% or more killed! The poor Palatinate...

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## Tomenable

> my impression has always been that the people of Prussia were always quite close to East Europeans genetically


Ancient DNA is slowly revealing the genetic prehistory of the region. We already have several aDNA samples contemporary with the Lusatian culture, but all of them are from the fringes of that culture (it will be harder to find samples from the core area, because "Lusatians" practiced cremation):

https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map.../51.138/25.576

*Tollensetal* (Welzin) - DNA of warriors who died in battle *ca. 1250 BC*
*Turlojiske* - 3 samples dated to *1010-800, 930-810, 908-485 BC*
*Halberstadt* - 1 sample (I0099/HAL36C) dated to *1113-1020 BC*
*Bylany* - two Hallstatt culture samples dated to ca. *850-700 BC*

This map shows cultural (archaeological) situation around year *1200 BC*. In *Suchowola* a new Lusatian culture settlement dated to *800-500 BC* has been discovered recently, so it turns out that this culture extended even more to the north-east (the distance between Suchowola and Turlojiske is 90 km). *Chotyniec*, is a recently discovered Scythian settlement from *700-500 BC*:



According to one theory, the Lusatian culture could be a Pre-Proto-Slavic culture:

http://macedonia.kroraina.com/en/fds/fds_1.htm

*^^^ Map:*

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## Joey37

Okay. Sure.

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## mha

> Where do you have this info from?
> 
> Eastern Germans usually do not plot anywhere close to West Germans in PCA graphs. They have mixed a lot.
> 
> One known exception are Volga Germans, but it was a late migration, they settled in Russia in the 1700s. Most of them still plot close to South Germans (which is where most of Volga Germans originally came from in the 1700s).
> 
> It is also said that Baltic Germans in Latvia and Estonia remained separate, but I haven't seen their results.
> 
> In East Prussia for example it was a different situation than in Latvia, and huge mixing/assimilation took place.


Looking from semantic perspective, “communities” are known to others when they are distinctive … or, with other words, assimilated people are not communities. I believe there were more German migrants to Slavic lands, but are now without special German identity, so not known to everybody.

Why some communities kept their original identity? As it was already told, some migrations were relatively recent, people entered into nationalistic era more homogenous, and from then on, they cultivated their tradition/language. I suppose the number of group members is also relevant, more is obviously better than less.

Environmental conditions could also play a factor here, as migrants were often transferred to less populated, and less hostile environments. One local example from Slovenia are Kočevarji, who were settled in the heart of huge forest area, so they stayed isolated until 20th century.

----------


## mha

More hostile ... not less :)

----------


## martinmkp

This topic is a very nice... although interrupted with several off-topic notes :)

I can not comment Eastern Europe, but in medieval Central European Slovakia, that time called Upper Hungary and fully integrated into Habsburg Empire, it is believed that 20% inhabitants were Germans, 20% Hungarians and 60% Slavs, mostly Slovaks in modern term. 

Hungarians occupied southern Slovak lowlands mostly and have been there continuously up till now (still around 10% of population of modern Slovakia). 

Germans, or Karpatendeutsche, occupied three important islands for Centuries: Small Carpathians Area, Central Slovakian Mountains (Gold, Silver and Copper mines), and Zipser Region (now called Spis). They immigrated to Slovakia (Upper Hungary) from mostly Frankenland and later Old Bavaria through Danube river (started around 1000 and increased around 1300) and from Sachsen and Schlesien regions (through Krakow-Krakau territory). 
Recently, there were strong immigration (18-19 Century) from Schwaben territory.

Germans were a very significant linguistic and cultural separate group in what is called today Slovakia. They had their own culture, different from other ethnic groups (including fe daily dress- cloth etc). 

Genetically, they intermarried with Slovaks in those three regions, but strictly kept their own culture and traditions. If there would not be a forcible expultion after WWII (in 1946 mostly), they would certainly kept their cultural phenomena till nowadays.

Many Slovaks I personally know who have had their German roots and now are associated with Slovak culture, are today very proud of their German roots and are keeping them partially alive. It is a very pity that so called Deutschtum has dissapeared in Slovak territories due to after war period and due to lack of interest from Germany to keep theirs cultural heritage outside of DE borders. I think the approach of Germany to its own cultural heritage in Slovakia is very regrettable and their null to zero interest in everything German outside of their own borders is historically unexcusable.

I would predict that genetically, there are still strong German - influenced "population islands" in Slovakia. It is due to strong genetic traces (even after the expultion of majority of German language populations) of Germans in those three regions.

My personal example: 
Quarter of my genofond is coming from Schlesien-Preussen (19 Century immigration to Slovakia from Reinerz), culturally Germans, no known Czech or Polish intermarriages.
Quarter of the genofond is coming from Small Carpathian German cities ladies who were very happy to marry our Croatian- Slovak little noble family working for Habsburgs as from early 1600 (no Hungarian marriages). And I have also those Zipser Germans from Kneissen in my blood. 
Genetically? Of course absolut mixture of Slavic-Germanic roots with an autosomal affinity (only theoretical) to Grenzmark, Lusitian Sorbs, Czechs, Brandenburg, Volga Germans, Carpathia, Polish Silesia and many more :). 
Jokingly, it is still better mix as that of my proudly Germanic Ost-Austrian friends who did inherit from their Hungarian, Czech, Croatian, Slovenian, Krakauer, Sudetenlander etc etc forefathers :). And now they vote for Ultraright movements (to be frank, I understand those genetically mixed folks as well why they are so prudent).

In this topic, I would say that Angela as well as Tomenable are right in their conclutions. If we stop thinking too "Germanic" or too "Slavic", we shall sooner or later conclude on our proudly mixed blood in Central Europe from Pommern through Preussen to Pannonia. Is not it beautiful? only fool makes borders. I still insist there are and never were (with very few exceptions) borders between East and West on Elbe river :).

I only would be happy if we stop thinking too Slavic or too Germanic and will research more deeply our earlier Indo-European and pre Indo-European roots. Beeing R1b does not mean being "Celtic" and being R1a M458 does not mean being proud Polish Slav. It is older. It is good for rough understanding of population genetics but not for deeper thinking of our origins. We should look at ourselves from above not from inside, as we are practicing now.

----------


## Tomenable

> I'm the opposite of Tomenable...I have a R1a-M458 Y haplogroup and zero Eastern Europe autosomal...also have a Polish last name, since my biological grandfather left the family when my Dad was six and Nana made her three sons take their new stepdad's last name. Looking at that Thirty Years' War map, the area where my male line comes from (northern Wurttemberg), my God, 66% or more killed! The poor Palatinate...


How exactly do you know that you have "zero Eastern Europe" autosomal DNA?

As for me, all tests give me mixed autosomal signatures, Eastern and Western.

But I have not tried 23andMe (and probably I won't, since v4 was a better chip and they replaced it with a worse product for the same price - if it is still possible to order v4 then I'm willing to order it). In any case 23andMe claims to report your ancestry only from the last 500 years, so scoring 0% Eastern at 23andMe does not mean that you have zero Eastern, only that you have zero Eastern after year 1500 AD.

The best tool for "racial admixtures" (rather than "geographical ancestry") is GEDmatch.

----------


## Angela

I don't think it's at all unusual for South-central and South-west Europeans to score no East European. The highest I've ever gotten for that specific component is .63 on a Eurogenes calculator, and he sets them up to show more East Euro.

That's in addition to my genealogical tree, which tells me I don't have any in the last almost 600 years.

----------


## Tomenable

If you talk about Dodecad V3 then this component called East Euro there is actually specifically Baltic (Lithuanian, Latvian).

That's why even Russians score more West Euro than East Euro in this calculator, because they are predominantly Slavic.

Here is my result for example:

Population 
East_European 28.79
West_European 42.87
Mediterranean 18.88
Neo_African - 
West_Asian 8.71
South_Asian 0.41
Northeast_Asian - 
Southeast_Asian - 
East_African - 
Southwest_Asian 0.29
Northwest_African - 
Palaeo_African -

And here is my mother's:

Population 
East_European	27.04
West_European	44.37
Mediterranean	17.65
Neo_African	- 
West_Asian	6.87
South_Asian	0.91
Northeast_Asian	0.38
Southeast_Asian	- 
East_African	- 
Southwest_Asian	2.52
Northwest_African	0.26
Palaeo_African	- 

=====

The highest I have ever seen is this Lithuanian politician and genetic genealogist: M434508

He scores:

Population 
East_European 67.60
West_European 24.71
Mediterranean 7.69
Neo_African - 
West_Asian - 
South_Asian - 
Northeast_Asian - 
Southeast_Asian - 
East_African - 
Southwest_Asian - 
Northwest_African - 
Palaeo_African - 

I think I can post the kit number because he is a public figure, but remove it if you prefer.

----------


## Tomenable

> Eurogenes calculator, *and he sets them up to show more East Euro.*


I don't think so.

On the other hand, many Russians and Belarusians score more West Euro than East Euro on Dodecad V3 (made by Dienekes). And I don't know what is his Polish reference in Oracle, but 90% of Poles don't get Polish in Single Population Sharing there, so his Polish average is "off".

I for example get Slovenian in Dodecad V3 as my 1st population (while in all of Eurogenes calculators I get Polish 1st). Poles from Suwałki (North-Eastern Poland) do get Polish in Dodecad V3, but in Eurogenes they get Lithuanian (and rightly so, because they are mostly Slavicized Balts).

Suwałki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suwa%C5%82ki

This "Baltic genetic signature" in Poles extends also over the region of Mazovia, as far as Warsaw at least.

Poles from Warsaw are also used in all genetic studies, because it is our capital city.

But a more representative of "typical Pole" would actually be a sample from Cracow, because Southern Poland is the most densely populated part of Poland (and it has been like this since the 1700s - before that, in the 1500s, Kuyavia in North-Central Poland had been the most densely populated part).

=====

My Oracle for Dodecad V3 (Mixed Mode is similar to my DNA Land "North Slavic" and "NW Euro" percentages):

Single Population Sharing:

# Population (source) Distance
*1 Slovenian (Xing) 7.95*
2 Hungarians (Behar) 8.29
3 German (Dodecad) 14.39
4 Polish (Dodecad) 16.77
5 Mixed_Slav (Dodecad) 17.19
6 FIN (1000Genomes) 17.89
7 N._European (Xing) 19.68
8 Argyll (1000 Genomes) 19.79
9 CEU (HapMap) 19.84
10 Balkans (Dodecad) 20.07
11 Orcadian (HGDP) 20.77
12 Finnish (Dodecad) 20.83
13 Orkney (1000 Genomes) 20.91
14 Russian (Dodecad) 22.3
15 Romanians_14 (Behar) 24.15
16 Russian (HGDP) 25.69
17 Swedish (Dodecad) 26.02
18 Mixed_Germanic (Dodecad) 26.24
19 French (Dodecad) 27.36
20 French (HGDP) 27.74

Mixed Mode Population Sharing:

# Primary Population (source) Secondary Population (source) Distance
1 60.5% Mixed_Slav (Dodecad) + 39.5% Mixed_Germanic (Dodecad) @ 2.09
2 53.6% Mixed_Slav (Dodecad) + 46.4% Argyll (1000 Genomes) @ 2.27
3 53.4% Mixed_Slav (Dodecad) + 46.6% N._European (Xing) @ 2.5
4 62.1% Mixed_Slav (Dodecad) + 37.9% Dutch (Dodecad) @ 2.64
5 54.8% Mixed_Slav (Dodecad) + 45.2% Orcadian (HGDP) @ 2.68
6 53.6% Mixed_Slav (Dodecad) + 46.4% CEU (HapMap) @ 2.71
7 55% Mixed_Slav (Dodecad) + 45% Orkney (1000 Genomes) @ 2.73
8 54.6% German (Dodecad) + 45.4% Mixed_Slav (Dodecad) @ 2.76
9 63.7% Mixed_Slav (Dodecad) + 36.3% Kent (1000 Genomes) @ 2.85
10 65.5% Mixed_Slav (Dodecad) + 34.5% Cornwall (1000 Genomes) @ 3.06
11 61.2% Polish (Dodecad) + 38.8% Mixed_Germanic (Dodecad) @ 3.06
12 52% Mixed_Germanic (Dodecad) + 48% Belorussian (Behar) @ 3.12
13 65% Mixed_Slav (Dodecad) + 35% British (Dodecad) @ 3.24
14 53% CEU (HapMap) + 47% Russian (Dodecad) @ 3.29
15 54.1% Polish (Dodecad) + 45.9% N._European (Xing) @ 3.3
16 59.2% Argyll (1000 Genomes) + 40.8% Belorussian (Behar) @ 3.3
17 59.3% N._European (Xing) + 40.7% Belorussian (Behar) @ 3.32
18 64.6% Mixed_Slav (Dodecad) + 35.4% British_Isles (Dodecad) @ 3.34
19 54.3% Polish (Dodecad) + 45.7% Argyll (1000 Genomes) @ 3.35
20 74.2% Slovenian (Xing) + 25.8% Finnish (Dodecad) @ 3.52

----------


## Angela

> If you talk about Dodecad V3 then this component called East Euro there is actually specifically Baltic (Lithuanian, Latvian).
> 
> That's why even Russians score more West Euro than East Euro in this calculator, because they are predominantly Slavic.
> 
> Here is my result for example:
> 
> Population 
> East_European 28.79
> West_European 42.87
> ...


Tomenable, I specifically said: that specific cluster and in an EUROGENES calculator, to wit, Eurogenes EU test.

----------


## Tomenable

Anyway. As you probably know I'm helping Maciamo with regions for One Family One World Project, specifically Polish Regions:

https://www.eupedia.com/images/desig...NA_project.png

I did a lot of research before drawing the borders of these 15 regions that are currently there (actually we are thinking about updating it to 18, but these 3 additional regions would be very small, and the number of samples they have to date is far from impressive, so maybe there is no point in creating more regions if it will be hard to obtain even few good samples from each). Borders of regions are drawn along year 1900 county borders. Here is the proposed update to 18 regions (new regions would be West Polesia, East Lusatia and Lublin Land split from Lesser Poland):

https://i.imgur.com/SgsPDFM.png - map shows pre-1914 county borders

I also calculated total population for each region down to county level around year 1900, as well as % of ethnic Polish population.

Every single region had substantial minorities, be it Jewish, German or other (East Slavic, Lithuanian, etc.).

4 regions were basically German-speaking with only small Polish minorities - Lower Silesia, Neumark, Pomerania and Oberland.

The remaining 11 regions can be considered predominantly Polish/Slavic (including Warmia-Masuria, but those Polish-speakers in Masuria were mostly Lutherans rather than Roman Catholics, and many of them were German-identified despite most likely being genetically Slavic).

The highest % of ethnic Poles was in the region of Lesser Poland - 86% of the total population.

Anyway, if we go by ethnic Polish population (numbers for around year 1900) only:

1. Western regions*** had *4.1 million* ethnic Poles
2. Southern regions**** had *5.6 million* ethnic Poles
3. North-East regions***** had *3.0 million* ethnic Poles
4. Central Poland region had *1.0 million* ethnic Poles

***Greater Poland, North Poland, Kashubia, Upper Silesia
****Lesser Poland, Polish Mountains and Red Ruthenia
*****Masovia, Sudovia-Podlachia and Warmia-Masuria

So as I said, Southern Poland was the most densely populated. Despite this, all genetic studies (such as Behar's studies) collect autosomal DNA from North-East Poland. Which means that what we currently know about Polish genetics represents only some part of variation.

All in all, there were ca. 14 million ethnic Poles within present-day borders of Poland in year 1900. And 20 million in total in the world.

As you know we were divided between three Empires - Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian.

If we go by borders of empires, then the distribution of ethnic Polish population was as follows:

*1. Russian Empire: ca. 9.9 million*, including:

Within present-day Poland: 7.4 million
In the rest of the Empire: 2.5 million

*2. German Empire: ca. 4.0 million*, including:

Within present-day Poland: 3.6 million
Diaspora in West Germany: 0.4 million (this included huge Polish migration to *Ruhrgebiet*)

*3. Austro-Hungarian Empire: ca. 3.8 million*, including:

Within present-day Poland: 2.8 million
In the rest of the Empire: 1.0 million

So the Russian Empire had almost 10 million (7.4 million within present-day borders of Poland and 2.5 million mostly in what is now Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia), the German Empire had 4 million (3.6 within present-day Poland and 0.4 mostly in West Germany - particularly Ruhr Gebiet) and the Austro-Hungarian Empire had 3.8 million (2.8 within present-day Southern Poland, and around 1 million elsewhere - mostly in what is now West Ukraine and Czech Silesia). The lines between what constituted an ethnic Pole and what constituted a Roman Catholic Belarusian or Lithuanian could be blurred in eastern regions, though - it depended on self-identity, national consciousness.

*4. Outside of Europe (Polish Diaspora in 1900):*

4a. The United States: ca. 1.9 million - this figure is from Wacław Kruszka, it includes only Roman Catholics
4b. South America: ca. 0.1 million
4c. Rest of the world: at least 0.3 million

Wacław Kruszka - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wac%C5%82aw_Kruszka

=====

Well, there were also Polish communities in France, etc. I don't know how numerous they were back in year 1900.

Modern numbers can be found on Wikipedia (Polish Diaspora is estimated at 20-22 million, half of it in the USA):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...#Ethnic_groups

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs#Population

----------


## Tomenable

BTW, what about Jewish samples for One Family One World Project?

I've heard that they are not accepting Jewish-admixed people for European Projects. Not sure if true.

They will probably launch a separate "Jewish Diaspora Project" later?

----------


## Tomenable

> I specifically said: that specific cluster and in an EUROGENES calculator, to wit, Eurogenes EU test.


My results in Eurogenes EU test:

Population 
SOUTH_BALTIC 29.06
*EAST_EURO 17.12*
NORTH-CENTRAL_EURO 20.50
ATLANTIC 15.83
WEST_MED 8.02
EAST_MED 5.29
WEST_ASIAN 4.17
MIDDLE_EASTERN - 
SOUTH_ASIAN - 
EAST_AFRICAN - 
EAST_ASIAN - 
SIBERIAN - 
WEST_AFRICAN - 

When you look at the Oracle Spreadsheet, this admixture peaks in Udmurts, who are a Finno-Ugric group. Average Udmurt has 32.37, Erzya 31.58, Komi 30.94, Selkup 28.91, East Finnish 27.81, North Russian 31.82.

South Baltic admixture looks actually more Slavic, and is even common in Ukraine (30.43 in the Spreadsheet).

----------


## Tomenable

Maybe when we actually get Ancient Slavic (I mean Migration Period Slavic) samples, it will be possible to design a calculator with Slavic admixture, just like JTest has Ashkenazi admixture.

But I'm not sure about it, Ashkenazi admixture in JTest was possible mainly because they are a bottlenecked population.

I don't think that Slavs are also so bottlenecked, even though you would expect it considering that they basically "emerged from nowhere" in the 6th century AD (indicating that their number was probably initially small and they were breeding fast during expansion).

We need ancient samples to get relatively "unmixed" Proto-Slavs because during expansion they assimilated populations.

Slavs also assimilated Balts, who had been genetically similar to begin with, so this assimilation might not be easily detectable in DNA.

----------


## Angela

The J test is ludicrously bad, imo. It's practically malpractice to leave it up at gedmatch.

----------


## Tomenable

> The J test is ludicrously bad, imo. It's practically malpractice to leave it up at gedmatch.


Why do you think so?

----------


## davef

> Why do you think so?


Ashkenazi only score about 26 percent ashkenazi on that test. To me that's very odd, especially since most ashkenazi are pretty much the same genetically.

----------


## Tomenable

Relevant is rather the Oracle, not admixtures, though.

----------


## Tomenable

Davidski kind of admits that this test is not perfect (but is there any better test for Ashkenazi ancestry?).

He wrote:

"*Update 19/03/2018*: It's come to my attention that many people are still using the Jtest and taking the results very seriously. Indeed, perhaps too seriously.

Also, some users are doing weird stuff with the Jtest output in an attempt to estimate their supposedly "true" Ashkenazi ancestry proportions, like multiplying their Ashkenazi coefficient by three, because Ashkenazi Jews "only" score around 30% Ashkenazi in this test. Ouch! Please don't do that!

Let me reiterate that this test was only supposed to be a fun experiment. It was never meant to be the definitive online Ashkenazi ancestry test. And even as fun experiments with ADMIXTURE go, it's now horribly outdated, and probably useless for anyone with less than 15-20% Ashkenazi ancestry."

==========

Here is my father's result in JTest (despite 4% AJ admixture, Oracle gives none):

Admix Results (sorted):

# Population Percent
1 SOUTH_BALTIC 27.65
2 NORTH-CENTRAL_EURO 19.72
3 EAST_EURO 17.99
4 ATLANTIC 15.06
5 WEST_MED 7.23
*6 EAST_MED 5.71
7 ASHKENAZI 4.45*
8 WEST_ASIAN 1.93
9 EAST_AFRICAN 0.25

Oracle:

Mixed Mode Population Sharing:

# Primary Population (source) Secondary Population (source)  Distance
1 51.7% AT + 48.3% LIT @ 2.35
2 59.1% Belorussian + 40.9% AT @ 2.53
3 89.8% PL + 10.2% Tuscan @ 2.59
4 76.8% PL + 23.2% AT @ 2.61
5 88.9% PL + 11.1% PT @ 2.71
6 88.7% PL + 11.3% North_Italian @ 2.75
7 87.4% PL + 12.6% FR @ 2.87
8 89.8% PL + 10.2% ES @ 2.93
9 51.5% Northwest_Russian + 48.5% AT @ 2.94
(...)
14 82.4% PL + 17.6% Serbian @ 3.1
*15 92.2% PL + 7.8% South_Italian_&_Sicilian @ 3.12*
16 79.7% Belorussian + 20.3% Tuscan @ 3.13
17 79.5% UA + 20.5% NL @ 3.14
18 84.7% PL + 15.3% West_&_Central_German @ 3.17
19 77.3% Belorussian + 22.7% North_Italian @ 3.17
20 71.5% LIT + 28.5% Tuscan @ 3.21

4-Ancestors:

Using 2 populations approximation:
1 50% AT +50% LIT @ 2.721473

Using 3 populations approximation:
1 50% AT +25% Belorussian +25% LIT @ 2.673144

Using 4 populations approximation:
1 AT + AT + Belorussian + LIT @ 2.673144
2 AT + AT + LIT + LIT @ 2.721473
3 AT + AT + LIT + Northwest_Russian @ 2.760451
4 Belorussian + EE + LIT + Tuscan @ 2.767850
5 EE + EE + LIT + Tuscan @ 2.791048
6 AT + Belorussian + HU + LIT @ 2.823594
7 AT + LIT + LIT + Serbian @ 2.837335
8 EE + LIT + LIT + Tuscan @ 2.838456
9 AT + PL + PL + UA @ 2.924006
10 LIT + LIT + South_Finnish + Tuscan @ 2.928062
11 DK + LIT + LIT + RO @ 2.970933
12 LIT + LIT + RO + West_&_Central_German @ 2.976469
13 AT + PL + PL + PL @ 2.978255
14 EE + LIT + Northwest_Russian + Tuscan @ 2.991933
15 LIT + LIT + Serbian + West_&_Central_German @ 3.034988
16 AT + Belorussian + PL + PL @ 3.051656
17 LIT + LIT + NL + RO @ 3.059873
18 AT + HU + LIT + PL @ 3.074710
19 AT + PL + UA + UA @ 3.079765
20 EE + LIT + PL + Tuscan @ 3.099466

----------


## Tomenable

Another problem is Sephardic. 

Full Sephardic Jews only score ca. 7% Ashkenazi in JTest (not even close to 26%).

Contrary to stereotypes, a lot of Jews in Northern Europe were actually Sephardic.

Recently I learned, that German Jews can be not only Ashkenazi but also Sephardic:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...0053-0238a.pdf

*"Sephardic Jews in Germany*

In the 1930s when German Jews were trying to obtain
immigration visas to other countries to escape Nazi
persecution, they were told at Spanish consulates in
Germany that, if they could prove they were descended
from Iberian Jews who had been expelled from Spain or
Spanish Portugal after 1492, then they were very welcome
to return to the land of their forebears. Even as
late as the 20th century, many German Jews were aware
that one or more of their ancestors had come from the
Iberian Peninsula; for example, the head of the Ullstein
publishing house, Leopold Ullstein, the banker Max
Warburg, the shipping magnate Albert Ballin, as well as
the great German poet Heinrich Heine were able to
trace their ancestry back to one or more Jews born in
Seville, Lisbon, Porto, Toledo, and elsewhere (Kruse
and Engelmann 1992). *There were about 300,000 Jews
in Spain and Portugal in 1490 (Baron 1967) who had to
either emigrate or become Christians; the majority emigrated*
and settled, at least temporarily, in Muslim
countries. In 1490 there were about 80,000 Jews in the
Holy Roman Empire, i.e., Germany, Austria, the Low
Countries, and Switzerland. When Protestantism became
victorious in the north of the Holy Roman Empire,
many Sephardic Jews left the Muslim countries, as
well as France and Italy (especially Venice), for the
north, at the invitation of the Protestant rulers there.
Since they had knowledge of the Arabic number system,
the most advanced Arabic medical practices, and,
usually, more than three or four languages, they were
very welcome as physicians, jurists, bankers, and tradesmen.
*Even if only 10% of the original Iberian Jews
went to Germany (many via Amsterdam, Venice, or
Antwerp), they constituted in 1648 about 30% of the
Jewish population.* Since their standard of living and
their practice of most medical advances were much superior
to those of the Ashkenazi Jews, their percentage
in the German Jewry must have increased until the German
Jewry were emancipated circa 1848.
A survey conducted recently by myself among
readers of the German-Jewish New York weekly AUFBAU
revealed that a substantial number of its readers
knew that they were descendants of Iberian Jews who
had settled in diverse regions of Germany under Protestant
control. *Thus it seems advisable that, in genetic
studies on gene geography, studies comparing Sephardic
with Ashkenazi Jews should not include German
Jews among the latter."*

----------


## StevenEvans

check ithttp://www.omniglot.com/language/art...ikeanative.htm

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## CrazyDonkey

Who we "wed" and who we "bed" are often not one and the same. A great deal of admixture happened on the sly. More than just a few southern gentlemen, although zealously protective of their filial line, developed a taste for "brown sugar". No "color line" is impervious to gene flow, although the flow is more likely to be in one direction than the other.

----------


## mihaitzateo

> Where do you have this info from?
> 
> Eastern Germans usually do not plot anywhere close to West Germans in PCA graphs. They have mixed a lot.
> 
> One known exception are Volga Germans, but it was a late migration, they settled in Russia in the 1700s. Most of them still plot close to South Germans (which is where most of Volga Germans originally came from in the 1700s).
> 
> It is also said that Baltic Germans in Latvia and Estonia remained separate, but I haven't seen their results.
> 
> In East Prussia for example it was a different situation than in Latvia, and huge mixing/assimilation took place.


Mr Tormenable, German communities from Eastern Europe (including those from Romania) were not only East Germans.
In Romania, before 1945, we had lots of German, which were mostly Saxons or in German _Siebenbürger Sachsen.
_Highly doubt these Sachsen people were from Eastern Germany.
Simple proof that Transylvania Saxons are actually related to old Saxons from Germany, so quite close to Dutch and British people:
https://www.transylvaniansaxon.com/d...-of-discovery/
Their paternal lines:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2008/07...an-saxons.html

----------


## Tomenable

When it comes to Germans from Romania and Hungary I have only seen some Danube Swabian results, but not Transylvanian Saxon so far. Anyway you need a bigger sample size than 1 (or actually 1/2 considering that person claims to be only 50% of this ancestry) before drawing conclusions.

----------


## mihaitzateo

Swabs were few in Romania, and those, as their names tell, were from Bavaria.
Saxons, as their name tells, were from NW Germany.
Were, because a lot of them left Romania during Bolshevik times.
We had like 745.000 Germans, mostly Saxons ,in Romania, before 1945.
A lot of Saxons were brought as colonists in Muntenia.

----------


## 50cal

I don't know an awful lot about German communities in Eastern Europe, but I will share a couple of things regarding the Baltendeutsche.

Essentially, Latvia and Estonia was ruled by a German nobility for almost 600 years in a row. Even though technically a part of some other entity for extended periods of time (be it the Swedish or Russian empire), the German rule was continuous and uninterrupted up until the period of national awakening in the 19th century and more stringent Russian demands in the late 19th century.

Due to the Swedish approach to schooling, most ethnic Latvians and Estonians were literate already by mid-17th century despite having almost no rights whatsoever. This however led to a lot of lowly serfs actively looking for a place in cities and towns. As Latvians were not allowed to live or work there, they took up German names and switched to German in daily use. In effect, there was quite a lot of 'upwards mobility' through Germanization. 

There was quite a lot of interbreeding, in other words, despite it being a closed community. That was also the case in the interbellum period when the Germans were just a natural part of the Latvian society, just like the Swedes in Finland are right now.

Curiously enough, this led to Baltic Germans not being deemed 'Aryan' automatically and they had to undergo additional checks during the Nazi rule. The irony of it all being that one of the chief Nazi racial ideologues - Alfred Rosenberg - was a Baltic German himself, and he had an ethnic Latvian grandfather to top it all off.

Even though they were deported from Latvia and Estonia, several thousand still remain here. But they mostly speak Latvian or Estonian.

I'm not sure if their contribution to the Latvian genome is very significant, though. A slightly increased R1b rate, maybe.

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## Tomenable

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A study about historical marriage patterns in an area which was a Polish-German ethnic borderland and also mixed Catholic-Lutheran:

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...e_20th_century

*Abstract:*

The aim of this study is to characterize marriage patterns in a rural parish of Trzebosz in the borderland between Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) and Silesia in the years 18551913. A total of 343 data on marriages were gathered from the parish registers. The percentage of LutheranCatholic marriages was calculated. The distribution of age at marriage by martial status was assessed. The intensity of endogamy and exogamy was calculated as well as the coefficients of exogamy and biological polygamy. The annual rhythm of marriages was determined. In Trzebosz mixed marriages accounted for 3.94% in 18551899 and 14% in 19001913. The average age of brides and grooms was 25.36 and 26.22 years, while of widows and widowers they were 37.26 and 42.35 years, respectively. The average age of brides and grooms declined over time. In 18551899 the levels of endogamy and exogamy outside the parish were 19% and 81%, respectively. In 19001913 exogamy outside the parish decreased to 62%, while endogamy increased to 37%. The average mating distances for all marriages and exogamous ones were 24 and 42 km, respectively, in 18551899, while for 19001913 the respective figures were 7.4 and 8.7 km. The coefficient of exogamy declined from 0.78 in 18551899 to 0.67 in 19001913, while the coefficient of biological polygamy grew from 1.19 to 1.30 between those periods. The religious factor, apart from an economic strategy, shaped the annual rhythm of marriage. The outflow of the parishioners from Trzebosz in the early 20th century led to its ageing.

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Trzebosz is located near Rawicz, at the border between Wielkopolska and Lower Silesia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trzebosz

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