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German New Zealanders (German: Deutsch-Neuseeländer Māori: Tāngata Aremania o Aotearoa)[a] are New Zealand residents of ethnic German ancestry. They comprise a very large amount of New Zealanders in terms of heritage, with some 200,000 people from the country having at least partial German ancestry (approximately 5% of the population from an estimate in the 2000s).[2] New Zealand's community of ethnic German immigrants constitute one of the largest recent European migrant groups in New Zealand, numbering 12,810 in the 2013 census. 36,642 New Zealanders spoke the German language at the 2013 census, making German the seventh-most-spoken language in New Zealand.[3]
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 The German settlers of Puhoi, 1863. They came from Stod (Staab) in Bohemia, in the modern-day Czech Republic. | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| German 16,818 Immigrants (2018)[1]plus an estimated 200,000 of German descent | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Auckland, Manawatū-Whanganui, Tasman District, Bay of Plenty, Greater Wellington, Te Tai Poutini | |
| Languages | |
| New Zealand English, Māori, German | |
| Religion | |
| Predominantly Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Germans, German Australians, German Americans, German Canadians, French Germans, British Germans |
Germans first began immigrating to New Zealand in the 1840s. Between 1843 and 1914 around 10,000 arrived, mainly from northern Germany, but also from Prussia, the Sudetenland and Bohemia. One of the first ethnic Germans to explore New Zealand was the mercenary Gustavus von Tempsky, who was killed in armed conflict during the New Zealand Wars. From the 1840s to the 1860s, German immigrants established several rural communities. Ranzau (now Hope) was one of several ethnic German settlements in the Tasman, where settlers planted orchards and vineyards. Puhoi, built by Bohemian Germans, was a settlement north of Auckland on the boundary with the Dalmatian settlement of Dargaville, with whom Germans competed for the kauri gum trade.
Relationships with Germany were stained twice in the twentieth century, during both world wars and the New Zealand conquest of German Samoa. Today, New Zealand and Germany have a strong relationship, and there is frequent movement of people between each country for work, immigration and tourism. Many German immigrants, who today are mostly present in Wellington and Auckland, hold traditional Christmas markets and language classes, as well as Oktoberfests.[2][4][5]
The 2013 census counted 12,810 New Zealand residents who had ancestry from Germany.[6] This number does not include people of German ancestry who selected their ancestry as simply "New Zealander". Today the number of New Zealanders with German ancestry is estimated to be approximately 200,000 (5% of the population). Many German New Zealanders anglicized their names during the 20th century due to the negative perception of Germans fostered by World War I and World War II.
There were 16,818 people identifying as being part of the German ethnic group at the 2018 New Zealand census, making up 0.36% of New Zealand's population. This is an increase of 4,008 people (31.3%) since the 2013 census, and an increase of 5,901 people (54.1%) since the 2006 census. Some of the increase between the 2013 and 2018 census was due to Statistics New Zealand adding ethnicity data from other sources (previous censuses, administrative data, and imputation) to the 2018 census data to reduce the number of non-responses.[7]
There were 7,125 males and 9,693 females, giving a sex ratio of 0.735 males per female. The median age was 33.0 years, compared to 37.4 years for New Zealand as a whole; 3,273 people (19.5%) were aged under 15 years, 4,209 (25.0%) were 15 to 29, 8,067 (48.0%) were 30 to 64, and 1,269 (8.5%) were 65 or older.[8]
New Zealand has long been a popular destination for German backpacker tourists and students.
The Goethe-Institut is active in New Zealand and there is a branch in Wellington.[9]
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