Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans From Russia
Vol. 17, No. 1 Spring 1994 Editor CHRISTINE CLAYTON
Editorial Board IRMGARD HEIN ELLINGSON PETER J. KLASSEN Bukovina Society, Ellis, KS California State University, Fresno ARTHUR E. FLEGEL TIMOTHY KLOBERDANZ Certified Genealogist, Menio Park, CA North Dakota State University, Fargo ADAM GIESINGER GEORGE KUFELDT University of Manitoba, emeritus Anderson University, Indiana, emeritus NANCY BERNHARDT HOLLAND LEONA PFEIFER Trinity College, Burlington, VT Fort Hays State University, Hays, KS WILLIAM KEEL HELMUT SCHMELLER University of Kansas, Lawrence Fort Hays State University, Hays, KS
On the cover: The Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia is published quarterly by AHSGR. Mrs. Arndt, nee Peters, an Aussiedlerin Members of the Society receive the Journal, a quarterly Newsletter, and an annual genealogical publication, Clues. Members qualify for discounts on material available for purchase from AHSGR. Membership categories who was born in Selz, Odessa District, in are: Student, $20; Individual, $30; Family, $30; Contributing, $50; Sustaining, $100; Life, $500 (may be paid in 1914, photographed shortly after her five annual installments). Memberships are based on a calendar year, due each January 1. Dues in excess of $30 arrival in Germany in September 1989. may be tax-deductible as allowed by law. Applications for membership should be sent to AHSGR, 631 D Street, For a personal account of the experiences Lincoln, NE 68502-1199. The Journal welcomes the submission of articles, essays, family histories, anecdotes, folklore, book shared by many Aussiedler see reviews, and items regarding at| aspects of the lives of Germans in/from Russia. Manuscripts should be typed "Emigration of Germans from the Soviet double spaced with endnotes. Computer fan-fold paper should be separated before mailing. If written on Union in the Years 1987-1990-1993" by computer, please include a diskette containing a copy of the computer file. We can accept IBM-compatible Ida Bender, starting on page 27. ASCII or WordPerfect™ files. Our style guide is the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed. revised (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Please indicate in your cover letter whether you have photos or illustrations to accompany your article. If you wish your submission returned to you, please include a stamped, self-addressed envelope with adequate postage. Unless you instruct us otherwise, submissions not published in the Journal will be added to the AHSGR archives.
The International Foundation of AHSGR is a non-profit organization which seeks funds beyond the annual dues of members of AHSGR to support the needs of the many operations of the Society. The Foundation accepts monetary gifts, bequests, securities, memorial gifts, trusts, and other donations. Gifts to the Foundation may be designated for specific purposes such as promoting the work of the Aussiedler Project gathering information from German-Russian emigrants recently arrived in Germany, the AHSGR/CIS Project of research in Russia, or supporting the Society's library or genealogical work; gifts may also be designated for use where most needed. All contributions help further the goals of AHSGR: to gather, preserve, and make available for research material pertaining to the history of Germans from Russia. For information and to make contributions, contact the International Foundation of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 631 D Street, Lincoln, NE 68502-1199. Telephone: (402) 474-3363. Fax: (402) 474-7229. Donations to the International Foundation are tax deductible as allowed by law.
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Published by the American Historical Society of Germans From Russia 63 ID Street - Lincoln, NE 68502-1199 - Phone 402-474-3363 Copyright 1994 by the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. ISSN 0162-8283 CONTENTS
SEVENTY YEARS OF ARCHIVES ...... 1 Elizaveta Yerina Translated by Richard Rye
FROM THE LIFE OF A RUSSIAN GERMAN WOMAN...... 13 Translated by Christine Clayton
YOUNG AT HEART...... 16 Ralph G. Bennett
FROM GOD'S LOST CROP: ABLACK SEA ALBUM ...... 19 Ronald Vossler
EMIGRATION OF GERMANS FROM THE SOVIET UNION...... 27 IN THE YEARS 1987-1990-1993 Ida Bender Translated by Jo Ann Kuhr
FROM ASHES TO ASHES; FROM DUST TO DUST...... 39 Donnette M. Sonnenfeld
PASTOR HEINRICH ROEMMICH—IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF THE CO-FOUNDER AND LONG-TIME PRESIDENT OF OUR LANDSMANNSCHAFT...... ,...... 43 Josef Schnurr Translated by John Nickel
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994
SEVENTY YEARS OF ARCHIVES
Elizaveta Yerina
Translated by Richard Rye It is not surprising that the Engels branch of the State migrated on the strength of their belief against military Archive of the Saratov Oblast has attracted the attention of service. They founded nine of their own colonies on the scholars from many countries. This archive contains the Volga steppe. basic collection of documents about the history of Germans Already by the middle of the nineteenth century there of the Volga Region from the time of their settlement in were 170 colonies in the Volga Region, and at the turn of 1764-1767 until their deportation in 1941. the twentieth century, there were 190 colonies totaling Thousands of inhabitants of various areas of Ger- 407,500 persons. many—Hesse, Baden, Trier, Saxony, Holstein, Mainz, and In inviting foreign colonists to Russia, Catherine II others—and of Austria, France, Holland, Denmark, Swe- believed that the colonists would "by their art, leadership, den, and other states responded to the invitation of the industry, and machines unknown in Russia, open to Rus- Russian Empress Catherine II expressed in her manifestos sian citizens the easiest and most direct means of working of 1762 and 1763 to come and settle in Russia, the land, encourage the growth of livestock, develop the The journey of the first colonists to the Volga was ar- use of forested lands, and by using all the available re- duous and long. First was the difficult trek to the port cities sources, lead to the establishment of factories making use of Lübeck and Danzig. Then followed the more wearisome of peasant labor." And in this the Empress was not mis- journey on the Baltic Sea in overcrowded boats to taken. The German colonists brought enormous resources, Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg. After this came the both economic and cultural, to the development of the state. hardest leg of the trip through the endless expanses of Thanks to the immigrants, new trades appeared on the Russia to Saratov. Just this last leg of the journey could Volga, interest in which has lasted to this day. From them take over one year. A multitude of graves of the first colo- great establishments arose, and the land began to yield nists litters the shores of the mighty Russian river. good harvests. In spite of all the difficulties, in the period from 1764 A study of the preserved historical documents supports to 1768, one hundred six [sic] colonies were founded, in this conclusion. But a long list of occurrences led to the which 25,600 persons lived. These people laid the foun- loss of part of the unique documents. In 1774 Pugachev dation for the formation of a new people on the territory of destroyed the majority of documents of the first years of Russia—the Volga Germans. settlement of the colonists on the Volga. In the 1870s the Having survived the hardships of the first years of liv- closing of the Chancery for the Guardianship of Foreigners ing on the Volga, where they had to construct villages in resulted in the loss of some of the documents which were the vast open spaces, plow virgin soil, and fight with wan- determined by authorities to be "of little import." Complete dering nomads, the colonists experienced great success by preservation of documents was also hindered by fire and the end of the eighteenth century. By the beginning of the flood, revolution, civil war, the destruction of churches, nineteenth century, this territory had become the most cold and hunger, and by the lack of paper in the 1920s. economically viable in the entire Volga region. The last difficulty brings to mind a letter of the chair- By the middle of the nineteenth century, a small group man of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Mennonites from Prussia arrived on the Volga, having (VTsIK), M. I. Kalinin, which was transmitted by radio to The author is Director of the Engels Branch of the Saratov Oblast the executive committee of every guberniya. The letter Stale Archive. She has been recognized as a "Meritorious Worker stated that archival documents having significance "for of Culture of the Russian Federation." The translator of the Russian continuing Soviet construction and for historical and eco- text is a staff member of AHSGR. nomic science" were being sold as scrap paper. Considering Terminology: Of the Russian terms for units of government such theft and destruction of state resources completely oblast, guberniya, uyezd, and volost each can be translated as "district" or "region;" there are no direct equivalents in English.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 2 Archives unacceptable, VTsIK pointed out the necessity for all or- On 30 April 1918, the Volga Region Commissariat of ganizations to comply with decrees of the Sovnarkom, the German Affairs was organized in Saratov. Karl Petin and Soviet Narodny Commissariat. The first decree of I June Ernst Reuter headed the organization. Its members also 1919, "Concerning the Reorganization of Archival Work," included Gustav Klinger and Georg Dinges, scientist and was prepared by the head of the Archive of the People's one of the organizers of the German Pedagogical Institute Commissariat of Education, and a commission was created and Director of the Central Museum of the German for speeding up the reworking of archival reform, directed Republic. by the deputy director of the People's Commissariat of The Volga Commissariat prepared for and con- Education, M. I. Pokrovsky. All work was conducted by ducted the first and second sessions of the Soviet of Depu- departments created by the guberniya/oblast central ties of the German colonies. The first session, which took archives. The task of overseeing the mandate of the VTsIK, place in Saratov on 24-30 June 1918, divided the places of signed by Kalinin, was laid upon the local archival settlement of the Germans into three uyezds: Rovnoye organizations, but no archival organization had been created [Seelmann], Katharininstadt [Marxstadt], and Goly in the oblasts of the Volga German regions. There was no Karamysh [Balzer]. The decision concerning division of the archive in the future capital of the republic, Pokrovsk (after uyezds was ratified on 5,15, and 24 August 1918, re- October 1931 known as Engels). spectively. This effort actually became part of the prepa- ratory work of the second session of the Soviet of Deputies of the German colonies which took place on 20-24 October in Rovnoye [Seelmann]. On the basis of the decree of the Soviet of People's Commissars signed by V.I. Lenin, "Concerning German Colonies of the Volga Region," the Workers' Commune of the oblast of Germans of the Volga Region was invited to this session. The Volga Region Commissariat was liquidated, and all power in the new union was transferred to the executive committee of the Soviet of Deputies. The difficult process of actually constituting the three uyezds from the existing administrative-territorial divisions, the Samara and Saratov gubemiyas, began later. Not until March 1919 was the commission, composed of representatives of all interested parties, able to complete the task. When work on the definition of borders and actual delineations of the uyezds was completed, even before the assumption of autonomy, serious problems arose. The main difficulty was the absence of a single territory. One of the uyezds, that of Goly Karamysh, was located on the right bank of the Volga below Saratov. The two others, Marxstadt and Seelmann, were on the left. The absence of a unified territory complicated matters, as did the absence of a capital. Of course, the guberniya city of Saratov could not become the capital of the Workers' Commune. Rovnoye, a small steppe village, could not be considered. The choice fell to the city of Marxstadt, which until 1918 was located in the Nikolaev uyezd of the Samara guberniya. The government and oblast organizations moved to the city, which had been founded in 1766 as a German settlement on the Volga. But Marxstadt [Katharininstadt], Ekaterinograd, and Baronsk were inconvenient as centers of a separate Elizaveta Yerina (middle) andAHSGR members Arthur and autonomous territory Cleo Flegel in front of the Engels Archive building. Photo courtesy of Arthur Flegel.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 Archives 3 not only because of their locations but also because they On 15 March 1923, the Presidium of the Executive had no railroad. All of these problems did not make for the Committee (Narkom) of the oblast of Germans of the quick establishment of autonomy, and deferred the Volga recognized "the necessity of organization of the resolution of the creation of an oblast archive, which was oblast archive," but decided to "reserve special judgement" absolutely necessary for the preservation of documents regarding a candidate for director. The presidium consid- about the history of colonization of the Volga area and the ered it necessary to have a competent head of the archive, a newly created autonomous region. specialist in oblast archive affairs who also knew the This Gordian knot of problems was resolved by a de- German language. By that means, they again delayed the cree of the VTsIK of 22 June 1922, "Concerning Changes question about the activity of the archive. in the Composition of the Workers' Commune of Germans On 12 July 1923, the oblast executive committee di- on the Volga," which encompassed the oblast and all of rected a letter to all canton executive committees, with a Pokrovsk and Russian, Ukrainian, Estonian, and Tatar request to take immediate measures to prevent dispersal villages lying between the German villages or bordering on (theft) of archive documents of the former volost authori- them. In August 1922 all oblast organizations moved to the ties, village councils, and to collect them to be sent to the city of Pokrovsk, which became the capital, but this move state administrative organs for long-term future preserva- did not give immediate impetus to the establishment of an tion. With this letter they removed archival affairs from all archive. but those specifically authorized. The document closed with a strict warning: "Persons cited for pilfering and steal- ing archive collections will immediately be handed over to the courts," The letter was prepared by the future first director of the archives, Mikhail Fedorovich Piskunov. He graduated from Kharkhov University, worked in the ar- chives of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Justice, and Central Military Headquarters compiling the history of the Don Cossack Host. As we see, the basic requirement that the director [of the archive] be competent, was fulfilled by the proposed candidate. And the brief report on organi- zation of related archival services compiled by M. F. Piskunov again supported this conclusion. Street in Pokrovsk (Engels). Photo courtesy of Piskunov proposed, first of all, to find a proper build- Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Rußland. ing for the archive. He noted that the building must be of stone, dry, separate from all other structures, modelled after In February 1923 the department of the directorate of archive structures abroad or similar to the former archive of the oblast executive committee turned to the central the Ministry of Justice in Moscow. Further he pointed out archive of the VTsIK with the request to send training the necessity of means of support and protection of the material necessary for the organization of an oblast building, organization of archival service in the cantons, archive. On 19 February the directorate of the central archives for businesses and institutions. He broached the archive allotted the means for the support of two workers question of finances, staff, compiling a scientific research of the archive bureau of the oblast of Germans of the library, and transport for the collection of archival Volga Region, specifying that the archive should become materials. He also proposed to the workers of the future an organization "with special initiative for the collection archive that they surround themselves with those to whom and concentration of work as a founder and organizer of the past of their native land [kray] was dear, that they col- Soviet power...." lectively work, learn, and immerse themselves in historical Workers from the oblast of Germans on the Volga material, and take to the schools the lesson of under the People's Commissariat added their own mite to "rodinovedeniye—maintaining a homeland." M. F. the organization of the oblast archives. Fate disturbed even Piskunov closed his document with the exhortation that the the Saratov guberniya (which for a short time included the present is closely tied with the past and "that the present is Pokrovsk uyezd). The Saratovites were distressed by losing easily comprehended and completely explained by the documents of the Pokrovsk volost directorate and part of illumination of the past." the files on the Pugachev rebellion to fire.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 4 Archives But Piskunov was only temporarily appointed to the Schmall, of the graduating class of the German Pedagogical duties of director, because he did not meet the second de- Institute, who had transferred from Moscow to Leningrad, mand: knowledge of the German language. He well un- sent quite comprehensive informative material about the derstood the demand that the director have knowledge of economic condition of all German colonies in 1797, the German language and he proposed a wise solution: information about the satisfaction of the colonists with the bring on staff a worker skilled in the German language. land allotment of 1830, and other documents, Incidentally, The first year of work was unusually difficult, but very in his letter Schmidt advised that copies of these documents fruitful, Piskunov was able to obtain two small rooms in had been specially made for the Marxstadt museum. the building of the TsIK [Central Executive Committee] and gather almost 57,000 files into thirteen collections. Further, he enlarged the staff of the archive, obtained new areas for archival storage, attracted attention to the prob- lems then at hand, wrote articles in the local press, con- ducted lessons in local history at schools, and prepared a joint conference of workers of the archives of the Saratov gubemiya and ASSRNP [Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Germans of the Volga Region] in December 1925, where he gave reports on the organization and ac- tivity of the archive. He took part in the first conference of archive workers in Moscow. Upon his shoulders fell the task of saving the archive from flood, when in 1926 the Volga came out of its banks and literally flooded the entire Pedagogical Institute in Pokrovsk (Engels). Photo courtesy city for three days. Quickly, the small collective of the o/Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Rußland. Central Archive Management of the ASSRNP (as by directive of the Sovnarkom of the Republic of Germans on Approaching the TsIK and Sovnarkom with the given the Volga the archive came to be called) moved thousands question, Piskunov emphasized that this work must be of archive files and books of the library to the upper supported, enlarged, placed within the structure of the plan, shelves and to the third floor of the building of the TsIK. and funded by special allocations. He proposed to create a Piskunov understood the meaning of creating archives local historical society, for whom this work would be an locally for the preservation of archival material, and suc- immediate task. Piskunov affirmed that it was impossible to ceeded in bringing on staff an inspector who worked with obtain the original documents from Leningrad, but the enterprises and organizations. He insisted on the formation copies which were made were good substitutes and rich of canton archives and did not agree that this work should material for researchers. He wrote: *The indicated archival be laid on the workers of the ZAGS (Registry of Civil material in connection with printed material already Acts), who did not have sufficient time to become involved available... gives the possibility of creation of a history in archival work. One of the important stages in the work textbook, the study of the way of life of the German colo- of the archive of this period was the collection of archival nies for the entire period of their existence." materials then located outside the borders of the republic. The more one studies the documents, the more one is At this time, the archive of the Chancery for the impressed with enormous respect for the organizer of the Guardianship of Foreigners was located partly in Penza, archive in the German Republic; the constant referring to partly in Saratov. Also received from Saratov were the files the TsIK and SNK [Soviet Narodnykh Kommissarov} by of the N, Dobrinsky credit association, and the means of reports and letters in which he concretely set out Gubprodkom [Guberniya Ration Committee], One of the the needs of the archive; the problems which were impor- first propositions Piskunov supported was that of the di- tant and needed immediate attention; the demands for in- rector of the executive committee of the oblast committee creasing the staff and setting apart a place for the archive. [Ohkom\ of the Communist party of the German Republic, He was worried about other issues related to the archive; Ivan Christianovich Schmidt, to study the [material on the] he did not agree with them, argued, and demanded. In spite history of the German colonization kept in Leningrad (now of all the difficulties, by 1928 the archive had gathered St. Petersburg). Students Dekker and
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 archival material of the Tarlyk, Linevo Ozero, Oleshna, in the archive repository, since by 1927 only one-eighth of Norka, Krasnoyar, Tonkoshurovo, Torgun, Verkhne- all the materials located in the cantons had been con- Yeruslan, Stefan, Byzyuk, and other volost authorities; of centrated in the central archive. an entire list of village councils: Blumenfeld, Nizhne- Before his departure from the archive in 1927, Galka, Frankreich, Kochetnoye, Lyatoshin, Volsk, Novo- Piskunov succeeded in solving the problem by adding to Privalnoye, Yablonovo, Kazitskoye, Staritskoye, and oth- the archive a former granary built in 1902 on Kom- ers. A long list of church archives connected with the clos- munarnaya Square (now Lenin Square). As we see, other ing and destruction of churches was gathered. Also re- issues relating to the archives in our country were worked ceived were collections of the Pokrovsk organizations, the out in the Republic of Germans on the Volga. And at that Pokrovsk treasury, banks, mutual credit associations, and time a wide sweep of construction began in the capital of other institutions. By this time, documents of the village the republic. They built schools, movie theaters, recon- Soviets of all territories of the German Republic were re- structed and added on to the buildings of the Central Ex- ceived, basically from 1918-1923, and of the Military ecutive Committee and the Soviet of People's Com- Commissariats for those same years, Piskunov and his missariat. They constructed the buildings of the German workers left archival material at local sites only after they Pedagogical and Economic Institutions of Higher Learning were convinced of its appropriate preservation, free from [VUZ], and increased construction of living quarters, But threat of destruction. Thus an archive was established in the decision to move the former granary to the archive was the village of Koeppental (formerly Malyshin volost), brought to a standstill in 1928 because funds for its which was used by Zyuryukin in his work about the restoration and adaptation to the needs of the archive had Mennonites, and an archive in the village of Susly, which not been allocated. Not until 1930, after many capital re- provided material used by Gotflieb Beratz in the writing of pairs, did this building, which stands uniquely apart from his history of the German colonies of the Volga. These other neighboring buildings, become located where it is were necessary measures because of the absence of space today.
The Engels Branch of the Saratov Oblast State Archive.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 But Mikhail Pedorovich Piskunov, while remaining to work. The archivists began to become familiar with the new fulfill the duties of manager of the central archive, did not facility. At first they entered the less-than-optimal, work in the new building. He was replaced in February unfinished building on a wooden ladder through the attic 1927 by a new manager, Josef Petrovich Prinz. A worker of and processed the documents in the building opposite, this same archive, he continued the efforts of his which belonged to the former City Executive Committee. predecessor. And Mikhail Fedorovich worked as an Then a workroom was built. archivist for another half year. He continued the work of In 1931 a young girl came to the archive; she was an collecting documents, organizing archival service in the archival-technical co-worker, who dedicated her whole life cantons, and creating departmental archives at other sites. to the archive. The last fourteen years, until her retirement Many trials also fell to the lot of the new manager. In in 1958, she served as director. But until the last hour she June 1927 the Central Archive was transferred to the ju- loved her brain-child, rejoicing in its successes, suffering its risdiction of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs failures. This girl, this director about whom we speak, was [NKVD} in order to comply with the decision of the Praskovya Grigorievna Krause, to whose memoirs we will government to cut back on administrative apparatus. From refer later in this article. 15 December of that year, the directorate was transformed The co-workers of the archive worked under difficult into a bureau, and the staff was reduced fifty percent. The conditions in order to preserve history. During the day they manager became a senior inspector with a staff of only two responded to the requests of citizens; during the evenings, "keepers of the archives." Appearing in May 1928 at the under the light of kerosene lamps, they inventoried the first republic meeting of archive workers, Prinz heatedly collections. The frequent changes of supervisors were emphasized that the archive of the German Republic was impediments to the work. After Prinz left, Wichman, the only one in Russia, and in the entire Soviet Union, Lavochkin, Medvedev, Milyushin, and Sikachuk so quickly which was subordinate to the NKVD, while all other ar- replaced each other that they did not leave noticeable marks chives were subordinate to their corresponding executive on the work of the archive. But then the young cadre, such committees; that the NKVD had actually converted the as P. G. Krause and A. I. Martinov worked, taking courses archive into a department, and that with such a small staff, it at the Moscow Historical-Archive Institute to upgrade their was not possible to fulfill the tasks set before the archive. In qualifications, and doing everything possible to improve the one of his memos to the NKVD he wrote; "If we find work of the archive, justification for the inaccurate and inattentive attitude to- The severest trials fell upon the archives and the docu- ward the archive in the first years of the Revolution, then in ments kept there in 1941, after the Decree of the Supreme the eleventh year it is unforgivable. Two thirds of all the Soviet of the USSR of 28 August 1941, "Concerning Re- material that has been gathered has been scattered to the location of Germans Living in the Areas of the Volga Re- periphery of the German Republic...." gion." The decree was published in the republic's news- In spite of the difficulties, the work was not stopped papers Bolshevik and Nachrichten, and thus began the ter- and the new building laid the foundation of great archival rible pages in the history of the German people, On 6 September 1941, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) of the Autonomous Soviet So- cialist Republic of Germans of the Volga Region (ASSRNP) issued an order "For securing preservation of documentary materials of establishments, organizations, and enterprises of the ASSRNP." It stated that in connec- tion with the deportation of the German people and the absence of supervisory workers from enterprises and or- ganizations, with the aim of preventing plundering and destruction of documental materials of current record- keeping and departmental archives, it was necessary to transfer them immediately to the State Archive of the ASSRNP; the concentration of all documental materials in the State Archive of the Republic was to be completed by 1 Government building in Pokrovsk (Engels). Photo courtesy November 1941. On 1 January 1941, the o/Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Rußland.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 Archives 7 archive had contained 1475 collections of 320,195 files. By comfortable to work. This was the contribution of the order of 13 October 1941, the Central State Archive of Praskovya Grigorievna Krause, who in 1944 took on her the Republic (TsIK) was liquidated. The archive became a female shoulders the yoke of director of the archive. branch of the Saratov Oblast State Archive; the staff was After the liquidation of the German republic, fifteen reduced to five persons. It was necessary in the last few cantons were transferred to the territory of the Saratov moments to collect and to accept thousands more files of oblast and seven to the Volgograd oblast by the decree of liquidated branches of the central organs: TsIK, Supreme the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 7 September 1941. Soviet, Sovnarkom, Narkomats, associations, trusts, Unfortunately, on the basis of the distribution of the Main organizations, and enterprises. We turn to the memoirs of Archive Directorate of the MVD of the USSR of 17 June P.G. Krause: "They brought in documents on trucks, 1950, this division applied not only to territory, but also to stacking them like firewood, not separating inventoried the documents. More than 200 collections totaling 15,000 files from non-inventoried. The trucks stood in queues.... It files were transferred to the Kamyshin branch of the was necessary to put them [the documents] everywhere." Stalingrad State Oblast Archive. Thus documents which Workers of the Main Archive Directorate, evacuated from reflected the history of the colonization and founding of Moscow to Engels, helped the archivists collect the part of the Volga lands by foreigners left the archive: the documents. The population actively helped, as did workers volost authorities and village councils of Seewald of a whole line of enterprises and organizations. And losses [Verkhovoye], Neu-Donhof [Novoye], Peskovatka [Kolb], were unavoidable. The documents of the Komvuz Neu-Bauer, Josephtal, Hussenbach, Dietel, and others. [Communist High School] disappeared in the building Such a fate of territorial division and storage in various which was being used as an evacuation hospital. A large archives befell the documents of churches of the number of documents of two educational institutions, the Evangelical Lutheran and Roman Catholic villages of German Pedagogical Institute and the German Agricultural Verkhnaya Kulalinka, Walter, Hussenbach, Kraft, Kaneau, Institute, were lost. Matters of preservation of the Merkel, Stefan, and others. These were transferred to the documents located on the periphery became still worse. Kamyshin branch, as were the collections of enterprises The documents of the lower network, kolkhozes, and organizations of the Soviet period: canton central sovkhozes, machine-tractor stations, and of other organi- executive committees, volost executive committees, village zations and enterprises were almost completely destroyed. Soviets, military commissariats, professional unions, At this terrible time, when the front line actually machine-tractor stations, sovkhozes, and artels of Gmelin, reached the Volga at Stalingrad, the government decided Pallasovka, Staro-PoItava, Ilovatka, Dobrmka, Erienbach, not to risk the archive documents and immediately evacu- and Frank cantons. Unfortunately these transfers were not ated them to Perm, The archive workers were sent to the limited. The most important collection for the study of the Zolotov region to dig trenches. Not until 1946 did the re- settlement of the Volga region, that of the Chancery for the evacuation begin, and even this did not ensure complete Guardianship of Foreigners for 1774-1898 [Kontora}, in preservation of the documents. The basic collection was which are preserved the lists of first colonists, material returned in two railroad cars. The receipt for delivery from about the establishment of new colonies, the relocation of the Central State Archive of October Revolution and colonists to the Caucasus and the Semipalatinsk region and Construction, dated 20 August 1946, has been preserved. It other countries, revision lists, land survey books, is noted in the receipt that the material arrived in a chaotic information about the construction and work of churches, state. Some of the binding materials were undone so it was documents reflecting the culture, way of life, and education impossible to determine the quantity of collections and of colonists went to the Saratov Oblast State Archive. The preserved units until they were completely re-examined. It lack of space and the status of our archive has not permitted was estimated that about 85,000 files of seventy-seven the return (after the expiration of the period of retention) to collections were received. Part of the documents were the departments and archives of the Registry of Civil Acts damp and mildewed. The archivists moved them to the (ZAGS) of documents of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran storage area in the basement, dried them out, and sorted churches which were transferred to the oblast archive them by collection, inventoried them, and so on. By this ZAGS at the Saratov Oblast State Archive. time the granary had received electric lighting, windows The basic part of the collections remained in Engels, were made in the workroom, a stove/heater was placed in first, because our archive was made up of documents of the center of the room, so it became warmer and more
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 8 Archives
Elizaveta Yerma, Director of the Engels Branch of the Saratov Oblast oblast and republic organizations of the ASSRNP, and State Archive, in her office. Photo because the larger part of the territory of the republic (fif- courtesy of Arthur Flegel. teen cantons of twenty-two) was assigned in 1941 to the Martiazhka], Usatovo [Eckheim], Konstantinovka territory of the Saratov oblast. And today the archive holds [Schilling], Ehrenfeld [Kratzke], Zhulidovo [Schondorf], documents of the collections of the volost governments for Kazitskaya [Brabander], Gryaznovatka [Schuch], Zhdanov 1799" 1917 of the cities of Katharininstadt [Marxstadt], [Hoffental], Belopolye [Lilienfeld], and others reflect the Goly Karamysh [Balzer], Sosnovka [Schilling], Bizyuk many-sided life of the settlers. First of all, there are verdicts [Marienberg],Tonkoshurovka [Mariental],Tarlyk [Laub], of the village councils, books of various types of Hussenbach, Torgun, Norka, and the other governments in collections; land councils, treasury, tax lists, books of ac- which are copies of imperial decrees, decrees of the counts of liquid assets, income and expense of collected Chancery for the Guardianship of Foreigners [Kontora], funds; lists of colonists collected for various purposes; manuscript copies of the manifestos of Catherine II about accounts of heads of household with indications of their the settlement of foreigners in Russia, documents about the properties, heredity affairs of deceased, orphan affairs, and economic situation in the colonies, about the recovery of files of family allotments; lists of persons desiring to relo- taxes, collection of rent, about feudal rights, about popu- cate to the Semipalatinsk oblast and other lands; documents lation censuses, trade, business of the courts, about real- about the work of trading establishments, industrial estate and land use, strip farming, sowing and harvesting of enterprises; information about population, crops, harvests, crops and hay. The majority of pre-revolutionary livestock, census lists; information about the economic collections which we have are the collections of village situation of the population, about consolidation of lands in councils of 1799-1917: Ust Karaman [Enders], Volsk personal ownership in accordance with the law of 9 [Kukkus], Zvonarevka [Schwed], Podstepnoye November 1906, issuance of loans for planting spring [Rosenheim], Staritza [Reinwald], Lugovaya Gryaznukha fields, distribution lists, those in need of food, information [Schuiz], Serpogorye [Sichelberg; also known as about the number of inhabitants, village communities, about measures taken in the battle of animals' diseases, information about the number of schools, number
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 Archives 9
German houses remaining in Mariental, one of the cities and villages for which the Engels Branch of the Saratov Oblast State Archive has holdings. Photo courtesy of Marion Wasinger, Hannibal, Missouri. of teachers, of students; contracts of hiring of farm laborers, Privalnoye (1794-1916), Reinhardt (1820-1914), Liebental, shepherds, notices of rent, and other items. Lucerne, Rohleder, and others are kept in our archive. It is natural that many documents of the volost gov- There is a whole row of books with notations of births and ernments and village councils reflect one and the same deaths of settlers, registrations of marriages, prenuptial questions about the lives and ways of the settlers. It could examinations. There are confession and search warrant not be otherwise. The first unit of authority in the colonies books, protocols for inspections of churches, schools was the village assembly; the second was the volost, which attached to them, and church property. Part of these church united several villages and decided all questions books with notations of births, marriages, and deaths are concerning the colonists. located in the Saratov State Oblast Archive because they Also preserved in the archive are the collections of the were transferred, as stated above, by the Oblast Executive volost courts, which contain the decisions of volost and Committee of ZAGS after the seventy-five-year period of arbitration courts, civil and criminal affairs. [There are] conservation, without taking into consideration the law of several collections of the land officers [zemskiye archives and the indivisibility of archive collections. And nachalniki], tax inspectors, trade houses of Andrei Bender now before us is the task of returning them to the Engels and sons [of Balzer], the Schmidt brothers; the archive for completion of the collections, and unification of Katharinmstadt Central Russian School, separate gym- documents which will make work easier for the archivists, nasia, and schools. Basically, information about education, researchers, and mainly for ordinary people who approach the work of schools and high schools can be gleaned from the archive with questions of genealogy the documents of the village authorities and the Our archive is more completely furnished with docu- churches. ments of institutions and organizations created after 1917- The documents of the Roman Catholic and Evangelical This is a service of the archivists, who simultaneously ac- Lutheran schools of Balzer (for 1804-1918), Gnadentau cepted documents for preservation at the archive. The (1824-1913), Marxstadt (1763-1865), Norka (1834-1915), Soviet period opens with the files of the Volga Region
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 10 Archives Commissariat of German Affairs; in the collection are government telegrams about the creation of the Commis- sariat, documents of the first and second sessions of the German colonies, material about the apportionment of uyezds, protocols of general meetings of the colonists, correspondence with village Soviets on the questions of land use. Also preserved in the archive are the collections of the Oblast Executive Committee [Oblispolkom], its departments and management, where the development from the Workers' Commune to the oblasts of Germans on the Volga is traced, document by document. Here are illuminated all questions of the life of the recreated oblast union in its battle to survive: the first years of power, the battle with hunger, the overcoming of crisis, the establishment of an economy, the necessary adjust- ments. Documents of all the central organs of the ASSRNP are completely represented: the Central Executive Com- mittee, Supreme Soviet, Soviet of People's Commissars, People's Commissariat, management, associations, and others. As the region of the Volga is basically agricultural in nature, its collection of the People's Commissariat of Land Use, which has not been researched, attracts special at- tention. Reflected in it are all kinds of activity: processes of sowing, harvesting, land use and land improvement work, reorganization of the peasant economy, collectivization of agriculture, organization of collective farms, state farms, machine-tractor stations, supply of farm machinery. There is interesting information about the work of Y. Mamin on the invention of the Karlik tractor; about the creation and work of the Krasny Kut and Valuisk experimental farm stations; about work to defend animal and plant life from harmful farming practices and illness. There are documents about livestock production, sheep, swine, the work of the veterinary service, and so on, Along the same line, interesting material is presented in the collection of the Directorate of Economic Accounting, which includes statistical data about the totals of censuses, industry, livestock, dynamics of research of peasant agriculture, harvests, accounts of work of individual enterprises, collective farms, state farms, machine-tractor stations, activities of scientific institutions, institutions of the people's education, cultural-educational institutions, health care, transport, and communications. In the collec- tion of the People's Commissariat of Education are found materials about the work of pre-school institutions, devel- opment and work of networks of schools, technical schools, and institutions of higher education. The work on the eradication of illiteracy among the population and
Draft of the future Engels Archive building, based on a drawing provided by the author.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 Archives 11 Volga," He is working together with the archivists to pub- lish comprehensive material about the first settlers. Schol- ars of the Gottingen Institute show interest in our materials. James Long of America [has spent many hours researching here]. Co-workers of the archive also work on their own documents. Of course, questions about the provision of safety of archive collections are paramount, as are repair of the building and a more rational disposition of files in the depository, the processing of the files of the collections, the creation of a good scientific research apparatus for them (inventories, guidebooks, historical information, prefaces). But the archivists conduct great research work, View of Katharininstadt (Marxstadt). Photo courtesy and attempt to bring the collection to wider attention. To o/Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Rußland. this end, we use many platforms: appearances at all ses- sions, conferences, meetings, connected with the move- the introduction of universal compulsory education is com- ment of Germans for their rehabilitation, at meetings of pletely reflected. The history of the organization of the archivists, in the press, and on radio. German Pedagogical Institute and its unique library is in- A history of the German Philharmonic has been pub- teresting, as is the history of the Institute for Teacher Cer- lished. Histories of the German State Theater, Marxstadt tification, and the German Economic Institute. Presenting library and music school have been written. In process is a interest for study are the documents of sessions, confer- history of the German State Pedagogical Institute. Working ences of workers of education, materials about the issuance in the archive are students, aspiring historians, editors, and of textbooks in the German language, and similar items. correspondents of various newspapers and journals. The Not so complete as one could wish, but preserved, are latter are attracted to the photo collection in the archive; the documents of the directorate on the works of art, dra- periodicals such as Der Kolonist from 1918, Nachrichten matic theaters, puppet theaters, musical comedies, and from 1921-1940, and republic papers in the Russian philharmonic. But from them we learn of the many-sided language Trudovaya Pravda (Bolshevik) for 1921-1941. A life of the republic, the searches for ways to solve its prob- small quantity of canton newspapers has also been lems, the creation of a national culture, and writers' orga- preserved, as have newspapers from separate machine- nizations. Preserved in the archive are several works of tractor stations, Andres Sachs, Gerhard Sawodsky, Johannes Schauflee; Today it would not be necessary to describe so pre- poems, articles and stories of Johann Bicher, Willi Bredel, cisely the content and condition of the documents pre- and Heinrich Kempf. German folklore of the Volga is rep- served in the archival collections of the branch, if this resented; riddles, sayings, proverbs. In the documents of the information had been included in the guidebook, State former Central Museum of the German Republic are lists of Archives of the RSFSR. One of the multitude of problems first colonists; the works of Pastor Erbes, and Pastor facing this small collective is to write a guidebook. One of Schaaf; manuscripts of the scientific works of Lonsinger; this series of problems is of global rank: the construction Felde's, Staube's, and Ehlberg's notes on folksongs; the of a new building for the archive, one which can meet all ethnographic notes of Dinges; works of historians, current demands, with a reading hall, laboratory, and including the History of the Volga Germans by Dietz, exposition hall. The head of the city administration has which is currently being prepared for publication. allotted a plot of land on one of the central city squares, Researchers constantly work in the archive. Historian and a projection has been drawn up for an archive building A. German wrote the book German Autonomy on the Volga with storage area for 800,000 units of preservation. The on the basisi of materials found in the archive. The first archive collective hopes to receive support from all state part has been published; the second is at press. Historian structures, societies, business persons of all rank, and just Igor-Plehve has also published several works, among ordinary people who love history. which is "Pugachev and the German Colonies on the
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994
This map shows the Central Asian Republics. (Originally published in Heimatbuch der Deutschen aus Rußland 1965. Used with permission.)
AHSGR Journal/Spring 3994 13
FROM THE LIFE OF A RUSSIAN-GERMAN WOMAN Translated by Christine Clayton
It was 1930. We lived quietly in our parents' house. Our How far away is that time that once made me happy, father died of a stroke in 1921. Our mother suffered her the hope of youth disappeared. But I hurry to where first stroke in December 1929 and, three weeks later, her eternal youth will adorn me, to my home in the eternal second one. Reconciled with God, she passed away land, happily; we five siblings were full of sorrow when we House and home are changed— the garden is buried her. I was twenty-three years old at the time; my gone, the meadow is divided. I am still often youngest sister was fifteen; we were four sisters and one drawn to the dear old place, where I once dwelt brother. At that time, I harbored a strange wish: to achieve with my parents. "the crown of life by bearing the cross." That wish started We had to pack what little we had. We were allowed to to become reality soon after my mother's death. take as many clothes, food items, and kitchen utensils as Before her death, not least because of her wishes, I had we could. We were given a receipt for our house and our become engaged to a young man who was also a believer. cow. We were told that we would receive the same at our We married in March of the same year. We were all still destination. With bleeding hearts we went to the next train very much under the impression of my mother's death, and station, which was fifteen kilometers away; it was already therefore we were not able to be in a festive mood. One dark when we arrived there. Several children who had been and one-half years later, I gave birth to a girl, who died of sick and died on the way had to be handed over to the mouth cancer in her third year of life. Of our three other authorities. There was no time to bury them. Our luggage children, the youngest, a boy, became ill with meningitis was stacked in barns, and we were promised that it would when he was eleven months old. The lower half of his be sent after us. body was paralyzed, probably because of harmful in- Like patient sheep we allowed them to load us onto the jections into his spine. He was not able to develop nor- wagons, bereft of all energy. Benches were attached to the mally and became crippled. We took him to Moscow, and wagon walls and bedding placed on them for the children the physicians gave us reason to hope there would be an and old people. The rest of us sat on suitcases and boxes. improvement in his condition, but then the horrible war There was a little iron stove in the middle of the wagon. interfered in 1941.1 heard a voice: Your thoughts and your The locomotive whistled, and the train wheels started ways are in God's hands. moving, creaking and screeching. We were convinced that In 1941 official orders forced us to settle in the wil- only God knew our destiny, A few young people were derness, in Siberia and Central Asia. Although we were singing: Good-bye, dear homeland. It was so cold that the hoping that this would only be a temporary event, it was bed covers froze to the walls; there was only a little fuel for hard for us to leave our beloved village where we had heating. Whoever had not yet learned how to steal was spent childhood and youth. learning it now. We secretly searched for coal at every stop. Many children and old people became ill and died. Longing We had been on our journey for eleven days when they I think back to the days of my childhood, began disconnecting one wagon at each stop. Thus, the to the days that are long since gone— people in the fifty train wagons were scattered throughout to my parents, who, at night, with a friendly look Kazakhstan. Then it was our wagon's turn. "Get off!" we sang a nursery rhyme for me, were told roughly. A snow storm was raging outside; This article was written by a woman from the Volga area, whose it was dark, and we were terribly frightened. We were name is unknown. The article, "Aus dem Leben einer standing in front of Kazakhs wearing enormous fur hats rußlanddeutschen Frau," originally appeared in Heimatbuch der and strange coats. We had never seen this people. Deutschen aus Rußland 1973-1981. Used with permission.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 14 Russian-German Woman
Steppe in Kazakhstan near Alexandrovka at the Chinese border (from: Bild am Sonntag). Photo courtesy of Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Rußland. A decrepit sled, drawn by a few oxen and camels, was we had not remembered him often enough, had pursued waiting to give us a ride. We loaded the children and old riches, and had directed our work and concerns towards people on it; whoever had healthy legs had to walk through worldly matters. the knee-deep snow. Our clothes became thoroughly The men then started to search for our luggage at the drenched. Thus, we made our way step-by-step and hour- different stations along our way. We found all our packages by-hour. At dawn we finally saw the so-called village: after many trips; others did not obtain everything. We were partly crumbled mud huts. From now on, these were sup- also supposed to go to work—to shovel snow—but nobody posed to be our living quarters, which we had to share with went, since one had to work for free. At the end of other people; in some cases, we had to live with the February, we received an order: All men, whether old or Kazakhs in one room. young, were mobilized. My husband, too, was sent to work I will try to describe this nomad people briefly. One in the forest in the far north. I remained behind with our can hardly imagine the filth and odor they live in, if one has three children, one of whom was crippled, and carried the not experienced it oneself. They only take off their clothes fourth under my heart. Again a train started up after they have turned to rags because of sweat, dirt, and screechingly, and a piece of life was torn from my anxious lice. The lice live in the seams of their clothes, and the heart. However, two of my sisters remained at my side— Kazakhs crush them with their teeth. The Kazakhs say: and the Almighty Father, who does not burden his children They are our flesh and blood. The lice multiply incredibly with more than they can bear. fast. We also found their way of preparing meals extremely In the summer time, after much effort, we managed to distasteful. A simple meal, for example, consists of animal move to a nearby station, where my sisters found work as innards, which are cooked in a so-called "Grappen" [a dish bookkeepers. Their salaries were small. German women similar to haggis—Translator], The cooking utensils are not did not receive food stamps, and I could not find work in cleaned, sheep heads are cooked whole with skin and hair, my condition. In the meantime, women and girls had been bones are gathered afterwards and cooked a second time. mobilized as well. They had to go to the primeval woods in At the same time, the Kazakhs are extremely hospitable. the north to fell trees. I was allowed to remain with my Was this my way to the crown by bearing the cross? children, but some mothers of five or six children had to Our supplies dwindled quickly, and nothing was added. In leave. The way to the crown led through the cross. Again, the snow-covered fields, we had to search for cooking fuel. one had to take leave. There were heart-breaking scenes at The brushwood was partly green and would not burn. Our the station: mothers had to leave their small, defense-less men sat there, with their heads in their hands, and cried. children to the care of an unknown people. Why did we deserve this? It was God's punishment; Slowly I walked back, sank to my knees and, embrac"
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 Russian-German Woman 15 ing my children, cried to God. I now began to exchange his camp, and people argued even over those rats. kitchen utensils and articles of clothing for food. Many While I was helplessly sitting in our room, a German times I went home empty handed; many times I received woman entered and started a fire in our little stove with a only little for those items. After a few months I had traded few semi-rotten, bad-smelling pieces of wood. We were everything except the essentials. My husband and both my able to warm ourselves. Once again, I received work at the sisters sent us money as often as possible. During all this nursery school, which meant warm meals for my children. misery, 1 gave birth to a healthy girl. Soon afterwards I got With God's help, we soon recovered despite the meager a job at a bread shop, where I had to tidy up in the amount of food. There was a lake with fish not far from our evenings. The shopkeeper was a cousin of mine; she was living quarters. My children caught the fish and brought very good to me. Many times she gave me a piece of bread them to me for cooking. or something else. Life was unspeakably difficult; the chil- Thus, seven years went by. One day I was called to the dren suffered from hunger. I obtained a position as a night colonel (a Kazakh), who was in charge of the Germans. I guard in a nursery school. Every day I could take home was astonished to find my husband with him. He had not some cooked food for the children from the nursery school. been able to cope with the separation any longer and had But my smallest girl became ill and died, I wrapped her in secretly escaped. He had almost made it home when he a linen cloth and put her in. her grave. There were no was caught and arrested. I went to get the children, and boards for a coffin. when the colonel saw those pale, poor creatures, his heart I had one valuable article of clothing left: my softened. They cried and asked that their father not be husband's woolen wedding suit. My sister-in-law and I taken away again. He was allowed to stay, under the "purchased" a little mud hut on the river with it, after hav- condition that he would work as a carpenter for the colonel; ing lived with the Kazakhs for five years. Unfortunately, I had to agree to work as a cleaning woman in the office. we only lived there for one winter. In the spring the river Thus, we became slaves of the colonel, who was often rose above flood level, and our little house collapsed. We rough and angry. We had to work for nearly nothing. In the were now homeless. The government took pity on us and end, we had built a small house out of painted clods of gave us a small lodging. My children and I collected the clay. necessary firewood near the railway, When our oldest son was sixteen, the government sent Next, illness entered my hard life. My two healthy him to Karanganda to train as a coal miner. Two years later children and I contracted typhoid. We were taken to the we dared to move there ourselves. We went through a lot hospital, and since my crippled child could not live by of trouble for that. We sold the little house we had built himself, he came along with us. After a few weeks of good ourselves for a few pennies. We thank God the Almighty care, we recovered our health. But when we returned home, for the wonderful ways he led us and for his help and we did not have one bite of bread or one bit of fuel. My support. This, in short, is my life, which, in my youthful husband was not able to send us anything, because he suf- dreams, I had hoped would lead to the crown by bearing fered from hunger himself. They caught and fried rats in the cross.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 16
YOUNG AT HEART
Ralph G. Bennett When I close my eyes and remember my grandmother, given to innumerable small villages throughout the not only can I see her face clearly in my mind's eye, but I Ukraine. So exactly which Monastyrische it is that can also hear her voice. Her favorite song, in her later years, Grandma hailed from, I have never been able to figure out was "Young at Heart," which I always thought to be definitively. appropriate for her in a very charming way since Grandma The essential point of her story was that the custom, in was one of the lucky ones who lived to be an old, old lady those days, was for the girls in the family to get married in indeed. At the time that I became interested in learning the order in which they had been born. about my family's history. Grandma was in her late eighties Because of this, there was great pressure for an ar- and living in a nursing home. Yet, she still presented a very ranged marriage to be consummated for an older sister dramatic appearance: bewigged ("To hide my thinning when a younger one had a beau. Because Grandma had hair," she said) and wearing dense white face powder ("To been the youngest, she was the only one on whom there hide all the wrinkles!"). To me, she looked like a "spin-off was no great parental pressure for marriage. This was a fact of the grooming style of Queen Elizabeth I! Although she that could not have been more in agreement with Sari's was physically frail, her memory was as "sharp as a tack" plans. Considering the time and place in which she had and she could recall details that occurred sixty and seventy been born, she was a young woman engaged in extraordi- years ago as if they had happened yesterday. She, at first narily progressive thinking. She had a great passion for reluctantly and then more and more openly, revealed her singing and she hoped, against all odds, to use her fine secrets. I was surprised to find out so many details of her soprano voice as an entree into a glamorous operatic career. background that I never knew before. In that way she hoped to escape her sleepy village. She day- Grandma was murky about certain facts. For example, dreamed endlessly about the glamorous high time in Kiev, although she was inordinately proud of her Germanic heri- or even Moscow, St. Petersburg, or Berlin! She had seen tage, she had been born and spent her youthful years in the her older sisters led off, one by one, to the altar by her Ukraine. Exactly why and when in the past her family had parents, thenceforth to spend their lives with big bellies moved there from Russia was unclear to her. The one fact from repeated pregnancies and to pass their days working about which she was adamant, and which I had heard on the farms or in the shops of the Ukraine. That was not to repeated by Oma Sari all through my childhood, was that Sari's taste at all! She was the rebel who pined for an she was the youngest in her family, of the fourteen children, independent life of her own away from the sleepy and who had lived to adulthood. She was born in the town of provincial town of her birth. Monastyrische in the Ukraine. In later years when I was All of that changed somewhat when a troupe of stroll- trying to pin down exactly her point of origin, I discovered, ing players came to town to present their traveling dramatic to my consternation, that the town's name meant "the little production and Sari found herself smitten by one of the city of the monastery" and was the name young actors named Vassily. The troupe was only in town for a few days. Sari, a buxom, star-struck young woman at © by Ralph G. Bennett. Used with permission. Ralph G. Bennett, that point, managed to catch Vassily's eye and extract from M.D., is a physician whose practice encompasses Dermatology and Allergy in Hayward, California (a suburb of San Francisco). He first him a promise that he would write to her from the various became interested in researching his family tree about ten years cities on his itinerary. How she wished that she could join ago. From genealogy, his interests over the years have broadened his band of players! How glamorous it would be to dress up to involve scholarly study in a number of other areas as well. Dr. in costumes and make-up and travel all over the country Bennett has published over four dozen articles concerning medical singing, dancing and emoting drama! Of course, her parents subjects, history, genealogy, art history, anthropology, and were horrified. This was not at all the sort of young man economics. His work has been accepted for publication in the they had in mind for one of their daughters! Everyone knew United States and six foreign countries, and has been translated into four foreign languages. Dr. Bennett's article "A Matron Not a that a young girl needed a stalwart, stable husband who Maid" appeared in the Winter 1992 issue of the AHSGR Journal. could provide for her, preferably some-
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 one from the German-speaking community. But to marry that she distracted and entertained the troops. Finally, they an outsider? An actor yet? Rubbish! left so that her sister's family was, of all the households in The years passed and, amazingly, letters from Vassily the district, virtually the only one that escaped unharmed. did occasionally arrive. Sari continued to dream of him and After this frightening incident, all the others prayed to of forging her own career on the stage. Her parents kept God and "thanked their lucky stars" that they had been suggesting eligible young men, but she brushed them aside. spared. But Sari could not join them in their complacent "I'm the youngest," she said. "There's no rush for me to faith that God would look after them nor could she resume marry. Besides, I'm too busy taking singing lessons!" and life as usual. She was now determined to leave. But where she would put them off until they stopped nagging, if only would she go and how could a single young woman escape temporarily. alone from those tumultuous times in Russia? Her family Whatever fantasies Sari harbored were dashed by the would never allow such a thing. Secretly, she made onset of World War I. Suddenly, the country was plunged preparations to steal away at night. into pandemonium. There was no way now that she could As a child, I had heard vague stories as to how my escape from Monastyrische. Young men were being grandmother, of all the members of her family, had man- drafted into the army and everyone was paralyzed by fear aged to escape, alone, from war-torn revolutionary Russia. of impending attack. Somehow, despite all the The details had been quite sketchy but now I finally learned disorganization and chaos, a letter came through from directly from Grandma something of her experiences. Vassily. He wrote that he had decided to leave Russia for Somehow, she had made her way to Riga, Latvia, hoping to the United States in order to avoid conscription. Sari day- board a ship that would bring her to America where she dreamed about someday joining him. He was her idol and was sure that she could track down Vassily. However, at the more her parents and sisters made fun of her Riga she discovered that the ships were crowded with aspirations, the more she clung to them. But the war was refugees all of whom were in hopes of better lives in not the only glitch in Sunja's romantic fantasies. Just after Western Europe and in the New World. Waiting lists the war ended, the Communist Revolution began, stretched months ahead. Finally, she set off overland again Grandma always referred to the Communists as the and eventually boarded a ship at .Danzig that would take Bolsheviks. On the night an army of them invaded her her west as far as England. Time was passing for her with village and began to murder all the townspeople, she was agonizing slowness but, finally, the shores of Britannia having dinner with the family of her married sister. Bertha. were in sight! Her money was gone and, although the When they heard screaming in the street, they became thought of traveling all the way to the New World was very panic-stricken. From the windows, they could see that a frightening to her, she decided that she had to continue. She rowdy mob of strange young men was shooting at the got work as a seamstress and lived practically on "air and townspeople. Some of their neighbors were being hung in water" until she had accumulated enough money for the the streets that were awash with blood! But Sari had an passage. Finally, one day in 1921, she boarded the SS idea. She was the only one of the family who knew how to Astoria in Liverpool bound for New York. speak true Russian because of her dramatic training; all the I had never realized the extent to which she and the others spoke German and the local Ukrainian dialect, other refugees, streaming out of Europe, had suffered in Quickly, she made her sister and brother-in-law and all of Chose years. In my mind, I had always pictured her flight their children hide in the attic. Then, alone, she prepared to to freedom as being imbued with a kind of radiant, charmed face the soldiers who were banging on the front door. With magic, like in an adventure story. It was only recently, in perfect Russian diction, she greeted them, "Privet fact, that I read a book about what conditions were really Tovarich" ("Greetings, Comrade").The soldiers were sur- like at that time. My research revealed that, at the turn of prised to find a real "Russian" woman in this Ukrainian the last century, Liverpool, along with Rotterdam, Ham- town. However, being quick on her feet, she explained that burg, Bremen, and Southampton, was a major port for the she had come from a poor family and had hired herself out exodus of refugees from Eastern Europe. In the book Days as a maid-servant. of Our Years (New York: HilIman-CurI, 1939), Pierre van "But where are the master and lady of the house?" the Paassen, who grew up in those times, described a typical soldiers wanted to know. scene. He wrote how, at the age of ten, he saw all of the "Oh," lied Sari, "they've been away on a business trip. immigrants passing through on their way to the new land of Come, Comrades, and have a glass of tea!" Thus, it was freedom:
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 }8 Young At Heart [T]housands. . . were waiting to board ships for the great and of finding her true love. Instead, as it was with so many unknown. It was evening when we arrived on the other hopefuls, fate led her elsewhere; she became a wharves. In the sheds, by the unsteady light of a few housewife who indulged her fantasies by singing at family petrol lamps, we could see that mass of fugitives lying gatherings. or sitting on their bales and sacks of baggage. Infants Why had no one in my family ever heard the details of wailed. Young girls shrieked in their sleep. Old men this romantic story before? A large part of it was Sari's were sitting forlornly in the open doorways, staring with embarrassment at revealing that she had married my grand- unseeing eyes at the river which at that hour was father "on the rebound." Also, she had given up her chance sprinkled with silver by the last rays of a sinking sun. of an independent career of her own and, upon reflection, it Most of these people were in rags. Hunger and long seemed to her that she had forsaken her aspirations just years of destitution had left an ashen imprint on their when she had arrived in the place where their fulfillment faces. There was an air of hopeless impotence about was possible. That was typical "Grandma" thinking—al- their movements; a dumb defeatist resignation, almost ways dreaming of a scenario far removed from practical inhuman ... We learned that many of the ... emigrants reality and, yet, somehow rising to the occasion whenever a had not eaten for days. Others had spent their last real crisis threatened. kopecks in buying bread in local... bakeries. Naturally, Later, as I continued delving into the unknown details certain... charitable organizations had done their utmost of my family's past, I discovered yet another reason for to relieve the distress, but their resources had proved Grandma's reticence. It turned out that she was somewhat inadequate. Every train from the East brought new older than her husband and this she regarded as a great contingents of poverty-stricken starvelings who had secret, to be repressed at all cost! As I was doing my ge- invested their last resources in a steamship ticket. nealogical research and began unearthing actual documents, I found, to my surprise, that in her panic to conceal her true Somehow she had made it! Once ashore in New York, age, she had adopted the "subtraction method." With each Grandma again put out feelers among the Russian émigrés successive document that had to be filled out (her age on there, hoping to track down Vassily. All the while that she arrival in America, her marriage certificate, her had been sailing across the ocean, she had hoped against nationalization, the birth of each new child) she had hope that he would stay in New York and not set out for subtracted a year or two so that, instead of getting older, she some outpost still farther west. What supreme delight she was actually getting younger! However, she had made the felt when she discovered that he still had a New York ad- mistake of telling me the year that my grandfather had dress. But this feeling of elation soon turned to despair arrived in the United States and his age at that time, so I when she discovered that Vassily had met a girl during his was able to calculate that he was born in 1889, Some fur- travels westward, had fallen in love with her, and as soon ther mathematics indicated that she was actually born in as they arrived in New York, they had married. So there 1883, which meant that, although she readily admitted to was Sari, destitute, alone, and far from the comforting being eighty-five, at the time (1981) could it be ... was she circle of family and friends. However, the people among really in her late nineties? No! She absolutely denied it and the German-speaking community who had gathered in she accused me of entrapping her by asking her questions New York were friendly to her. Within just a few months, about her family's past! America had accomplished for her what she had striven so Yet I am sure that, when she died in 1983, she was hard to avoid back in Russia: she had met a kind, gentle over one hundred years of age. I thank her now, as I did man (my grandfather to be), they were married, and she then, for revealing her secrets and telling me about all her was pregnant (with my mother). She settled down to a life adventures in the far-off world of the Ukraine so many of domesticity, into a safe refuge from the long struggle years ago. Without her, I would not have learned about this and from her many disappointments. She had come to romantic piece of my family heritage. Danke schön, Oma! America with dreams of becoming a great opera singer 19
FROM GOD’S LOST CROP: A BLACK SEA ALBUM
Ronald Vossler
The following sampler is selected/row a collection of poetic portraits of characters of Black Sea German origin, the fictional voices of original settlers and settlers' children in south central North Dakota, as they make the adjustment to the new land. The author has published a collection of short stories. Horse, I am Your Mother (Fargo: Simon Johnson Guild, 1988). His article "Names" appeared in the Spring 1992 issue of the AHSGR Journal.
LINOLEUM (Martha Neimals) All I ever wanted was linoleum. During those long winters, after my parents spit sunflower seeds down, it was my job to clean up the mess.
On my hands and knees for hours, from the splintered sod house floorboards, I picked up every hull. And slivers too, a whole harvest of them, in my knees and toes and hands. But in my dream of linoleum, it was a golden city to me, where I could hide from all that hurt.
It was always in my thoughts, acres of shiney smooth linoleum, even when I married Harold through a kooplesman. And if I had any sense, along with the sides of beef and the fifty dollars he give for me, I'd have asked for linoleum.
He was a good man, and give me what he could—good eats, a roof over my head, but no linoleum. We saved for a rainy day; but there was always something else to buy. "Our reward's in heaven," Harold would say, coming in with muddy boots from the fields, and spreading dirt over my floor that took hours to clean up.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 20 God's Lost Crop
Away we'd go to revival meetings, with him on the horse and me riding behind on the bumping stoneboat. In church, I prayed hard, trying to open myself to the Lord. But all that come to me was that shiney clean linoleum floor I didn't have.
The years, they moved like wind through the grass. Then one day Harold was gone. Alone in that house, my feet felt hot, like I was standing on burning coals,
So I sold out. The land, the barn, the machinery— everything but the house my cousin pulled to town on big moving beams with his truck.
With some of that money, I picked out linoleum from the hardware store. I hired a man to cut it nice and clean into my home. Now every room is a part of heaven. Now when I walk that smooth linoleum, I like to think both Harold and me got what we wanted.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 GOTT HAT MICH VERGESSA (Grandma Schindler) Me—I was just a straw in the haystacks of our people, "Unsera leuta," in those villages around the Black Sea,
But Gott always remembered. Even on the big waters, when those stormy waves pounded the ship, He held me in His hands.
Out homesteading on the wide land of Dakota, even the Evil one himself couldn't find me, wrapped there in His grace.
I worked. I married. My children come—one after the other. I sang the old church songs in a high voice. "Gott isch die Liebe" was always on my lips.
When the Sintflut, that Spanish flu, took my oldest, the daughter with the same name as me, I ran outside and screamed so loud that the sparrows in the bushes flew away; "You forgot me."
The heavens stretched tight over me. The years wrapped around my bones. Neighbors, old friends, Ludwig my husband—all of them were called home, leaving just me there.
In town where I moved, everyone talked strange, like pigs with their snouts caught in cream cans, always bending close to ask my secret of long life. Grape juice? Clean thoughts? A little glass of Schnappsla everyday?
No, I tell them, I'm here because Gott forgot me. And when He calls me home, I'll say, at least I never forgot You.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 THE TALKER (Jacob Klootz) All I ever done meina ganza Leva, my whole life, was make my Gusch go with the talking like viedich, Folks said I was born that way, screaming the bugs out of the sod house walls, and brulling in Deutsch and English, with sometimes a little Russian thrown in too- verhuddling and mixing them all together so that even I don't always know what I mean, verstehe?
Back when I was a little Hossashissa, a pants-pooper, my first prayer at the table was: "Abba lieba Vater amen,"—too short for me, I just got going when I had to quit, so I asked God, "Please grow me a new prayer, a big one like that Gugumera in my Mutter's garden last year, because this little don't last, ich werd a bissela mehr verzahle mit Sie, I want to keep talking to you, so amen again und nochamally."
Like a rain barrel in April, that's how I always was, full of questions; was fressen Gans and where does the land go and how come we talk Deutsch but come from Russland and live in America, and why does the teacher in die Schule only speak with the English and always put tape over my mouth and tell me to stay home and talk the ears off the cows, not him?
And once shoveling out from the big blizzard, I made again with the questions, was it going to snow for forty days like in the Bible, and was Vater going to be Noah, and why was snow white and why did water hide inside it, and Vater he stopped and looked at me and said: "Halts maul; there is enough wind on the prairie already,"
And in my little bed under the peak of the sod house, up there in the attic, I lay there like a Rauper spinning my cocoon of daydreams and words and Bible stories and asked questions to the ceiling, why don't we drown in our sleep, and why doesn't our house sink and how did we come here, in the middle of this cold place, and why is mustard so nice and yellow and a weed, and flax so blue and a crop?
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 "You'd spin the cream out of a woman," my Vater always told me growing up. "You'd knock her flat like a hailstorm in a field." So I never married, and anywhere where was the bucket big enough to hold all my questions? On Saturday nights in town I'd stand on the wooden boardwalk in front of the bar on main street and flap my lips at everyone who come by, and they'd say pass auf, watch out, here comes the talker, and they'd say how I was like the old saying, I had goose-grease smeared on my mouth so I couldn't shut up, and there I stood, with my forehead shiney white after hiding all week under my cap, and I'd tell anyone who'd listen and those who didn't want to, about how when I plowed, the seagulls flew around my tractor, just by my ear, whispering their secrets to me, and once out in a pasture ich hap rum geguckt, I looked around and saw a green animal with a red tail disappearing down a gopher hole, and once in the clouds at sunset I saw a big city, once in church above Reverend Ermel's head when he praediged a long sermon I seen a halo floating, like an innertube I blew up and threw into our creek once.
On Sunday out in our country Kircha, our little church, I always made with the talking during praying time when the ganza Leute, the whole congregation, they knelt and prayed outloud in Deutsch, and I always told all my sins, alle meina Schunda, and when everyone else finished, there I was, still, going at it, like the barn door you can't shut when there is a snow pile in the way, and they said I prayed so long all the time that someone could drive to town and back again, twenty miles and still find me praying, and I would tell Gott everything and then some, and ask all my questions, how does a horse know it's not a dog, and does ground die when it gets covered over with a street, and doesn't Heaven fill up with all these words that people pray, and when Sunday was over I was always happy, so I could get out and schaff and work again, and let my sore throat heal up, and give Gott another week to rest, because He was the only one who never told me to stop with all the talking.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 CARRYING (Christina Dobler) Only what you could carry—that's what the steamboat company said. So Vater and Mutter and Uncle Kloos and my brothers and cousins, they brought what they could, bedclothes and seeds and the family Bible. And maybe me. if I listen to my brother Hilmer, who remembers the crying bundle he held all the way from the Dorf in Russland. But Hilmer never tells the same story twice. And with Vater and Mutter gone, I carry my question around like an orphan. "On the way over," Uncle Kloos says. "You were the one who wouldn't nurse and almost got buried in the ocean." "On the trip north to take up land," my cousin Gottfried says. "In that wagon we bought from a Jew in Eureka." But Hilda Koeplin, the midwife, she says it was in the new sod house, "I should know, I washed your newborn eyes with milk, so you'd always see the truth." But maybe she was wrong, because everywhere I looked, in the Bible, and in church records, and in the county courthouse, I couldn't find the papers telling about me. With my own kids, I wrote down the time and which room in the house and the weather and the country and what I had for breakfast that day when they first seen the light of day—at least they'll know. "You're here, what does it matter," my husband says. "Only Gott himself knows the answer," the minister says. But me, I sit into my old age, that same question heavy in my lap like a big rock: where?
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 THE TIE THAT BINDS (Heinrich Rail) We took up our land next to them, Those first nights, over the crackling fires, we heard their drunkenness,
Those first years, during Bruderschaft revival sermons in our sod house, worshippers glanced across the way and whispered, "Poor Rails. Close to Gott. But closer to the Roeslers."
Yah, the Roeslers. They brewed their own whiskey, drinking and singing until sunup. Their dead?—they were buried before they were cold, while the survivors danced like they were at a wedding.
But us Ralls, we knelt until our knees were sore, beat our breasts over the smallest sin, and poured out our prayers like Roesler whiskey before every meal. And our neighbors?—they laughed at our pious- ness and stumbled away.
So our lives went. But the Lord laid His hand on each of us, Roeslers and Rails. Our eldest fell in with one of their boys and got poisoned from a whiskey still. Their son lived. Ours died.
Now their weeds grow in my fields and I can see what ties us together. But the ways of Gott der Herr are mysterious.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 THE HUNT (Hilmer Wolf) Her name means rabbit in our Deutsch way of talking. And she lived down by Beaver Creek, where all those Haases run wild.
Me, I come from the rocky hills to the north, and I ended up chasing her across all those young years into the fenced acres of a sod house and fourteen kids.
We raised our brood. They're all grown now, and I'm long in the tooth, still waiting for the night.
Then our bed spreads wide as the prairie again, and I'm the wolf, chasing.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 EMIGRATION OF GERMANS FROM THE SOVIET UNION IN THE YEARS 1987-1990-1993 Ida Bender
Translated by Jo Ann Kuhr someplace. It is impossible to find lodging in a hotel in Moscow. Many rent a private room for one night with two Ida Bender was born in Rothammel, Volga Region, and was or three people in one room in a private apartment. Others a young woman when she was deported to Siberia with spend the night sitting in a chair in the waiting room at the thousands of other Germans in 1941. An intelligent, train station. articulate woman of courage and perseverance, she is an Some people succeed in receiving several applications epitome of the strength and faith of the women who at the embassy which they then sell in their home town in survived many hardships—and yet retained a sense of order to recover some of the costs of their trip to Moscow. honor and humor. She is presently writing an article about My son and I purchased our applications in this manner her father, the famous Soviet-German poet, Dominik and saved a difficult, strenuous trip to Moscow. We needed Hollmann. This article is a result of the Aussiedler project. two applications, one for me and the second one for my son, his wife, and the two minor children. In order to emigrate from Russia to Germany, the Germans Several days are needed to answer all the questions in of Russia must obtain a Certificate of Admission from the the application. For every answer (to every question) one German government, [that is,] from the Federal Office of has to have proof—documents, and certificates. It takes Administration. In order to obtain this, one has to present much time to acquire the necessary documents: the birth an application. This application consists of fifty-four pages certificates of the petitioner, his/her parents and grandpar- with about seven to twelve questions on each page. If one ents on both sides; the birth certificates of the spouse, his/ has relatives in Germany, they can obtain this application her parents and grandparents; the birth certificates of the from the German Red Cross and send it to the relatives in children; wedding certificates of everyone named in the Russia by mail. Yet it often happens that these mailings are application (parents and grandparents included); death lost on the way, that is, they do not reach the addressee. In certificates of all deceased relatives of the petitioner (par- Russia one can obtain this application only at the German ents, grandparents, spouses, and so forth); the work Embassy in Moscow. In order to go to Moscow from records .,. Siberia or Kazakhstan (where the Germans where exiled to Since it was not customary in the Soviet Union before in 1941), one has to travel by train for three to four days. In the Second World War to give village inhabitants docu- Moscow there is an incredibly long line waiting in front of ments like birth certificates, personal identification papers, the German Embassy—up to one thousand and more and so forth (so that they could not flee from the kolkhoz) people, and they all want into the embassy. Some want to very many Germans in Russia have no documents or cer- pick up an application, others have already filled out an tificates at all. During the deportation of 1941, many docu- application, answered all questions, provided ments of the Germans were lost. The archives of the Ger- documentation, and now want to deliver everything to the man settlements, from which all inhabitants were suddenly embassy. Others have already received the Certificate of deported in 1941, have only partially survived. Because the Admission from the German government and now want to decree of the Soviet government of 28 August 1941 have a visa for entering Germany stamped into their identified all Germans of Russia as spies and saboteurs, the passports. Waiting lists are made by groups, according to archives of the Germans were treated accordingly by hate- their goal, because not everyone gets his/her turn in one filled Russian functionaries. They were somehow (not day. One stands in a line in front of the embassy all day carefully) bundled together, transported in open trucks in until the end of the working day. Then one has to find bad weather to some rooms or other, and dumped in piles. lodging "Those are the Fascists' papers!" Such disdainful maltreat"
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 28 Emigration of Germans ment of the archives of the Germans of Russia is still not even notified of their death. Six years of hard work are [present] today. The newspapers Neues Leben (Moscow) missing from the work record of the Russian Germans. The and Freundschaft (Kazakhstan) reported at different times Germans affected can receive compensation for these years at the end of the 1980s—in the years of glasnost—about the in the concentration camp after their entry into Germany state of preservation of the remains of the archives in the according to the prisoner-of-war law. The emigrants from former Volga German Republic in the cities Engels and Russia can use this money well in their new homeland, yet Balzer: damp rooms, scarcely any shelves, documents it is extremely difficult to obtain a certificate from the bundled together any which way. [For more information on NKVD officials (NKVD: Ministry for the Interior of the the archive in Engels and another perspective on this U.S.S.R.). The answer to many requests of the former subject see Elizaveta Yerina's article "Seventy Years of trudarmiya Germans written to the appropriate NKVD Archives" in this issue.—Editor] officials is: "No data available." Yet here and there indi- I also had no birth certificate and visited the city of vidual persons succeed in receiving the necessary certifi- Balzer in 1989 where supposedly the remains of the ar- cates. I had also managed to obtain such a certificate with chives of the district (raion) concerned are found. The the help of the editors of the newspaper Neues Leben (Mos- archive worker did not even want to look. Angrily she said, cow) where I worked for twenty years as volunteer corre- "You want to go to Germany! There are no documents here spondent and newspaper distributor and had received much from the village Rothammel!" I had to leave without praise for it. achieving my goal. So it is with many Germans, But the Not every German in Russia can fill out the application birth certificate states that one is of German origin, and that himself/herself because the greatest number of Germans is decisive for the Certificate of Admission. Then one tries have not learned to read and write German. They have to to obtain a birth certificate from witnesses. Luckily my find people who know how to write [German] and pay a lot youngest brother was born in the city Kamyshin in 1931. of money for filling out the application. In the city of This city did not belong to the territory of the Volga Kamyshin (Volgograd District), the society Wiedergeburt German Republic. To be sure, all the Germans living in [Rebirth] was able to obtain a little room (about nine square Kamyshin in 1941 were deported, but the archives meters) in the city hall in which a translator worked daily at remained undisturbed. The clerk only had to go to the a set rate, filling out the applications and translating the shelves and reach for the book for the year 1931 to find the accompanying documents into German, The clients were entry about the birth of my brother Vitalis. He could be a happy to pay the translator for the work and pay the tax. witness for the issuing of a duplicate birth certificate for There was always a waiting list of two to three months for me. this translator. Many German names were changed at the time of the The society Wiedergeburt was founded in March 1989 deportation of 1941 because of the Russian transliteration. by the Germans of Russia. The goals of this society were For example, a Mr. "Haberkorn" became a "Gabekon," et the restoration of the equality of rights of the Germans in cetera. How much running around the Germans have to do Russia, the rebirth of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist because of the altered names! They have to have the name Republic of the Volga Germans, which was liquidated in corrected in all the documents. The Russian clerks in the 1941, and to help those who had decided to emigrate. My Civil Registry Office are angry because they have so much father, I, my son, my daughters, and many, many others work with these Germans. They are full of hate and envy were active members of this society. The rent for this room because the Germans are now emigrating and going to was paid for from the dues of the members of Germany with its high standard of living. Wiedergeburt. In Russia there are only few photocopy Many Germans were "mobilized" (as it was called at machines, and these are in the offices to which Germans that time) into the trudarmiya [Workers' Army] for forced have no entry. Yet copies have to be made of all docu- labor in 1942. When the survivors were released from these ments, and these have to be notarized. This takes another Soviet concentration camps (of the trudarmiya) in 1947-48, two months of standing in line and more money. Every- they were given no certificates or proof of their work thing is borne patiently by the emigrants. during the six years. Those remaining in the concentration Once all the certificates, documents, and data have camps, those who starved to death, were certainly not given been gathered for the fifty-four-page long application and it certificates. Their relatives (family members) were has been filled out in print, everything has to be sent to the German Federal Office of Administration in Cologne.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 Yet one cannot depend on the mail in Russia. The tedious tion department drove up. We had to make way and work of many months could be lost. It is better to take the edged closer together in order to let the truck drive by. We application with all the documentation to Moscow and were afraid of getting out of the line and clung tightly to deliver it to the German Embassy. That means another trip one another. Rudolf supported my back. There were few to Moscow and again standing in line for several days. women there, mostly middle-aged men, but also a few I also had to go to Moscow this time in order to deliver older men were there. When the truck drove up, our line our applications to the embassy. I could not go alone divided to let it drive past the gate. An older man (fifty because, at age sixty-nine, I was not strong enough for the years) supported me. He could also still speak German, strenuous activities ahead. Since my son could speak only The driver remained with his truck parked directly in the little German, we decided to go together. The train ride midst of the people. He did not turn off the motor but in- from Kamyshin, Volgograd District, to Moscow took stead let the exhaust fumes pour out. We could scarcely thirty-three hours. One has to take food along because one breathe, since the air around us was so polluted. Yet none cannot count on food being available. We had to prepare of us, not one person, left the line; no one wanted to lose for four meals during our trip. There are no refrigerators on his place. The driver parked his truck in our crowded midst the train, so one has to contemplate what to take so that it without leaving his cab, without conducting any work here. will not spoil on the way. There is a restaurant on the train, He riled the air with smoke for ten minutes and then drove but not everyone can afford it, not only because of the on without having done anything. We all knew that he did prices but because of the quality of the food served. that on purpose, yet no one dared to complain to him, to At 4:00 a.m. the train arrived in Moscow. At 5:30 a.m. call him to task, out of fear that in the event of a loud we took the first subway to Alexander Deis, a former argument between the driver and us Germans from the schoolmate of my son. After settling in and having break- crowd, the police would arrest the loud Germans. We had fast, Rudolf (my son) and I went to the German Embassy. to endure much, bear much patiently. Alas and alack! I knew that there were always many At 11:00 a.m. of the second day, our group of twenty people standing in front of the embassy, but what I now people was admitted into the embassy. In the embassy saw surpassed my imagination. It was indescribable. For a building, we had to stand in line again in front of an office. long time we sought information, sought the end or be- Four people were still standing in front of me at 11:55 a.m., ginning of a waiting line. Finally Rudolf found the line of when the official announced the lunch break. Everyone had those who wanted to turn in their applications—our goal. to leave the embassy. We obeyed unwillingly because we We were numbers 432 and 433. We knew that our turn knew how hard it was again to push through the crowd into would not come on the first day of waiting. During the day the embassy. We stood outside in front of the embassy an unending, long tine gathered behind us. At 5:00 p.m., again, waiting anxiously. I ate a sandwich and an apple, the when the work day was over. we went to our lodging; ate lunch I had brought with me. Rudolf fasted as did all the lunch and supper in one, and I immediately went to bed in others. After the lunch break the individuals who had been order to give my old, ailing legs some rest. We were in the embassy building and who still had unfinished fortunate that we could feel at home with Rudolf's friend. business, were allowed to be first in front of the gate. Still The next morning we were in our place in front of the all sorts of other people (not Germans from the waiting embassy at 7:00 a.m. It was drizzling lightly; no one could lines), who wanted to apply for a transit visa without use an umbrella because we were pressed so closely to- waiting, pushed in front of me, A very large, massive gether. There was an open space of about fifty square ruffian placed himself in front of me directly in front of the meters in front of the embassy for cars going in and out. gate. I could not look around him to one side or the other. Three policemen and volunteer helpers from the lines of When the official opened the door a crack to let the correct people waiting helped keep it open. From time to time the people in, I called out in German from behind the broad gate opened and the German official invited the next group, back of the ruffian in front of me, "Please, it is my turn, but about twenty people, into the territory of the embassy. At I do not have the strength to move the young man in front first it was those who wanted to have entry visas stamped of me away!" The official called the Russian police who into the passports. We had been standing in the drizzling removed the obstacle, and I was let in.... rain for three and one-half hours. It was 28 October 1990, Finally, all the applications together with the copies of and it was cold. Once a Russian truck from the city sanita the documents were handed in to Germany. We had to
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 wait for the decision of the Federal Office of Administra- We again had to go to the German Embassy in Moscow tion. "We are sitting on our suitcases," is what one says. to have visas for entering Germany stamped into our That is a very strenuous time, full of nervousness. From passports. That meant again standing in a line of four hun- 1972 to 1987 those who wanted to emigrate were called to dred to five hundred people at 5:00 a.m. in any kind of a special organizational meeting in their workers' collective weather. That meant standing without the possibility of and shamed. "You went to school here, you have received sitting or leaving the line for ten to fifteen minutes. Once lodging, and medical care. The Soviet State has given you forced out of the waiting crowd, one does not regain one's work, and you are permitted to shop in the state stores. This earlier spot. By 4:30 p.m. of the first day of waiting and is how you now thank the Soviet State. Now you want to after the embassy workers had finished their work for the leave your homeland, which has cared for you. That is day, we were numbers 26 and 27. Behind us was another treason. Go! Away with you! You are not worthy of being a line of five hundred to seven hundred people. The next Soviet citizen. It was not without reason that Stalin labeled morning we again took the first subway to the embassy in you Germans as traitors in 1941. You are still traitors order to get in line. When the doors to the embassy opened today!" Such collective gatherings were a true purgatory and the first twenty people were let in, the people behind and hell. To be sure, after Gorbachev had come to power me pushed so strongly that I was forced out of the line. The with his glasnost and perestroika, such organizational Russian policeman shoved against my left shoulder with his meetings were no longer conducted. However, private fist and said, "Back!" I did not fall from his shove because harassment from the side of the colleagues with whom until of the crowd of people behind me. Tears came to my eyes. then one had always gotten along, and even had had social "Yes, one can shove an old woman, hit her. We are all used interaction, was not lacking. to that, that people have been kicking us for forty years," I After about eight to twelve months we received the said in German, and the German gate-keeper opened the Certificate of Admission. I received my certificate in June door just for me. I needed an hour to fill out the 1991. Now, when I am writing these lines in 1993, people questionnaire for the visitor's visa in the waiting room of have to wait as long as two years for the Certificate of the embassy and to turn it in at the desk. We could pick up Admission, Too many applications await processing at the our passes with the visas the next day at 2:00 p.m. without Federal Office of Administration. standing in line: people are called in. Not until one has the It is necessary in Russia to take the Certificate of Ad- visa in the passport can one acquire the passage tickets. mission to the OVIR office. OVIR is the department for And then the standing in line for several days from early registering foreign arrivals and departures. There one re- until late begins again. ceives the questionnaires for the passport and the permis- Those who have relatives in Germany and thus per- sion to leave Russia. One receives the passport in the mission to emigrate can fly with Lufthansa free of charge. course of one to two months. Yet we did not get ours. The To be sure, there is a wait here, also, but it is relatively OVIR official told me, "The agreement of 1972 between peaceful. One is given a date when to pick up the flight the German Government and the Russian Government con- tickets and then returns home to pack his/her belongings, cerns reuniting families. You, Mrs. Bender, do not have The industry of the Russian Germans has often been noted. any relatives of the first degree [parent, grandparent, child, Many have their own houses, automobiles, television, sew- sibling] in Germany, and we will not give you permission ing and washing machines, refrigerators, furniture of all to emigrate." Although we had a newspaper with the de- sorts. Everything has been obtained by many long, hard cision of the Soviet Government according to which Ger- years of work without rest or vacation trips. Every piece of mans from Russia were allowed to immigrate to Germany clothing, every bit of furniture or appliance is very dear to even without having relatives of the first degree, the OVIR the heart. To leave everything in Russia and go away when official stood by her decision to deny permission to emi- one could use everything in Germany, is hard. My books grate, We (my family) had many acquaintances at this bothered me the most. It hurt me greatly to leave these time, former colleagues, who had immigrated to Germany. classics of world literature behind. And my father's We telephoned to one of these friends, Alexander Heinze archives, his writings! in Hamburg, and asked him to send us an invitation to visit One is allowed to take personal property, but there are him. In another two months, we finally received our pass- strict regulations how the articles must be packed for trans- ports for the visit. These were different from the passports portation. It must be a container with the measurements 1,5 for emigration. meters by 1.5 meters by 1,5 meters, which must not be
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 heavier than five hundred kilograms. The container has to one and one-half thousand rubles for a visit; yet in the be built of 10-millimeter-thick plywood and bound with bank, I was told there was not any more money for the year lead strips. Although there are many forests in Russia, even 1991. One could obtain German marks and U.S. dollars on many collective lumbering companies, one cannot buy the the black market, yet without the stamp of the state bank in necessary plywood in any store. It has to be obtained my passport showing how much money had been through acquaintances and bribes. Naturally one cannot exchanged, the customs office at the border would have take everything in such a container. It is possible to sell taken illegally obtained foreign currency. So it was that we much in Russia, Refrigerators, washing and sewing ma- went from Russia to Germany without a single penny. We chines, automobiles or motorbikes are rare consumer goods also could not take any containers of belongings with us. in Russia, and there are always buyers for them. There are The pensioners who are emigrating receive their Rus- even buyers for the family homes. Yet the buyers are well sian pension for six months in advance before their depar- aware of their advantageous situation. The emigrants can- ture. I could not apply for that, either, as I was only going not take all their possessions with them and will sell these for a visit. And because we were going for a visit, we also things at an agreeable price, sometimes for a ridiculous could not use the airplanes of Lufthansa designated for price. The money saved so carefully in savings accounts is emigrants. We had to look for other travel possibilities. We not given up easily by the state, only a limited amount, could not obtain any train tickets. All tickets had been sold which is determined individually at each location. Even the in advance from November until the end of the year. There state bank exchanges only a limited amount of rubles into were also no airplane tickets to be obtained from Aeroflot. German marks at the current rate. Thus the German Yet my son learned that someone had returned to Aeroflot emigrants are robbed by the citizens of Russia and the three airplane tickets for 25 November. We were able to state. Now, in 1993, after the fall of the U.S.S.R., German obtain these, although it was not exactly our preferred marks and U.S. dollars are available to the Russian citi- route. Thus on 23 November 1991 we left the city of zens, due to Russia's move towards a market economy via Kamyshin for Moscow. We arrived there on 25 November closer contacts of various concerns with foreign countries. at 4:00 a.m. Rudolf's former college friend, Alexander Earlier that was not possible at all, and even regarded as Deis, who lived in Moscow with his family, picked us up at being a criminal activity. the Pavelski train station in his car and took us to the The mafia used the fact that the German emigrants Sheremetevo airport. We were not stopped. Perhaps we did acquired a certain sum in rubles through the sale of the not appear to be emigrants because we had little baggage. houses and goods, which they could not exchange into We were allowed to take only twenty kilograms per person other currency (until 1993). One hears of such tales: At the onto the Aeroflot airplane. train station in Moscow, minutes before the departure of a I spent the few hours before departure with my daugh- train, a five-year-old child is stolen from a German family. ter Ludmilla and her husband, Mikhail Shchuklinov, who A high ransom is demanded from the parents of the child. had accompanied us from Kamyshin to Moscow. I re- A bus travels regularly from the train station to the airport mained strong in order not to cry. I did not want to make in Moscow, En route the bus is stopped. Ten strong men the separation harder for my daughter. But I thought, "Will board it and demand large sums of money from the I ever see my daughter again, my grandchildren, who were German passengers, or otherwise the bus will not travel always there for me, who afforded me consolation and any farther. "The plane will leave without you!" the rob- support? What was awaiting me in the unknown land that I bers say. They are also not embarrassed to take golden now call home? What will happen to me there?" The wedding rings and other jewelry from the travelers. Even separation from the familiar surrounding and landscape, the private automobiles with emigrants (which one can rec- separation from my daughter and her family made my heart ognize by the amount of baggage) are stopped on the way heavy. My son-in-law embraced me and whispered into my to the airport by people in military uniforms who demand ear, "If things should go badly for you there, come back. money. You will always find a friendly home with us." I was I did not have a lot of money, I could not sell my apart- thankful to him for his words. They gave me hope, a sort of ment, the furniture, or other goods because I was going for security. a visit and had to keep the secret to avoid complications The bags were x-rayed at the customs inspection. with my trip, that is, emigration. It was at the end of the Everything was normal. We took off from Moscow at 7:00 year, November. The state bank should have exchanged p.m. on25 November 1991.And we landed in Frank"
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 furt at 7:00 p.m. on 25 November 1991. We had regained On 26 November 1991, at 2:00 a.m., we arrived at the the two hours for the flight by the rotation of the earth. reception camp Friedland. Everyone was sleeping. Only in On the airplane my daughter-in-law was sitting next to the fire department was there light. We announced our a German woman, Lydia [Malishev]. This woman with her arrival and were taken to the barracks. The room had five Russian husband and three children (six, eight, and ten double bunks, enough for ten people, for our two families years) was, like us, flying to Germany on a visit—in order (Bender and Malishev). So we lived there for eight days, to remain in Germany. This family from the Siberian from 26 November until 3 December. We reported at the village Maryanovka in the Omsk District had the same fate camp in the morning and received our meal cards, with as did our family. When we entered the Frankfurt airport, which we received food three times a day in the cafeteria, our bags met us on the conveyer belt. We looked around Each of the eight days we were busy in the administrative shyly. Where to now? Then two young men came toward offices in the mornings. We had to fill out forms. Here we us and called out loudly, "Kto na zovsem?" (Russian) Who also had to wait (sit) in lines for a long time. We were not has come for good? "We responded. Our friend, Elvira the only ones who had arrived. In (he afternoons there were Schab, Rudolf's former colleague who had immigrated to lectures by the Employment Office about the rights and Germany two years earlier and who had advised us in duties of people looking for work and people finding work; respect to our emigration and travel, this good lady had [there were lectures] by the social counselors, and by the requested through the German Red Cross that the two men Red Cross. The minister also asked us to meet with him. meet us at the airport with a minibus. From there the We received clothes from the Red Cross. The first days in minibus took us to the train station. After waiting two Friedland, in Germany, everything was different than in hours, we traveled from there by train to the reception Russia; the buildings, the streets, the traffic, the well-kept camp Friedland. We had no money to buy train tickets. On lawns. In the afternoons, when the adults were free, we the advice of the Red Cross workers, we sought out the went walking with the children. We marveled at the many train conductor in the train immediately and explained to well-tended parks, visited the memorial in honor of those him why we did not have any tickets. He produced a lost in the war and who did not return home. We walked voucher which we turned in at the Red Cross office in through (he streets of the little city. We marveled at the Friedland, Our trip was then paid by the Red Cross. streets decorated for Advent and St. Nicholas Day.
A typical cafeteria in an Aussiedler reception camp.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 We had never seen such a thing. In the evenings there was editorial staff of the German-language newspaper in no entertainment. The children especially suffered from Kazakhstan, here in Germany I had difficulty with the lan- that. I told them fairy tales and about the life of the original guage—not with speaking it, but with understanding when man. I used the names of our five children, let them go on others spoke. The pronunciation here is different from in discovery trips. They liked that and it replaced the tele- Russia, from the German language spoken in the former vision. Volga German Republic. Those Germans who did not at- After data about each of us had been gathered, it was tend a German school, who do not know the literary lan- time to determine where we should live. Those who had guage, who spoke only dialect in the family, have many relatives of the first degree in Germany received permis- more difficulties. I often had to ask someone to repeat what sion to reunite the family. Those with more distant relatives they said, which sometimes resulted in anger, I had to go did not always go to the same town when there was a everywhere with Rudolf or Ludmilla (my daughter-in-law), shortage of work and apartments there. The Mahshev to all offices, even to the doctor's office. Hamburg is very family was sent to the eastern areas of Germany. We asked large. In order to get to one or the other office we had to to be allowed to go to our friend, Mrs. Schab, in the state of change modes of transportation two or three times, from Baden-Württemberg. Yet this state had already taken in bus to subway, then to the elevated, and we also walked a many Aussiedler, and in December 1991 newly arrived lot. My poor, old, ailing legs hurt, so that at night I could people were sent there only in exceptional cases. We also often not sleep. The next morning, with my legs still not had friends in the city Hamburg, so we asked then to be rested, it was out again to climb stairs, change modes of sent to Hamburg, Hamburg was consulted by the officials transportation, walk to the elevated station. But there was and agreed to accept several Aussiedler families. On 4 De- no other way. Once in front of the Employment Office we cember 1991, we happily received two hundred German met a young couple—Germans from Russia— who were marks of "welcoming" money per person (including the asking for the way to the office with an open dictionary in children) and train tickets to Hamburg. their hands. I helped them this time. Unfortunately, I never Our friend Alexander Heinze met us in Hamburg, em- met them again. It is a pity how these people have to push braced us, and took us in his car to the Office of Compen- through without any knowledge of German. sation where we were directed to a temporary housing unit, It cost us much effort and several days of hard-necked the four-storied apartment building on Haldenstreg 5a. We talk in the Employment Office to get acceptance into Ger- were assigned a large room, thirty square meters with five man language courses for academicians (people with uni- beds, two clothes closets, a table and chairs. We were versity-level education) for my daughter-in-law, who in given bed linens, dishes, a refrigerator. About 120 families Russia had graduated from the university majoring in bi- lived in this building: Germans from Russia, from Poland, ology and had worked for twelve years in the biochemistry from Albania. There was a common kitchen with four laboratory of a clinic as physician's laboratory assistant (in electric stoves for every seven families. There were Russia the highest degree of laboratory worker; showers, toilets, a small gym, and a child care center for there is no equivalent rank of occupation in Germany). The preschool children. Every day at 8:00 a.m., for one whole friendly, smiling female official in the Employment Office month, we had to go to various offices to fill out did not even want to acknowledge that there were language applications and questionnaires: to the Office of courses for people with higher education like my son, a Compensation for identification as having been deported, teacher of technical disciplines, who is also an one of the most important documents of the Aussiedler, to academician. Again we had to present our case several days the Employment Office to apply for work, to receive and repeatedly insist that he had a right to attend these assignments to language schools, to receive the children's higher language courses in order to continue in an allotment; to the Social Welfare Office to apply for social occupation corresponding to his higher education. This welfare, health insurance, personal identification papers, friendly counselor gave us the wrong address to a place wage tax cards, citizenship, schooling of the children, from which the language courses had moved three years recognition of diplomas earned in Russia, occupations, and earlier. However, we persevered, and he was accepted into finally my pension. these language courses. But it was clear to us that many My son and my daughter-in-law could speak only little workers or counselors in the offices make an effort to put German. Although I spoke German well and had finished obstacles in the path of the German Aussiedler, to hinder ten grades taught in the German language by 1940 and many years later worked as translator (1963-1972) on the
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994
The Bender family in front of their temporary housing unit, container No. 54, in Hamburg. From left to right: Ida, Artyom, Ludmilla, Yuri, and Rudolf Bender. their assimilation in Germany, obtain this important practical training. After classes, he On 3 February 1992 instruction began in the language had to practice at home in order to keep up with the group. courses. In the beginning everything was unintelligible for At the age of thirty-six he is the oldest in the group and the both of them. In the evening they caught up (with my help) on\y Aussiedler. That said a lot. In school in Russia he had on what they had not grasped during the day. Soon not learned much English. Now he had to catch up. But he everything went better. My children were zealous in their also had to practice programming at home. Therefore he studying. After six months of language courses, they could bought himself a computer. He was able to do that only speak passable German. Then followed one month of oc- because of a modest standard of living and saving money. cupational orientation and then five months of occupational My son and his wife each received 1020 German marks per integration. These were actually also language courses, yet month of assimilation support from December 1991 until with words, expressions, and phrases in the corresponding July 1993 for their needs. The retraining is planned for two occupation. Then followed three months of practical study. years. The Employment Office pays the school costs. For My daughter-in-law was placed in a biochemical living expenses he has received, since the beginning of the laboratory. She was well acquainted with the work there, so retraining period, social welfare of 150 German marks per the lack of language did not hinder her much. My son had week. no chance to work as a teacher in Germany. He was told My daughter-in-law finished her practical training in that the teacher training in Russia did not meet that in May and was free until 9 August. Then came the call from Germany and that he would have to take two years of the head of the laboratory where she had done her practical retraining. Since he had to do retraining, he decided to training. She was offered a permanent position there. That acquire the occupation of computer specialist, He had was a very happy occasion. Apparently she had made a worked with a computer privately in Russia. After the good impression during her practical training. language courses he had his practical training in a data My grandchildren, Artyom and Yuri (nine and five processing department. Without this practical training in years old at the time of emigration) could speak not one the data processing department, he would not have been word of German. As soon as I was free from the running accepted into the training for the occupation of computer around to, the offices, I spoke German with them every specialist. The church congregation helped him greatly to day. The children of other Russian-German families in the
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 Emigration of Germans 35 temporary housing unit with whom my grandchildren played Adjusting to Germany; how we are treated every day liked to take part in my "study time" with my grandchildren. I began by naming all the objects in the room. Right on the first day of our arrival in the reception Soon we could play word games. Artyom had been in the camp Friedland, a woman from the German Red Cross third grade in Russia. Here he was put into a special group visited me, welcomed us, explained everything we had to for children of Aussiedler and foreigners who could not do, gave us advice, and made us aware of some things that speak German. Yuri was not yet six years old ; there was no could seem unusual to us newly arrived immigrants. She such group for him. But he begged and begged to be also said not all German citizens were happy about the admitted to school as well. So he was put into a normal influx of the Aussiedler from Russia. We often experienced (usual) preschool class. He kept up, painted when they all that later in our many trips to various offices. The office painted and played with them all. The teacher told the workers approached us always smiling yet not always children they should invite him to play with them. There wishing us well in the solving of our affairs. Once when I were no problems. After my son and his family were did not understand something right away, someone said to assigned an apartment in another part of the city in October us spitefully, "Unfortunately, I do not know Russian, and if 1992 (eleven months after our arrival), the children were put you do not know German, then you should have stayed in into the normal elementary school. Artyom was in the third Russia!" That was what the lady in the office felt and grade, Yuri in the first. The teacher worried if Artyom and finally the moment had come to say it. Another time the Yuri would get along with everyone. Mr. Munkemuller, the lady in the office threw at me, "You did not even teach teacher of the third grade, immediately requested Artyom to your son German and now you come here and read and was very happy that the boy could read normally. That is my reward. I often borrowed children's books from the clothes closet of the German Red Cross and read with Artyom daily. In the beginning he read only two lines a day. Later, more and more. There were problems with it because many letters of the Cyrillic alphabet look just like some letters of the Latin alphabet, but they denote quite different sounds and are read differently. Because Artyom could read Russian, he often read these letters in the Russian meaning. This problem did not exist with Yuri because he had not learned the Cyrillic letters and could not read Russian, Every day at 11:00 a.m., I left my room and took the bus and the elevated (underway fifty minutes) to my grandchildren in order to serve them lunch when they came home from school. I listened to their reports about the school day, checked their home work, and sometimes helped them read a few additional lines of cheerful stories for children. Soon Artyom could read the whole chapter. We also took walks outdoors. They still did not have any friends. Now (1993) Artyom is in the fourth grade, belongs to a handball group, has friends who visit him, or whom he visits. Yuri is in the second grade and also plays with a handball group. He also has school friends. There are no problems. Sometimes I ask my grandchildren, "Are you homesick for Kamyshin, the city in Russia where we lived?" Both say no. Both can still remember well that there was little food there, and that they were taunted by their schoolmates that they were Fascists (because they are Germans).
The author in a photograph recently taken in Hamburg.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 36 Emigration of Germans want money!" Rudeness must be met by rudeness. I an- children and grandchildren had gone out. Rudolf swered, "If Hitler's Germany had not declared war against desperately needed shoes. There was a knock on the door. Russia in 1941, then our German schools would not have Mr. König came in accompanied by another man who in- been closed, and we would not have been sent to Siberia. troduced himself as Kurt Cebulla, a citizen of Hamburg. He Then my son would have been able to learn German also." wanted to make the acquaintance of an Aussiedler family I have already described above the difficulties of being from Russia. I was supposed to tell him about the history of accepted into the language courses of the Aussiedler with the Germans in Russia. At the end, Mr. Cebulla invited my college education. We received the impression that one family to visit his family for Christmas. He picked us up in wanted to make acceptance to higher education difficult, if his car on 26 December 1991 and brought us home after the not impossible, for the Aussiedler. celebration, Yet, there were also many other examples. David, Kurt's five year old son, and our two boys, We arrived in Hamburg on 4 December. We had to Artyom (nine) and Yuri (five) played with one another on visit many offices, we had many obligations to fulfill. One this day as if there were no language problems. Yet I had to of the most important was to find the Social Welfare Office translate for us older people. We had much to talk about. It to solve the question of money. When we arrived there, it was a marvelous Christmas celebration: the beautifully was two minutes before closing. Yet when Mr. Mütze, the decorated Christmas tree, the large package of presents for director of the department for people over sixty years old, us, the festively covered table, and mainly, the atmosphere learned that we had just arrived and had no money, he told as if we were in the house of old friends. Even later Mr. us to come back the next day, although there were no office Cebulla always stood by us in word and deed. We were hours scheduled for the next day. His colleague, Mrs. amazed when we learned much later, that the dear, good Fistler, received me very graciously and took care not only Kurt had already been unemployed two years at the time. of my case but also that of my son and his wife as well. Soon after the celebration, he got a permanent job, and he Although Mrs. Fistler was only in charge of the affairs of always said to me, "Grandma, you brought me luck!" (He people over sixty years old, she did not send my children called me Grandma.) away indifferently. In addition, after we had received Because we had come to Germany with very few things apartments in a different part of the city, Mrs. Fistler often (clothing), my daughter-in-law Ludmilla already worried telephoned me. She was still interested in our situation, our about clothing for our boys a few weeks later. She learned difficulties. She gave us advice. Mrs. Fistler always said of from the neighboring Aussiedler, who had already been her own initiative, "You have the right to this and that, you living in Germany for some time, that one could obtain can make an application for it." used clothing from a clothing room in the Sinstorf Church. Quite different was the social counselor [from the We went there. Ludmilla could obtain clothes there not Social Welfare Office] of our new place, Mr, Koch. One only for her children but also for herself. The congregation had to come to him armed with paragraphs. Something like, of this church had announced a meeting of local citizens "According to paragraph so and so, the regulation so and and Aussiedler with coffee and cake in order to get to know so, I have the right for such and such." One had to battle one another better on 8 March 1992. Rudolf, our two boys, him for all achievements. And that is our weak side. We do and I went. About eighty to one hundred people were not know all these laws and paragraphs. gathered. Five members of the congregation gave a concert In the temporary living quarters there was a Mr. Konig on woodwinds. Then an Aussiedler child (Ilya Sabelfeld, who came from the Social Welfare Office three times a ten years old) played the violin. Together we sang German week to advise us Aussiedler. He helped many Aussiedler folk songs. The minister, Mr. Buer, asked if one of the fill out the many questionnaires. Although Rudolf and I had Aussiedler wanted to give a talk. I replied, "In order to get filled out our questionnaires ourselves, there were often to know one another you must know the following." I questions in the official language which we did not un- recited by heart the prologue to the poem Wolgaland- derstand. Mr. Konig was patient, helpful, and always gave Heimatland by Woldemar Herdt. At the end I recited my us good advice concerning the questionnaires and also for father's poem Den Nachkommen and then afterwards, to daily living. There was much in Germany to which we cheer up the atmosphere in the room, I recited Father's were not accustomed. He helped us adjust. Not all tempo- poem Bei uns im Dorf ist Erntefest. I received great rary housing units for the Aussiedler had such a Mr. König. applause. Many Aussiedler from the Soviet Union did not Shortly before Christmas, on 22 December 1991, my know the first
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 Dominik Hollmann, the famous Russian-German poet and the author's father. In a recent letter to the translator, Ida Bender writes: "My father's . . . life was so closely connected to the history of the Germans in Russia that one could not be separated from the other. Born in Kamyshin , , . in 1899, he experienced the few joys and all the hardships of his ethnic group, all reflected in his poetry. He kept fighting for the rights of the Germans in Russia after his ... exile and after having been released from the concentration camp more dead than alive (almost starved). In 1978 he managed to move back to his place of birth where he died on 6 December 1990. Shortly before his death, he entered into his diary: 'We eternally exiled and damned—where are we supposed to turn to?'" Photo courtesy of Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Rußland. they asked me, they had been following my tale with in- terest. They asked, "What can we do for you, the Aussiedler?" At the end a lady came to me. Dr. Klassen- Bauer, a university professor, and asked me to give this lecture at the Lüneburg University where she taught. I was willing, I could hardly imagine such a thing—to be able to tell young people, who in a few years will have something two poems because these poems were not allowed to be to say and do about the events in the history of Germany printed in the Soviet Union. The term "Volga," even if in a and Europe, to impress upon them the history of my lyrical poem, could not be mentioned until 1988 because of people. This lecture took place on 21 October 1993. censorship. We could also not write about the deportation I held similar lectures in the counseling office of the or the trudarmiya. German Red Cross, in the House of Women, at a seven-day Because of my recitation of the poems, I made many seminar on the theme "The history of Germany 1941-1991" friends. The deaconess, Mrs. Schade, and active members sponsored by the Society for Political Education e.V. of the congregation—Mr. and Mrs. Bull, Mrs. Jollenbeck, Hamburg. In this activity I found some peace and Mrs. Dienstbier, Mr. and Mrs. Barz, Mr. and Mrs. satisfaction, but sometimes in between, there are difficult Kujawa—expressed the desire to visit me in order to learn days and nights, sleepless nights, full of grief, worry, and more about the Germans in Russia. I was happy to do that. yearning for my daughters, their families, and the grand- Then the pastor, Mr. Buer, visited me at home and had me children. tell him the story of the Germans in Russia. He wanted to I have been a widow for fourteen years, and have been have such a lecture at church. I agreed to it, Mr. Buer pre- alone. But I had my grandchildren in three families (two pared a map of Russia on which I indicated the areas of daughters and the son). I never lacked for work, activity for settlement of the Germans before and after 1941, This lec- my hands, and head. I liked to make small, humorous gifts, ture took place on 26 March 1993. Two hours flew by. The surprises, for my grandchildren. That filled my days in audience asked more and more questions. After that many Russia, Here I did not have this opportunity. 1 missed that people I did not know would greet me on the street "We very much. I missed my visits with the families of my heard your lecture. It was informative, interesting, worth daughters, the happy gatherings with their families, the knowing," A few days later Mrs. Kujawa asked if I were confidential conversations when they asked me for advice, willing to give this lecture at the Lions Club, I was again or when I sought peace of mind in my old days. I missed willing. It is good if many people are informed about the the daily telephone conversations in the evenings: Germans from Russia. My lecture had passed its test, and "How are you, Mom? Is everything ok? Well, good night thus I felt obligated to help my fellow comrades in then." If I could at least travel to them once a month with suffering who live in Russia in worry if they will ever have the bus, like earlier, for a few hours. . . . But that is not the fortune to be able to emigrate, or if Germany will close possible. I sought consolation in writing letters. I wrote two the gate. to three letters a week, emptied my heart out jokingly, This lecture took place on 26 May 1993.1 had very bad stage fright. I knew that the members of the Lions Club were rich and influential professional and business people. I, with my seventy years, a wrinkled face, snow white hair, looked not in the least like a lecturer. How would they accept me? I was afraid at first, but then my narration just flowed along. According to the questions
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 described the weather, the nature. But, oh ... all these letters of such officials and workers like Mr. Koch from the Social did not arrive in Russia. Only occasionally did one arrive. Welfare Office (see above), for whom one must know all Also I did not receive many letters from Russia, not paragraphs and strive for his rights. because there were not any written, but because the mail There is much in Germany which is not familiar to us, service in Russia is so miserable. It is said that the postal On my first trip alone with the train (to Büdingen) I felt so workers rip open whole mail sacks full of letters looking insecure, because everything was so unknown. Or the first for money and throw the letters away. Nothing was left but shopping trips in the grocery stores. .. The variety, the to telephone my daughters in Russia once a month (because quantity of wares on display, to which we are not accus- of the high cost only once). As a diversion I attend the tomed, make one confused, uncertain. senior citizens meetings in the community hall on Often people ask me, "Are you homesick, do you long Wednesdays. There are mainly local people there. We sing for the homeland (Russia)?" I always long for the relatives songs, talk, and play games. In these hours I forget my who remained in Russia. My home, where I was born and worries, switch over to an entirely different wave length, grew up, the German settlements along the Volga, this Many Aussiedler have organized prayer groups. In homeland was taken from me in 1941 by the dismal edict addition to the worship services in the church on Sundays, of the Soviet Government. From this time on I, like all they gather on Saturdays in the congregational hall for Germans of Russia, deported from place to place (sites of devotions, just as they were used to doing in Russia exile), was treated like a criminal although [I was] inno- (without churches). A Russian-German layman preaches cent. I was active in the battle of the Germans of Russia for from the Bible. They sing their hymns, the same as here, rehabilitation, for equal justice for the Germans in Russia, but in the manner in which they were accustomed to sing- for the resurrection of the unjustly dissolved Autonomous ing them in Russia. They tell all the news and go home Soviet Socialist Republic of the Volga Germans. And this satisfied. I do not like such sermons, but I do not want to battle, the hope for justice, was the content of my life, and distance myself from my comrades in suffering. I therefore let me put up with much. Yet then I realized that all our invited many to attend meetings in the House of Women, or efforts, all our battles brought no results. I have lost the at the Ecumenical House. In the summer there are excur- hope for justice, have left Russia with a feeling of outrage, sions to the zoo, to the swimming pool, to the park. Later injustice on the part of the Soviet Regime towards the [we go] to advent concerts. Older people who were already Germans of Russia. There I was a stepchild, and my retired and on pension in Russia but had their own houses, descendants remain forever foreign bodies, disdained, gardens, and cattle, had their daily activities there. These people shoved aside by the Russians. people suffer here. They long for activities for their busy Much has changed since 1993 [sic}. In the areas of the hands. They are not used to seeing their hands inactive. former U.S.S.R., the situation of the Germans has become That is the hardest problem with the older generation. much more unstable. "Go to your Germany," they often The younger ones have the largest problem with the say. In Germany the support of the Aussiedler is greatly language. They cannot go to the movies or watch a film on curtailed. Now the newly arrived Aussiedler [referred to as TV. They cannot read a book. That is hard. In the tem- Spdtaussiedler since 1 January 1994] must pay for their porary living units many families make friends for a longer food in the reception camps. If the Germans in Russia time, celebrate birthdays, exchange experiences, and help cannot sell their possessions before their departure (and that one another. But they are completely and entirely burdened is all too frequent), they have no money to pay for their with studying, language courses, and later looking for care from the first day in Germany. The language courses work, where once again the language skills present diffi- have also been shortened to six months. The non-German culties. And not knowing the laws. [They are] like blind spouse remains a foreigner and receives less support. people without this knowledge. Whereas a local citizen Nevertheless the Germans emigrate from Russia and seeking work knows exactly what awaits him, what he can immigrate to Germany in order that their children are no ask, the Aussiedler stands there like a dummy in front longer second-class citizens in Russia. They are to be citizens of Germany with all rights.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 FROM ASHES TO ASHES: FROM DUST TO DUST
Donnette M. Sonnenfeld Uncle Erwin's pickup finally comes to a halt in a small mind. From childhood to adulthood our religious training section of land which to an outsider looks like any other taught us that God created man from the dust of the earth farm land. This section of land is special to our family and breathed life into him. Our German-Russian ancestors because in this fenced area lie the remains of our family's breathed life into the prairies and created homes from the sod house and also the graves of two family members. dust of the prairies which now remain scattered, as mere Grandpa Sonnenfeld*s brother, little John, was only five skeletons forgotten in time. when he was killed in the cyclone that destroyed the house As I walked through this forgotten home of our past I and badly injured Great Grandma Rosina Sonnenfeld. He hear the wind blowing through the now empty rooms, lies buried just down the hill in an area without markers mourning those who have gone before. The wind is telling and beside him lies Great Great Grandpa Johannas me to listen more closely—to listen to the stories the house Sonnenfeld's third wife, whose name is known only to has to tell, of the births and celebrations, of the deaths and God. While we look at the mounds of earth that once losses. Barn swallows now nest where a family once lived. sheltered and protected our ancestors, I am filled with If I close my eyes I am reminded of the story that Grandma questions about the house. I want to know everything about Oster always told Dad about the swallow's nests: this sod house, actually any sod house. My uncle points to "If you tear down a swallow's nest your milk cows will a distant building that he calls a "sod house." I look at him give bloody milk." Though the wind still blows, the rain in disbelief because the house, although a distance away, falls, twisters have run their zigzag courses over the prai- appears to be covered with boards. He tells me to get in the ries, and fires have threatened with all their strength, these truck and he will take Dad and me over to see it. While my structures have been able to withstand and protect with all dad and uncle talk about the days when Dad used to work their might, for they seem to want to live on into eternity as for my uncle, I am anxiously watching the house grow a testament to our ancestors' hardiness and strong closer and closer. For once I really do not mind the ruts character. that seem to be trying to tear the truck apart. So many The 11 July 1896 edition of Harper's Weekly, in an things are wandering through my mind. Finally we have article on a German-Russian settlement at Eureka, South arrived at the house, and what greets me appears to be a Dakota (as quoted by W.S. Harwood), describes these wooden sided house. However, after I get out and look homes: "Low-roofed and broad are the houses of these closer I see the batsa bricks appearing where the siding has peasants, veritable homes of earth. They are not the sod come off from years of wear and the cruel South Dakota shanties of the western boomer by any means, for these elements. After a little looking we discover a way in. Mind foreigners have a way of building for the future. They con- you, if any little critter had moved in the house I did have struct their homes in curious fashion, and build them so the nearest exit spotted for a quick getaway. I am sure I substantially they will last half a century if necessary— last could have outrun Olympian Carl Lewis if that would have until greater prosperity and American influences shall call happened. for houses of wood and stone." Although most of these Asche zuAsche. Stauh w Staub. From ashes to ashes. buildings have now faded back to the earth from which From dust to dust. After visiting our family plot of land and they came, some have lasted for nearly one hundred years. now visiting this house these words slipped into my Some have even outlasted the homes built to replace them. The first houses built on the prairies were dug-outs or Donnette M. Sonnenfeld, a Life Member of AHSGR, is currently were built out of the very sod of the ground. As strips of serving as Secretary on the Board of Directors and as Chair of the sod were cut from the virgin prairie they were laid on top Membership Committee. She is also a member of AHSGR's of each other. While these buildings provided shelter from Linguistics & Oral History, Public Relations/Publicty/Marketing, and the elements, they did not last long. Soon they returned to Historical Research Committees. Ms. Sonnenfeld will be the the earth from which they came, merely mounds of earth, Convention Chair for the 1996 Convention in Minneapolis. left and forgotten in time. An intensive survey conducted by the State Historical Preservation Center located in
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This is the sod house Donnette Sonnenfeld writes about. The house is boarded up, but batsa bricks are visible in some places. Vermillion, South Dakota, describes the buildings that re- they stayed there over night! placed the sod shanties, which too have been long since The glass is gone from the windows of this old house abandoned: "The house form is a rectangular-shaped, and dirt now covers the floor. Another sod house I am gable-roofed building constructed of puddled clay, rammed shown later in the day does have glass in the windows. earth, brick or stone masonry, batsa brick, frame and batsa This other home of the same construction still has the lace brick, or frame." curtains hanging behind old, distorted glass. Back at this William C. Sherman writes, "The German clay building house, the curtain rod holders are still in the wall, which style was without peer among the buildings which at- still sport the multitude of layers of paint which once beau- tempted to cope with the environment of the Great Plains.... tified this home. Mop boards still adorn their proper place These were to be their permanent homes. Here was a house along the floor boards. This house was even wired for elec- that could be built without the aid of skilled carpenters and tricity although the wiring and fixtures have long since bricklayers, one that could be built with the expenditure of been removed by the last occupants. In the book Along the only a few dollars for window glass, hinges, a stove pipe Trails of Yesterday, Nina Parley Wishek describes the and a few boards for doors and furniture. Here was a low- interior of the houses of the Germans from Russia: "The slung, one story house that followed the prairie contours houses all had the natural dirt floor, so hard and dry that it and was warm in winter and cool in summer," As we could be swept like a board floor. The housewife would walked through the now empty house, my uncle told my sprinkle the dusty floor before sweeping. The interior walls dad and me that when their oldest brother and he were kids of yellowish clay plaster were often decorated in bright they were invited to stay with friends. The family lived in a colors or with a boarder-like frieze in reds, blues, greens, sod house. For the kids it seemed like a fun adventure. or yellow. These colors were never modified or softened Adventure it was. In the middle of the night the boys they but were very gaudy and glaring. The outer doors might be were staying with lit a lantern and got out the ,22 rifle and painted in a gay yellow, with blue panels or some other began shooting at rats! That was adventure enough for my additional color." In German-Russian Folk Architecture in uncles and also the last time Southeastern South Dakota, Michael Koop and Stephen
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Front of the house. The siding has fallen, and bricks are evident. Ludwig state that "The most common colors recorded are had just visited. Our earthen home has long since rejoined blue and mustard or yellow ochre. These are used through- its origin, leaving only the gentle mounds where walls once out the house on wails, ceilings, floors, moldings and wain- stood. Just beyond the land I can see a neighbor using a scoting, Various shades of turquoise blue, midnight blue Case International tractor, a far cry from the horses and and darker shades such as olive and forest green and red- oxen our ancestors used to tame this prairie into what it is dish-brown are also common." today. I look out the window at the vast prairie which weaves As I look around at the walls which now crumble, the a majestic calico quilt of colors, land still held and farmed ceiling which now sags, and the Vorhdusl now just a pile of by the second and third generation Germans from Russia discarded lumber, I not only see and feel my past, I sense who persevered, and endured everything God and nature the future. The family might be gone, and this may not be could send them. Arrival to this foreign land was the sec- the home of one of my ancestors, yet it is home. I can feel ond major immigration for our people. Here, as their an- my rich heritage as I move slowly through the house, room cestors did when they first immigrated to the Russian by room. Did the homes of my great grandparents look like steppe, they had to tame the prairie, build shelters without this? Could Great Great Grandpa Johannas Sonnenfeld or the aid of readily available trees. Crop after crop was de- Great Grandpa John Sonnenfeld have at one time walked stroyed by hail and twisters, grasshoppers and droughts. these very floors, discussing the crops, their families, or Most came with nothing and from it built vast empires of talking about a recent letter from home, Russia? The wheat wealth out of the prairie that earlier prospectors had ig- fields waving prove that the gold and riches our ancestors nored in favor of the land of opportunity the western coast found are still here. And the families? Perhaps they are still seemed to hold for them. The Germans from Russia ac- reminded of their German Russian roots, or perhaps the cepted the challenge of work in exchange for their freedom youngest generations have really become like the from the tsars. They toiled on the land using all their bodily Englische. Wherever the families have gone, one thing strength and oxen and horses. From the window I am remains hidden in this home from the past, memories. looking out I can see one of the sections of land we These "homes of the prairies" that re-
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 main with us both in their presence and their spirit can still always been a big part of my life. As for wings? Well, I tell their stories. We must listen not only with our ears, but may have wings, but with these reminders of our heritage with our hearts and our memories. Carl Sandburg said it around back home, I can never truly use my wings to fly well: "When a society or a civilization perishes, one away from my heritage. With God's help some day when I condition can always be found; they forgot where they have children they too will be firmly rooted in their rich came from," As a proud third generation, one-hundred ethnicity. percent German from Russia and a member of AHSGR, I am certain I will not forget my heritage. As a reminder of this house and of my past, Dad gets a brick for me to have. Bibliography The brick weighs about thirty-eight pounds, I see the vast Baselt, Fonda D. The Sunny Side of Genealogy. A Humorous Col- lection of Anecdotes, Poems, Wills, Epitaphs, and Other Mis- changes this house has gone through since my first explo- cellany from Genealogy. Champaign, Illinois, 1986. Quoting ration ten years ago. The wall is beginning to separate and Carl Sandburg and Hodding Carter. fall to pieces. It will only be a matter of time and elements Harwood, W.S, "A Bit of Europe in Dakota: The German Russian before the house is no more. It will soon become part of the Colony at Eureka." AHSGR Workpaper No. 25 (Winter, 1977); dust and ash it was created from. 17-20. Koop, Michael, and Stephen Ludwig. German-Russian Folk Dad and I have visited this old house several times, and Architecfure in Southeastern South Dakota. Vermillion, South each time we are left wondering if this will be the last time. Dakota: Each trip we find the road more rutted and more of a threat State Historical Preservation Center, 1984. to the transmission of the Bronco II. When the wind blows Koop Michael, Stephen Ludwig, and Carolyn Torma. "German- through the house, as the wind always blows in South Russian Folk Architecture, Intensive Survey" (Unpublished material). Vermillion, South Dakota; State Historical Dakota, I can feel my heritage drawing me a little closer to Preservation Center, Summer 1982-Winter 1984, a time long ago. Hodding Carter once said, "There are only Sherman, William C. "Prairie Architecture of the Russian- two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children: One German Settlers." In Russian-German Settlements in the of these is roots, the other, wings." My roots will always be United States, by Richard Sallett. Translated by LaVern J. firmly planted because my heritage has Rippley and Armand Bauer, 185-195. Fargo: North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 1974. Wishek, Nina Parley, Along the Trails of Yesterday: A Story of McIntosh County. The Ashley Tribune, 1941.
A colonist house and stable built of clay and straw bricks and sods.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 43 PASTOR HEINRICH ROEMMICH—IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF THE CO-FOUNDER AND LONG-TIME PRESIDENT OF OUR LANDSMANNSCHAFT Josef Schnurr
Translated by John Nickel
Pastor Roemmich was described as a man of action with a firm character. Once he chose the correct way to follow, no obstacles ever prevented him from reaching his goal. He was always accepting of others, even those who opposed him. Those were the words of Pastor Eugen Bachmann at Heinrich Roemmich's funeral service on 1 October 1980, and those were also the thoughts of all who knew him. Heinrich Roemmich's relationship with his fellow- beings was marked by tolerance and by his attempts to understand the thoughts and feelings of others. Russian Germans owe much to him; he placed his life at their ser- vice. It all started with his studies of Evangelical Lutheran theology at Dorpat, and his position as assistant minister in
Glückstal, near Odessa. He then was a teacher of religion and principal at the secondary school for boys in Tarutino, Pastor Roemmich on his eightieth birthday; a pastor in Saxony and a religious counselor at 180 Stuttgarl-Feuerbach 1968 resettlement camps; he also worked for the Evangelical Origins Lutheran Aid Committee (Evangelisches Hilfskomittee) Heinrich Roemmich was born on 12 May 1888 in the and the Landsmannschafl der Deutschen aus Rußland. He village of Worms, in the Odessa District [of South Russia]. was committed to serving his compatriots right up to the On one occasion he was asked about his ancestry. He said final years of his life—those who had come to Germany, that his ancestor was Karl Roemmich, a cavalry soldier. He and those still living in the [former] USSR. and his wife, nee Lingenfelder, crossed the Rhine and "disappeared" from Edenkoben in the Palatinate in 1809. At least, that is what the church book says. This was during John Nickel serves on the AHSGR Board of Directors; he has pub- the Napoleonic wars, when the French were mobilizing. lished his family's history. The Nikkel-Nickel Family of Prussia, Tsar Alexander I was recruiting German settlers, Karl Russia, America and Canada (Steinbach, Manitoba: Derksen Print- Roemmich, his wife, and three sons immigrated to Worms. ers, 1981).—The article. "Pfarrer Heinrich Roemmich—In Heinrich explained his home life in greater detail: "My dankbarem Gedenken an den Mitbegriinder und langjahrigen mother Christine, nee Serr, had eleven children, nine of Vorsitzenden und Sprecher unserer Landsmannschaft," originally whom grew to adulthood. My father was mayor of the appeared in Heimatbuch der Deutschen aus Rußland 1985-89. Used with permission.—Additional information on the Roemmich village for many years, making a living as a colonist and family can be found in Herman Roemmich's publication A Conflict farmer, raising five boys and four girls. We were comfort- of Three Cultures; Germans from Russia in America. A History of ably well off. As the third oldest son, I attended village the Jacob Roemmich Family (Forgo: Horth Dakota Institute for school and was raised completely in a German colonial Regional Studies/North Dakota State University Libraries, 1991), which is available at AHSGR headquarters.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 44 Pastor Heinrich Roemmich
Odessa District. The Reformed Church. Right: Original church building, as it served the congregation. Above left: After reconstruction in 1941, with bell tower placed next to it. From: Rußlanddeutscher Heimat-kalender 1953.
setting. I enjoyed school and, because of my friendship Luther's Concept of Repentance.' I had studied these under with the oldest son of my religion teacher, Johannes Professor Karl Girgensohn. He was a dogmatist but also Bachmann, I saw and read much more than the average pursued religious philosophy, which broadened his student. My parents soon realized that I was fonder of knowledge on the subject. He was a very clever man and books than the plough, so they sent me, at age fourteen, to had great influence on me. Since I leaned towards pietism Neu-Freudental. There I studied at the Berezan central from my mother's side of the family, I was also impressed school. Learning came so easy to me that after two years by the teachings of Professor Traugott Hahn, who was shot they allowed me to skip the third year, and enter my fourth to death by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Hahn was a practical and final year. This pleased my father, who among his theologian who had a strong sense of responsibility to the many children did not have much money to spare [for congregation. But all the time it was Pastor education]."
Secondary School and University Pastor Daniel Steinwand proposed that Heinrich should study in preparation for admission to the secondary school (Gymnasium) at Dorpat, along with his classmates Otto Mauch and Imanuel Koch. All three failed their Russian exams, nearly losing a year of studies. They asked if their admission exams could be repeated and promised to study very hard in the meantime. Meanwhile school classes had been canceled for several weeks during the Revolution of 1905, and when they resumed, the boys were accepted into the fifth year. At age twenty, Heinrich passed his final exam and studied theology at the University of Dorpat for two years. Since his parents could not come up with enough tuition money, Heinrich, for an interval of two years, served as a teacher in a private home, before completing his studies in the following two years. In April 1915 he became eligible for an assistant church pastor position with Provost Schilling in Glückstal. When asked under which professors he had studied at Dorpat, Heinrich replied: "My candidacy thesis dealt with the topic 'The Buddhist Teachings of Denial and Martin Heinrich Roemmich in university years
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The university at Dorpat
Steinwand who influenced my thinking the most, with The Boys' School in Tarutino reference to my commitment to the colonists, the school, In 1917 Friedrich Steinwand, a friend from university and the church." days, appointed Heinrich Roemmich as teacher of religion at the secondary school for boys in Tarutino, Bessarabia, a The First World War province of Russia at the time. Friedrich was the oldest son World War I broke out in the meantime, with [disas- of Daniel Steinwand. This school was a private institution trous] consequences on German colonists. Farms were with six classes, founded by the local German expropriated, the German language was forbidden in congregation. All classes were taught in Russian. Except schools, and German papers had to be printed in Russian. for Steinwand and Roemmich, the faculty was Russian, yet "There was a ban on preaching in German," Heinrich these two men had plans of making this school a German Roemmich explained. "We were allowed to conduct only teacher training college, just like it was before the war. German liturgical church services, and at funerals we were Now there was hope that these plans might be realized, as confined to biblical quotations or passages of Scripture and the new Kerenski government recognized the rights of prayers in German. These events shaped my thinking, and ethnic groups in Russia to organize their own schools. the relationship to my compatriots and my congregations. In 1918 Bessarabia fell under the rule of Romania. In Yet in spite of these restrictions, we stayed calm, not 1919 Heinrich Roemmich became principal of the boys' wanting to cause suspicions of conspiracy. After the war, I school, after Friedrich Steinwand, in an attempt to move took part in the first German congress in Odessa. Provost his wife and parents to Tarutino, was not allowed to leave Schilling had co-authored the new church constitution. Russia. Thus, I was well informed of the church organization Roemmich not only made immense organizational (Synodalordnung) for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of contributions to the school, he was also active in the cul- South Russia. At this time I no longer felt so tied to the tural life of Bessarabia in several ways. He was a member doctrine of the Reformed Church; to me, Martin Luther of his church's synod, and, as First Secretary of the was the German reformer. I understood less and less what Evangelical Lutheran Consistory, helped with the reorgan- all this opposition was all about, and with it, the limiting of ization of the church. When the German Council for [the powers] of the two Protestant churches. The common Bessarabia was founded, he became its Vice President. He fate and predicament of these churches meant more to me was also the President of the society in charge of pub- than their denominational differences." lishing the Bessarabian German paper.
AHSGR Journal/Spring 1994 H. Roemmich in Germany them to remain in Germany. In particular, he struggled hard to give those Germans the same rights as other dis- Pastor Roemmich was married in 1922. In 1932 the placed persons. He knew how to work with the adminis- Roemmichs with their two daughters immigrated to Ger- trative offices, and his efforts were consistent and sus- many, settling down in the district of Saxony. Here tained, Right up to his senior years, the help he gave in Heinrich became pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran dis- organizational matters was respected and appreciated. He trict church in the village of Possendorf, near Dresden. In was awarded a distinguished service cross {Bundes- 1941 he was drafted into the German army, and in 1945, verdienstkreuz) and many other honors. after four years on the Eastern Front, the Soviets took him Heinrich Roemmich and his wife Claudia spent their as prisoner of war. Thus, he learned what prison life was final years together in a rest home run by the Evangelical all about. After his release, he returned to his family and Lutheran Church of Stuttgart, loved and honored by all was able to move from the East Zone to Bad Cannstatt, those around him. These were years filled with concerns near Stuttgart, There he became the teacher of religion and over his countrymen still remaining in the [former] USSR. secretary of the city church. In 1952 Heinrich took over the He had problems in dealing with an (earlier) decision of the congregation in Stuttgart-Zazenhausen, where he also was Landsmannschaft to leave its supervision to the Baltic a teacher of religion. Germans, who, according to him, were of a "different sta- In addition to his activities as minister and after his tus" and found it difficult to understand the situation of the retirement in 1954, he continued to provide help among the colonists. He had also sometimes felt misunderstood by his many thousands of his people who were now returning church in his younger years and did not feel reconciled from Russia and who at first did not know where else to with it in his senior years. He faithfully wrote articles for find help. He served as a chairman of the Evangelical the Heimatbücher, Volk auf dem Weg (A People on the Lutheran Aid Committee and, from 1949 until the 1960s, Move), and for other publications. he was the director of its head office. He was also a co- Eighteen months before he died on 26 September 1980, founder and secretary of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Pastor Roemmich was struck blind, although an eye Ostumsiedler (Organization of Resettlers from Eastern operation did restore his sight for several months before his Europe), which later became the Landsmannschaft der death. As he discussed the text for his funeral sermon with Deutschen aus Rußland. Pastor Eugen Bachmann, he remarked that it was his wish He always recognized the signs of his times. In the that no mention be made of the honors bestowed upon him. 1950s, there was a growing trend for Russian Germans to He said he had received enough of them during his move to America. Roemmich worked hard to persuade lifetime.
First country-wide meeting in Stuttgart, 1951. Pastor Roemmich in first row, first on the right.
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