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This essay details the emergence of an idea of Danube Swabians as eternal colonizers, created by and about one group that settled Entre Rios, in the state of Paraná in postwar southern Brazil. This essay traces the wanderings of these Danube Swabians from south-eastern Europe to Brazil, and it explores how the intersection of their memories of multiple expulsions and survival were coupled with their characterizations as Germans in both Europe and Brazil. In turn, it shows how the colonists and others used those couplings to construct the basis of their trans-Atlantic identity as Germans/Swabians/Brazilians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oral narratives by the inhabitants of the district of Entre Rios in the municipality of Guarapuava PR Brazil, are provided and discussed. The Entre Rios settlement, with approximately 2500 people, was formed in the 1950s. The inhabitants identified themselves as Suabians of the Danube who migrated to Brazil as refugees after World War II. Besides immigrants and their offspring, the district is also inhabited by non-Suabians. Current analysis focuses on the life-narratives of migrants or non-migrants, the social events celebrated among the inhabitants and the identifications in the narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text represents another contribution in the series of articles on Vojvodovo, the Czech village in Bulgaria, published in recent years. The author attempts to answer the question in his analysis why so many Vojvodovo Czech Protestants chose as their marriage partners inhabitants of a nearby village of Bărdarski Geran, both Banat Bulgarians (Paulicians) and Banat Swabians. In both villages religion was perhaps the most important organizational principle, religious endogamy being one of its main rules. One would expect absence of intermarriage between Vojvodovo and Bărdarski Geran for this reason; the opposite, however, was the case. The author shows that the reason why members of both communities felt a kind of mutual affinity was culture, as both groups shared many cultural traits. One of these cultural traits was deep and genuine religiosity, perhaps better expressed as belief. So, although at first sight religiosity (in the form of their creeds) would seem to prevent any closer contacts developing between the two communities, it actually is religiosity (as belief) that stands behind the surprising and unexpected number of marriages that took place between members of the two local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Banat Swabians represent in the years 1867-1918 one of the most exciting parts of regional history, and we tried to contribute to a more detailed knowledge of the multicultural and cross-cultural and multi-confessional physiognomy of the region Banat. Our research intends to provide more information on the past of this cultural-linguistic and confessional group. Its presence from the eighteenth century in the region between Mures, Tisa and the Danube is correlated with the Habsburg policy of modernization and with the ethnonational identities structured in the romantic era. The study seeks to enrich the history of regional history through a so-called marginal component, which has always played a key role in defining the specifics of a region as the Banat. We focused on the Austro-Hungarian period, highlighting the relevant passages in the life of this important community, namely, its social expression, economic and cultural development. Throughout the paper, our intention was to highlight the active participation of the Swabians at the modernization process.We chose the years 1867-1918 - those that coincide with the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy - because at that time, the Banat Swabians had a spectacular economic development and an ambivalent cultural creation, between German and Hungarian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]