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The concept of who is a German has varied. Until the 19th century, it denoted the speakers of German, and was a much more distinct concept than that of Germany, the land of the Germans. The Dutch and the Swiss had already split off and shaped separate national identities. The German Swiss, however, retained their cultural identity as Germans, although a specific kind of Germans.

In the 19th century, after the Napoleonic Wars and the fall of the Holy Roman Empire (of the German nation), Austria and Prussia would emerge as two opposite poles in Germany, trying to re-establish the divided German nation. In 1871, Prussia attracted even Bavaria at the founding of her German Empire, and the multi-ethnic Austrian Habsburg monarchy was effectively excluded from the attempt to create a German nation state. From this and on, the connotation of Germans came to shift gradually from "speakers of the German language" to " Imperial Germans" and today "nationals of the Federal Republic of Germany".

Before the second world war, most Austrians considered themselves Germans and denied the existence of a distinct Austrian ethnic identity. It was only after the German defeat in World War II, that this began to change. After the world war, the Austrians increasingly saw themselves as a nationA nation is an imagined community of people created by a national ideology, also known as nationalism, to which certain norms and behavior are usually attributed. Added to this is usually the idea that a national (a person of the national ideology) should distinct from the other German-speaking areas of Europe, and today no more than 10% of the German-speaking Austrians see themselves as part of a larger German nation (" volkVolk is a German word meaning people or folk. It is commonly used in words such as "Volksmusik" or "Volkerbund" ( League of Nations), or the car manufacturer Volkswagen (literally, "people's car"). A number of volkisch movements were set up in Germany aft") linked by blood or language. In most references concerning the population or demographic of Austria, however, the vast majority of the Austrian population is generally classified as German-Austrians, ethnic-Germans, and in some cases simply German.

In recent years, the German speaking countries of Europe have been confronted with demographic changes due to decades of immigration. These changes have lead to renewed debates, especially in the Federal Republic of Germany, about who should be considered German. Non-ethnic Germans now make up more than a 8% of the German population, mostly the descendants of guest workers who arrived in the 1960s and 70s. Turks, Italians, Greeks, and people from Southeast Europe form the largest single groups of non-ethnic Germans in the country. Germany is now also home to thousands of non-white and mixed race people as well. While most non-ethnic Germans in the country remain non-citizens, thousands of other now have German passports. The majority of Germans continue to hold the view that a person require at least one German parent to be considered "German" but this view at least allows some visible minorities to be considered German, especially children of mixed heritage. Recent changes in citizenship laws and the increased visibility of non-ethnic German minorities would seem to indicate that the concept of who is a German is slowly moving away from one that centered entirely on ethnicity and heritage to a concept based more on nationality (i.e. citizenship) and cultural identification.