More Germans moved overseas last year than repatriated. This reports a Swiss newspaper.
In several 19th Century waves, hundreds of thousands of Germans left their homes for better lives in other countries, especially in North and South America and Australia and, after the German Imperial expansion into Africa, into today’s Tanzania.

It has been argued that part of the motive for obtaining colonies in the first place—never really part of German tradition—was a felt need to retain emigrants within the internal economy of the German empire.

From the vantage of today’s wealthy Germany, the economic engine of Europe, it’s hard to remember the brutal poverty in 19th century Germany, not entirely unlike that in today’s Africa. Germans were starving to death.

That’s why the very news of German emigration is eye-popping. The article doesn’t explain who these people are or why they’re moving. Without knowing better I’d guess a high number would be retirees moving to Italy or Spain, now part of Schengen’s borderless Europe. I’ve heard tell of German communities in Goa, India, serviced by German doctors and dentists.

Germans have a long-established culture of roaming and distance tourism; they gave us the word Wanderlust, after all. Still, it’s remarkable when a people loses interest in living at home.