The Donauschwaben , or Danube Swabians, were ethnic Germans who settled along the middle Danube River in the 17th–18th centuries. After the Ottoman Empire was pushed back from Central Europe, the Austrian Habsburg rulers invited German settlers to colonize the depopulated frontier regions (today parts of Serbia, Romania, and Hungary). The first major migration wave began in 1722 under Emperor Charles VI, when Germans (many from Swabia in southwest Germany) were offered land i