German New Zealanders (
German: Deutsch-NeuseeländerMāori: 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]
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]
Demography
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]
Tourism
New Zealand has long been a popular destination for German backpacker tourists and students.
German New Zealand culture
The
Goethe-Institut is active in New Zealand and there is a branch in Wellington.[9]
^Various Māori words for Germany include Tiamana, Hāmene, Aremania, Hamani, and Tiamani. All are transliterations of the English exonym except for Aremania (an earlier adaption of the French Allemagne)