His parents were Danube Swabians, German pioneers whose ancestors settled in parts of eastern Europe that would later be known as Hungary and Yugoslavia.
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For the Danube Swabians, a German-speaking minority in the former Kingdom of Hungary, a variant similar to West Balkans Préférence has been described.
The village of Schutzberg was founded in 1895 by a mixture of Danube Swabians and German settlers coming from Slavonia, Galicia, Bukowina, Hungary and Württemberg.
Specifically, many Danube Swabians were drafted to the Waffen-SS - officially as volunteers, though it was claimed that they had in fact little choice in the matter.