A History of Al- Berta’S German-Speaking Communities

Biographical directory of clergy in Alberta’s German-speaking communities: From the 1880s to the present i Introduction This reference book deals with the lives and work of hundreds of pastors in eleven religious groups who have ministered to their German-speaking congregations in Alberta since the 1880s and have provided spiritual guidance and comfort. In their dedication the pioneering pastors often not only served, but led, bringing their faithful to Alberta and assisting them in establishing their families in the new homeland. They preached and taught, visited and counseled, performed the rites of passage, administered and di- rected, provided practical leadership in establishing the new congregations and played a pivotal role in developing their internal cohesion. No doubt, these pastors fulfilled an essential function in the settlement history of Albertans of German origin. Each of the eleven chapters commences with an outline of the early settlement history in Alberta of immigrants of German origin before introducing the German-language pastors themselves. This Introduction attempts to examine and document in some detail the wider context in which the members of these religious groups and the pioneer pastors came to settle in Alberta (a more exhaustive exami- nation of the issues is available in several books by the compiler on the cultural history of the German- speaking communities in Alberta1). Three themes will be addressed: the reasons that brought these families to Alberta from countries in central and eastern Europe, the United States and Canadian provinces; the settlement history of immigrants of German origin in localities across the province and their religious affiliation; and the groups that facilitated their immigration to Canada. 1. Reasons for emigration to Alberta. Who were these “Germans” who made up almost 11% of Al- berta’s population by origin in 1911, and what brought them here? Alberta’s German-language newspapers in the early 1890s reported regularly and with interest on the arrival of “Germans” in the what would become the province of Alberta in 1905: “German-speaking immigrants arrived in Medicine Hat ...,” “An- other batch of German immigrants from Russia arrived …,” “Russian-German immigrants left Russia …,” “... a visit to the German colony near Dunmore ..,” “The German settlement to the south of Medicine Hat .…,” “180 Germans leave Dunmore …,” “53 German families from Galicia ...” The newspapers were clearly aware of the fact that “the Germans” did not come from the German Empire, but from the Russian and Austrian Empires. Around the turn of the century only about 15% of the immigrants of German origin actually came from Germany; it would take until the 1930s that there was substantial emigration of “Germans” from Germany to Alberta. 1.1 Emigration from eastern and central Europe around the turn of the century. What moti- vated thousands of families in Galicia, Volhynia and elsewhere in Russia around the turn of the 20th century to pack up and undertake the dangerous journey to a largely unknown, but ostensibly promised land? There were many so-called “push-and-pull factors” that can account for the emigrants’ willingness to up- root their families and start over once again. “Push factors” are conditions that drive people to leave their homes, such as scarcity of land, poverty and political or religious persecution. “Pull factors” attract people to a new area, such as the promises of rights and freedoms, land, jobs and opportunities. 1.1.1 Push factors. Among the “push factors” for leaving eastern and central Europe were the ethnic and linguistic tensions between the local and national governments and the population, on the one hand, and the settlers of German descent, on the other. In Russia many people of German origin feared for the sur- vival of their religious and ethnic communities because they had lost their historical special privileges in 1871 (free exercise of religion, freedom of movement, exemption from taxes for many years, local self- government, the right to carry on a business or trade, exemption from military service, and the right to the use of German in churches and schools) that had been given to them “for all time.” The systematic ii Biographical directory of clergy in Alberta’s German-speaking communities: From the 1880s to the present policy of Russification and discrimination against the Germans made living and working conditions ever harder. The number of ethnic Germans after 200 years of supportive immigration under Tsarina Cathe- rine the Great and Tsar Alexander I.—and “benign neglect” throughout this time—was large: By 1897 the number of German settlers in Volhynia numbered 170,000 and 250,00 in the Volga area; according to the first census of the Russian Empire in 1897, about 1.8 million respondents reported German as their mother tongue. Their economic success and constant need for new land brought one third of South Russia’s arable land under their control. At the same time, growing conditions had a huge impact on their lives, especially between 1889 and 1892 when the Volga Germans suffered from extremely poor harvests. The system of land distribution also increased the settlers’ “land hunger.” The Volga Germans had accept- ed the Russian mir system of communal government; it provided that land was held in common and was re-divided and re-distributed periodically–every 12 years or so–on the basis of the number of male family members, therefore increasing family size and putting even greater pressure on acquiring more land. Among the Black Sea Germans the family land went to one son undivided, which also implied that more land needed to be purchased since every farmer was determined that his sons became farmers as well. In Austrian Galicia the Polish institutions were increasingly given certain local administrative rights in the second half of the 19th century: they tried to “Polonize” society, discriminated against German speak- ers in courts and schools and made it hard or impossible to purchase more land. There was already insuf- ficient land to absorb the area’s excess population as industrialization lagged far behind other regions in the Austrian Empire. Furthermore, there was pressure on the religious freedom guaranteed by the Holy Roman Emperor of Austria, Joseph II., which extended freedom of worship to non-Catholic Christians living in Habsburg lands. Similar “push factors” drove emigrants to Canada from the Crimea, the Black Sea and Bessarabia, the Austrian Bukovina and elsewhere. 1.1.2 Pull factors. The “pull factors” for the immigrants in the time between 1880 and 1914 was Cana- da’s wealth of newly opened rich land and the promise of guaranteed rights and freedoms. Following Con- federation in 1867, Canada was eager for immigrant settlers to fill the sparsely populated area known at the time as the North-West Territories. Canada had realized that settlers were necessary to create a trans- continental nation and to prevent a—possible—American takeover of unsettled land. Immigration, how- ever, remained negligible. Canada’s Dominion Lands Act of 1872 aimed to encourage the settlement of the Prairie provinces. The Act was closely based on the American Homestead Act of 1862 and echoed the American homestead system by offering ownership of 160 acres of free land (except for a small registra- tion fee of $10) to any man over 18 or any woman heading a household who agreed to cultivate at least 40 acres and to build a permanent dwelling within three years. A family with several older sons was thus able to purchase a substantial piece of land (one quarter section each) for $10. This offer of free land proved to be very successful for recruitment in Great Britain, but had only measured success in central and eastern Europe. But from 1896 on, under the Minister of Interior, Lord Clifford Sifton, the Canadian government compelled the Canadian Pacific Railroad to make a final selection of the land that they had been given to compensate it for the loans required to build the railroad. Because the C.P.R. had already sold the best land and the land closest to transportation corridors and had blocked the selling of the other land this move by the government liberated more arable land again near the railroad. Perhaps even more im- portantly, Sifton also created and staffed a federal department, the Immigration Branch of the Depart- ment of the Interior. He placed agents on commission, blanketed England, Europe and the United States with “propaganda” in the form of flyers, pamphlets, books and maps, paid commission to shipping agents who delivered agricultural settlers to Canada, encouraged irrigation schemes and encouraged the estab- lishment of highly successful colonization companies. Brochures in German and other languages were distributed in central and eastern Europe, and while many of the immigrants came from Britain and the Biographical directory of clergy in Alberta’s German-speaking communities: From the 1880s to the present iii United States, Canada also gained from a large influx of Ukrainians, Doukhobors and other groups from the Austro-Hungarian Empire (in Sifton’s words, they were “stalwart peasants in sheep-skin coat, born on the soil, whose forefathers have been farmers for ten generations, with a stout wife and a half-dozen chil- dren”). Of course, potential immigrants of German origin were also tempted by this offer of virtually un- limited free, arable land and good political and economic conditions in Canada. The decision to emigrate to either the United States or Canada was often made simply because likely emigrants received welcoming letters from those who had already become successful in the United States or Canada, respectively. Thus it happened not infrequently that Germans from Russia emigrated to the U.S.

Load more