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The hidden history of Colorado’s by MATT MASICH Even the toddlers in this large Germans from Russia German-Russian family near Greeley helped work in the sugar beet fields. Although Sugar Beets, Krautburgers and Dutch Hops ethnically German, their peo- ple lived on the Volga River in Russia for several generations before coming to Colorado. 40 • COLORADO LIFE • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017 GERMANS FROM RUSSIA • 41 Greeley beet farmer Carl Meyer shows off his 1960 harvest. Catherine the Great invited Germans to Russia. A monument German-Russian, their history and culture is deeply embedded in to the successful HEREVER YOU SEE an old sugar the way of life of the northern Front Range and northeast Plains. German-Russian Krautburgers are just the tip of the iceberg. Luft family stands factory in northeast Colorado, you outside their former W FROM GERMANY TO RUSSIA TO COLORADO home in Sterling. can probably find a krautburger nearby. This A little more than a century ago, northeast Colorado was in the midst of an economic boom thanks to white gold – sugar. Farmers favorite local lunch is part of the cultural grew sugar beets in fields throughout the region, raking in millions of dollars when local sugar factories turned the beets into pure, white legacy of the Germans from Russia, the sugar. The sugar boom couldn’t have happened without workers willing to work long, hard hours in the beet fields, and the original people whose work in the sugar beet fields migrant laborers who met this need were the Germans from Russia. Germans are from Germany, and Russians are from Russia. So fueled the region’s prosperity but whose very what, exactly, is a German from Russia? John Kammerzell, presi- dent of the Northern Colorado Chapter of the American Historical existence has become obscured by history. Society of Germans from Russia, has a lifetime of experience answer- ing this question. His family has been fielding similar queries since Mexican food is the house specialty at The Border Restaurant on they arrived in the United States from the Volga region of Russia Main Street in downtown Windsor. The enchiladas, chile rellenos in 1906. and chimichangas are big sellers, but one of the most popular menu Kammerzell, a retired U.S. marshal now living in Fort Collins, items stands out from the rest: the krautburger. remembers how his grandparents bristled as they told him how their Mexican restaurants don’t typically serve krautburgers. In old neighbors in Brighton used to call their family “dirty Russians” Windsor, however, it seems perfectly normal. – or “dirty Rooshuns,” as the locals pronounced it. The name-call- Windsor lies at the heart of what you might call northeast ing stung Grandpa Johannes and Grandma Emma because it simply Colorado’s Krautburger Triangle, which covers the area between wasn’t true: Not only weren’t they dirty, they weren’t even Russians; Brighton, Fort Collins and Sterling. Travel within the triangle, and they were ethnic Germans. you can generally find a nearby restaurant that serves these dough The story of how the Kammerzells and other German families pockets stuffed with seasoned ground beef, cabbage and onions. came to live in Russia begins with Russian Empress Catherine the Venture beyond, and you’ll get a lot of perplexed looks if you try to Great. (With the possible exception of history professors, no group Wikimedia Commons Joshua Hardin order one. seems to be as knowledgeable about Catherine the Great as German- The krautburger flourishes here because it is the Colorado Russians.) In 1763, the German-born Catherine put out an open homeland of the people who brought it over from the Old World invitation for Germans to come settle along the Volga River in Russia, HARVESTING WHITE GOLD Colorado sugar factory was built in Loveland in 1901, and a dozen – the people known as German-Russians, or Germans from Russia. promising them cheap land, freedom to keep their own language “The population of Colorado was increased 586 today,” reported more sprouted up in cities across the region over the next 25 years, Although many Coloradans have never heard of the Germans from and religion, low taxes, self-governance and exemption from Russian the Denver Times in an April 1902 article about the arrival of a train- most owned by the Great Western Sugar Co. Russia, or are simply confused by the seemingly oxymoronic term military service. For German peasants yearning to own their own load of “Russians” to Loveland, there to grow beets for the city’s new The Germans from Russia arrived in Colorado wearing long fur land and escape the misery of the recently ended Seven Years’ War, it factory. “As the industry is one requiring a great deal of child labor, coats typical of the Russian Empire, and as they had most recently Previous page: Greeley History Museum Below: Colorado State University Libraries was an attractive offer. More than 30,000 Germans moved to colonies these families are peculiarly adapted to the work, several of them lived in Russia, few Coloradans bothered to inquire further about in the Volga region. They called themselves the Volga Deutsche. having from five to nine children ranging their ethnicity and declared them The Germans thrived for many generations, successfully farming from babies in arms and toddling young- “Rooshuns.” The newcomers settled first the fertile steppes. Then, near the turn of the 20th century, the Russian sters to youths of 18. They were all healthy, in tents and then in shanties clustered government began reneging on Catherine’s promises, pressuring the vigorous specimens of humanity.” near the sugar refineries. Their neigh- Germans to adopt Russian ways and conscripting the men into the Similar articles appeared in newspapers Neighbors in Brighton bors gave these areas nicknames like military. Kammerzell’s great-grandfather Georg Victor Kammerzell throughout northeast Colorado, as the “Little Moscow” or “Rooshun Corner”; was drafted into the Russian army, leaving behind his home in the flight of German-Russians from the Volga called them the German-Russians usually just called town of Frank to fight in the Russo-Japanese War, a horrific conflict perfectly coincided with another histor- them “the jungles.” that presaged the trench warfare of World War I. His family received ical event: the birth of the sugar industry “dirty Rooshuns.” Bob Lebsack grew up in Johnstown no word from him for several years. They assumed he was dead. in Colorado. Before the turn of the 20th in a German-Russian family with nine “One day, this guy in uniform came walking down the road century, most sugar came from sugar cane, children, all of whom worked in the beet into Frank,” Kammerzell said, repeating an old family story. “My grown in tropical or subtropical climates, but the introduction of the fields. Lebsack, now 90, still grows sugar beets. “I’ve dug beets every great-grandmother saw him, but she didn’t realize until he got very sugar beet to America in the late 19th century meant there was a year of my life that I can remember,” he said, not counting the two close that it was her husband – he’d lost so much weight and was so fortune to be made creating sugar on the Great Plains. years he served in the Army in Europe. unkempt. As soon as he got home, he said, ‘We’re leaving.’ ” Colorado’s first sugar factory was built in Grand Junction in 1899, Life revolved around beets. The day after Lebsack’s sister Ruby was Like thousands of other German families along the Volga, the followed by another in Sugar City, near Rocky Ford, in 1900, but born, their mother, Pauline, was in the fields thinning beets. During Kammerzells came to America, bound for the beet fields of the northeast Colorado, with its plentiful irrigation from the South Platte one harvest, their parents placed their 3-month-old brother John on Great Plains. River, was to become the heart of sugar country. The first northeast the plow, with sister Marion assigned to watch him; Marion was 2 42 • COLORADO LIFE • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017 GERMANS FROM RUSSIA • 43 The abandoned sugar factory’s silos and water tower still stand in Ovid, but the mill building that stood beside them for decades was demolished earlier this year. The Ovid factory, which produced beet sugar from 1926 to 1985, used to be one of 13 sugar refineries operating in northeast Colorado. Today, only the Fort Morgan factory still makes sugar. For the first generations of German- Russian families in Colorado, growing sugar beets was a focal point of life. As the sugar industry faded, a part of German-Russian identity went with it. Joshua Hardin years old. Two horses were pulling the plow, and when one stopped Spaur was doing some genealogical research on his grandmother’s heritage, leading them to be called an invisible minority. right after World War II, it was suddenly quite undesirable to be while the other kept going, the infant went flying to the ground. “One birthplace in Russia (coincidentally, the same village, Frank, where German-Russians in Colorado had already grown worried that Russian. Many German-Russian families swept the old cultural iden- of the horses stepped on the side of my face,” said John, who emerged John Kammerzell’s family originated), and he was struck by how subsequent generations would forget where they came from. In 1968, tifiers under the rug and became, simply, Americans. miraculously unscathed, though he added, with a twinkle in his eye, familiar the names on the 1905 village census were. “It looked like a group of them founded the American Historical Society of Germans But not all of the old ways disappeared, with food being the most that the incident gives him “a good excuse for being the way I am.” my beet seed customer list today,” Spaur said.

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