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The Crimea Germans (, , ) were ethnic German settlers who were invited by Russia to colonize the Crimea as part of the Ostsiedlung ("East Settlement").
The first planned settlements of Germans in Crimea were founded over 1805–1810 with the support of Czar Alexander I. The first settlements were:
All of these early colonies were located in the Yayla-mountains of Crimea and were mostly wine-farmers. However over time only Sudak produced quality wine and the other settlements soon turned to agriculture. The second generation didn't have enough land and soon young men started buying land from the Russians aristocracy and creating new ("daughter") colonies.
Later Mennonites began to move from Ukraine into Crimea.
Details are vague but during the 19th century a "German hospital" and dispensary arose in the Simferopol suburb of Nowyj gorod (called Neustadt or new city—now this is Kyivskyi District of Simferopol).
"Stalin had no doubts about the loyalty of the ethnic German minority. He considered them all potential traitors, and in line with his inherent "Great Russian" chauvinism, had already decided to deport the entire community to internal exile in case of war. Therefore , when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, a decision was made by Stalin to evacuate all ethnic Germans from the Western Regions of the Soviet Union. The first evacuations, which , in reality , were expulsions, as the inhabitants were never allowed to return to their homes, were decreed by the Supreme Soviet already on June 22. Action to deport every ethnic German from the Crimea began on August 15. Although the decree stated that old people would not have to leave, everyone was expelled—first to Stavropol, and then Rostov in Southern Ukraine, near Crimea ; but then all were sent on to forced labor camps and special settlements in Kazakhstan, Central Asia. The deportees were not told where they were going, how long they would stay there and how much food to take ; they were given only three or four hours to pack. The result was starvation for many and, due to the confusion, the separation of a large number of families. In all , as many as 60,000 ethnic Germans were expelled from the Crimea at this time ."Ulrich Merten (2025). 9780692603376, American Historical Society of Germans from Russia. ISBN 9780692603376
It is unclear whether any Crimea Germans remained at all during the Nazi occupation—Germany policy called for the evacuation of all surviving Soviet Union Volksdeutsche to settlements in Poland. Hitler had claimed that many Germans in Crimea were descended from ancient Goths settlers (the Crimean Goths), and had intended to "reclaim" the peninsula for Germanic speakers. One plan envisaged a special status for Crimea and its hinterland - an ahistoric resurrection of the territory of the ancient Crimean Goths as a purely Germanic (Goth region) re-settled by ex-SS Wehrbauer. The Nazi Generalkommissar for Crimea, the Austrian Alfred Frauenfeld, toyed with the idea of resettling ethnic Germans ( Volksdeutsche) here from Italy South Tyrol after the war, and he re-labelled several cities of the envisaged Gotengau with constructed German/Gothic language names: (Simferopol became Gotenburg and Sevastopol became Theoderichshafen, for example, honoring the Goths and the Ostrogoths king Theodoric). By 1950, all ethnic Germans were expelled from Crimea.
The 1991 RSFSR law On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples addressed rehabilitation of all ethnicities repressed in the Soviet Union. However the law had various deficiencies, including unclear legal status of a number of peoples, such as Crimean Tatars and Crimean Germans moved across the borders of Soviet republics, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Правовые вопросы реабилитации репрессированных народов, in Pravo i Zhizn, 1994, no 4, p. 26. After the annexation of Crimea by Russia, on April 21, 2014 Vladimir Putin signed the decree No 268 "О мерах по реабилитации армянского, болгарского, греческого, крымско-татарского и немецкого народов и государственной поддержке их возрождения и развития". ("On the Measures for the Rehabilitation of Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, Crimean Tatar and German Peoples and the State Support of Their Revival and Development"), Внесены изменения в указ о мерах по реабилитации армянского, болгарского, греческого, крымско-татарского и немецкого народов и государственной поддержке их возрождения и развития amended by Decree no. 458 of September 12, 2015. Указ Президента Российской Федерации от 12.09.2015 г. № 458 The decree addressed the status of the mentioned peoples which resided in Crimean ASSR and were deported from there.
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