Many places in Central Europe, mostly in the former German Empire and Austria-Hungary but now in non-German-speaking countries, traditionally had names in the German language. Many such names have been used for centuries by the German presence in the area dating back to Ostsiedlung, while some others were simply German transliterations of local names or names invented in the 19th and 20th centuries.
In some cases, especially in Eastern Central Europe, towns or cities were inhabited by significant numbers of members of two or more ethnic groups, including Germans. As long as the places were part of Germany or Austria-Hungary, these German names were used invariably in German – and usually in English and most other languages too – while the local Slavic, Magyar, or Romanian inhabitants used their own names for the places in question.
After World War II, when the German population of this region was largely expelled, the German names gradually fell into disuse in German and other languages, especially for the minor towns. New Slavic names were adopted to replace names of German origin. In Poland, the Commission for the Determination of Place Names determined new names throughout the newly acquired lands, most often by reverting to a previous Slavic name, but often inventing new names.
German names of major cities like Danzig, Königsberg or Breslau are still recognizable and frequently used in Germany (Danzig about half the time; Breslau somewhat less). In only a few cases, the use of the German name persists invariably, i.e. in the case of capital cities like Prague or Warsaw, which are almost exclusively referred to by their German names (Prag, Warschau), just as they have separate names in English and other languages.
Wortschatz-Datenbank, a page listing the usage of words in German newspapers; searches for old German names of now-Polish cities show that most of their use is in historical contexts, while the Polish names are generally used when reference is made to the present-day cities
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Dual Monarchy, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War and was dissolved shortly after its defeat in the First World War.
Ruthenia is an exonym, originally used in Medieval Latin as one of several terms for Kievan Rus', Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia, and, after their collapse, for East Slavic and Eastern Orthodox regions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, corresponding to what is now Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Krajina is a Slavic toponym, meaning 'frontier' or 'march'. The term is related with kraj or krai, originally meaning "edge" and today denoting a region or province, usually distant from the metropole.
Prussia is a historical region in Europe on the south-eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, that ranges from the Vistula delta in the west to the end of the Curonian Spit in the east and extends inland as far as Masuria. Tacitus's Germania is the oldest known record of an eyewitness account on the territory and its inhabitants. Pliny the Elder had already confirmed that the Romans had navigated into the waters beyond the Cimbric peninsula (Jutland). Suiones, Sitones, Goths and other Germanic people had temporarily settled to the east and west of the Vistula River during the Migration Period, adjacent to the Aesti, who lived further to the east.
Wilamowice is a rural town in southern Poland, situated in the Bielsko County, Silesian Voivodeship. The town is inhabited by a Germanic ethnic group of Vilamovians, who speak highly endangered Wymysorys language.
Cisleithania, officially The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council, was the northern and western part of Austria-Hungary, the Dual Monarchy created in the Compromise of 1867—as distinguished from Transleithania. This name for the region was a common, but unofficial one.
The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye was signed on 10 September 1919 by the victorious Allies of World War I on the one hand and by the Republic of German-Austria on the other. Like the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary and the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, it contained the Covenant of the League of Nations and as a result was not ratified by the United States but was followed by the US–Austrian Peace Treaty of 1921.
Europe, the westernmost portion of Eurasia—is often divided into regions and subregions based on geographical, cultural or historical criteria. Many European structures currently exist. Some are cultural, economic, or political; examples include the Council of Europe, the European Broadcasting Union with the Eurovision Song Contest, and the European Olympic Committees with the European Games. Russia dominates the continent by both area and population; spanning roughly 40% of its total landmass, with over 15% of its total population.
Walhaz is a reconstructed Proto-Germanic word meaning 'Roman', 'Romance-speaker' or '(romanized) Celt', and survives in English as 'Welsh'. The term was used by the ancient Germanic peoples to describe inhabitants of the former Roman Empire, who were largely romanised and spoke Latin languages. The adjectival form is attested in Old Norse valskr, meaning 'French'; Old High German walhisk, meaning 'Romance'; New High German welsch, used in Switzerland and South Tyrol for Romance speakers; Dutch Waals 'Walloon'; Old English welisċ, wælisċ, wilisċ, meaning 'Brythonic'. The forms of these words imply that they are descended from a Proto-Germanic form *walhiska-. It is attested in the Roman Iron Age from an inscription on one of the Tjurkö bracteates, where walhakurne 'Roman/Gallic grain' is apparently a kenning for 'gold'.
An endonym is a common, native name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, or linguistic community in question; it is their self-designated name for themselves, their homeland, or their language.
The Pannonian Basin, or Carpathian Basin, is a large basin situated in south-east central Europe. The geomorphological term Pannonian Plain is more widely used for roughly the same region though with a somewhat different sense, with only the lowlands, the plain that remained when the Pliocene Epoch Pannonian Sea dried out.
Below is a list of German language exonyms for formerly German places and other places in non-German-speaking areas of the world. Archaic names are in italics.
The ethnonyms for the Poles (people) and Poland include endonyms and exonyms. Endonyms and most exonyms for Poles and Poland derive from the name of the West Slavic tribe of Polans (Polanie), while in some languages the exonyms for Poland to derive from the name of another tribe – the Lendians (Lędzianie).
The presence of German-speaking populations in Central and Eastern Europe is rooted in centuries of history, with the settling in northeastern Europe of Germanic peoples predating even the founding of the Roman Empire. The presence of independent German states in the region, and later the German Empire as well as other multi-ethnic countries with German-speaking minorities, such as Hungary, Poland, Imperial Russia, etc., demonstrates the extent and duration of German-speaking settlements.
The territorial changes of Germany include all changes in the borders and territory of Germany from its formation in 1871 to the present. Modern Germany was formed in 1871 when Otto von Bismarck unified most of the German states, with the notable exception of Austria, into the German Empire. After the First World War, Germany lost about 10% of its territory to its neighbours and the Weimar Republic was formed. This republic included territories to the east of today's German borders.
Upon the outbreak of World War I, Ukraine, as was the case with, for example, Ireland and India at the time, existed as a colonized ancient nation, but not as an independent political entity or state. The territory that made up the modern country of Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire with a notable southwestern region administered by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the border between them dating to the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
The Recovered Territories or Regained Lands, also known as Western Borderlands, and previously as Western and Northern Territories, Postulated Territories and Returning Territories, are the former eastern territories of Germany and the Free City of Danzig that became part of Poland after World War II, at which time their former German inhabitants were forcibly deported. The rationale for the term "Recovered" was that these territories formed part of the Polish state, and were lost by Poland in different periods over the centuries. It also referred to the Piast Concept that these territories were part of the traditional Polish homeland under the Piast dynasty, after the establishment of the state in the Middle Ages. Over the centuries, however, they had become predominantly German-speaking through the processes of German eastward settlement, political expansion, as well as language shift due to assimilation of local Polish, Slavic and Baltic Prussian population. Therefore, aside from certain regions such as West Upper Silesia, Warmia and Masuria, as of 1945 most of these territories did not contain sizeable Polish-speaking communities.
Names of the Serbs and Serbia are terms and other designations referring to general terminology and nomenclature on the Serbs and Serbia. Throughout history, various endonyms and exonyms have been used in reference to ethnic Serbs and their lands. Basic terms, used in Serbian language, were introduced via classical languages into other languages, including English. The process of interlingual transmission began during the early medieval period, and continued up to the modern times, being finalized in major international languages at the beginning of the 20th century.
Poles are one of 17 constitutionally recognized ethnic minorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They arrived during the Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina and settled mostly in the north of Bosnia proper, bringing new technology and skilled manpower. Their destiny was tied closely to that of the Ukrainian minority, with whom they joined the Yugoslav Resistance after the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia. After the Second World War, Bosnian Poles faced difficulties with establishing their rights as a minority as well as persecution by local population and remaining fascist collaborators. This forced a vast majority to answer the Polish government's call for repatriation. There were around 30,000 Poles in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1930, while their number today is estimated to be less than a thousand, with communities in the major cities of Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Zenica and Mostar.
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