Demographics
Since the 19th century, Bavaria's population has more than doubled, from 5 million around 1900 to over 13 million today in 2021. Yet Bavaria's natural balance is negative, meaning that there are more deaths than births every day: an average of 344 deaths per day for 293 births. This increase is only possible because immigration exceeds emigration, and the proportion of foreigners in Bavaria is now almost 10% of the total population. This population growth has been accompanied by an exodus from rural areas, which has mainly benefited large and medium-sized towns. Today, 55% of Bavaria's population lives in towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants (compared with just 32% in 1900). This overall increase masks local disparities: while the Franconian cities of Nuremberg, Würzburg and Bamberg continue to attract more and more people, rural areas are experiencing a certain decline. By contrast, southern Bavaria, and Upper Bavaria in particular, is undergoing continuous expansion, both in town and country. The metropolis of Munich is particularly dynamic in this respect. With 4,400 inhabitants per km², Bavaria's capital is the country's most densely populated city, and the number of residents continues to rise, while high rents do nothing to dampen the city's appeal. As in other Länder, Bavaria's population is elderly and aging. As in other developed countries of the European Union, life expectancy is very high: 79.7 years for men and 84.4 years for women. The average age is 46.6, and 34% of the Bavarian population is over 60.
Language and dialects
The official language in Bavaria is German, but those with a discerning ear will soon realize that not only standard German is spoken here. Many dialects are spoken. To simplify things a little, there are three: Bavarian dialect, Franconian dialect and Swabian dialect.
The Bavarian dialect (Bairisch) is a regiolect that can cause serious problems not only for German-speaking foreigners, but also for visitors from other German regions. In Bavaria, it is only spoken in Upper Bavaria, Lower Bavaria and the Upper Palatinate, but not in Swabia or Franconia. Bavarian has declined sharply since the Second World War with the displacement of populations, but it has not completely fallen out of fashion. Austrian dialects are very close to Bavarian, so linguists sometimes use the expression "Austro-Bavarian" to describe this family of dialects. So, to sum up, this dialect known as "Bavarian" doesn't have a monopoly in Bavaria, and it's also used outside Bavaria's borders.
In northern Bavaria, the local language belongs to the "Franconian" dialect family , commonly referred to as "Fränkisch" in German. Once again, this dialect doesn't quite correspond to the borders of present-day Franconia, although it's not far off.
The same applies to Swabian ("Schwäbisch" in German). Its speakers are spread across Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and a small part of the Austrian Tyrol. Swabian belongs to the Alemannic dialect family, which also includes Swiss German and Alsatian. But there's no guarantee that a Colmar man, a Zurich woman and a Bavarian Swabian will understand each other if they speak each other's dialects.
It's interesting to note that the sign language used in Bavaria has a few signs of its own. To give just a few examples, the signs for "Sunday", "horseradish" and "pork butcher" differ between the sign languages used in Bavaria and the rest of the Federal Republic. However, these nuances are anecdotal, and a deaf-mute from Munich and another from Bremen will have no trouble understanding each other.
Immigration since 1945
In 1945, following the German rout and the expulsion of German-speaking populations from Poland and Czechoslovakia, Bavaria took in 2 million refugees. With a population of around 9 million at the time, this new community represented almost a quarter of Bavaria's population at the time. Of these exiles, the vast majority (around 1 million) were Sudeten refugees, expelled from Czechoslovakia after the country regained its pre-invasion borders in 1938. Bavaria is the region of Germany that has received the largest number of these refugees, so much so that the Sudetenlanders were soon regarded as the "fourth tribe of Bavaria": in other words, the Sudetenlanders are perceived as the fourth demographic group after the Bavarians, the Franconians and the Swabians. For centuries, Sudeten Germans had lived and shared their lives with Czech-speakers from Bohemia, Moravia and southern Silesia. As exiles, these German speakers were often poorly received in the countries that were supposed to welcome them. The Dachau camp, for example, was used to house Sudeten families while they waited for new housing to be built, for which they sometimes had to wait 10 years. Several towns or districts were created specifically to house these new arrivals. One example is the Neugablonz district in Kaufbeuren, named after the Bohemian town of Gablonz (now Jablonec nad Nisou). This immigration of Germans from Eastern Europe also changed the denominational landscape of Bavaria, with Catholics settling in Franconia and Protestants in the south. Generally speaking, the issue of DPs(Displaced Persons) accompanied the post-war years. Many of these DPs remained in Bavaria only temporarily, often going into exile in the USA or Palestine.
Several years after the war, Bavaria - like the rest of West Germany - experienced a revival in productivity that came to be known as the "economic miracle". To keep its factories running, West Germany called on foreign workers. The Federal Government signed agreements with foreign powers such as Italy (in 1955), Greece and Spain (in 1960), Turkey (in 1961) and Yugoslavia (in 1968) to bring cheap labor into Germany. These low-skilled or unskilled workers mainly worked in industrial sectors, keeping production on the assembly line. These workers were nicknamed Gastarbeitera term that could be awkwardly translated as "host worker" or "guest worker", as their stay in Germany was intended to be temporary. Many of them remained in the FRG and were joined by their families. An estimated 14 million Gastarbeiter came to work in Germany in the second half of the 20th century. Of these, 3 million remained in Germany. In Bavaria, they contributed actively to the success of major infrastructure projects. It could even be said that without these foreign workers, Munich would not have a subway railway or Olympic facilities.
For 40 years, Bavaria shared a common border with the other German state, the GDR. Between the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and its fall in 1989, an estimated 1.5 million East Germans left the German Democratic Republic to settle in the Federal Republic. Of these, 200,000 chose Bavaria as their new home. The number of Bavarians moving to the GDR is fairly anecdotal, but every year between 200 and 600 Bavarians chose to leave the FRG to try their luck in the socialist neighboring country.
A little-known phenomenon in French-speaking countries is that of the Spätaussiedler (literally "late repatriates"). This is the name given to German speakers from Eastern Europe who joined Germany after 1950. In Eastern Europe (Poland, Romania, Russia, etc.), German-speaking families have lived and continue to live (in some cases since the 18th century!). Between 1950 and 1987, 1.4 million German speakers from Eastern Europe settled in West Germany. Russian Germans" (Russlanddeutsche sometimes also referred to as "Volga Germans") were German speakers living in Russia and the satellite countries of the USSR. Many German families had responded to Tsarina Catherine II's call in the 18th century to settle in the Russian Empire. In the 1990s, Germany concluded an agreement with Russia to allow the "return" (after so many generations, can we call it a return?) of these German speakers. This phenomenon intensified with the disintegration of the USSR. Today, Germany boasts many celebrities from these Russlanddeutsche communities: singer Helene Fischer and actress Emilia Schüle are just two examples. It is estimated that 250,000 people in Bavaria today are originally from the USSR. This Russlanddeutsche immigration was accompanied by Jewish immigration, and 90% of Jews in Germany today are of Russian origin.
In the 1990s, the wars in Yugoslavia led to numerous population movements. With 300,000 Yugoslav refugees, Germany welcomed the largest number of men, women and children fleeing the war and massacres in the Balkans. By way of comparison, just under 16,000 Yugoslav exiles have found asylum in France. Racist and xenophobic acts of violence were committed against these newcomers. Under pressure from public opinion, representatives of the CDU/CSU, SPD and FDP parties agreed on a new regulation of the Asylum Act in December 1992. The aim was to speed up asylum procedures, but the possibilities of invoking the Basic Law's "fundamental right of asylum" were considerably restricted. With the end of the civil war in 1995, many returned to the Balkans.
In 2004 and 2007, the European Union family expanded to include twelve new members: the three Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Malta, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania. Bavaria, which had long been on the fringes of the European Union, suddenly found itself at its center. Two million people from these new European countries have come to Bavaria since 2004, although three quarters have since returned to their countries of origin. Bavarian companies benefit not only from the workforce, but also from new markets within the EU. This reshuffling of the European cards is also having an impact on immigration to Bavaria and the job market. Seasonal work, such as asparagus harvesting in the Schrobenhausen region, is often carried out by Romanian pickers. Elsewhere, young women from Eastern Europe are employed in the personal care sector. Many of these European workers are forced to endure difficult working conditions, often poorly paid and sometimes with precarious contracts, or even "moonlighting". Some also find work or training and settle in Bavaria on a long-term basis.
In 2015, Germany granted asylum to a large number of Syrian refugees fleeing war, misery and repression by Bashar al-Assad's regime. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a phrase that has remained famous, Wir schaffen das ("we'll make it"), is seizing the chance to welcome a new, young population. Exact figures are hard to come by, but in 2015 Bavaria welcomed around 100,000 of these refugees. For many, Munich railway station was the first stop in Germany for refugees who had travelled the Balkan route and crossed Austria. Images of Munich residents welcoming refugees with blankets and food made the rounds of the media and immortalized Bavarian hospitality for posterity.
