German Speaking Populations Outside Germany

In addition to the over seventy million German speakers in the Federal Republic of Germany, there are more than fifty million more German speakers spread throughout the world. German speaking populations can be found from the far west in North America to the far east in Australia and New Zealand.

If we start at the western end of the world, a survey has shown that there are at least 25 million German speakers in North America who are direct German descendants. If the German speakers with mixed ancestry are included, then the number of German speakers in North America could add up to more than 40 million. Germans are considered to be the largest ethnic group in North America.

In Latin America there are around 20 million German speakers. The largest concentration of German speakers in Latin America is in Brazil. Brazil has more than 16 million German speakers who are German descendants. Germans in Brazil account for almost 10% of the total population. Moreover, Brazil’s Germans are a dominant ethnic group and have been successful in many different areas of business. For example, one of Brazil’s former Presidents was German and there are several well-known Brazilian politicians, musicians, designers, etc., who are German.

After Brazil, Argentina is the only other country that has over a million German speakers. Other countries accounting for the remaining German speaking populations in Latin America include but are not limited to Chile, Peru, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Mexico and Bolivia.

Germans densely populate central European nations such as Austria and other nations surrounding Germany. Moreover, there are millions of German speakers in the eastern areas of Europe, including countries like Russia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Moldova, Ukraine, Poland, and Hungary, among others. There are over one million German speakers in Russia and Kazakhstan alone. Germans are also a prominent minority in Poland. Germans have been given different rights in accordance with the Polish Law and in some Polish towns the German language is used along with the Polish language by government officials. Poland has several schools that teach the German language.

On the African continent, German speakers are only found in considerable numbers in Namibia, where more than 5% of the population is German. There are also some German populations in South Africa, but they are insignificant in comparison with Namibia.

In Australia, there are almost one million Germans who migrated to Australia over many years. German speaking populations account for nearly 5% of the total population of Australia. New Zealand is another country in the Far East where several hundreds of thousands of Germans have also migrated over the last few centuries.