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Germans have been coming to live in the United Kingdom for hundreds of years. Today, there are many Germans living in the United Kingdom, and many Britons or ''German British'' () have German ancestry, including the British royal family. While the German-born are one of the UK's largest foreign-born groups, many are British nationals, rather than German nationals, who were born in Germany to British military personnel based there. ==History== Germans have resided in the United Kingdom throughout its history. The Anglo-Saxons were partly from what is now Germany, and created the notion of England as a Germanic country. Likewise, the English language was descended from their dialects. The Anglo-Saxons arrived in what later became England from the 440s. Examples include the Hanseatic merchants of the Middle Ages and also the sixteenth-century Protestant refugees who emigrated to Britain to flee the instability caused by the religious wars following the Reformation. By the end of the seventeenth century, a significant German community had developed, consisting mostly of businessmen, mainly from Hamburg; sugar bakers and other economic migrants. In 1709/10, thousands of Germans from the Electorate of the Palatinate, which had been invaded by French forces and suffered a severe winter, also migrated to England. Queen Anne's government had invited them, with the plan to settle Germans in the North American colonies. Some stayed in the London area. In 1714, George I, a German Hanoverian prince, ascended to the British throne, founding the British House of Hanover. Every subsequent British monarch until Edward VII in the twentieth century would take a German spouse. While Edward VII did not take a German spouse, his wife was a Danish princess of pure German ancestry. His son would marry a British noblewoman of pure German ancestry, and his great-granddaughter would marry a Greek prince of predominantly German ancestry. The British Royal family retained the German surname Saxe-Coburg-Gotha until 1917 when, in response to the anti-German feelings of World War I, it was legally changed to the English-sounding 'Windsor'. Reigning King Edward VII famously relinquished all his titles held under the German Crown and his son, the future George V, stripped fifteen of his German relatives (mostly from the House of Hanover) of their titles. Even today, the Royal family is sometimes parodied as being 'German'. In terms of religion, St Georges, a Lutheran Church dating from 1762/63, is the oldest German church in the UK. The congregation was founded by Dederich Beckmann, a wealthy sugar boiler and cousin of the first pastor. It served as a religious centre for generations of German immigrants who worked in the East End sugar refineries, and meat and baking trades until the First World War. During the Nazi period in Germany, St George's pastor Julius Rieger set up a relief centre for Jewish refugees from Germany, who were provided with references to travel to England. The leading theologian and anti-Nazi activist Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also associated with the work of St George’s when Bonhoeffer was pastor at the nearby St Paul’s church between 1933 and 1935.〔(German-Language Newspapers and Journals Published in London Since 1810 )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Germans in the United Kingdom」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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