The Indian community in Germany includes Indian expatriates residing in Germany, as well as German citizens of Indian origin or descent. In 2009, the German government estimated that the number of people of Indian descent residing in Germany at 110,204, of which 43,175 people were holding an Indian passport, while 67,029 were holding a German passport.[2] In 2023 the number stood at about 273,000 of Indian descent of which 198,000 had a migration background.[3] According to the Federal Statistical Office the number of nationals from India is the second largest in Germany from either South, South East, East or Central Asia, only below the number of nationals from Afghanistan.[4]
Small numbers of Indian students resided in Germany before and during the Second World War. In early to late 1960s and 1970s, many Malayali Catholic women from Kerala were recruited by the German Catholic institutions to work as nurses in German hospitals.[5] According to the documentary ‘Translated lives’, around 5,000 women migrated from Kerala during the 1960s and 70s to become nurses there.[6]
Since the 2010s, the Indian population also grew in former East Germany due to Indian students who study mostly in technical universities. Unlike other minorities, there are many Indians in cities like Chemnitz and Leipzig and the state of Saxony has the largest population of federal state in former East Germany with about 9,000 Indians.
Germany has become a popular destination for higher learning, and of the total student population in Germany about 12% are International students.[20] Hundreds of schools in India have signed up to teach students German as their primary foreign language as part of an effort by Germany's top technical colleges to attract more Indian students.[21] As a result, there has been a steady increase in the Indian student population in Germany which has quadrupled in 7 years since 2008.[22][23] Of these, more than 80% Indian students pursue their studies or research in the STEM fields i.e., Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.[24]
Academic year
No. of Indian students enrolled in German universities
Joybrato Mukherjee, Professor of English Linguistics and the President of the University of Giessen.Youngest university president ever appointed in Germany. President of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
^Bundesamt für Flüchtlinge und Migration, Dr. habil. Sonja Haug Stephanie Müssig, M.A. Dr. Anja Stichs (Hrsg): Muslimisches Leben in Deutschland, 2009: page 76, chart 5
^Goel, Urmila (2008), "The Seventieth Anniversary of 'John Matthew': On 'Indian' Christians in Germany", in Jacobsen, Knut A.; Raj, Selva J. (eds.), South Asian Christian Diaspora: Invisible Diaspora in Europe and North America, Ashgate Publishing, p. 57, ISBN978-0-7546-6261-7
Van Hoven, Bettina; Meijering, Louise (2005), "Transient Masculinities: Indian IT-professionals in Germany", in Van Hoven, Bettina; Hörschelmann, Kathrin (eds.), Spaces of masculinities, Critical geographies, vol. 20, Routledge, pp. 75–85, ISBN978-0-415-30696-6
Lal, Brij V.; Reeves, Peter; Reeves, Rajesh, eds. (2006), "Germany", The encyclopedia of the Indian diaspora, University of Hawaii Press, pp. 358–362, ISBN978-0-8248-3146-2
Goel, Urmila (2008), "The German Internet Portal Indernet: A Space for Multiple Belongingness", in Goggin, Gerard; McLelland, Mark (eds.), Internationalizing Internet Studies: Beyond Anglophone Paradigms, Routledge advances in internationalizing media studies, vol. 2, Taylor & Francis, pp. 128–144, ISBN978-0-415-95625-3
Indien-Institut in Munich/Bavaria; attached to Völkerkundemuseum
Escape from East Germany 1972, autobiographical account of an Indian Ph.D. student in Dresden who married an East German woman
Marathi Katta Germany, Frankfurt – A Marathi Indian Community, a non-profit organization serving Marathi/Maharashtrian Indian community living in Germany for many years.
