Journal Of the American Historical Society of Germans From Russia

CONVENTION ISSUE

Vol. 14, No. 3 Fall 1991 Published by American Historical Society of Germans from Russia 631 D Street • Lincoln, Nebraska 68502-1199 • Phone 402-474-3363 Edited by Headquarters Staff ©Copyright 1991 by the American Historical Society of Germans From Russia. All rights reserved. CONTENTS

CATCH THE VISION ...... …………………………………………………………...... 1 Lee Kraft, AHSGR President RETURN TO BERRY MEADOW: EMERGING RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES IN SARATOV AND THE OLD VOLGA COLONIES ...... ……………………………………………...... 3 Richard D. Scheuerman ANNUAL REPORT...... ……………………………………………………...... …...... 11 Annual Report of the International Foundation Report of the Executive Director USSR Germans-from-Russia Archives and Research Project Aussiedler Committee Chapter Organization Committee Addendum to the Chapter Organization Committee Report Editorial Committee Finance Committee Folklore Committee Genealogy Committee Historical Research Committee Library Committee Linguistics and Oral History Committee Membership Committee Nominations Committee Personnel Committee Translations Committee Ad Hoc Bylaws Review Committee Building Committee Lease Review Committee Ad Hoc Marketing Committee Presidents' Council Resolutions Committee PHOTO ALBUM I ...... ………………………………………………………….28 REPORTS TO THE FOUNDATION ...... …………………………………………………31 REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR TOGETHER WE CAN Joyce C. Demes FINANCIAL STATEMENTS MERITORIOUS SERVICE AWARD ...... …………………………………………………. 34 Lee Kraft, AHSGR President HANDING DOWN OUR HERITAGE ...... …………………………………………………. 35 Carol J. Harless PHOTO ALBUM II ...... ………………………………………………………….38 VOLHYNIAN LEGENDS ...... ………………………………………………………. 41 Leona Janke EVALUATING FAMILY HISTORIES AND TRADITIONS FOR EVIDENCE OF MEDICAL ILLNESS USING ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE AS A MODEL ...... 49 Thomas D. Bird, M.D. THE BROTHERHOOD/BRÜDERSCHAFT ...... ………………………………………………. 55 George Dorn WE HONOR OUR HERITAGE THROUGH FAITH ...... ………………………………………….57 Werner K. Wadewitz MEMORIAL ...... …………………………………………………………….58 Lydia Jesse

CA TCH THE VISION Lee Kraft, AHSGR President Ladies and gentlemen, it is an honor and my great pleasure the vision that Adam projected, and we have to wonder why. to welcome you to the Twenty-second Annual Convention of Ruth Amen in her presidential keynote address at the annual the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia. It's meeting in Lincoln in 1978 recognized the rapid growth of the also a pleasure to welcome you to this dynamic metropolitan society prior to 1978 and predicted that the society membership complex of Chicago, America's third largest urban area. would reach roughly 15,000 family memberships within a Chicago has long been a symbol of the melting pot that is period of 15 years. What happened? What went wrong? Why America. It has been here to this magnet of mid-America that was Ruth's dream never realized? Was she guilty of building an hundreds of thousands of immigrants have been attracted. Here unrealistic air castle? Did Dr. Giesinger and Ruth Amen they came to find out what the American Dream was all about. operate on the false premise that our society was offering a Here they came to toil and sweat to make better lives for "product" that wouldn't sell on a broad scale? themselves and their children. Indeed, this stream of By the most conservative estimate, there are, as Dr. immigrants included thousands of our Germans from Russia Giesinger said, at least a half million people on this continent descendants. that have a German-Russian heritage. At the end of last year, We have come a long way, and we have burned a few we had a total of 5,580 memberships. Stated another way, our bridges behind us since that significant day of September 8, society comprises about 10,000 individuals. That means we 1968, when the first organizational meeting of our society took have signed up as members only two percent of that 500,000 place at Windsor Gardens in Denver, at which time the forty- pool of Germans from Russia. two people present dreamed a dream and forged a vision that If we were in the business world, we would have to there might be a future for an organization that sought out and acknowledge that this two percent segment represents a collected "any and all material of whatsoever kind relating to mediocre market penetration. Our corporate strategy would the history of Germans from Russia." necessarily have to take into account how we could increase At the 1985 annual meeting at Yakima, then President Sally market share. We would consider such factors as to why there Hieb said, "Our society came into being in 1968 as the result of was not a greater demand for our product. Was our advertising the inspired dream of a few men and women who envisioned aggressive enough? Was there something intrinsically wrong an organization of some sort to record and preserve our with the product? Was there something unattractive about the precious Germans-from-Russia legacy." She gave special credit packaging? We simply could not sit back and be indifferent. to David and Lydia Miller, Alice Heinz, Gerda Walker, Adam We either grow and prosper, or we slowly wither and die. The Giesinger, Arthur Flegel, and Ruth Amen. I, too, take my hat challenge of the 90s—looking ahead to the next century—is to off to these pioneers and salute them for helping to create the develop an aggressive marketing strategy to tap a larger miracle that is AHSGR. We owe so much to these few who segment of that ethnic reservoir of Germans from Russia. A worked so uncommonly hard to lay the foundation for the large goal of at least five percent of that pool, or 25,000 members, and diverse family that our society has become. would appear to be attainable. A generous heaping of credit goes to David Miller who led I believe we are thinking too small. A more probing the society as president for the first five years and who helped analysis is needed. Perhaps it would be money well spent to to lay a firm foundation under the dream that became the engage the services of a professional marketing consultant to society. There is an old proverb that says that progress walks in analyze what we are doing right, what we're doing wrong, and Indian file behind a man willing to stick his neck out. David what we can do to more aggressively market our organization. Miller was such a man. He refused to accept defeat, and the There is some danger in going through such a process. It society survived and prospered. could challenge old ways of doing things. It might hurt some of In a keynote speech at Dearborn, Michigan, eleven years us to think big. However, I feel strongly that if this society is ago, then President Adam Giesinger mentioned that there were not to wither away, then we need to catch the vision to dream at least 500,000 descendants of Germans from Russia in the like David Miller and others did so many years ago. New ideas United States and Canada. Adam speculated that at least 5,000 and new visions, and yes, new leaders are desperately needed if additional families from this ethnic pool would be interested this organization is going to persevere and if it is to remain enough in the history of our forefathers to join our society. viable and if it is to remain relevant. Thus, I challenge you to Unfortunately, that didn't happen, and we have fallen woefully catch the vision of a new beginning of our society. short of

AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Page I Thirteen years ago Ed Schwartzkopf at the Lincoln offense doesn't reach me." convention toasted our society by quoting Henry Ford, who Through the relatively short history of AHSGR when push said, "Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is came to shove we have demonstrated that we Germans from progress; and working together is success." Russia can work together effectively to get results. This has We have certainly "come together," and this I consider to included reaching into our pockets to come up with the money be Phase I of our evolution. I have already paid credit to the when the value of a project was clearly demonstrated. Millers, Ruth Amen, and the others who got our society off to Numerous examples could be cited. Suffice to say that raising a healthy start, "Keeping together," as Henry Ford said, is money years ago to translate and publish the Stumpp book and progress. Through the ups and downs of our early years, the the more recent effort to help Dr. Giesinger and others to trans- society thrived and matured. I call this Phase II of our late and publish the Beratz book are just two examples. The evolution. Now we are out of the teen years of our existence. donations so generously given for the Aussiedler Project in We have reached the mature adulthood of our twenty-third Germany and the most recent effort led by Timothy year, Now we are in Phase III of our evolution and into the Kloberdanz and Richard Scheuerman to get copies of valuable part that says, quoting Henry Ford again, "working together is files out of the archives in Saratov in Russia are just two more success." I am not sure that our society always fully good examples that AHSGR knows how to pull together when understands the significance of this commitment to work the cause is good and the benefits are clearly understood. Now together. we face the ultimate challenge of creating an endowment fund I am proud to serve you as your president. I do not wear the for one million dollars so that the interest earnings can keep mantle of office lightly. Yes, we have had some trying times our society financially stable; so that we can more quickly recently. Some of you have worried that AHSGR has been too respond to opportunities; and so that we can enhance the influenced by cliques that set the agenda and decide what is services to our members. We need to catch the vision to make best for the society. This is perhaps more of a perception than this happen! Are you ready for the challenge? a reality. Nevertheless the perception prevails and the reality of We should not be discouraged if we at times raise some it has affected the vitality of our organization. We've got to get heat as we argue and debate the ideas and issues that come this out of our system if our sincere desire is to make the before this diverse family. Those that understand physics will society prosper and grow. confirm that it takes heat to generate light. And where you get For several years we have faced trying internal problems. two Germans from Russia together you are bound to generate As I said at Sacramento when I accepted the presidency, this is some heat! However, if our overriding pledge is to work the time for reconciliation! The years of the 90s are going to be together and stay together, to give a little and get a little, to trying. Trying as in "difficult" and "painful," We will find out forgive and forget, and to realize that to get along you have to in the coming decade of our maturity just what we are made go along, then the heat we generate will produce good results of. How much diversity can we have in this society without that will please the majority of our members and yet will not breaking the bonds that hold us together? How much arguing hopelessly offend the minority. and bickering can we tolerate without completely polarizing Let's renew a spirit of excitement about AHSGR and let's the society into warring camps? discover it again for the first time. Catch the vision of what can Let me remind you, as I often remind myself, reconciliation be accomplished in the decade ahead so that the convention is not an easy thing to accomplish. Reconciliation doesn't meeting in the year 2000 can say with pride that we were good mean surrender. Nor does it mean compromise. Reconciliation stewards of this organization, that we upheld its lofty ideals, means accepting people as they are, even those we can't stand and that we advanced the society in a positive way. and with whom we frequently disagree. In short, reconciliation I close with the challenge to each of you and to all of our means forgiving people and in return accepting their members to catch the vision of creating new opportunities of forgiveness. I say to you: Catch the vision of reconciliation. working together for the advancement of the American Put it into practice. Forget the "us versus them" trap; stress the Historical Society of Germans from Russia, "we" that demonstrates that "working together is success." Enjoy the convention. God bless each of you, and God bless As Germans from Russia, perhaps because of (he our society. conditioning effect of the many years of disappointments and hardships in the old country, our people tend to get their feelings hurt too easily. As Confucius said, "Men don't To obtain audio cassette tapes of this and all speeches stumble over mountains, but over molehills." And when we given at the convention (including ones that will not take offense at what another has said, just remember what the appear in the Journal), contact French philosopher Descartes said over 200 years ago, "When TRIAD anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the P.O. Box 120 Toulon, IL 61483

Page 2 AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 RETURN TO BERRY MEADOW: Emerging Research Opportunities in Saratov and the Old Volga Colonies Richard D. Scheuerman In July 1990 AHSGR held its annual convention in One month later I found myself trailing my Russian Sacramento, California, and while I was preparing to address a comrade as he hurriedly fought our way through the ballroom crowd on the origins of Volga-German settlement in cacophonous caverns inside Pavelyetsky Railway Station near the American West, my good friend Allyn Brosz of the heart of Moscow. I kept expecting something to go haywire Washington, D.C., who served as the session's moderator, at any moment, but thanks to Volodya my visa had "Saratov" handed me a startling letter from Dr. James Long of Colorado prominently typed on the destination line, and I soon State University. He had established contact with a professor in recognized the same name in Cyrillic suspended from the high Saratov, Russia, whose field of specialization was Russian- iron arm of a signpost in front of a waiting train. With not more German history. Saratov had remained the political and than ten minutes to spare we were off by night, one of the economic hub of a region that in 1921 had been designated by limitations imposed on my travel, and settled into a good Lenin the "Autonomous Volga German Socialist Republic"— night's rest, lulled to sleep in our comfortable cabin by the first such entity of its kind in the new nation. Furthermore, flashbacks of stories heard in my youth and the muffled clatter the letter indicated that the professor offered definitive on this road back in time. I knew this place to which we were confirmation that the long-sought nineteenth-century census headed as well as any Yagader. Saratov had been often revisions did in fact exist. This intelligence alone had eluded described to me by our Russian-born informants. About forty the best efforts of special task forces of international archivists miles southeast of Yagodnaya Polyana, this great Volga city and genealogists commissioned to determine the disposition of was visited at least once or twice a year by most families who such documents in the Soviet Union. On my return home I made the trip for special purchases and to transact banking or immediately fired off a letter to the professor with copies of other official business. But I knew the streets and sights of materials I had written on the Volga Germans and word that I Yagodnaya even better through the composite memories of so might have occasion to visit the USSR that fall on business many old friends who had taken the time to patiently recall related to my responsibilities with the Institute of Soviet and with obvious pleasure countless details of village life. For their East European Studies in Wheaton, Illinois. sake, I hoped also to travel those last forty miles from Saratov. The following September I travelled to Washington, D.C., The gently rolling panorama of spacious awe that greeted to help host a delegation of Soviet educational officials we had us the following gray morning reminded me of the many arranged to bring to the United States. One particularly intrepid photographs I had seen of endless Russian steppe in National and winsome fellow named Volodya insisted on experiencing Geographic. Recently harvested grain fields were separated by more of America than capital area tours. While I had expected thickly branched arbors from chestnut fallow lands stretching the general requests for shopping excursions and theater to the horizon. Now leafless in full fall, many groves along the tickets, his were quite specific and a bit more challenging to railroad revealed within their frosted lace a habitat of in- meet. He needed a rubberized neck brace, an incandescent numerable hanging baskets built by some nesting species. The insect electrifier, and a trip to see Greenwich Village mood of haunting beauty was enhanced by the pallor of immediately! I replied that the first two could probably be solitude across the landscape. Even by late morning we rarely handled, but a trip to New York City during their brief stay spied a soul on the muddy roads along the route. Fenced would require myriad arrangements for travel and lodging at a country cemeteries densely packed with distinctive Orthodox time when our agenda was heavy with official business. Before crosses often suddenly appeared against the somber October entirely dismissing the possibility, however, I risked asking for sky, and little activity was seen in the neighboring villages a special personal incentive. Somehow I would get him to New through which we regularly passed without stopping. The first York if on our reciprocal visit to Moscow in October he would indication that we were finally entering the land of usu Leut arrange my travel to Saratov. I would take my chances on came when the steel wheels carrying our car announced a seeing my ancestral village of Yagodnaya Polyana (Berry forthcoming stop in low, shuddering tones. Slowly the train Meadow) once getting that far. His hearty laugh and sly smile rumbled to a rest next to a railway station directly opposite our told me he could pull the right strings, and a handshake sealed window. Perched above the broad, double-doored entrance was the bargain. I returned to Illinois to find a telegram on my desk a weathered wooden sign bearing the word "ATKAPCK," with a concise message from the Soviet professor: "Will be which I recognized as Atkarsk, the place where scores of our glad to meet with you in Saratov during your trip." people had boarded trains for the first leg of their

AHSGR Journal/Fail 1991 Page 3 journey to America. Yagodnaya Polyana could not be more of activity one would expect in the heart of such a than twenty mites to the east, but I had to settle for a look out metropolitan area. Strangely, the crowds quietly passed by the opposite side of the train across the sepia expanse and the with people poking in and out of storefronts to gaze or stand in hope I could somehow venture there over the weekend. lines while waiting to procure life's necessities. Where An hour later we began entering the littered outskirts of commercial banks and exclusive merchandisers once were Saratov, a city of some 900,000 bordered by the massive located were found meat shops and costume jewelry stores; Volga on the east and a sea of smoking hovels in the morning former luxury hotels contained dimly-lit apartments and air from all other directions. Soon we entered the city proper cluttered bookstores. Not one that I visited had a single book and roiled to a stop along an elevated concrete ramp at the on the region's German heritage although there was a rare train station. Upon alighting from our coach, we were warmly availability of books on city and area history due to the greeted by the professor, in his early forties and obviously celebration of the anniversary of Saratov's founding as a delighted we could meet, as well as a journalist firing frontier military garrison in 1590. questions about local nationality problems and policies I had Saratov has been home to many figures of national and hoped would be avoided in public. Our host tried to deflect the international significance during the subsequent four centuries. inquiries and succeeded in postponing the session until he Among other notables who have lived or studied here are the could acquaint me with the local political situation. He also literary figures Radishchev and Chemyshevsky, government told me that he had visited Yagodnaya Polyana once several officials like Stolypin and Kalinin, and the first man in space, years earlier and that he might be able to arrange a visit there Yuri Gagarin. The city maintains several museums to on the morning of my scheduled departure in two days. I commemorate the achievements of these individuals as well as readily assented. We then set out in a yellow Lada with one of a general city museum that does have a small exhibit on the his associates to tour the city. German colonies. This building is located several blocks north I soon learned that the residents of the city, who are of the Slavonsky Hotel, where I stayed. A very good facility overwhelmingly Russian and Ukrainian, fear that their region by Soviet standards within the steps of the Volga shoreline, it is still under consideration for a restored Volga German features a large restaurant and receiving center for Volga Republic. Alternative locations in Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, and cruise ships that ply these waters all summer between Kaliningrad have not been accepted by an all-union Volgograd and Nizhni Novgorod (formerly Gorky). A large commission charged with resolving the matter. Most Soviet bridge connecting Saratov and Engels could be seen a short Germans, one of the country's largest ethnic groups, favor distance upstream and seemed to stretch for miles to the restoration of republic status for political and cultural reasons. opposite shore. Sunset Sunday evening painted an Although most now reside in Soviet Central Asia and Siberia, unforgettable panorama of dappled rose across the blue-gray many are known to prefer to return to their old homeland on water beneath my window. the Volga, Consequently, some citizens of the Saratov area As our excursion continued the next morning, my hosts fear the possible expropriation of their homes, enterprises, and explained that a great debate continues about the origin of the other property. city's name, though a consensus of scholarly opinion credits its The heart of old Saratov remains the former German Street etymology with two Tatar words '.sari (yellow) and tai (hill). district. Since German associations with area place names have The name possibly referred to the hill Sokolova that looms remained a sensitive subject since the war, the street is now above the city. The Tatars were one of several Mongol tribes called Nevsky Prospekt. Strolling down the broad thoroughfare that remained in the region following the invasion of Asiatics was like walking into a bygone world. Its length is entirely under the Khans in the thirteenth century. Centrally located on closed to traffic and has the appearance of a great European the great Mother River of Russia, Saratov soon came to serve mall with the only modern feature being electric street lights as the political and economic center of the region. Its original crowned with clusters of clear, glass globes. Two rows Russian military fortification knew recurrent challenges at the extending for a half-dozen blocks illuminate the entire area at hands of local tribes. The famed Cossack raider Stenka Razin night in a soft yellow. As the city escaped the ravages of the attacked the fort in 1617, as did Emelian Pugachev in 1774 Second World War, imposing four-story structures from the during his ill-fated attempt to claim Catherine's throne. Saratov previous century rise up on both sides of the boulevard in a survived each crisis and expanded along the west bank of the variety of continental styles reminiscent of some scene from Volga. In 1780 it was designated the regional center for civil Budapest, Vienna, or other great European city. Among the government, which brought a new wave of residents who were most prominent buildings is the enormous corner-steepled reinforced after the formation of the Saratov Gubernia as an conservatory, its spires soaring over one hundred feet, that administrative district in 1797. The phenomenal success of the would seem more at home overlooking the Rhine than the German colonists' agricultural enterprises after an initial period Volga. Noticeably absent, however, was the hubbub of difficult adjustments also boosted the economic development

Page 4 AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 of the region, and great wooden granaries soon appeared along after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, some works owned or the waterfront as Saratov became the major grain exporting painted by local German families are likely in the museum. center on the lower Volga. This is probably the origin of an unknown German woman's Stretching nearly sixty feet in the center of the Nevsky portrait hanging near the end of the upstairs south hall. Rare Prospekt mall today stands a massive panorama in oils sixteenth century German painted glass is displayed in the room depicting historic scenes in chronological order from the with Peter the Great's statue, and an enormous canvas of sixteenth century to the present. I looked to find the arrival of Catherine the Great appears upstairs above the main entrance. the first German immigrants pictured between the defeat of the Within the jurisdiction of the Saratov civil administrative Turks and Pugachev's Rebellion, but this historic moment district are two archives containing the preeminent collections escaped the artist's brush. Another impressive anniversary of Volga-German history useful to scholars and family display a few blocks away was an enormous, three-dimensional researchers. Their holdings were the subject of a presentation diorama of the Saratov waterfront with an adjacent matching at a Soviet archival conference held in Moscow last November scene showing the present arrangement. Noticeably absent in and described in E. M. Yerina's "A History of the Founding of the contemporary view were the great Catholic and Orthodox Archival Collections Regarding the History of Germans Near cathedrals and the beautiful Lutheran church—all victims of the River Volga." The article was published this year in a book Stalin's campaign against religion in the 1930s. In their places of conference proceedings, but the edition was limited to just were the cold, gray, cubic structures that stood as monuments 150 copies in Russian, and it was not publicly distributed. The to the brutality of previous regimes which stifled religious following archival information is largely gleaned from this expression and creativity. My friend took me down a back alley article, and though it focuses on the collections at the Engels to see what remained of the Catholic cathedral, which in the Archive, much of this material was originally held across the rear still revealed its original grand lines and pillars. The front river in Saratov until its relocation for safekeeping during had been entirely torn off and replaced with a dead, square World War II. Collection categories are similar in both entry. My guide shrugged his shoulders and decried the effort institutions although holdings are differentiated by time as "vandalism." The Lutheran church was completely periods and colonial area. In some instances unique and destroyed, as were several of the city's most historic Orthodox important collections exist entirely at one facility, as is the case cathedrals. The most prominent one that remains, however, the with certain census records known to exist in the Saratov Holy Trinity Cathedral, is a testament to the genius of Archive. The original immigrant registers from the 1760s, as architects who combined both Eastern and Western Christian well as the census revisions of 1816, 1834, 1850, and 1858 motifs in a design unlike anything I had ever seen. The reside in Saratov and constitute a treasured resource for entryway resembled a broad, walled conservatory of jeweled genealogists, as records exist there for most mother colonies on glass on top, framed by flowing letters in Old Church Slavonic the west bank, listing the names and ages of all residents' painted white. For the first time in nearly half a century, its family groupings. The location of all 1798 revisions is not symphony of bells began to be heard again recently, as every presently known, but some are believed to be in existence in half hour is announced in melodic tones, and a special chorus both Saratov and Leningrad [now St. Petersburg]. of harmonies is rung from the belfry each Sunday. The Engels Archive was established in the city (formerly A remarkable collection of European art that is largely Pokrovsk) in 1923 when the old German colonial unknown abroad can be found in Saratov's Radishchev Art administrative structure was being dismantled by the Soviets. Museum. Important works on display include those by Its initial holdings consisted of some 57,000 items divided in Bogoliubov, Firs Zhuravliov, Mikhail Botkin, and Paul thirteen collections, which grew to some 243,500 pieces in 758 Tretyakov. Among the museum's present 2,762 paintings is collections by 1930. Processing this huge reservoir of material also a special collection of works from the late 1800s by was hampered by low staffing and the increasingly political members of the Society for Circulating Art Exhibitions, or sensitivity of the subject matter, study of which was not "The Wanderers," whose special themes related to realistic encouraged during the decade preceding the war, as Nazi "people's" art. Represented in this series are canvases by Ilya belligerence threatened stability on the continent. Moreover, in Repin, Ivan Shiskin, Nicholai Gay, and Vasily Perov. 1941 when the holdings had grown to 1,475 collections of As a whole the museum's holdings are eclectic, with rooms 320,300 items, the handful of archivists assigned to Engels was featuring outstanding examples of periods from classical included in the great deportation when the entire Volga Orthodox iconography to Revolutionary art. Other valuable German population was exiled to Central Asia and Siberia pieces include French and Dutch tin vessels. Delft porcelain, within weeks of the Nazi invasion of Russia. The and malachite vases and boxes of distinctive ribboned green. Since many private collections in the region were nationalized

AHSGR Journal /Fail 1991 Page 5 Engels Archive was closed on August 28, 1941. Ironically, the Samtow Zeitung, Saratovsky Listok, and the Saratovsky facility burgeoned with new material during this time, as Vestnik. carloads were brought into the city from surrounding villages From our discussions while wandering through the city that in advance of the threatening Wehrmacht. Great lines of day, I learned that the professor shared my passion for learning vehicles formed outside the archive as work progressed night the full story about all that had happened to our people after and day to salvage all manner of records. While much was the Russian Revolution and was equally committed to recovered, much also perished under the difficult providing help for family history researchers. I inquired about circumstances. the holdings of local archives and was impressed with both the To avoid the growing threat of the German advance in depth of his knowledge and the extent of the collections. In 1942, the major holdings of the Engels and Saratov Archives addition to his teaching responsibilities at the university, he were both moved to Moscow and Perm. Four years later, with had labored for months to compile an exhaustive list of all the war finally over, two railroad boxcars containing these original Volga-German colonists from extant eighteenth- precious collections were sent back to the former repositories century records housed in both the Saratov and Engels on the lower Volga. Tragically, one car derailed and severely Archives. He had also assembled copies of the colonies' 1834 damaged much of its contents, although some were salvaged census revisions, including the one for Yagodnaya Polyana. intact. During the reorganization of the collections in Engels Access to the original documents was severely restricted but and Saratov, the Ministry of Internal Affairs decided to possible, given enough time and the approval of the archive relocate 200 collections of material dealing with the director. Unfortunately, neither could be arranged on the southernmost colonies, which had been located in the weekend of my visit. He offered, however, to bring his copies Volgograd District, to Kamyshin. This included selected items of the records in handwritten Russian to my hotel room the from the colonies of Kolb, Dietel, Walter, Hussenbach, Kraft, next evening, if that would be of any help. The question Merkel, Stephan, and others in that area. A renewed effort to seemed rhetorical, as no one in the West had even known for index the vast holdings that remained in Engels was begun in sure that such records survived the ravages of revolution and 1978 and still continues, but the emphasis of this work has war. been the Volga-German collections from the post-1917 Soviet He appeared at the appointed time bearing a heavy, black period. The most completely catalogued collections include the leather satchel which carried hundreds of pages of census lists records of the Autonomous Volga German Republic's arranged in file folders by village. I desperately wanted to Sovnarcom [Soviet people's committee]. Supreme Soviet, retrieve them all for the sake of the thousands worldwide who Ministries, Planning Commissariat, and of special significance yearned to understand more fully a heritage so long denied in the region, the Commissariat of Land and the Census them. But lacking a photographic memory and a copy Department. Other important collections include the papers of machine, I was compelled to confine my investigation to the the original Volga Commissariat, the First and Second families from Yagodnaya Polyana. Further complicating my Congress of Soviet Deputies of German Colonies, the efforts was the difficulty in readily comprehending German Commissariat of Nationalities, and material on the Great names handwritten in Russian, As the professor had other Famine of 1921. The archive also holds the records of the business that evening, I thanked him heartily for entrusting the republic's Department of Education and Health, the German documents to me and promised to return them to him in the State Philharmonic, the Marxstadt and Balzer German- morning since our trip to the village was still planned. I rolled Theaters, and the German Writers Association. up my sleeves before the small birch desk and opened the file The pre-revolutionary Volga-German collections constitute to see the names Bafus, Blumenschein, Fox, and Lust all on a major part of the Engels Archive, although access to these the first page. A quick glance through the stack provided other materials is further limited since most lack container lists. names I had known from youth and confirmed in my mind the Categories include minutes of village meetings (1899-1917) records were genuine. I pulled the last page to read that in which cover myriad aspects of community life; records of 1834 a total of 1,922 residents inhabited Yagodnaya Polyana Lutheran and Catholic church administration, parishes, and in 286 families. Returning to the beginning I then began schools (1804-1918); the Saratov Internal Affairs Office on copying down by hand as many names and vital statistics as Foreigners; prominent Volga-German business firms like possible before my mind would demand rest from the Schmidt Brothers and those managed by the Bender family; weekend's hectic schedule. In the course of putting down and district legal codes (1799-1917). Two other collections of hundreds of names, I realized that I could complete only a special significance are the records of the Office of partial listing at best in the allotted time but determined to be Guardianship Chancery (1774-1894) and the Erbes Folk accurate with what entries I could record. The periodic Culture Collection. Although not well organized, the archive designation novorozhd next to certain children baffled me until also contains extensive series of regional newspapers including I Nachrichten,

Page 6 AHSGR Jounal / Fall 1991 deduced by their ages that these persons were among those for heads that would provide no harvest offering this late in the whom this census was intended. These were the "newborn" year. The murky, gray skies we had known for several days, whose names would not have appeared on the previous however, soon dissipated into a ceiling of lucent turquoise. enumeration of 1816 and therefore needed to be added for tax Climbing the gentle rise for which the colonists named this side purposes and land redistribution. Similarly, individuals who of the Volga the Bergseite, we spotted a sign in large white had died during the interim were also indicated. letters against a Prussian blue background for Yagodnaya There were frequent entries with my own surname, as was Polyana that directed us eastward off the main highway onto a the case with all others in the village of prolific and isolated severely cratered road. This route deteriorated into a deeply Germans that had grown dramatically since the trek of the first rutted lane in three miles as we began descending steeply families sixty-eight years earlier. When I encountered family through an autumn-gilded cowl of quaking birches protecting number eighty-eight, however, my heart stopped. The father's this tranquil valley. Visible among the peeling white beryozky name was Yost Scheuermann, and he had been among those was an endless aisled carpet of humble moss and frosted who had died since the last census, at the age of sixty-five in woodland flora where Aunt Lizzie and her friends once 1820. Doubtless this was Johann Jost, the son of Hartmann and collected wild mushrooms and strawberries. In the distance Elizabeth, who had joined his parents as a boy on the historic appeared the outskirts of my trip's ultimate destination, trek to the Volga and whose name was included in Kromm's Yagodnaya Polyana, an obscure Russian village yet sacred to emigrant register of 1767. Even more startling was the name the memory of thousands. and age of a grandson. Fifteen-year-old Peter was certainly the Halfway down the slope leading into a substantial man who in later life taught Aunt Lizzie Repp those children's community we slid to a stop on ground greasy with morning songs from his knee. The dates all coincided with what sunmelt. I wanted to compare the scene to a copy of Mollie's fragments of information we had scraped together from oral picture that I had brought for this very purpose. Straining to histories. Peter's father, we learned for the first time, was find a familiar physical landmark, I thought we either had the named Heinrich, which only seemed appropriate. It was the wrong village or the negative had been reversed when the print same name given to my great-grandfather, the man who was made years ago. I proceeded along for some time in ultimately brought our family to America. Our "missing link" geographic vertigo until realizing that the print was fine, but had finally been found. I worked throughout the night with what I always understood to be east in the picture was actually renewed vigor from this discovery, trying to make sense of the opposite direction. Suddenly everything fit into place as we crude transliterations from German that must have knotted the parked the car near what appeared to be the village's major brows of any Russian census-taker. "Gomshtene" was really crossroads. The dry goods store that we just passed now Holstein, "Ryech" was our Reich, and the name of our revealed itself to be the old Russian school where C.G. Kleweno cousins was spelled "Klyevyeiau." With the first Schmick, Conrad Blumenshein, and so many others had glint of sunlight peering over the horizon, I paused for a brief grudgingly studied as boys. A block south of where I stood was rest— but quickly fell asleep. a two-story building of fading aqua bearing the unmistakable A knock at the door that seemed just moments later lines of the German school, where after enduring a single day signalled the beginning of my final day in Saratov. After a of schoolmaster Kromm's discipline, Martin Lust never breakfast of oatmeal and cabbage, a combination I had only returned. The structure now apparently served civil functions. known my wife's grandfather to enjoy, I met my university Several youngsters chased a flock of gabbing geese in its hosts for the hour's drive to Yagodnaya Polyana and the adjacent lot and their school nearby appeared' to be one of the fulfillment of a lifetime dream. We tore through the city at the newer and largest buildings in the community. It was same breakneck speed I had come to expect in Soviet cities, surrounded by a wire fence anchored by blue posts and and I prayed that an accident I also anticipated someday would positioned where the Henry Appel home had once stood. not occur today. We soon moved onto a highway at a more This orientation meant that the cream-colored brick leisurely pace, encountering several small communities and structure crowned with the red star rested where the splendid undulating landscapes similar to the terrain we had passed by Lutheran church had been located. Our Grandma Scheuerman train two days earlier. Our discussion turned to the problems of had been baptized here and hundreds of our people took their Soviet agriculture, though the best commentary enroute was the last communion within its walls before tearing themselves rusted hulks of feed mills and grain elevators that resembled away for the journey to America. Many held the parochial castles of cracked concrete surrounded by sprouted moats of certificates just signed by Pastor Schilling that today were careless spillage. keepsakes for families back home. So much for the pollyanna- We passed stubble fields and an immense congregation of ish hopes that parish records miraculously survived in some ochred sunflowers bowed with heavy attic sanctuary of the original building.

AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Page? The place before us did not appear more than twenty years old uneasy. Within moments I heard rushing water, and after we but did remarkably approximate the architecture of its crossed a rapidly flowing brook, the muffled roar of Yagada's predecessor minus the four-tiered entry tower once crowned fabled spring emerged from a steep sidehill enmeshed in with cross-laden cupola. The number of side windows and the brambled bowers of overgrown bushes and vines. Surely this is tin-roofed gable design appeared identical to the former where Grandma Morasch and Kedda Luft exchanged family church. Two passing women braving the mired streets news and future dreams as hundreds of women gathered daily confirmed its recent age and informed us that it presently for fresh water and clothes washing. They ultimately settled in served as a community recreation and meeting hall. They Endicott and Sheboygan, respectively, and saw each other but viewed us with some suspicion but spoke freely when we once in their adopted country, though they never forgot an explained the nature of our mission- They reported that a few enduring friendship that grew from this special place. Germans had even moved back in recent years, without A few moments later we traipsed up an earthen driveway to volunteering any specifics. the back of an attractive home of plastered white exterior with Knowing that my great-grandfather's home was directly blue-framed windows. Standing next to a woodpile near the across the street from where the church had stood, I entryway was an attractive middle-aged women with whom approached the house that was occupying that place to see a my hosts spoke briefly. I thought I caught a familiar name as red-scarfed bundle of black ambling among some chickens she led us inside somewhat indifferently after we left our shoes behind a crude fence of upright poles. Responding to the of muck at the entry. I again heard the name inside the kitchen Russian of one of my companions, an elderly Ukrainian as she introduced us to her parents, Georg and Maria woman turned to peer at our strange faces before breaking into Scheuermann. They caught my expression, and when I told a helpful smile. The conversation shifted into Ukrainian when them my name, we were all dumbfounded for a moment. The both realized they were natives of the Novodruzovskaya elderly couple took us into a small living room divided from region. She was among the first people to re-inhabit the kitchen by a flowered curtain, where Maria reclined on a Yagodnaya Polyana after the German farmers had been couch specially prepared for her use with a stack of pillows deported. She came as a refugee from the Ukraine, where their and warm quilts. She said her maiden name was Schneidmiller entire kolkhoz had fled en masse in the wake of the Nazi and seemed pleased when I replied that Yagada families by onslaught into that region. Upon arriving in Yagodnaya that name were well known to me in Washington and Idaho. Polyana only weeks after its virtual abandonment, they found Georg reported that he was one of the Kazak clan of only a few families in which German women married to Scheuermans, but that we were surely distant cousins through Russian men had been permitted to remain. The deserted our common German emigrant ancestor. A member of our households were already showing signs of disrepair and Yusta branch was living just down the street. He and Maria pilfering, but as in other Volga-German villages, they were were still getting reacquainted here since arriving from readily occupied by peasants streaming to the area. She herself Peschanoye in Kazakhstan just three weeks earlier. That fact was soon redirected to work on a cattle farm twenty kilometers led me to ask if they had ever known my wife's cousin, away but returned to the village when she retired not long ago. Friedrich Lust. Know him?' He was a favored nephew whose When asked how many Volga-German families had managed lay ministry among our people in Central Asia had been well to return to Yagodnaya Polyana, she estimated about a dozen, known to many Volga Germans. with several residents in the immediate vicinity. One elderly Their retelling of the tragic events in Yagodnaya Polyana couple in fact had just arrived and were living with their through the fall of 1941 meant dredging up painful memories daughter's family behind the community building. We posed made little easier by the emotional impact of my sudden together for a picture and offered our thanks before heading appearance minutes earlier. I chose to temper my questions toward the house. With afternoon commitments back in accordingly, but readily learned that I was in the presence of Saratov and an early evening departure time, I knew this next two people who had fully experienced the travesty of the visit would likely be my final opportunity to ascertain the story innocent village's rapine assault. They had witnessed the of Yagada's inter-war fate. expropriation of everyone's property and the slaughter of those We clumsily stepped single file in each other's footprints to who resisted. They had both known starvation during the cross the quagmired road separating us from an elevated famine Stalin had imposed upon their people, his brutal sidepath while two red-sweatered boys dawdled in the mud. suppression of their Christian faith, and had heard the The only visible means of transportation under such conditions announcement in the village that fateful fall morning was an occasional wagon drawn by ponies bearing the beginning the deportation. Only a handful that had survived all traditional duga arched yoke reminiscent of a scene from these plagues had managed to return where they had all taken Oblomov's Poor Folk. Several men glared at our curious dress place. Their and my camera, making each muddied step a bit more

Page 8 AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 descriptions of these events especially affected one of my underground had not sheltered innocents facing arrests and Russian companions, who listened incredulously to events of exile. Georg explained the horrific circumstances in a single national significance entirely new to his ears. word: terror. These lamentable events had not occurred The disruption of life across the country following the 1917 haphazardly but seemed part of a complex diabolical plan to Russian Revolution and Civil War coupled with poor harvests systematically reduce the local populace to compliant subjects in the early 1920s brought famine to the Volga Region and forced to bury their own convictions. Acquainted for Yagodnaya Polyana. Grain reserves were shared widely but generations with the intricacies of agriculture rather than tactics were soon depleted. Hundreds perished in the area before relief of terror, the German farmers were like sheep among wolves from America arrived. The most pitiful casualties, Georg that tore assiduously and ruthlessly at the cultural vitals of recalled, were children who shriveled into living skeletons with religious conviction, private farms, and inseparable family. bloated bellies. Like Paulina Schmidt, circumstances during the Beleaguered by starvation, shock, and loss of blood, they next decade were little improved for Maria, who experienced faltered and ultimately collapsed into a withdrawn silence. But exile and family loss before the mass exile. When she was a the periodic stirrings that kicked against the beasts of young girl in 1931, her immediate family had been banished oppression only to renew bloodshed were not death throes. beyond the Urals in the midst of Stalin's collectivization, which While the heart of the body numbly succumbed in compliance, began in Yagodnaya about 1930 and consolidated all land it ever breathed the memories of another life that knew faith, holdings in the area into two huge collective farms. Both of pride, and love which survived even in the face of exile to the Maria's parents soon died in the east, and relatives back home desolate wastelands of the east. arranged for her and a brother to return. As brutal as these Many of the troops assigned to the relocation in September conditions were, other farmers who resisted expropriation of 1941 were scarcely out of their teens as the government their property were often shot outright and buried in mass seemed to be using younger recruits for such service while graves in the cemetery overlooking the village. The fact that older men were sent to the front. NKVD agents had gone door some of the perpetrators were Germans themselves remained a to door just days earlier ostensibly to compile a roster of all source of community shame. Soon after the Russian Civil War residents fluent in German who could serve as translators if concluded in 1921, the region was occupied by the Red Army, such work became necessary during the war. In retrospect, which established a local soviet, or workers' council, with Georg realized they were deceptively at work drafting the sweeping legal authority in every village. Placed by the army village's deportation list from which there would be no escape as chairmen and representatives within the Soviets were unless a German woman had taken a Russian spouse. With a handpicked, local Bolshevik-Party sympathizers who tended to population of about two thousand, Yagodnaya had only a constitute the shiftless element that clings to any community handful of families that fit this category. Officials had returned and stands to gain the most at the expense of somebody else. to the village later in the week with the announcement that These feckless firebrands, who had increasingly become the since the German Army's advance was threatening the region, bane of Volga villagers during the Civil War, soon bullied their transport vehicles would arrive in three days to facilitate their way into positions of local authority. "evacuation" and that armed guards were posted all around the These same malcontents facilitated the war against religion village to prevent any unauthorized exit. The Russians feared in the village when ordered to do so by party officials in 1928. that given the choice, many Volga Germans would remain to The local Lutheran pastor, Reverend Arthur Pfeiffer, continued face the conditions of life under Nazi occupation rather than to serve his local parish despite repeated threats on his life and entrust themselves to further treatment at the hands of proven family's welfare until the church was closed with his arrest enemies. A widespread rumor held that the Germans were about 1934. No one dared appear at his trial for fear of further racing to the Volga to liberate lands already peopled by their reprisals against him or themselves, and the courageous man countrymen. who had served Yagodnaya Polyana for many years was Again powerless to mount an alternative response, the sentenced to ten years in prison. After his release he continued villagers' panic settled into chaotic preparation for the move. to minister unofficially, since the Lutheran Church in Russia The weather was turning colder and required careful selection was formally dissolved in 1938. Pastor Pfeiffer sought out his and packing of necessities, since the order allowed only former parishioners and relocated to the Pavlodar area, where baggage that could be readily carried by the family. Brass his unofficial ministry flourished, before retiring to Moscow, samovars and white linen skirts were cast aside in favor of where he died in the early 1970s. wooden soup spoons, black crusted loaves of rye bread, and I groped to understand in gallant naivete how local pleated woolen coats. Tattered German Bibles, often hidden in resistance had not somehow prevailed when their beloved secret places, appeared on the select pile, while precious church was threatened or why an invisible feather bedding locked in wooden chests, deftly used spinning wheels, and even heir-

AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Page 9 looms from the legendary eighteenth-century trek would from which her people had drawn strength during "the dark remain in Yagodnaya Polyana to face an equally uncertain fate. times." And despite the limitations, life today in the village, This new journey eastward knew none of the sanguine even amid a sea of strangers, had certain advantages to an anticipation of that earlier time. Though some of the smaller indefinite residence in Central Asia. For one thing, she children looked upon the tumult of those three black days with explained emphatically, the sky was again blue here and wide-eyed interest, their elders knew this event was not of their rolling earth black—the way God had fashioned His creation. choosing, and some guessed that they would never return. Even decades of Communism could not blot out these happy At the appointed time a battalion of trucks rolled down the features which stood in marked contrast to the monotonous western approach to the village and began loading operations brown smears on the horizon, adobed homes, and what few that took hours to complete. Men and women alike wept at the hills did exist where they had lived before. prospect of leaving a beloved home, giving little mind to the They were glad to be here at almost any cost, as when prodding barked by the drivers and men assigned to this bitter adopted children sometimes overcome seemingly insur- task. Despite the agonies of recent years, extraordinary force mountable obstacles to be reunited with a natural parent. For was sometimes needed to tear heart from hearth. Some soldiers me the all-too-brief introduction to the mother colony would looked upon the scene with sympathy as old women were have to suffice while they were committed to residence with a pulled away from their doorsteps to the cold confines of a truck maternal memory. Our momentary diversion from the bed. Other troops evidenced no little animosity against the incredible chronicle to more interpretive matters brought to villagers whom they had been propagandized into believing mind an observation by Henry Wallace that seemed to embody were fifth columnists poised to rise up in support of the this ethic; German invaders. By late afternoon a caravan extended for "Many of the most lively, intimate expressions of spirit spring miles along the road leading across the hills sheltering their from the joyous, continuous contact of human beings with a once secure domain and holding the bones of departed loved particular locality.... If life can be made secure in each ones in the plaintive cemetery near the top of the rise. In community there will flower not only those who attain joy in another hour they reached Saratov where they waited endlessly daily, productive work well done; in a holding compound before being ferried across the Volga to but also those who paint and sing and tell stories with the the railhead at Engels. From that point they began an flavor peculiar to their own valley, well-loved hill, or broad exhaustive ten-day journey to Kazakhstan with occasional prairie." stops for replenishing supplies of bread, potatoes, and water. As we sat in Georg and Maria Scheuermann's tiny living Traveling with other Yagader families, the bulk of the room, listening to the saga of their lives in this remote part of contingent was assigned to a collective farm in the Kachirsky such a vast country, I was annoyingly returned to present region north of Pavlodar, They gathered to form a new reality by our driver's recurrent motions to his watch. My community at Peschanoye, while a group of rural Ukrainians, Russian friends courteously left the room to allow us a few equally dispossessed by war's approach, began occupying their private moments before parting. The stories related by these old homes back on the Volga. two tempered souls had given me far more than I could ever Among the many topics covered that day, none was more offer them. They had finally shed light on the lives of all usu meaningful than the reason this family and others like them Leut whose fate in this troubled country had long eluded our had returned. After an earlier lifetime of travail they had knowledge. I could do little more than import manifold established an ordered existence in Kazakhstan, but in old age assurance for so many others across the ocean that they had Georg and Maria apparently were risking it all again to move not been forgotten during all those years of suffering and in back to Yagada, The renewed presence of Volga Germans in those uncertain days still remained in our prayers. A kind of the old colonies threatened to fuel fires of local prejudice that catharsis permeated our fellowship as two worlds briefly met recurrently had been directed against them. Maria's response to in the place both had begun. On the road back out of town I my question was laconic; This was home. Yet increasingly looked in vain for the clumps of wild strawberries that had clear through our morning's conversation was that "home" given Yagodnaya Polyana its name and realized that the connoted more than mere place. She spoke eloquently about question of their presence I had wanted to ask was one of the faith spawned here and memories many I had missed. If they were anything like the domestic species in our garden back home, they were connected by long-living runners.

Page 10 AHSGR Jounal / Fail 1991 ANNUAL REPORTS Annual Report of the International Mhz computer, which has a 20 megabyte hard disc drive and monitor. The trustees enthusiastically accepted this generous Foundation of AHSGR 1990-1991 gift. John Gress delivered the computer to Lincoln. The trustees again paid tribute to the many hours of donated Solomon R. Schneider labor and dedicated service to our organization from the The International Foundation of the American Historical volunteers. All members of the society and foundation should Society of Germans from Russia had five meetings during the praise those giving volunteer service an extra pat on the back year of 1990-1991: when the occasion is appropriate. July 28, 1990, Sacramento, California; October 26, 1990, The results of the year-end appeal were given to the trustees Lincoln, Nebraska; March 1, 1991, Yuma, Arizona; July 8, 11, and were also a part of the meeting packets. Since some of the and 13, 1991, Chicago, Illinois. All meetings were well gifts came after the first of the year, the report will reflect the attended. figures as of 31 January 1991. Officers for the year 1990-1991 were Solomon Schneider, President; Edward Schwartzkopf, President-elect; Joyce Aussiedler Project 2,215.00

Deines, Vice-President; Ruth Stoll, Secretary; and Jake Sinner, Building Fund 1,700.00 Treasurer. Committee chairmen were Joyce Deines, Ralph Giebelhaus, Rosemary Larson, Edward Schwartzkopf, Jake Computer Fund 150.00 Sinner, and Ruth Stoll. Other trustees serving were Ralph Endowment Fund 3,935.00 Giebelhaus, Arthur E. Flegel, Adam Giesinger, John Kisner, Genealogy Fund 1,020.00 Rosemary Larson, Larry Metzler, Arnold Schroeder, and Roy Library Fund 631.05 Spomer. Mrs. Elizabeth K. Wilson served as Executive Use Where Needed 765.00 Director of the Foundation, Mr. David J. Miller as General Counsel, Mrs. Alice Heinz as President Emeritus, Ruth Amen $10,416.05 as Executive Director Emeritus, and Mr. Lee Kraft as President of AHSGR. A special grant request by Heather Ropes Gale in the The foundation approved a loan to the society of $1,000.00 amount of $2,000.00 was denied. The content, even though for the purpose of printing the books Bessarabian Knight and perhaps new to the requestor, was of no consequence to the Her Golden Door, and $1,000.00 to Michael Anuta for the foundation and showed to be of very little promise to school copyright and printing of Ships of Our Ancestors. children. The treasurer's books for the year 1990 were audited by The First German Congregational Church at 1st and West F Ralph L. Giebelhaus. Mr. Edward Schwartzkopf, chairman of Street proposed the possibility of moving the church to the the Finance, Investments, and Audit Committee, complimented Heritage Center property. The Board of Trustees after much Mr. Ralph Giebelhaus on the outstanding quality of the audit discussion voted not to accept the offer. and his report to the Board of Trustees. The Endowment Committee asked the Board of Trustees for On June 20, 1991, the closing on the purchase of the $10,000.00 to conduct the campaign for the endowment. The property located at 1137 South 7th Street, Lincoln, Nebraska, request was granted. was consummated for the amount of $27,000.00. The Board of The Central Washington Chapter request for a loan of Trustees voted an amount not to exceed $5,000.00 to upgrade $3,000.00 to help with the publication of Germans from. the newly acquired property so that the artifacts currently Russia in the Yakima Valley Prior to 1940 was approved. housed at 1139 South 7th Street could be transferred to it. Congratulations to the chapter because as the time for the Rosemary Larson was voted to become the interim needed money came to be, the chapter rose to the occasion and bookkeeper for the International Foundation following the took care of all the costs. termination of the accounting firm of Rhoades, Wendt, and On March 1, 1991, in Yuma, Arizona, the Board of Trustees Brauer. voted to terminate the services of Rhoades, Wendt, Brauer and The International Foundation Appreciation Luncheon Company, that all records be turned over to the foundation, marked the beginning of the Fund Raising Campaign for the and that a part-time bookkeeper be hired to provide accounting one million dollar endowment. Speakers were Dr. Howard services until our books can be put on the computer. Bruner, retired professor from Colorado State University, Port Arthur Flegel donated his IBM compatible 286-12 Collins, Colorado, who spoke on "Attitude Adventure," and Mrs. Joyce Deines. Endowment Fund Committee Chairman, from

AHSGR Journal /Fall 1991 Page ll Mead, Nebraska, whose topic was "Together We Can." The Last and most important is our effort to go to computerized total amount of money raised in cash and pledges during the accounting for the society. We prepared a quarterly report and convention was $27,736.00. The itemization is as follows; while some adjustments need to be done in format, we are endowment donations in cash $8,393.01; endowment pledges progressing and are confident of reaching our goal in this area. (non-cash) $13,977.99; We have had an exceptionally busy year in printing. In the auction, $2,013.50; the bazaar, $1,398.50; and the quilt addition to the publications which we constantly strive to raffle $1,948.00. improve, the Annotated Bibliography of Materials Available Newly elected members to the Board of Trustees for the for Purchase was updated and reprinted. After the March three year term are Ruth Amen, Ralph Giebelhaus, Rosemary board meeting we printed Bessarabian Knight, corrected and Larson, Jake Sinner, and Elaine Wilcox. The two candidates reprinted Her Golden Door, and thanks to Dr. Adam elected for the one-year term are Verna Goral and Nancy B. Giesinger, had only minor details to oversee for the Beratz Holland. book. The author of Her Golden Door, Cal Nuss of Mr. Al Reiber of the Nebraska Panhandle Chapter was Scottsbluff, Nebraska, donated the copyright to AHSGR. He is informed to proceed to the completion of their video tape presently very ill with cancer. Please remember him in your dealing with the Sugar Beet Story. prayers. We try to take advantage of any public relations or publicity opportunities. This year there was an article about AHSGR in Home and Away, a travel magazine. I was on the host committee for the Bill of Rights display in Lincoln, and some Report of the of our volunteers attended the opening and served as guides. Executive Director We also participated in the National Quilt Show in Lincoln in June, We featured quilts made by Germans from Russia Elizabeth K. Wilson displayed in the chapel and staffed with AHSGR attendants. We were visited by 450 persons from all over the nation, gave President Kraft, Members of AHSGR, Guests: out brochures to interested persons, obtained some new It is with pleasure that I extend greetings to you and add my members and sold some books. welcome to the twenty-second annual convention of the There have been two consultations with representatives of American Historical Society of Germans from Russia. We the Latter Day Saints Family History Center to make appreciate the hospitality of the Illinois Chapter and the preparations for the microfilming of our obituaries and family wonderful convention they have planned for us. They have group cards. We also have been working with Richard been great to work with and have been well organized in all Scheuerman to make necessary arrangements to facilitate the their planning. I flew into Chicago to meet them in January, AHSGR/USSR project. the day after the Persian Gulf War began. When they were able We want to express our thanks to the chapters for to get me out of the airport with ease, I knew they'd have no responding to our "want list" and to all those who made cash problems with convention! gifts to help with the operation of headquarters. Your support It has been a busy year for headquarters since we met in is greatly appreciated. Sacramento. Probably the area in which the staff has And now, I would like to introduce the VIPs at head- experienced the most growth is in utilizing the capabilities of quarters, our staff and volunteers; JoAnn Kuhr has been with our computers. Three of the staff members took short courses us for twelve years. In addition to helping members with related to our specific software programs which have been genealogy, she edits Clues and is the central figure in the most useful. Aussiedler project. JoAnn's expertise is well known and we are In this year's issue of Clues, sections I and II were prepared proud of her many accomplishments. camera-ready by the staff. The passenger lists, put on a disc by Kathy Schultz is our staff accountant who has been with us Allyn Brosz, needed only some minor column adjustments. three and one-half years. She is working very hard on the This resulted in a savings of approximately $1,385. Clues was computer accounting and has done a great job of improving delivered just before we left and will be mailed out on our our record keeping. She does a variety of tasks too numerous return. There are copies in the Genealogy Workshop for you to to mention. It is usually her voice heard on the phone unless it use. is Laurie Grammer, who also handles incoming phone calls. Last year was the first year we used the computer for Laurie has been with us two years, handles all membership convention registration and for preparing the packet mailed in records, supervises all bulk mailings, processes book orders, March. It was much easier this year and provides detailed lines up volunteers for tours and receptionists. She also has a reports that are very valuable in planning future conventions. real knack for making the computer produce the reports and We have developed our programs for membership so we information we want. are now able to send chapter presidents a roster of their Rick Rye has been acting editor for two years. When Linda members, indicating those who have renewed and those who Kahler resigned. Rick moved to the posi- have not. We hope they will make every effort to encourage renewals.

Page l2 AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 tion of genealogy researcher. Rick speaks and translates (4) And then the challenge of meeting the goals set for the Russian and German and coordinates all translations. Endowment Fund that will eventually provide the financial Mike Ronn, our new librarian, replaced Mary Rabenberg means needed to meet the challenges we have noted. when she resigned. Mike started in January and has been The future of the society is in your hands. You have a working diligently to improve our record keeping, catch up all unique opportunity, an awesome responsibility, for the cataloging, and to put our library in top form. decisions made at this convention will shape the future of this While I have mentioned their specific duties, they are all society. frequently called upon for additional tasks to meet the work There will be differences of opinions on issues. This is true load: proofreading, tours, mailings, etc., and they willingly in any family. But remember, we are a family. As you debate respond to get the job done. They work well together, help the issues to seek the best possible solutions, remember those each other, and make headquarters a pleasant place to be. They with differing opinions are also motivated by their love and are a hardworking, dedicated group and we are lucky to have concern for the best interests of the society. Respect their them! opinion and their right to express it. And when the majority Our second group of VIPs are the volunteers. In mid-March prevails, let us then do what any strong and loving family does: we began keeping a book for volunteers to log their hours. support the decision and set our differences aside to Hugh Dobler, who continues to work on the microfilming concentrate on working together in harmony to meet our project, volunteered to put the figures on computer, creating a challenges. record for each person. Thanks to him we can acknowledge The headquarters staff stands ready to do our best to volunteers and recognize the total number of hours they have implement the decisions you make and we pledge ourselves to given in a three-and-a-half-month period: Hugh Dobler 192 assist you to the best of our abilities in every possible way. hours; John Schneider 138; Alex "Sash" Stier 105; Henry Thank you. Grasmick 102; Henry Grenemeier 86; Frances Amen 66; Alex Miller 50; Lydia Spomer 38; Frieda Dobler, Hal Bauer, Al Kruse all had 27 hours. There were 34 others who had under 27 hours. All told, we have 45 regular volunteers who gave a total of 1,161 hours in this three- USSR Germans-from-Russia and-a-half-month period. At minimum wage, this would total $4,937.44. We would also like to acknowledge the volunteers Archives and Research Project who do typing, translating, obituaries, etc., through the mail- Our thanks to you all, you are a very important part of our Richard D. Scheuerman operation. In the absence of subcommittee chairman Tim Kloberdanz, I During the last two years one of the major facets of my job have been asked to submit this report on the origins and has been to listen. I have heard many messages of concern for progress of our work. One year ago. this week at the society's the future of the society. Some expressed with hope and convention in Sacramento, Allyn Brosz shared with us the optimism; some in anger and frustration. But all had a common contents of a remarkable letter from James Long of Colorado thread— genuine concern for the growth of the society, for its State University. It was dated June 6, 1990, and informed us preservation and for its welfare. All have had a note of pride that he had established contact with an historian at Saratov and love. State University who was studying the Germans of Russia. Dr. Our society is faced with many challenges: (1) The Long characterized his recent contact with Igor R.Plehve as necessity to maintain and preserve headquarters, the Heritage "vital information" and quoted a letter from Plehve received on Center and all that has been accomplished in the past in the that date: "Much time has been wasted, because of the lack of face of rising costs and a dwindling corps of local volunteers. reproduction equipment, in the preparation of lists of names of Age and declining health are taking their toll. (2) The the first settlers in each colony located on the mountain side." challenges of the future as we move toward computerizing our He also indicated that his sources were directly from the state genealogical records and developing a plan to coordinate the archives in Saratov. project so the efforts of many computer researchers can be Many of us in AHSGR had longed for the day when the interchanged to create a databank accessible to all our precious records documenting our people's experience in Russia members. (3) Continuing the efforts we have begun to keep the would finally be available in the West, and I expected to travel Aussiedler Project alive and to explore the exciting possibilities to the USSR in the fall [of 1990] as part of my administrative in the USSR that should give our society new growth and new responsibilities at the Institute for Soviet and East European interests. Studies in Wheaton, Illinois. Accordingly, I wrote to Dr. Plehve on August 22, 1990, informing him of my travel plans and that, "I was hoping I

AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 Page 13 might be able to meet with you at my expense near the end of content of these discussions with Lee Kraft, Elizabeth Wilson, October in order to more fully explore these matters of Volga- Tim Kloberdanz, Art Flegel, and others who also recognized German research. There would be great interest from AHSGR the significance of the Saratov and Engels Archives holdings. and other scholars in the United States and Canada in your With the help of these individuals we prepared a proposal for work." the AHSGR board suggesting that approximately $5000 would Through personal contacts in the Russian Ministry of be needed to provide Dr. Plehve with the necessary computer Education, I was able to obtain the necessary visa approval to equipment and supplies to undertake a three-year pilot project visit Saratov for three days in October 1990. I sent Dr. Plehve a to supply us with unprecedented access to the census revisions telegram informing him of my plans to which he responded on for selected colonies and primary source records relating to the September 28 with the concise message, "Will be glad to meet. Guardianship Chancery, church parishes and consistory When arrive USSR call Saratov for me." He was contacted administration, district legal codes, Volga German Republic through my friends at the Ministry and met me at the train commissariats, and other collections. The determination of upon my arrival in Saratov. A complete report of my time with what could be gleaned over three years from the volume of Dr. Plehve and others that weekend has been submitted to the material potentially available would be negotiated with Dr. society. I was particularly impressed with Dr. Plehve's Plehve and involve the availability of his time, staff support, kindness, his willingness to provide assistance in my inquiry, and equipment. A new and unexpected problem was emerging and the scope of his knowledge about archival sources on the in our quest to gain access to these treasures: so much might be Germans from Russia. available that prioritization of collections would be necessary. Of particular note was a recent publication that he shared President Lee Kraft encouraged me upon my return to with me describing various collections of these materials in Illinois in the fall to maintain a dialogue with Dr. Plehve and repositories throughout the USSR. Copies of the book were he indicated that the board would consider the matter of limited but he shared its contents with me, and a summary of support for a cooperative research project at the March 1991 this information was included in my report. I was struck by the meeting in Yuma, Arizona, I met again with Dr. Plehve in volume of the materials that remained in existence despite all early March in Moscow where he arranged for me to be a our fear in the West that most had perished by decree or special delegate to the first Congress of Soviet Germans that disaster and by Dr. Plehve's assertion that he had conducted was meeting in the city to discuss the restoration of the Volga extensive work with the census revisions and had found them German Republic. He supplied me with some valuable to be complete and in good condition. Access, however, materials including his original manuscript of a book-length remains highly restricted due to the continuing political work on Sarepta which I sent to AHSGR Archives. He also sensitivity over Soviet Germans and the nationality problem. explained in greater detail his computer and related equipment Dr. Plehve's research, for example, is frowned upon in the needs. More problems arose. The simplest and most cost history department at the university. Dr. Plehve also shared effective means of duplicating the census records— with me his willingness to assist AHSGR in its research efforts microfilming—was out of the question given archival and that he had already been in written communication with restrictions. We also decided that photo-duplicating was Dr. Long and Tim Kloberdanz. I shared with him the work that impractical given the volume of paper required and lack of Tim and I knew was being conducted at the University of equipment support as well as reliability over the long haul. The Washington School of Medicine on genetic founder effects. only alternative available was computer entry by hand or The fact that Russian-German families were being studied for scanner. Dr. Plehve thought a scanner would be acceptable for this purpose and his work might provide valuable information manuscript materials and documents but since all census to medical research could provide a clinical and scientific revisions were in handwritten Russian, he could guarantee justification for our genealogical work in the event questions accuracy in spellings only if that information was entered into about its propriety might arise from local government the computer under his personal supervision. Accordingly, it authorities. Dr. Plehve concurred and I pledged to provide him would be necessary to find hardware with sufficient memory with letters of support from the project director. Dr. Thomas compatible with Soviet electrical current and appropriate Bird. (His letter of April 16, 1991, was delivered to Dr. Plehve software in both Latin and Cyrillic script. on my May visit to Moscow which solicited "... assistance in Later that month in Wheaton, I was informed by President locating and compiling census records, ..of Frank, Walter, and Lee that the AHSGR board "enthusiastically supported a neighboring villages. . . . ") cooperative project with Dr. Igor Plehve at Saratov by helping Upon my return to the States last fall I shared the to supply him with

Page 14 AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 certain equipment." He noted that no funds were presently 1. Project Name: "USSR Germans-from-Russia Archives and budgeted for this purpose but the project was being approved Research Project." "on 'faith' that donors would quickly come up with the needed 2. Project committee structure. funds. ..." The president and board evidenced considerable 3. Equipment and materials supplied (Dialogue 40MB hard vision in responding to this remarkable opportunity since they disk drive personal computer, monitor, and keyboard; NEC 500 were aware through our correspondence on the matter of the letter quality printer; Microsoft Works software in Latin and various political and technical risks involved. The board also Cyrillic script; 1 carton of computer paper and expenses [$500] appointed a task group for the purpose of overseeing the for toner and supplies). project, to be chaired by Tim Kloberdanz with Allyn Brosz and 4. Consideration to purchase a photo-duplicating machine; myself as members. Dr. Plehve also informed us in March that total labor-related expenses not to exceed $2500 per year. he had located in the Saratov Archives what was probably the 5. Schedule of work for census revisions from 1798, 1816, only extant complete series of annual reports from the 1834, and 1858 (the years in which the colonies were founded Guardianship Chancery for Foreign Settlement which are excluded due to Plehve's prior directive from the supervised Volga-German political and economic affairs Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Russland allowing them throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We learned to publish that series first): at the same time that the Soviet-American joint venture firm J.V. Dialogue manufactured personal computers in the USSR June, 1991-92: Frank and Kolb that would likely meet our specifications for the research June, 1992-93: Rothammel and project. With the authorization of funds by the board and the Yagodnaja Polyana subsequent financial support provided by members and June, 1993-94: Norka and Walter chapters across the country and in Canada, arrangements were June, 1994-: Balzer and others to be made for Dr. Plehve and me to pick up the equipment at the determined company's outlet in Moscow during my May visit to the USSR. 6. Schedule of work for other primary source materials (not Of note was Dialogue's willingness through Vice-president less than 150 historically significant documents per decade Tony Waterluk to provide this equipment to AHSGR at cost. annually for three years from the Protocol and Records of the The proposed contract between the society and Dr. Plehve Guardianship Chancery of Foreign Settlement [1774-1894] was the subject of considerable discussion within the Collection). Total labor-related expenses for this part of the subcommittee prior to my departure. The designation and project not to exceed $1000 per year. sequence of village census lists to be processed was to be 7. Dr. Plehve's designation as Editor-in-Chief of any determined by taking three factors into consideration: colony publications resulting from this project. size, association with the medical project, and relationship to 8. .Restriction of these categories of work to AHSGR with all significant work already conducted by Dr. Plehve. Regarding materials supplied to be the property of AHSGR. this latter point, for example, he had already devoted some 9. Statement of intent to fully abide by these terms while months to analyzing census records of some colonies being recognizing the significant political and logistical challenges to researched by graduate students in his department. the project, contract terms to be reviewed annually and subject Furthermore, we would propose that a second category of to change by mutual consent. primary-source historical documents (those in addition to the Total expenses committed by AHSGR to the project to date census revisions) be designated to provide the society with are $2,929.50 in the following categories: selected materials relating to the Chancery, churches, and the Autonomous Volga German Republic. Upon arrival in Moscow $1,365.00 - Computer and monitor in May 1991, I arranged to meet Dr. Plehve in the Sevastopol 514.00 - Printer Hotel where we discussed the terms of the proposed contract. 500.00 - Paper, toner, and supplies 50.00 - Software My friend, Yevgenii Kunitsyn from the Ministry of Education, $2,429.50 - Total equipment who had helped to arrange my original visit to Saratov, was 500.00 - Biannual labor installment present during the discussions to help interpret when needed. $2,929.50 - Total Project Investment, 10 July 1991 The contract negotiated on behalf of AHSGR on May 6 Note that a photo-duplicating machine or computer scanner specified ten terms relating to the following points: has not been purchased although one or the other will be required to obtain copies of the Guardianship Chancery records. The scanner has been determined to be the preferred equipment for

AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 Page 15 this purpose and can be purchased for approximately $1500. research on the Germans from Russia. Furthermore, the This amount was included in our original proposed estimate for committee expresses sincere gratitude to the board for their the project. The scanner costs no more than a good photocopier vision in supporting this historic endeavor. and has the important advantage of converting any document into a digitized format for placement of innumerable pages on RECOMMENDATIONS a small computer disk which would facilitate transfer of materials across the border. 1. Direct a letter from AHSGR to Dr. Plehve expressing our One of the more controversial aspects of the work might appreciation for his willingness to assist us in this appear to be the sequence of village census revisions. It is important undertaking and thanking him for already important to understand and respond to inquiries concerning providing significant manuscript materials to our this matter, however, with the knowledge that the sequence is archives. largely due to circumstances unique to Dr. Plehve's research. 2. Authorize the purchase of a computer scanner for Were these records located in the West, a researcher would approximately $1500 for use with Dr. Plehve's likely begin by simply contracting to have village lists equipment in the Saratov Archives. microfilmed in some logical order, perhaps on the basis of 3. Encourage AHSGR chapters and members to contribute to population beginning with the largest villages and working this historic project during this period in which access to over time down to the smallest. For several reasons such an Russian archives is possible. approach is simply not possible in the USSR at the present time. At least two prominent archival associations in America, incidentally, have attempted to gain access to such materials using this approach which has brought no results. Aussiedler Committee Archival work in the USSR is uniquely conditioned by several factors including (1) extreme sensitivity by the Arthur E. Flegel, Chair government over research in matters related to nationality (e.g.. Herbert Babitzke Soviet German) problems; (2) suspicion by local authorities of microfilm projects and other methods previously deemed Allyn Brosz "clandestine"; Adam Giesinger Nancy (3) rampant corruption at all levels when dealing with state Bernhardt Holland officials; (4) the absence of trained workers, bilingual in archaic German and Russian, who are willing to volunteer for Tim Kloberdanz the months of labor required to enter census data for a single Laurin WUhelm village, and (5) the vast scope of Germans-of-Russia material, For the members who may be vague as to its purpose, it can much of which is not well organized or catalogued, that we be interpreted as follows: A ussiedler is the newly created now know is available in the Saratov and Engels Archives. word for the many people being resettled in Germany from To resolve these challenges, a plan was devised to still use foreign lands. We are especially interested in those coming population size as a general guideline but also be conditioned from Eastern Europe, principally the Soviet Union, of whom by other important factors identified by Dr. Plehve such as there were 150,000 last year. work that could be justified for scientific purposes (i.e.. AHSGR's identification with this program has a manifold University of Washington genetic founder effect studies on purpose for which a committee was formed and with which Jo residents from Kolb, Walter, and Frank) or that was currently Ann Kuhr of our headquarters staff has worked very diligently. being undertaken by the few graduate students capable of Our aims are as follows: assisting him in census data computer entry (e.g., graduate students in the department have been conducting dissertation 1. To make contact with new arrivals at the reception centers research on Yagodnaya Polyana and Rothammel). Accord- or in their homes and to let them know that they have ingly, the sequence will proceed according to the scheduled friends in the United States. outline above in Section 5 of the contract. 2. To obtain and record their life stories by cassette tape or I believe we were most fortunate to find in Igor Plehve a other means. man of high integrity and scholarship who is willing to 3. To acquire a more complete first-hand knowledge of provide these services and materials to us in order to dispossessings and displacement of our people during the significantly promote international Stalinist period. 4. To help in every way possible for the Aussiedler families to be reunited with family members and relatives in North America. To that end, we sent Jo Ann Kuhr as our paid representative to Germany last year. She was accompanied by committee member Nancy Bernhardt

Page 16 AHSGR Jounal / Fall 1991 Holland at her own expense. We feel the endeavor was a AHSGR President Lee Kraft at the 1991 Chicago Convention. success as most of you learned from Jo Ann's well-detailed Congratulations go out to them. report at the Sacramento convention. In a less pleasant vein, the Center of the Nation Chapter of Unhappily, the program has recently been "on hold" for Belle Fourche, South Dakota, is struggling to remain a viable several significant reasons: and active chapter. Membership has declined; so has interest 1. So many refugees have been arriving almost daily (150,000 in doing the necessary tasks to keep a chapter going. last year) from the eastern countries that the Consideration was given to purchasing a life membership and Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Russland personnel turning it over to the public library in Belle Fourche. This has has been fully occupied with helping these needy people not yet been done, however. Mr. Doug Queschnick is serving become resettled. this year as the president and Lydia Stumpff is serving as 2. Physical impairments plus other responsibilities have secretary; they are keeping the chapter going for another year. hampered the efforts of the people who had indicated The committee wishes to thank them for their leadership and sincere interest in carrying on the interviews under Jo hard work. Ann's direction. With the aging of our members and their passing away, it is 3. Up to this point, it has been difficult to find people inevitable that some chapters will cease to function. sufficiently dedicated to the project to contribute the time Hopefully, there is contained within the charter itself the and effort required. provisions for disestablishing the chapter. In some cases, it will allow for the purchase of a life membership in the name Now things are looking up. Frau Ute Richter-EberI of the of the chapter that can be turned over to the local library. In Landsmannschaft spoke about the project at a seminar in this way, the AHSGR publications will still be made available Oldenburg in April. She also conducted a seminar and training for interested persons. In some cases, provisions are not session in June for volunteers who will make the interviews. A provided and assets should be sent to AHSGR headquarters in number of our people who have traveled to Europe this year are Lincoln, Nebraska. Of course, no one wants to see a chapter in the process of recruiting interviewers from among their dissolved, but sometimes it happens. friends and relatives. Dottie Momany of Michigan has recently It is absolutely necessary that each of us "weed our garden" returned from Germany where she spent several days at and see to it that our chapter is "alive and well." reception camps. Assisted by Georg Wolf, president of the Osnabrück Ortsgruppe, she took photos, interviewed people, and is preparing a videocassette program documenting the past and present experiences from people currently arriving in Germany. Bob and Roswita Niessner, who have just returned Addendum to the Chapter from Germany, will shortly report on their experiences. To finish my report, I am pleased to state that the Organization Committee Report approximately $600.00 from the Ecumenical Service in John Gress Sacramento has been given to the Pastors Karl Ernst Voehler and Anja Klonz of Trossingen for their work with the I happen to believe that the pattern to follow to build and Aussiedler. Concerning family reunification, we received nine keep a strong functioning chapter is consistency. requests from July through December of 1990 and made seven • Consistent meetings: a minimum of one every other connections. Since January 1991, we have had 36 requests with month. Don't lay off over the summer, even with only a four successes. Family reunification is a meaningful activity for three-month lapse it's hard to get them started again. AHSGR and deeply appreciated by the people affected. • Work on your programming. Speakers, workshops, book reports, and ethnic dinners and potluck food will get them every time. Chapter Organization • Have the meetings in the same place and at the same time. Poll your members and see when is the best time for the Committee majority. • Invite your society board member to at least one meeting a Laurin Wilhelm, Chair year. Think about having your international president or John Gress the executive director visit your state or representation Robert Niessner district every year or so, splitting the cost. William Schwab The Midlands Chapter in Nebraska and the Mt. Diablo Chapter in California were organized and have been functioning successfully for approximately one year now. They formally received their charter from

AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Page /7 And something new for most of you to think about: • Develop a state- or district-wide organization. The idea Finance Committee has been working well in both Kansas and California for Ella M. Reese, Chair some five or six years with the stronger chapters giving Jake Sinner support to the ones needing it. We have a state-wide list of speakers (in California) who are available almost for Lydia Jesse the asking. Joyce Domes How many of you have or know about the manual put out at one time by AHSGR headquarters called "How to Organize a Ray Pfau Chapter"? I recommend that we upgrade it and get it out to all The Finance Committee reviewed the Statement of Activity chapters as soon as possible. for twelve months ended December 31, 1990, as prepared by Rhoades, Wendt, Brauer and Company. Revenue received during this period was $227,953.56, and the expenditures for the same period were $227,819.80, which resulted in an excess of $133.76. The approved budget for Editorial Committee 1990 was $225,500.00. The Finance Committee agreed that the Nancy Bernhardt Holland, Chair total income and expenses compare very favorably with the Arthur Flegel approved budget. It was noted that the accountant's report included Life Allyn Brosz Membership income under the heading of revenue. Life Elizabeth Wilson Membership income is excluded from revenues received as During the year since the Sacramento Convention, the only the interest thereon is used in the operations of the Editorial Committee of AHSGR has reviewed a number of society. manuscripts and has seen into print four new volumes For the three (3) months ending March 31, 1991, the available for purchase at this convention: revenues and expenses have been reviewed. The revenue of BessarahianKnight, the memoirs of lmmanuel Weiss as told to $149,359.35 is 65.57% of the total budgeted revenue. The George Wieland; The Story of Johann, the Boy Who Longed to expenses for this same period are $46,039.40. Come to Amerika, by Mela Meisner Lindsay; a new edition of Her Golden Door, by Calvin Nuss; and an English translation It was voted at the spring Board of Directors meeting in of Gottlieb Beratz's seminal work. The German Colonies on Yuma, Arizona, on March 1 and 2, 1991, that the society the Lower Volga. discontinue the services of Rhoades, Wendt, Brauer and Company. All of the accounting for the society is being done The committee has also reviewed recent issues of society by Kathy Schultz on the computers at our international periodicals and drafted a guide to editorial policy. The headquarters in Lincoln. We commend Kathy for undertaking committee has authorized the executive director to undertake a this monumental task. The Finance Committee is aware that search for a person to fill the role of editor of society there is some assistance that needs to be given the headquarters publications immediately. A substantive knowledge of the staff until the operation is functioning smoothly. history, culture, and languages of the Germans from Russia is The Finance Committee extends their sincere thanks to to be the most important criterion in selection of the editor. Arthur Flegel for his generous contribution of a computer and The Committee Chair wishes to add her gratitude for the to John Gress for transporting the computer from California to patient readings, thoughtful analyses, and sometimes difficult Lincoln. decisions made by members of the committee, Arthur Flegel We appreciate Jake Sinner for being available to assist the and Allyn Brosz, and ex-officio member Elizabeth Wilson. staff, and we are very confident that our finances are in capable Special thanks are also due to Ruth Amen for seeing The Story hands. of Johann through publication, to Diane Gentry for her vivid illustrations for that volume, to General Counsel David Miller And lastly, the Finance Committee expresses its deep for negotiating contracts with our authors, and to Adam appreciation to the many volunteers that help in preparing Giesinger for the countless hours he donated to coordinate the mailings and in many other ways. Without their help, our efforts of our valued translators, Dona Reeves-Marquardt, finances would be in "a world of hurt." LaVern J. Rippley, and Leona Pfeifer, and bring the long- awaited edition of Beratz in English to light.

Page 18 AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 Stoll (Past Chair of the AHSGR Folklore Committee), who Folklore Committee kindly chaired the symposium in my absence. Dr. Timothy J. Kloberdanz, Chair Gerhard Buhr, Vice-Chair Leona Janke Genealogy Committee Robert Niessner Allyn Brosz, Chair Ruth K. Stoll Joyce Deines, Vice-Chair Each one of the last four AHSGR journals has included one Arthur Flegel or more articles dealing with the folklore of the Germans from Leona Janke Russia. The topics range from folk stories and folk celebrations to traditional foodways and family folklore. These Penny Sittner articles include the following essays: Alexander Dupper's The Genealogy Committee wishes to recognize the "Bazaars and Fairs in the Black Sea Area" (Fall 1990); JoAnn outstanding work of AHSGR staff members Jo Ann Kuhr and Kuhr's "The Aussiedler and Their Stories" (Fall 1990); Irene Linda Kahler this past year. Linda has submitted her Radefs "Grandma's Kitchen" (Winter 1990); William Seibel’s resignation, and Rick Rye has assumed her duties. The "Down 'Die Linie' Caucasian Frontier" (Summer 1991); and committee wishes to thank Linda for her dedicated and very Timothy J. Kloberdanz's "Piecing the Past Together: The professional service to AHSGR. Important Role of Folklore in Family History Research" The Committee wishes to thank: (Spring 1991). • All volunteers who have supported genealogy projects A number of AHSGR members in the United States and across the country. Canada have been hard at work collecting examples of • Hugh Dobler of Lincoln, Nebraska, for all his assistance German-Russian folklore. Scholars in the former Volga- in microfilming obituaries at the Heritage Center and local German settlement area of the USSR also have expressed an church records in South Dakota. interest in collecting examples of modern folklore in the • Barbara Clausen of Salinas, California, for compiling the Lower Volga Region. At the AHSGR board meeting in Yuma, genealogical database for the village of Frank. This project, Arizona (held in early March), the board voted to support the containing information on more than 21,000 names, deserves efforts of Soviet university students and other scholars in our support. collecting German-Russian folklore and dialect examples • Roger Swayze of Battleground, Washington, for all his within the USSR. Thus far, a six-page research manuscript efforts on behalf of computerized genealogy. Mr. Swayze has already has been received from the USSR and it is now being developed, with the sponsorship of the Oregon Chapter, a readied for publication in the AHSGR Journal. proposed set of guidelines for chapter computer genealogy Folklorists also have been working closely with members of projects. The committee is excited about this and hopes to the Alzheimer's Disease research project at the University of present the guidelines to the full board for approval at the fall Washington in Seattle. In order to better understand the meeting. This has been a banner year for the genealogy of incidence of Alzheimer's Disease in the German-Russian Germans from Russia. Contacts have been established and community, folklorists are carefully examining such things as cultivated with Professor Igor Plehve at Saratov in the Soviet family stories, anecdotes, nicknames, foodways, customs, and Union, and we expect to receive much information on the related aspects of traditional German-Russian life. history, folklore, and family ties of those Germans who settled The role of folklore in better understanding the culture and in the Volga region. The committee would especially like to genealogy and even the medical history of the Germans from thank: Russia is becoming more and more important. Folklore is not • Dr. James Long and Richard Scheuerman, for establishing trivia; it is an integral and vital part of the heritage of all contact with Professor Plehve and for sharing those Germans from Russia. experiences with AHSGR. AHSGR members are encouraged to submit folklore • Dr. Timothy Kloberdanz and David Schmidt, for sharing material for publication in our society's journal. Letters and information on their ancestors that was provided by folklore contributions should be sent to the Folklore Professor Plehve. This was published in the Spring 1991 Chairperson, in care of the AHSGR Headquarters, Lincoln, AHSGR Journal. Nebraska. . The AHSGR Board of Directors and AHSGR Foundation Special thanks are due the two presenters at this year's Board of Trustees for their quick work at the spring 1991 folklore symposium: Mrs. Leona Janke of Schoolcraft, board meetings in Yuma, Arizona, to provide support Michigan, and Dr. Thomas D. Bird of Seattle, Washington. I and funding for the researchers in Saratov. Special am also indebted to Ruth K. thanks are due to

AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 Page 19 all AHSGR members who contributed financially to this lieb Beratz, the translation of which has been made available to project. you at this convention. • Jo Ann Kuhr, for maintaining contact with Dr. Nina This book deals with the first century of the German Berend, a Soviet-German academic in Germany, who has colonies on the Volga, their origin and early development. It is worked in the Soviet archives at Engels to compile the original based on long-neglected writings of Volga pioneers, which Volga-German settlement lists. We have extended Dr. Berend began to surface during this period, and on records which an offer of support and hope to hear from her soon. Beratz found in village and district archives. I have described Throughout the year, Genealogy Committee members have these sources in my Foreword to the Translation, which you also: will find helpful as preparation for the reading of the Beratz • prepared articles for publication in Clues; text. Because of the many quotations from awkwardly worded • prepared articles for publication in local, regional, and old documents, it is not an easy book to read, but it is national publications; rewarding. • delivered genealogy talks at local, regional, and national As an Appendix to the material from the Beratz book, you meetings; will find on pages 357-367 of our translation two interesting • prepared the genealogy program for the 1991 convention items regarding the early days of the Volga colonies which in Chicago and begun to compile a list of possible speakers for were not available to Beratz when he wrote: the 1992 convention in Seattle-Tacoma. (1) On pages 357-362 we have the 1769 Census of the • updated the list of village coordinators. The committee Volga Colonies, which we published in 1977 in AHSGR Work urges all members to continue to send individual pedigree Paper No. 25. It is interesting to compare these statistics with charts and family group sheets to Lincoln. It is also worthwhile those taken from Beratz, given on pages 348-353, which he ob- to collect your family's medical genealogy. We urge everyone tained from other sources. to support the work of the Alzheimer's Disease Research (2) On pages 363-367, we have a description of the Project at the University of Washington. interesting features of the Earliest Map of the German Colonies on the Volga, a map prepared in the early 1770s by one of the Frenchmen who were founders of some of the Historical Research German colonies. An enlarged copy of this map (16 x 20 in.) is available from AHSGR headquarters in Lincoln. It is a very Committee interesting supplement to the book. The translation of the Beratz book and the early map are Adam Giesinger, Chair two items that every descendant of Volga Germans in the Nancy Bernhardt Holland, Vice-Chair United States and Canada ought to treasure and preserve as a David Foth family heirloom. They are the best available source of information on the early days of the German colonies on the Ruth Amen Volga. Letters that I receive tell me that there is much research under way in the United States and Canada on the history of the Germans in Russia and their descendants overseas. The people doing the research choose to write to me because they have just read my book From Catherine to Khrushchev. Most Library Committee of their research is concerned with their family's history, with the history of their ancestral village in Russia, or the local Elizabeth K. Wilson, Chair history of the areas in which their immigrant ancestors settled Adam Giesinger, Vice-Chair here in America. Some of their questions I cannot answer, but Nancy Bernhardt Holland I tell them about books and places where they might find the answers. I do not have the time to do hours of research for Timothy Kloberdanz them (not even for generous pay.') but I try to be helpful in my The following figures show library activity from July 1, reply to their letters. 1990, to June 22, 1991: I could take up the time allotted to me here by describing OCLC (Computer) Loan Requests 113 some of this research, but I feel that I would be more helpful to Other (Mail, Telephone) Loan Requests 117 most of you if I described instead some research that was Total 230 carried out in the Volga region over a twenty-year period in the 1890s and early 1900s. The results of this research appear Reference Requests 138 in the book by Gott- Materials used “In House” 493 Items reaquested, but: Non-Circulating 3 Not Owned 7

Page 20 AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Donations General 77 Family Histories 41 3. Committee members are also collecting German-Russian 118 English writings such as Hanswurst, erne wahre Geschichte. Library Funds: As of June 30, 1990 $3,602.54 4. Members are urged to read a recent book on German- Russian English by Dr. Arnold Marzolf, Professor Donations through June 22, 1991 1,292.05 Emeritus of English and German at North Dakota State $4,894.59 University, Let's Talk German-Russian. This is an

Library Expenses excellent example of language used by our people after OCLC $640.64 they learned a bit of English and some German Library of Congress Schedules 184.25 expressions. Items Ordered and Received 5. I hope to have a strong committee during the next year or still outstanding 237.52 rather than just the two of us.

$1,062.41

Library Funds as of June 22, 1991 $3,832.18 Membership Committee Our new librarian, Mike Ronn, who began work in early January 1991 set some goals to be accomplished. First, he Ruth Williams, Chair checked to see that all material had been catalogued and has Ed Rau, Vice-Chair been working on catching up the backlog. A complete shelf Sara Neal reading/inventory will be done, which will provide an accurate record of the library's holdings, an updated card catalog, and Penny Sittner properly shelved materials. The periodical list in the card SYNERGETIC : Isn't that a beautiful word? It just kind of catalog must be updated and will be completed when the shelf flows off the tongue. The first time I heard it, the meaning was reading/inventory is done. obscure to me, so I got to the dictionary as soon as possible Materials on the shelves were crowded and in danger of before I forgot the sound. causing damage to some of the more fragile items. The "To work together, cooperating." In fact, it goes even collection has been spread out to avoid damage, which also further in meaning—two separate agencies working together makes the materials more accessible to library users. boost the performing action even more than they would There is also a need for a library policy statement to separately. establish rules and provide information to all users of the It is kind of like a marriage that functions beautifully and library. When completed, this statement will be printed in the effectively. There really is no room for 'T'-ism or "my rights." Newsletter, placed in new member packets, and will be When we encourage and hold each other up, it makes us available to anyane interested in using the library. stronger. That is the way I see the American Historical Society Eventually we plan to list all holdings on the computer so of Germans from Russia: we will have a complete inventory. We also plan to have a many people working together to build on and enhance the firm separate listing of all family histories for the convenience of foundation that was started many years ago by some very those doing research. bright and energetic people. Today there are so many opportunities for each one of us to put in good works and ideas to make AHSGR an even better organization. Every chapter needs willing workers. And new Linguistics and Oral History and innovative ideas are always welcome. The strong chapters make for a strong international society. That is why it is so Committee important for each one of us to inform our own communities that we exist. It is so easy to be excited about your own Herbert Babitzke, Chair personal background and family history of survival that as you Mary Froscheiser tell others your story they are bound to get caught up in your 1. There are materials at AHSGR Headquarters on this enthusiasm. Even people that are not from a German-from- subject. Russia background get excited. Either they know of someone who would be interested in an organization like AHSGR or 2. Committee members are collecting Plattdeutsch printings they can be encouraged to start working on their own family in a German-language monthly magazine. history. Either way we gain. I encourage each one of you to start anew to tell our story and add others to our membership list. There is not another source for information like AHSGR, so

AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 Page 21

North Central Washington 2 New Hampshire 2

North Star of Minnesota 5 New Jersey 14 Northeast Kansas 4 New Mexico 17 Northern Colorado 24 New York 34 Northern Illinois 23 North Carolina 9 Oklahoma Harvesters 0 North Dakota 41 Olympic Peninsula 7 Ohio 26 Oregon 42 Oklahoma 98 Oregon Cascade 2 Ontario 14 Platte Valley of Nebraska 0 Oregon 426 Post Rock 12 Pennsylvania 23 Rainier 8 Puerto Rico 1 Regina & District 2 Rhode Island 0 Sacramento Valley 9 Saskatchewan 58 Saginaw Valley 26 South Carolina 5 Southeast Wisconsin 9 South Dakota 50 Southeast Wyoming 3 Tennessee 7 Southern California 31 Texas 99 Southwest Michigan 4 Utah 31 Southwest Nebraska 3 Vermont 2 Sunflower 5 Virginia 36 Ventura 0 Washington 514 Yellowstone Valley 3 West Virginia 2 Non-Chapter Area 147 Wisconsin 148 Total 729 Wyoming 63 Washington, DC 9

Memberships by States, Provinces, and Countries Argentina 3 Alabama 6 Australia 1 Alaska 15 Germany 12 Alberta 92 Brazil 1 Arizona 63 England 1 Arkansas 4 Mexico 2 British Columbia 58 Spain 1 California 939 Switzerland 1 Colorado 466 Virgin Islands 1 Connecticut 6 Total 5,072 Delaware 2 Deceased 31 Florida 43 Total 5,103 Georgia 8 Hawaii 5 Idaho Illinois 40 152 Nominations Committee

Indiana Iowa 25 43 Ray Pfau, Chair Kansas 334 Lydia Jesse, Vice-Chair Kentucky 1 Sara Neal Louisiana 4 EdRau Maine 2 A I Reiber Manitoba 13 Ruth Williams Maryland Massachusetts Michigan 22 13 212 The Nominations Committee, composed of Ray Pfau, chair, Lydia Jesse, Sara Neal, Ed Rau, Al Minnesota 134 2 39 70 493 Reiber, and Ruth Williams, had two goals it wanted to accomplish Mississippi this year. The first goal was to achieve the representation district Missouri concept adopted at the Sacramento convention. This will be Montana accomplished by the nominations and elections at this Chicago Nebraska conven Nevada 14 tion.

AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 Page 23 The second goal was to publish the slate of candidates prior determine the cost of the premium, based on age and health to the convention as requested by the Presidents' Council at the profiles of the employees. We requested that only top quality Lincoln convention in 1989. We published the slate in the May companies with a reputation for excellent and prompt service 1991 AHSGR Newsletter on page 7. Unfortunately, in the rush be considered. After thorough research, two companies to accomplish this last goal a major error was made and was emerged: we selected Principal Financial Group, a national not discovered until the Newsletter was mailed. Ralph company providing coverage in most states. They were Giebelhaus, from Lincoln, Nebraska, was nominated for an at- competitive with a bid of $408.00 for $25,000 coverage for our large position. This was found to be contrary to the new six employees (first annual premium). A list of the employees bylaws. Only two directors shall be from any chapter. As covered and the premiums of the final two companies is Lincoln already has two directors, Ralph Giebelhaus was attached to this report. ineligible to run. Curt Renz from Ames, Iowa, in District 11, was nominated to replace Ralph and correct that error. The Nominations Committee wishes to apologize for the error and for any inconvenience and/or confusion this may have caused. A slate of thirteen (13) candidates was nominated. Translations Committee For Full Three-Year Terms: Mary Froscheiser, Chair Wayne E. Rosenoff — District 1, California and Hawaii Leona Janke, Vice-Chair Clarence D. Kissler — District 4, Colorado Elvest L. Lehl — District 6, Kansas Ralph Ruff Leona Pfeifer — District 6, Kansas William Schwab Brent A. Mat — District 7, South and West Translations for the first six months of 1991 are about 60 (Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, percent ahead of translations for all of 1990. Most translations and Utah) are Russian letters of relatives to and from the Soviet Union, Lydia Jesse — District 8, Illinois and Wisconsin mostly central Siberia and central Asia. Ray Pfau — District 8, Illinois and Wisconsin German translations are predominantly of relatives who Allyn Brosz — District 12, east and south, all states not have recently gone to Germany from the USSR. This shows listed above how many people are now able to establish direct contact with George Gette — District 13, Canada and other countries relatives from Russia. Curt Renz — At Large Other than German and Russian translations, one French For a Two-Year Term to fill Karla Schneider's unex-pi and one Latin document have been translated. red term'. On 18 June 1991, Margaret Freehling of Buchanan, Ron Neuman — District 13, Canada and other countries Michigan, received several letters from the USSR, some in For a One-Year Term to/ill the unexpired terms of German and some in Russian. The letters were sent in response Selma T. Hieb and Arnold Schroeder: to an inquiry she had placed in the Soviet newspaper for ethnic Irmgard H. Ellingson — District 11, Iowa, Germans, Neues Leben. Minnesota, and Missouri Charges to clients for translations to date in 1991 have been George Kufeldt — At Large $633.00.

Personnel Committee Ad Hoc Bylaws Review Ed Schwartzkopf, Chair Ralph Committee Ruff, Vice-Chair Ella Reese Sara Neal, Chair During the spring board meeting held in Yuma, Arizona, during the last week of February 1991, the Board of Directors Ray Pfau, Vice-Chair instructed the Personnel Committee to solicit proposals from Allyn Brosz life insurance companies to provide $25,000 life insurance for Ed Ran each AHSGR paid employee. Mr. Ronald L. Ballou, registered insurance broker/dealer was engaged to visit with employees Penny Sittner and The Ad Hoc Bylaws Review Committee was appointed by President Lee Kraft in the fall of 1990, specifically for the purpose of finalizing the revised Article VI of the AHSGR bylaws, as it was adopted at the 1990 Sacramento Convention. As we reported in the May 1991 issue of the AHSGR Newsletter, page 8,

Page 24 AHSGR Journal /Fall 1991 this work has been completed and the representation district 2. The AHSGR van has received tax exempt status for this concept has been implemented by the Nomination Committee year. to select the slate of candidates you will be voting on at this 3. Volunteers installed a security device on both flag poles at convention. 631 D Street to prevent further theft of flags. We have The Ad Hoc Bylaws Committee was also commissioned to lost several sets of flags this past year. review all other areas of the bylaws for possible additional revisions or deletions for the Board of Directors to consider. A 4. Several air conditioning units have been. repaired. few recommended changes were reviewed at the Board 5. Landscaping has been completed on the empty lot at 611 D meeting held in March at Yuma, Arizona, but further action on Street. these is pending. One possible revision suggested by various society 6. Lawn and yard work and snow removal have been carried members and by the Presidents' Council is the concept of out periodically at the Heritage Center. voting by mail ballot. This would require a major change to 7. Several areas which still had temporary wiring were Article XII, "Elections." The committee is working on this and changed to underground permanent wiring. hopes to have a possible revision by the fall board meeting. Therefore, the Committee, composed of Sara Neal, chair, 8. Touch-up painting on all buildings will be done this fall. Ray Pfau, Allyn Brosz, Ed Rau, and Penny Sittner, urge, with emphasis, chapters and concerned members to review the society's current bylaws. Should you wish us to consider your recommendations for additional bylaw changes, and/or proposals for voting by mail please put them in writing and mail them to us no later than February 1, 1992, so we can give them our attention at the Board of Directors spring meeting. Lease Review Committee Mail your recommendations to: Ed Schwartzkopf, Chair Joyce Sara Neal, Chair, Ad Hoc Bylaws Review Committee, 1336 Barleen Drive, Walla Walla, WA 99362 Domes, Vice-Chair The Ad Hoc Bylaws Review Committee also recommended Al Reiber to the board that Standing Rule #1 be passed. This standing Herbert Babitzke rule reads as follows: The Lease Review Committee met in Yuma, Arizona, and STANDING RULE #1 discussed the current lease agreement between the AHSGR The number of directors assigned to each representative Society and the AHSGR Foundation which indicates that the district 1 through 13 in accordance with Article VI, Section C, society through the paid staff provides administrative services of the Restated AHSGR Bylaws is as follows and will remain that equal the annual payment of rent that would be paid to the in effect until the next apportionment period: foundation. The committee felt that the AHSGR Foundation California and Hawaii, 5; Washington and Alaska, 3; should receive actual figures indicating the hourly services Nebraska, 3; Colorado, 2; Oregon, 2; Kansas, 2; South and provided for various functions and hourly rate charges for these West (Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and services. Our AHSGR staff has been recording the hours and Utah), 2; Wisconsin and Illinois, 2; North and West (Idaho, services performed during the past three months and has deter- Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota), 1; mined that this procedure should be continued for one year so it Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio, 1; would include all services and hours to perform them for one Minnesota, Missouri and Iowa, 1; East and South (all other complete year. The foundation will obtain a current appraisal of states not listed above), 1; Canada and other countries, 1; at rental cost for comparable office and storage space in the large, 3. community. This should be completed in unison with the AHSGR Society. Based on appraisal figures obtained three years ago, the monthly rent charged is $1,435.00, or $17,220.00 per year. When AHSGR completes the cycle of 12 months of Building Committee recording number of hours and cost for services performed, reasonably accurate figures should be available to establish a Jake Sinner, Chair figure to be used for agreement between the AHSGR Society Ed Schwartzkopf, Vice-Chair and the AHSGR Foundation. John Cress Ruth Amen 1. An application for tax exempt status has been filed for the empty lot at 611 D Street.

AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Page 25 Ad Hoc Marketing on-going, advantageous 10 and 20 percent quantity discounts. Committee Arthur E. Flegel, Chair Presidents' Council Sara Neal, Vice-Chair Wayne Rosenoff, Chairman David Foth Two sessions for chapter presidents were held at our 1991 Elizabeth Wilson, Ex Officio convention. The first was directed to reviewing concerns that had been reported in a preparatory polling by mail. Twenty- The committee is pleased to report that results from sales of two presidents, eleven delegated representatives, and several books continue to be most profitable. We are also happy to visitors discussed and took advisory votes on agenda items. report that in general, our inventory has been reduced to a The second session was held jointly with the members of satisfactory level. The headquarters staff is monitoring the the AHSGR Board of Directors. Its purpose was to express to sales and is making a concerted effort to keep the inventory in them the recommendations resulting from the first session. line. Recommendations Relating to Local Concerns It further pleases us to report that negotiations have been 1. Continue to seek information on possible carriers and costs completed with GRHS (Germans from Russia Heritage for state-by-state and/or local chapter policies for liability Society), to acquire the books they publish at favorable costs insurance. (Mr. Dean Deines, Mead, Nebraska, has offered his to us, and AHSGR will, in turn, extend the same courtesy on expertise in leading this effort.) books we publish. This action may be viewed as not only 2. Adopt those particularly successful practices reported by benefiting our membership, but extending good will between chapters to attract members to meetings. Among these are: the two Germans-from-Russia societies. inviting VIPs of our society to attend, e.g. district Unfortunately, we are still sorely overstocked on certain representatives (a.k.a. board members. President Kraft, distin- issues of the Journal and Clues. As pointed out in the flyer in guished members, genealogists, etc.). Add songfests, eating your convention packet, back numbers of these publications together, video exchanges and help with genealogy to meeting are now available at $2.00 each. However, for those agendas. Search out and take oral histories of the older individuals or chapters who will buy complete sets, the savings members, whether born in Russia or here in America, for will be even greater. This is an excellent means to place these articles in the chapter or district-wide Newsletter. Start a Who's valuable publications into your local libraries at a nominal cost Who of Germans from Russia for later inclusion in an to you, which will provide a three-fold benefit: (1) AHSGR International Roster of Distinguished Germans from Russia. will thereby expand its range of exposure. (2) The publications (Who knows? Descendants of those so included may want to will be out in the community where they will do much more buy a copy someday.) good than stacked in our warehouse. (3) Slow moving and 3. Urge the AHSGR Board to prepare and send out "dead" stock will be turned into needed cash. So I encourage promotional pieces about AHSGR to large-circulation every one of you to seriously consider donating a set of publications such as Modem Maturity, Parade Magazine, and AHSGR Journals or Clues to your local library at a very professional magazines to librarians and genealogists. nominal cost to yourselves. 4. Chapters with successful genealogy components can help In a few instances, we have run out of an issue. In an effort those without same in a major way by sharing and extending to maintain the high level of service to our members, such facilities and services. They can encourage members to numbers have been reprinted in small quantities at a much contribute family and ancestral records by setting up local higher cost than the original printing. For the most part, this repositories as backups to the Lincoln files. "Networking" has proven to be unprofitable. Therefore, it is our intention to among chapter genealogy chairmen is an idea fast approaching place a moratorium on reprinting and to appeal for help from the "can do" stage, and Dean Deines is forging ahead with a our membership to fill the occasional requests for out-of-print plan for doing so. Anyone moved toward helping should numbers by placing an ad for the desired issue in our AHSGR contact Dean at Rt. # 1, Box 179, Mead, NE 68041. Call him Newsletter. at 402/443-5338. Throughout the course of this convention, you may Recommendations Relating to Foundation Plans and purchase several excellent new editions at one-time-only Policies special prices, while discontinued books are being offered at close-out prices. If you have not already done so, I would encourage each of you to visit the bookstore and take advantage of the many exceptional bargains. Also, please bear in mind the

Page 26 AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 1. The trustees of the foundation are not elected in the same files on microfilm should also be published. manner as the AHSGR District Representatives. 8- Many potentially fine district representatives may decline Consequently, membership is not proportionally to serve due to the personal expenses associated in such represented across the 13 AHSGR districts. Was this an service. Some local chapters have helped and so now help oversight when proportional representation was adopted in support some representatives. The council suggested the 1990? The consensus was that the issue deserves attention districts consider this matter. at the next convention. 9. One of the three at-large positions on the AHSGR Board 2. The biographical sketches in the AHSGR Newsletter are should be set aside for the electee of the council each very helpful to presidents in appraising the qualifications of year. (Hoping that this recommendation would be candidates standing for election to the board. The consensus approved in the general session later, the council elected was that candidates for positions as trustees should have Donnette Sonnenfeld to be that nominee. [Note: It didn't their biographical information published in like fashion. happen, but she was nominated from the floor and elected 3. Following an explanation of the action taken to acquire for a three-year term as an at-large representative. Con- additional property for the Lincoln Heritage Center by the gratulations, Donnette1.]) chairman of the foundation's Endowment Committee, Joyce Deines, and a full discussion of related concerns, the call for a full review of plans for the Heritage Center was Resolutions Committee voiced for later consideration by the general membership. (The motion to do this was approved later.) Nancy Bernhardt Holland, Chair Joyce Recommendations Relating to Society-wide Concerns Deines 1. With a few abstentions and no one in opposition, the council Robert Niessner urged AHSGR to proceed expeditious-ly on cooperation actions/programs with the Germans from Russia Heritage WHEREAS, the Twenty-second International Convention Society. of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia has 2. Elections of district representatives to the Board of Directors been a stimulating experience and a great success, would be more appropriately held in the districts by the BE IT RESOLVED THAT we express gratitude and deep district's own members rather than at the national appreciation to: convention. In that regard, district representatives were Helen Wozniak, George Miller, the Convention Planning urged to call district conferences to prepare chapters for Committee, and all the dedicated workers and members of the this and to consider other district-wide activities. Northern Illinois Chapter, who have made us feel welcome; 3. A "How-to" manual for chapter presidents would be a The dignitaries and speakers, who have made us feel valuable asset to those who take that important office. Job enriched; descriptions for all chapter officers and committee The performers and musicians, who have made us feel chairmen were judged desirable, also. Donnette entertained; Sonnenfeld, President of the North Star of Minnesota The cordial staff and management of the Hyatt-Regency chapter, offered to move these ideas toward fruition. Woodfield in Schaumburg, Illinois, who have made us feel 4. The vital role of the chapter president in linking our society comfortable; to the individual member was readily grasped by all. The volunteers throughout the organization, including Presidents were adjured to carry out this communication conscientious members of the Board of Directors and function to their maximum capabilities. Foundation Trustees of the American Historical Society of 5. German Russians seeking freedom and opportunity in Germans from Russia who give so generously of their time, Germany now are so numerous that members who feel so talents, and resources, who make us feel united. moved were invited to write their respective congressmen WHEREAS, the Foundation of the American Historical and senators suggesting amending the present Society of Germans from Russia has initiated plans to produce immigration quotas on humanitarian grounds. an endowment which will maintain the society in perpetuity 6. The indexing of our Journals is an important project moving and fund its on-going efforts to collect and preserve the cultural toward completion. An article in the Newsletter and/or the heritage of the Germans from Russia, Journal listing what is now available would be valuable to BE IT RESOLVED THAT we support the foundation in its many members. efforts. 7. Information on progress in transcribing the obituary WHEREAS, the Germans from Russia, Unsere Leute, are members of one richly diverse, widely extended family, BE IT RESOLVED THAT we stick together.

AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 Page 27 In the convention packets were colorful ribbons with instructions to save them for a special occasion during the convention. Here Margaret Freehling is tying her ribbon on to the stick held by George Miller after he and George Dorn, the Hochzeitsbitter for the occasion, have issued an invitation to a wedding. Looking on are John Hahn, Harvey May (seated) and Marie Worster.

Alvina Busch wrote, directed, and narrated "A Tableau of Hochieit traditions" presented so ably by members of the Northern Illinois Chapter.

Ruth Freehling is shown pinning money on the bride, Margaret Aul, after the wedding.

Page 28 AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Portraying the very important cooks for the wedding were (from left) Bertha Doerr, Marie Urban, Alvis Kotecki, and Mildred Bulmann.

Ray Stahla's lively music kept the conven- tioneers entertained and singing at the reception following the wedding and on many other occasions throughout the week.

The host chapter had arranged some interesting and varied tours of the Chicago area for the conventioneers. Obviously enjoying this tour of Chicago are (from left), Evelyn and Or-van Edmonson, Rosemary and Ken Larson, Roswita and Robert Niessner, and Darlene and Donald Sonnenfeld.

AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 Page 29

Pictured here are some of the many life members who attended the convention.

Twenty chapter presidents gathered for this group photograph.

AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 REPORTS TO THE INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION Report of the Executive Director Elizabeth K. Wilson, Executive Director President Schneider, members and guests: as they occur. Last February we prepared a six-page report of The role of headquarters in relationship to the foundation is a necessary repairs and anticipated maintenance and submitted it bit different than that of the society. Basically we keep records to the Budget Committee to help them plan the needed funds in and act as a clearing house for information dispersed to and their budget. between the trustees, the members, and the president. Probably the most important duty is to record, deposit and We prepare and mail all pre-board meeting materials, prepare acknowledge all funds received at headquarters for the copies of the minutes or other correspondence and handle all foundation, prepare financial statements and reports, and see that mailings, forward messages to the proper person or committee the proper accounting procedures are followed. and when requested, collect and distribute information on We are very happy to report that we were extremely busy various items pertaining to the foundation. acknowledging gifts to the endowment fund that followed the Last year for the first time we devised a registration form to bulk mailing of materials by the chairman of the committee, record all pertinent information for all the items brought to the Joyce Deines, who was aided by the Midlands Chapter. We hope Sacramento convention for sale at the bazaar and auction. This to continue to be very busy with acknowledgements as the enabled us to send each donor a letter listing the item and the members respond to this appeal. Please remember, too, that ail amount of the sale and to express our appreciation to them for proceeds from the book Germans in the Land of the Volga by their generous support. We also print and distribute all the Peter Sinner will go to the Endowment Fund at the request of the tickets for the drawings, account for them, and separate them for donor, Jake Sinner. the drawing. The staff at headquarters will continue to assist and support We also report needed repairs and maintenance of all the the officers and members of the International Foundation Board buildings to the chairman of the Building Committee of Trustees in every way possible.

Together We Can Joyce C. Deines, Chair, Endowment Fundraising Committee Today is a wonderful day! Do you know why? It is because lenge. we, this family of Germans from Russia, are gathered together The need for our society to have an income-producing again. endowment fund has never been more urgent. The income from What a diverse, fun-loving, intense, unique group of this endowment fund will allow for the vigorous pursuit of the individuals we are. While we are all of those things I have just goals of the American Historical Society of Germans from mentioned, we are also all united by our dedication to the Russia not only today but into the future. To continue as a vital preservation of our history and our love of this organization. organization, we must have the funds available for the collection, Our forefathers, those people who have given us our unique dissemination, and preservation of historical information. We heritage, set for themselves many goals and worked diligently to must have the funds available for research and publication. meet the challenge of those goals. Together our families left Today our society is engaged in the establishment of Germany for a new life in Russia. Together our families standards for the storage and transfer of genealogical data established homes and villages on the Russian frontier. Together through the use of computers. At this convention we are learning our families migrated to the United States and Canada where they more and more about the exciting possibility of acquiring again established new homes and communities. Together they information on the Volga Germans from the Russian archival faced and met their challenges. collections. Books are waiting to be published. We must have the Today WE face a challenge. The International Foun dation of funds available to seize these opportunities. We cannot continue AHSGR has established an endowment fund with a goal of $ to "pass the hat" and wait. We must be able to act quickly, or we 1,000,000. Together we can meet this chal may lose our opportunity.

AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Page 31 As stated in the Endowment Fund Purpose Statement, Since arriving at the convention I have heard much donations to the fund will be kept separate from all other discussion concerning the recent acquisition of additional funds. Income generated by the fund will be reinvested until property by the foundation, I recognize that many of you are such time as the fund reaches $500,000. At that time 50 not aware of the fact that a long range building plan was percent of the annual income from the fund may be used in developed by the Board of Trustees of the International support of AHSGR goals. The remaining 50 percent of annual Foundation and the Board of Directors of AHSGR income will be reinvested until the fund reaches $1,000,000. approximately thirteen years ago. This plan was presented to Once the fund balance reaches the one million dollar mark, all and adopted by the membership. of the income may be used in support of the goals of AHSGR. As many of you may recall. Dr. Lewis Marquardt provided If we give now, if we pledge now, our organization, the the members present at the 1979 Seattle convention with an American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, will be outstanding slide presentation of the architectural plan for our recognized as a historical society with the will to act, with the Lincoln, Nebraska, headquarters complex. The recent purchase will to fund the research needed to preserve the records of our of property by the Foundation Board of Trustees was in unique heritage for future generations of Germans from keeping with this plan adopted by the membership. Russia, wherever they may be. Last night I read through some minutes of the meetings of the Board of Trustees of the International Foundation dating $66.67 per membership per year. At the end of three years we back to 1978 and 1979—that period of time during which the would have our $1 million Endowment Fund. long range plans were being formulated. The concerns facing You may have a "What If question of your own. You may those who served on the Board of Trustees were so similar to ask, what if there are members who are just starting out, as we those concerns we face today. all did at some point in time, who cannot afford $66.67 per In my review of these minutes, two sentences from a June year. And I will tell you that I am very glad you asked that 25, 1979, joint meeting of the Executive Committees of the question. I personally know some of those members who Board of Trustees and the Board of Directors of the society cannot pledge $200. Again, I am very glad you asked that stood out. I would like to read these two thoughts to you. question because it gives me the opportunity to ask you to "Arthur Flegel talked of the faith and the hard work necessary pledge more than $200. There are those of you I am personally for an organization to go forward. Alice Heinz talked of the asking to pledge $5,000. Indeed, there are those of you whom I progress of the foundation since its beginning to the present am asking to pledge much more. You, and each of you know and we should move forward without hesitancy and in who you are, I ask not only for your pledge, but I ask each of confidence." you to work with your chapters to encourage every member to pledge as much as you can. WE MUST MOVE FORWARD! One Million Dollars.... I told you at the beginning of my In the past many members have spoken of the great need for address that TOGETHER WE CAN do it. You know this is an endowment fund to perpetuate and expand the activities of true. Together we founded the society; our society. I will go back into the past and refer to an address together we built a Heritage Center; together we endeavor to entitled "WHAT IF" given by Edward Schwartzkopf at the preserve our heritage. 1980 convention. Paraphrasing from Ed's address, I ask you TOGETHER WE CAN FUND THE LIFE OF THE "What If...." What if each of our 5000 members pledged $200 AHSGR. over a three year period to the Endowment Fund? That is TOGETHER WE CAN!

FOUNDATION MAJOR RECEIPTS July 1, 1990, to June 1, 1991

1990 Auction 1,858.00

1990 Bazaar 790.01

Lincoln Chapter—rent 360,00

Store rental 5,400.00

Payments on 209-211 "F" Street 3,788.18

Office computer donations 975.00

Genealogy computer and software donations 687.00 Immigrant Plaques 300.00 Library and genealogy chairs 650.00 Summer kitchen 220.00 Sausage kitchen 1,000.00 Use where needed 612.00 Genealogy donations 1,944.50 Memorials 497.00 Library donations 1,222.00 Building Fund 2.099.25 Donated value of music boxes 13,350.00 Dividends—Air Products 2,666.88

1,852 shares closed @ 70.875 on 5/31/91 = $131,260.50 Dividends—Air Products 1,152.00 601 "D" Street 800 shares closed @ 70.875 on 5/31/91 = $56,700.00 ______$39,571.82 Page 32 AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991

SUMMARY OF STATEMENT SUMMARY OF STATEMENT OF OF FINANCIAL POSITION ACTIVITY FOR THE PERIOD As of December 31, 1990 JANUARY 1 THROUGH Total All Funds DECEMBER 31, 1990 ASSETS: Checking Account Balance 12,416.85 Gift Annuity Fund 5,286.56 Total All Funds Endowment Fund 59,250.83 REVENUE Certificates of Deposit 204,709.70 Accrued interest receivable 3,464.79 Gifts & Bequests — General 1,348.68 Prepaid insurance 3,156.12 Gifts & Bequests - Building Fund 66,607.26 Note receivable 16,231.45 Gifts & Bequests — Stock — unrestricted (at cost) 44,500.00 Endowment Fund 10,473.00 Stock—--restricted (at cost) 33,350.00 Total Gifts & Bequests 78,428.94 382.366.30 Rent 23,020.00 Interest 22.061.69 Property and equipment; (at cost) Dividends 3,659.76 Headquarters Building site 457,696.77 TOTAL REVENUES 127,170.39 Chapel 56,432.78 Buildings at 201 'F' Street 71,243.01 Museum at 1139 South 7th Street 20,286.29 EXPENSES: Land at 1145 South 7th Street 28,500.00 Administrative Services 17,220.00 Museum at 601 'D' Street 64,043.63 Insurance 3,039.96 Cow 700.00 Office expense 2,012.84 Blacksmith Shop 940.84 Professional services 3,207.60 Caboose 4,965.32 Depreciation 14,080.60 Furniture and Equipment 9,101.55 Repairs & maintenance 4,874.33 Total Property and Equipment 713,910.19 Taxes & Licenses 4,840.37 Less accumulated depreciation 101,017.05 Utilities 346.63 Net Property and Equipment 612,893.14 Convention expense 165.83 Fund raising 76.47 Interest expense 502.50 TOTAL ASSETS 995,259.44 Grants 2.500.00 TOTAL EXPENSES 52,867.13 LIABILITIES: Accounts payable 2,791.05 EXCESS REVENUES Grants payable 2,500.00 OVER EXPENSES 74,303.26 Accrued property taxes 1,526.81

Annuities payable 3,478.46 Deferred revenue 21,000.00 TOTAL LIABILITIES 31,296.32 NOTE: The information on this page has been summarized from the accountant's FUND BALANCE 963,963.12 financial statements, copies of which are available upon request. TOTAL LIABILITIES & FUND BALANCE 995,259.44

AHSGR Journal /Fall 1991 Page33 MERITORIOUS SER VICE A WARD Lee Kraft, AHSGR President This award establishes a tradition, which we will time and talents. As a founding member of our society, he continue at future conventions, to honor those pioneers of has worked tirelessly and with the utmost dedication. He our society who have contributed so much to make it the has always put his knowledge at the disposal of those thriving organization it is today. Tonight we honor one of interested in the history and genealogy of our people. He those people. I will not tell you who it is, but after the first was editor of the Journal. He served as president for four few sentences, I am sure you will recognize him. years. This person was born in a sod house in Saskatchewan, Everyone knows that he was the author of From where he is proud to have lived a German childhood, Catherine to Khrushchev, the most complete and author- steeped in the German language. He could not speak itative history of the Germans from Russia available in the English until he entered school, but you will agree that he English language. He is known as a meticulous researcher now speaks it very well. He went on to study French and and also authored the Captured German War Documents Latin. publication. We all know he was the editor of the trans- His father was a gifted musician, who played the lation of Gottlieb Beratz's book German Colonies on the accordion by ear, and was often called upon to play at Lower Volga. He is currently engaged in writing his weddings and other festive occasions. This young person autobiography in a historical and genealogical context. He remembers falling asleep on the floor with a bunch of his is a nice person. I have gotten to know him well as we have cousins while his father played on into the nights at served on the board together. German-Russian weddings, The award reads: "The AHSGR presents in grateful He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of appreciation a meritorious service award to Dr. Adam Manitoba. He taught chemistry and mathematics for thirty- Giesinger for many years of faithful service, making four years. multiple and noteworthy contributions as president from His wife Madge was a petite, charming young woman 1978 through 1981; as editor of the Journal from 1981 who swept this young teacher away and established his through 1984; as a member of the International Foundation Scottish connection. Now there are four living children and Board of Trustees and a member of the International twelve grandchildren from this union, AHSGR Board of Directors; as a charter member. I am talking, of course, about Dr. Adam Giesinger. His Presented at the twenty-second international convention, German-Russian heritage has never loosed its claim to his Chicago, Illinois, July 13,1991."

Dr. Adam Giesinger AHSGR President 1978-1981

Page 34 AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Handing Down Our Heritage Carol J. Harless (This is the text of a slide presentation at the convention.) interlibrary loan anywhere. Having been involved as the head of a family organization, I know that more good comes from books in the library than in our individual homes. Look at your What a glorious sight from here to see the sight of so many state and determine where books. Journals and Clues can be people ready to participate in a village night, who have come placed. This will often be the introduction to AHSGR. from all over North America, sit together in villages, plan, What might we do in our villages and what can I do alone study, and share in fellowship. This has always been a that will strengthen my village so others may know of it and highlight of the past twenty-one convention activities. The hand down our heritage? Let us dream together as to what we pulse or the heart of this organization lies right here tonight. might accomplish with our villages. Many of us are getting older, and the time is coming or it is At our last convention, questionnaires to be filled out were here to hand our heritage on to the next generation. This is our given to everyone. This was a beginning for some village theme tonight. coordinators to know about their people. There were I recently spoke to NAMA. These are the people who came questionnaires filled out for villages with no coordinators. to the North America from the Isle of Man, and they were Hopefully this convention will bring some willing new holding a convention. Vice-President Dan Quayle identifies coordinators. Tonight this questionnaire will again be with this group. As I spoke to them, I completely discarded my distributed (to those who have not filled it out before) to be of prepared notes and talked to them from the heart and shared help to your coordinator. These are not meant to be distributed with them many of the things we had done at our Sacramento unless there is no coordinator. When this is done at each 1990 Convention. I tried to envision with them what they convention throughout the United States, we will begin to might accomplish. They took to it like lightning and were construct a database for each colony. We need strong delighted to reanalyze their conventions and place new coordinators. Coordinators were contacted last year and many emphasis on furthering of family history. This is part of what were eager to be of service and help identify all the families makes us special. from their village. I just spent one week in Salt Lake at that great library where These are the modem lamplighters of this society. They I had taken 85 adult students, and every day there was someone spread light to all in their village. Wouldn't it be nice to have who came and was passing through the state of Utah or who the new members coming into this society have the name and had made a special trip there and would quickly identify address of their coordinator for their own village? We would themselves at the reference desk as a German who went into be reaching the ONE. And so we are going to need some Russia. They needed help, so I became involved. As I talked to strong, active coordinators as we move into the twenty-first them, one man had let his membership lapse in this society, century. Some colonies are large—we need more than one two never heard of AHSGR, and two others belonged. It was coordinator—share the work load. There is an old German thrilling to learn while I was mere that microfilming proverb—Viele Hände machen bald ein Ende— Many hands agreements have been reached for Bulgaria, Estonia, and make short work. You may be a willing worker. Tell the Czechoslovakia. A letter of intent has been signed with the coordinator and be assigned a task with a reasonable deadline. Republic of Russia, one of the republics of the Soviet Union. A As we dream together, your village could start a newsletter. contract will be signed there soon. How I thrill to see what is You could have histories, genealogies, recipes, pictures, coming for us! Again, it takes patience on our part, but anecdotes, and sharing of data together. meanwhile there is plenty of work to be done. Arthur Flegel and I started a resource list last convention. In the California State Library in Sacramento there is a There were twenty geographic areas completed listing all the book listing ethnic organizations within our state. There is original colonies, including maps and a resource list of what mention of AHSGR, saying they know we exist but that is all. one should read if one were from this area. I can't tell you the Chapters could be listed, and we need to follow through to positive effect this has had on new members joining us. They correct this. We are alive! While we are close to our didn't know where to begin other than they identified with this organization, we must find ways of letting others know of us. ancestry. Again we are unique as an ethnic organization. A new suggestion: perhaps in Clues or in our Journal, a Journals and Clues in California have been placed in ten section called "Village Coordinators— libraries, family history centers and university libraries. The state library system bound our journals at Sutro Library where they can be checked out on

AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Page 3 5 Notes from the Field," about what is going on with villages four members. These are those Germans who settled in could be started. You would enjoy learning about the other Poland during the times of the Partitions of Poland and later colonies and it would be meaningful. Let us try this and see the went to Russia. This has grown by leaps and bounds with the results. help of Ewald Wuschke of British Columbia serving as Judy Remick listed in Heritage Review those surnames she publisher and Helen Hahn as editor. Ewald brought an was collecting for her village. If you identify with that village, extensive library collection to share at the last convention and you would have a new-found friend. We need a nice working he was constantly busy during that week. He will be here also relationship with the Germans from Russia Heritage Society. bringing together families. They have a coordinators' list, and we should share with both Usu Leute von Jagodnaja Poljana (northwest of Saratov in societies so we would both benefit and work together. the Volga Region)—Richard Scheuerman of Endicott, Jubilee books are also a collective effort of people in Washington, started this semi-annual publication. Now his keeping historical information about a town here in America cousin, William L. Scheirman, heads this publication reaching where our people settled. those of this area. And so the stories could go on and on as to Maps of your village could be completed. Some have been the happenings of these villages. This thrills me, and I hope it beautifully done by individuals and villages. does you! Members and scholars within the society have completed The use of the computer is a wonderful tool to help us in family histories and placed them not only with their families this work. It was meant for us to use in this great work in but at headquarters library. There are over 300 family histories which we are engaged. Barbara Clausen of Salinas, California, there now. This collection continues to grow. has a database for the village of Frank which now includes There are already some success stories regarding villages. over 21,000 names. Barbara has benefited personally very To cite some: little, but it has truly been a labor of love to help unite others Glückstal Colonies Research Association—now has 200 from the village of Prank. There should be many colonies members. Their goal is to have a coordinator for each village. doing this. Let's do it! Assign one person from your village The Research Association is headed by Margaret Freeman, who enjoys working with computers to start a new village Santa Monica, California, and assisted by research consultants database. Gwen Pritzkau and Arthur Flegel. The Colony of Glückstal Write short life stories and oral interviews to go into one researchers are Aniva Sander & Marvin Hoefer. The daughter collection. This is a project for villages and individuals as well. colonies have Dale Wahl for Kronental and Mike Rempfer for Can you envision what is ahead for us if we put our time and Neu Beresina. The research association provides membership energy into what we might accomplish? data, both family group sheets and pedigree information, and As we hand down our heritage, a logical way to accomplish newsletters. Help from Carolyn Wheeler for Kassel, Greg this is through holding family reunions— young people today Dockter for the colony of Neudorf, Penny Riley entering data want to know more of their heritage. Families can organize on the computer for Neudorf, and Diane Ladd for Bergdorf. into organizations or associations. One great family is the They have nearly finished Declarations of Intent from Kulm family. As I listen to their activities, I want to be a Mclntosh County, North Dakota. They have Declarations of member. They have taken trips together to Europe and visited Intent from Campbell County, South Dakota, cemetery listings with those coming out of Russia. They started with June from some counties completely done and are extracting names Brown gathering her father's siblings together in 1973 at her for both North and South Dakota for 1900 and 1910 censuses. home in Los Altos, California. One hundred ten showed up Also, success stories are printed in the newsletters. Isn't this a that morning. Now, through the years with reunions held wonderful example of working together to collect the data for yearly for some years and now every other year, 400 or more those with this heritage? are brought together. They have newsletters, called Kulm Usere Leute von Kautz—Elaine Frank Davison of Walla Chronicles, their own society, their own flag, they are writing Walla, Washington—village coordinator for Kautz in the now their own family story which will be about 1,000 pages Volga Region—started in 1979 a newsletter publication with when ready for publication. Last year they completed a recipe history, genealogy, pictures, anecdotes. One can tell by the book with over 800 Kulm family recipes. They are happy and size of this publication done annually that there are lots of are striving to bring together generations. Do subtle things to people who identify with and support her and share in expense. help family be aware of our heritage. This is a labor of love. As I asked myself what I could do to help this society, I Wandering Volhynians—started in 1987 with Ron Neuman thought about one of my three villages. Because of my busy of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, with sixty- schedule, I volunteer as coordinator for only one of those villages, Dennewitz in

Page 36 AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 Bessarabia. In my twenty years in this society and having come • Picture pedigree of your lineage. to some conventions, I have found only one other person who • Your birth certificate. identifies with this village. Now, we know there were eighty- four original settlers listed in Dr. Stumpp's book. These people • Early childhood memories. are somewhere. I am fortunate as I have traced my people back • Elementary and high school years. into Germany to the early 1500s. It took twenty-five years and • College or trade school graduations. lots of help. • Your courtship story—it's probably greater than that of What can I do with limited time? I can start a database with Romeo and Juliet ever was. my own 2,000 people as descendants and add what Dr. Stumpp • Memories of homes. listed in his book. Then we have the beginning. I can search • Memories of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, special roster lists from previous conventions to find out who holidays. identifies with my village. I can create a map of this area. I can • Memories of family trips. help others who identify with my village. I can interview any older people from this village or their descendants. I can use • Trials in your life and how you overcame them. the obituary file to add names to this database. I can write the • Your children and grandchildren. history or origin of this village or through translation of • Your dreams and aspirations in life. articles written on this village. I can start a resource list for Why, I wish the governor of this state would pass a law that new members. This may take two to five years to accomplish you couldn't die until your life story was written! No person is but remember, it is the beginning of a village project that will as important in your family as you are. grow and become a reality. Downstream this will be helpful to Oh, this can be a rich and rewarding family project. I saw the next generation. What else can I alone do? about 150 of these albums as my genealogy classes came to the We have a collection of obituaries that continues to grow, end of this school year. I thrilled because I knew the impact perhaps the largest collection of any ethnic group. Have you these would have in the lives of those who completed the added your family obituaries? project on themselves. No two were alike because no two lives You can have a home library of those books with which are alike. Your families will cherish these albums you put you identify. Your children can become acquainted with their together for the next generation. Your families don't need to be heritage. left money, just leave them a book about yourselves. You can give a life membership to your children to After you have completed putting together your own perpetuate our living heritage. records, you could do the same thing for your parents and You can interview older members of your family. Even if grandparents and then great-grandparents. Assemble all the you DON’T have time to get these stories written up, then you pieces of the puzzle together, sort out all the records, write will have them recorded for a future time when you or your their story, include records from Germany or Russia, ship children can write these into your family journals. records they came on, naturalization records, deeds for land Will Durrant once said, "Let us gather up our heritage and they owned in America, family reunions to bring us together, offer it to our children." You can organize your family records obituaries, death certificates, and family pictures all labeled to share with others as a source of help and inspiration. You and identified. What an array of items we can include in our must remember that you are an ancestor. What have you done family histories. to personally be remembered in generations to come or will Oh, there is so much to do! We don't have time to die. What you be just a statistic? So our question is: What have you done tremendous power for good we have in assembling our family to add to the annals of your family history? records for the next generation. Now may our Village Night tonight take on new • Assemble a booklet about YOU. dimensions. May the lamplighters of this society brighten the • Include your Ahnentafel. lamps to shine and have your support sharing new ideas, new ' Create a time line of your life. On the left side, year by goals, new perspectives and perhaps even a little extra year put what you did. On the right side, tie yourself in financially for help in the group getting this off the ground for with history, with what is happening year by year. this endeavor, as our last decade in this century. May we truly hand down our noble and rich heritage. Thank you!

AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Page 37 David Aul, Margaret Aul, Chester Kolecki, Virginia Less, and Alex Miller (from left) were only a few of the many willing and hard workers who volunteered to assist in the Genealogy Consulting Workshop.

Henry and Emmy Horst of Cape Coral, Florida, enjoyed the "Polka Time" following the banquet on Saturday evening.

The annual International Foundation auction was kept rolling at a lively pace by auctioneer A! Reiber, assisted by his wife Betty. The bidtakers shown here are Phil Kehling (left) and John Haas. The auction netted $2,013.50 for the foundation.

Page 38 AHSGR Journal/Fall 199] The dedicated workers in the convention book store included (from left) Wilma Sellin, Shirley Meiers, Dean Deines, Ann Klug, and Laurie Crammer.

John Gress, Vice-chair of the Chapter Organization Committee, is shown presenting the charter of Mt. Diablo Chapter of California to Rachel Holmes, First Vice-President of the chapter. The Midlands Chapter of Nebraska also received Us charter at this convention.

A few of the twenty-five people who received their Life Membership Certificates at the breakfast on Saturday morning were Norma and Ken Miller, George Miller, and Katherine Sonnenberg. Seventeen additional new life members were recruited later during the meeting.

AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Page 39 The youth attending the convention were kept busy with a number of activities under the leadership of Alan Hins (center back row). Here they are shown at a pizza-and-pool party following a day at the Brookfield Zoo. Other activities included a trip to the Museum of Science and Industry and to Six Flags.

The traditional passing of the lantern took place at the banquet on Saturday night. Helen Wozniak and George Miller, co-chairs for the 1991 convention (standing in the back), pass the lantern to Betty Lamb, president of the Greater Seattle Chapter, and Herb Babitzke, representative of the Rainier Chapter. These two chapters will host the 1992 convention at Sea-Tac Red Lion Inn, Seattle, Washington, June 29-July 5, 1992.

One of the most popular ladies at the convention was Mrs. Irma Krueger Roschke, seated on the far right of this photograph of those born in Russia. She was born in Dermanka, Volhynia, experienced the terrors of World War II, and now lives in Germany. She spent many hours telling of her experiences in the Soviet Union.

Page 40 AHSGR Journal/Fail 1991 VOLHYNIAN LEGENDS Leona Janke When I finished working on Joseph Weiss's "Homeland for had already lost some of their native traditions before a Time," I wanted to find more material on the background of continuing eastward into Volhynia. This made it difficult for the Volhynian Germans. Mr. Weiss had made a reference to the researchers to learn their origins. Legends of the Germans from Volhynia and Polesye The material for Legends of the Germans from Volhynia (SagenderDeutschenaus Wolhynien und Polesye) by Alfred and Polesye was collected on foot, firsthand— no forms to fill Karasek-Langer and Elfrieda Strzygowski. I located a copy of out, no huge grants, just scholars interested in documenting the this book through the archives of Western Michigan University culture of ethnic Germans in a foreign land. The oral narrations in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and found that a seventy-page were recorded by the researchers exactly as told to them, history was the introduction to 920 Sagen. I decided the mostly in the years 1926-1928, and published in 1937. history from that book would be my next translating project. The researchers could only visit Polish Volhynia since the If you are wondering why I have such an interest in the equivalent of a Berlin Wall was created between Soviet and Volhynian Germans, it is because while growing up (between Polish Volhynia with the implementation of the Treaty of Riga Dowagiac and Benton Harbor, Michigan,) I didn't realize there in 1921 in which Volhynia was divided into two parts. Because were any other Germans in Russia except in Volhynia. Once I of previous internal migrations and the mixing which occurred became interested in my family's genealogy, I began to realize as a result of the deportation into Siberia and the Bolshevik how unique the area of Southwest Michigan was regarding this Revolution, however, it is possible some of these legends were group of immigrants and how little of this history was in also told in Soviet Volhynia- English. So, on my way to learning history about the From a historical perspective the Volhynian-German Volhynian Germans I found this book with 920 legends, and culture was young—approximately fifty years old at the time that is the reason I am here today. the folktales were collected—and a blending of cultures and I am fortunate to have the interest, support, expertise, and traditions was still occurring. Those colonies or areas which assistance of Dr. Jeffrey Gardiner, Assistant Professor of were scattered and isolated retained old traditions, customs, German at Western Michigan University, with this translating and stories longer than those colonies which were closer project. I am forever grateful for having crossed paths with Dr. together. In these closer colonies, as the blending of cultures Gardiner. occurred, some dialects were already lost at the time the Karasek-Langer and Strzygowski and their researchers narrations were recorded and were replaced by the Volhynian were interested in "determining what gave direction to the German's own brand of High German. This happened development and expansion of the German Volhynian relatively quickly since a great many of the Volhynian-German narrative." In other words, they wanted to know where these immigrants had already been colonists in Prussia or Poland, ethnic Germans came from. This was the reason such an in- and also the land of origin became still more remote. Because depth history was presented in the introduction to the legends. of that, the researchers kept careful track of exactly in which This book was another volume in a series that was being colony a legend was heard. As a result of these records, this published on legends of ethnic Germans living in foreign book contains the most complete list of ethnic German countries. Some of these legends are interspersed throughout colonies in Polish Volhynia I have encountered up to this time. this presentation. In addition to the list, the legends are indexed as to which As background to the legends, I will describe the primary colony they were recorded in, which is why they are numbered. German ethnic or tribal groups who migrated into Polish Volhynian-German culture goes back across Congress Volhynia and their contributions to the repertoire of Poland and Posen to German culture in the Danzig-Werder Volhynian-German legends. These groups I mentioned area in Pomerania, the Mark, and Silesia; in a weaker vein it previously in "Ethnic German Melting Pot," but not in the goes across Congress Poland and Galicia to the Palatinate, context of folk literature. I mentioned in that presentation that Hesse, and Württemberg. These immigrants can also be dif- the Germans in Polish Volhynia were 75 percent North ferentiated into those who came directly from the motherland German or Low German in ancestry, and a majority of them and those who were colonists before going to Volhynia. These had already become colonists in Poland before migrating on differences were important in the developing German culture eastward into Volhynia. Included in this group were in Volhynia where all ethnic characteristics were blending into Niederunger, Pomeranians, Silesians, Swabians, and others. a unique Volhynian form. The more years these people were Within these groups there were "Kashubes," "Hockerlinger," "Hollander," etc. Many of these people

AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Page41 away from their native German land, the more remote their neighboring Slavic linguistic enclaves. It amounted to making German traditions became. This also pertained to the area of the pure German traditions more vigorous. Different legends oral literature. Some common features of the different tribal give evidence of the difficulties these people encountered in groups were reinforced, and those individual features of no the colonization of this land. Legends 431, 434, 445, etc., are particular interest to the whole group faded away, although evidence of some of the difficulties in acquiring land. there were still reminders of particular, individual ethnic Even though the Mennonites made up the first groups of features when th e research was done, depending on the Germans migrating into Volhynia, they did not leave behind situation. For the most part, however, those individual much evidence of their ethnic culture. There were only a traditions which were not reinforced died out. The new couple of legends which made reference to the Mennonites, Ukrainian environment and the situation at the time the legends were recorded is also reflected in these narrations, 610 Driven-away Milk Bewitcher Cultivation of the legend in Volhynia was vigorous. Each group in Volhynia reported something in the area of oral (Vertriebener Milcherer) literature. All social classes contributed except for a small Men can also bewitch cows. There was one such man group of pastors, but other pastors, elementary teachers, in Zowiowka: Radtke (a Mennonite; the founders of the peasants, tenant farmers, forest workers, craftsmen, etc., did colony were Mennonites who moved on to the contribute. The best storytellers usually were those people who Molochna area) lived in the house before our moved around the most—forest and land workers, craft grandparents. He bewitched; he stole milk from the workers, and teachers. The storytellers went from community cows. In that way for years he stole cows' milk and to community, hearing new legends and carrying them on with nobody knew anything about it. Also, he stole the milk their own improvisations. Thus, the stories became Volhynian of a certain blacksmith, The first year the cows had in nature and, in moving around, the stories became uniform given hardly any milk, in the second year it became quite quickly. Usually each storyteller had his favorite even more scarce and was even worse the third year. subjects, although many of them were quite adept on any sub- Finally, somebody realized what was happening. The ject. Storytellers were not limited to a certain class or to older farmers in the district had a meeting and said that if he people; the younger generation participated and nearly half the took away the hex he could stay. But he could not agree legends recorded in this collection came from the under-thirty to that; he must hex further right up to the end of the age group. milk. So they drove him and his family out of the Good storytellers were imported, if necessary, from far-off colony—they had to migrate. settlements for harvest and work gatherings, since it was thought this made work go faster and easier. In winter, when 611 Bewitched Cheese free time was available, it appeared people gathered to tell (Hexenkäse) stories as well as to visit. The storytelling tradition was so With Radtke, who had bewitched away the milk of strong in Volhynia that it was not destroyed when different the people, it was to be thus. If they seated themselves at crises occurred in the land. The authors felt the oral tradition the table and ate and then the cat near the oven snarled, was still evolving in Volhynia when the research was done. it [the hex] must have revealed itself to the cat as to There was a wealth of demon stories in Volhynia, The what was happening. Also, the cheese fell down in the numbers of those stories multiplied beyond the usual number pantry and everything was in a bad state of affairs. On characteristic for a German-speaking enclave. This was the first day the cheese of Radtke was always so attributed to the Low German influence and was reinforced beautiful, as no other in the colony. But on the second when the different Low German tribes met in Congress Poland day the cheese was bad already, as it was first for others and then Volhynia. (Congress Poland is singled out here be- after weeks, and the worms were crawling in it. That cause of those immigrants into Volhynia from Poland, the was known to happen because of the bewitching. largest majority was from Congress Poland. We must remember also that there was no Poland as a political entity at The Niederunger were among the pioneers of Volhynia. the time of migration into Volhynia and the term Poland is Their role in the oral tradition of Polish Volhynia was more used to define an area with which we are familiar today.) important than their numbers would indicate because they had Another Low German motif reinforced in Volhynia was participated in the oldest colonization of Volhynia, and as a stories of the wild hunter or the night hunter or related result their traditions were encountered throughout Polish Vol- creatures. These subjects were not found in the hynia. The preservation of their legends was probably

Page 42 AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 due to the larger numbers of the Niederunger in Soviet A great many Pomeranians were already colonists in Volhynia and migrations within Volhynia before 1921. They Congress Poland before migrating to Volhynia and as a result possessed a strong individualism and a fundamentalist religious already had begun a loosening up and adaptation of tradition. attitude. Their stories often involved the supernatural; second Thus the further migration into Volhynia continued and sight or vision was also common to this group's stories and expanded the active cultivation of the narrative. They quickly picked up by the other tribes. possessed the most proverbs of any of the migrant groups from The Niederunger did not tell stories for fun and Congress Poland. Since they were scavengers for material for entertainment but usually stressed a moral point involving their story telling prowess there was much overlapping of "evil, guilt, and atonement." Isolated colonies were bound to other tribes' motifs within these tales attributed to the dialect. They were satisfied with their "inherent possessions Pomeranians. Most of those legends in this book that border on and reacted quite negatively regarding new tradition or the artistic and are broadly descriptive are of Pomeranian borrowing from the ethnically foreign environment." origin. Only the family-bound customs remained in the Here is a story told by a Pomeranian which was told to him Niederunger colonies. The community-related festivals and by a Silesian forest worker: customs had been lost already when the research was done. The author attributes the importance of the Niederunger in the 231 The Night Hunter Catches Two Maidens Polish-Volhynian oral tradition to the fact that their visions, etc., were picked up by their neighbors and used as material in (Nachtjäger fäangt zwei Mädchen) the oral narratives. A colonist from the Zhitomir Church District who The following legends are of pure Niederunger origin: had served with me in the military tells: Near him in the vicinity of the colony is a large woods and it is very swampy. There many colonists saw the night hunter 166 On a Three-legged White Horse riding. He announced his presence already from far off (Auf dreibeinigem Schimmel) through his horn, and at the same time there was also In a colony in the Rozyszcze church district I know, barking from his dogs. Once, someone from the colony but which colony I can't remember, somebody told me went cutting trees in the woods at Christmas time. He that he had met the wild hunter on a three-legged white was at work when the night hunter announced himself horse. There a wild shooting was always heard in woods from afar. He thought, "He will do nothing to me," and if the wild hunter traveled through. made the sign of the cross for his protection. Now as he waited to see what was going to happen, two maidens 167 One-eyed White Horse came running by him! One was saying to the other, "He cannot do anything to us, because he has not yet (Einäugiger Schimmel) washed'" And they disappeared into the woods. After a At night as she came home from feather stripping, a while there was trumpeting close by and the night young lady saw the night hunter riding. He rode on his hunter came riding by on his headless horse. At once he white horse which had only one eye. The eye was asked the woodcutter if he saw two rabbits running in entirely filled with fire. The night hunter had a long the vicinity. He answered him, "No, only two girls ran leather whip and he always cracked the whip thus: by and they were saying something!", "What?" "No, Pfih!— pfih! The hounds ran in front of him, a whole today he can't make us do anything because he has not pack—black and white. Karolinowka I, near Grüntal. yet washed!" Now the night hunter jumped off the horse, went to a swamp, there was a little bit of water there, and washed himself. Then he rode on and The Pomeranians of Congress Poland (known as Kashubes disappeared into the forest. After a time he returned the in Polish Volhynia) were considered the most talented tellers of same way. Now the two girls hung to him at the saddle, tales in Volhynia. "They were born storytellers." They were and blood was running from them; they were dead. The also good listeners and as a result picked up much material woodcutter became afraid, but the night hunter laughed, from their surroundings which appeared to be their own. They "You helped me hunt, you should have some!" and used this material along with their old-fashioned heritage and threw him the foot of one girl. The woodcutter became contributed greatly to the development of the Volhynian- very scared and ran from there, but the foot ran after German legend. Karasek-Langer and Strzygowski felt their him. Now, he had no idea how to get rid of it. He went adaptability and intellectual flexibility were revealed in their to the pastor and had him pray it away. narration.

AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Page 43 The two girls were such dead souls which the true especially when they lived in their isolated forest colonies. night hunter must hunt, because they did bad They were of East Central German origin and of the ethnic German tribes migrating into Volhynia were second in number things all their lives. to the Lowlander. However, they were not quite the storytellers that the Pomeranians were and therefore did not 236 The Little Underground People exert as great an influence on the Volhynian legend. They (Die Unterirdischen) were a good-natured people, according to Karasek-Langer, and In the Rozyszcze church district there is another type at ease with the hard work of forest clearing. Of the of little people: My grandmother told of the little Stabschläger or forest workers in Volhynia, the Silesians made underground people. They were in Germany in a up the largest percentage. The night hunter was one of their mountain and lived in it. Whenever one went by the favorite topics of oral narration; together with the Lowland mountain, one always tasted what the little underground tribes they helped affect the character of the night hunter very people cooked for lunch; thus the place smelled so vigorously in Volhynia. Wild hunts, eerie children’s strongly of food. appearances, unbaptized deceased souls appeared as will-o- wisps or water sprites. Their own traditions and dialect lasted This tale was told by a Pomeranian, but traces of the longer because of the isolation of their forest colonies. They Silesian forest spirit or goblin are evident: also were not eager to tell stories outside their own community when in this situation. 253 Goblin with Beard and Cloven Hoof (Kobald mit Bart und Pferdefuss) 195 Night Hunter Hunts a Child A man known as Brandt said this was the solid (Nachtjäager jagt ein Kind) According to a report from Chotlin, the night hunter truth. He lived in Proganow, and the people were hunts poor souls. A night hunter known to be in a a little afraid of him. One time he came home certain place hunted a small, naked child. The child from Torczyn, and as he came to the royal woods always ran in front of him, and the hounds barked and he heard the screaming of a child. He went to the wanted to bite the child. If the child met a person, it place but nothing was there. He had thought at begged that he should save the child. The child is known to be an unredeemed soul. first that it would be an abandoned child and was looking for that, but then he thought his mind had The German tribal group least interested in the legend in played tricks on him. As he stood thus for a while, Volhynia was the group which was probably the best educated he again heard a pitiful screaming, this time closer originally, the Swabians. Part of the reason for their weakness in legends is attributed to the fact that they had been colonists to the bush. He became a little frightened because for a considerable length of time. This includes both groups of it was twilight, but he retraced his steps again. As Southwest Germans who came to Volhynia, the Swabians of he searched the bushes, he saw a very small man Congress Poland and the Palatinates of Galicia, who were also with a beard and a cloven hoof lying on the called "Swabians" in Volhynia. In Volhynia the Swabians from Congress Poland lived among the Pomeranian and ground. Laughing, the little man clapped his Silesian colonists and subordinated many of their traditions to hands. With that Brandt was so scared that he their lowland neighbors and consequently lost much of their screamed loudly, and the people following him Southwest German tradition. As a result, many of the Swabian heard it. They suspected an attack, ran to him and narrations were actually Pomeranian in origin. The found a very pale Brandt standing in front of the Pomeranians were not real fond of the Schwabs in the beginning colonization, and as a result the Schwab is often the bushes. They did not know what was wrong, and focus of the action (360,657, 710, 713, etc.). Only the Galician he could not say a word. Nothing was to be seen Swabians lived in their own colonies in Volhynia. of the little man. They took Brandt on the wagon. The ghost-like animal Muhkalb was transplanted to Not until he was home did he recover from the Volhynia from the Galician Swabian colonies (19). They knew fright and was able to give them an account [of very little about him, just his name. In only a couple of legends (556 and 557) are there references to the homeland. In general, what happened]. The people, they were the oral narrative tradi- Hockerlinger (Silesian), and said that it was a goblin (Kobald). The Silesian forest workers or wood cutters (Stabschläger) from Congress Poland, also known as Hokerlinger, migrated into Volhynia soon after the Menonites, clearing the forests for the advancing waves of immigrants. Some of their traditions were still in evidence at the time the research was done. This was

Page44 AHSGR Journal / Fall 199} tion of the Swabians was weak, but they contributed much to the folklore of Volhynia via anecdotes and song. In their customs 710 Shot in the Fireplace limited to family situations, some of their Southwest German (Schuss in den Kamin) traditions were still evident at the time the narratives were Similarly yet others had reported: In a now-gone collected. colony near Adamow was a man with a terribly sinister look, who could do magic. He was a Schwab and lived in the colony among honest Kashubes (Pomeranians). 19 Ghost (Muhkalb) One time he sat with the schnaps and had nothing to The old people by us in Topza told of the Muhkalb. eat. He said he would provide them with wild game. He That is a ghost who frightens the people outside in the took his shotgun and shot into the fireplace. Then he open fields. How it looks I don't know. told them they should go there and there they would find a deer. They went and found it, and it was still bleeding. They returned to the inn and prepared it.

366 Burial of the Magician 713 Learning magic (Zaubernlernen) (Begräbnis des Zauberers) Similar stories were being told of the Schwab in Often all kinds of frightening things happened at Adamow: One of the men from the colony wanted to the funeral of evil people; When the Swabian learn magic from him. For that reason, instead of magician in Adamow (compare legends 657, 710, swallowing the wafer [host] during communion, he had 713, 714) died, the schoolmaster was supposed to hold to hold it in his mouth. Then around twelve o'clock they the funeral service, but he was not able to come. On went to the cemetery. The magician took the host and the coffin lid they had put, as usual, a cross. But as the placed the man and told him he should shoot backwards people were about to put the lid on the coffin, it flew with the rifle. Then he did something and urged the man open, so strongly that several windows were broken. to shoot. But the man turned around and saw how the They tried a few times more and finally four men magician pinned the host to Christ on the cross that was knelt on the lid and nailed it down with the strongest standing there. And he also saw how Christ climbed nails available. Nonetheless he threw it back. Finally, down from the cross and approached him. Frightened, the son of the magician took a knife and scraped off he threw down the gun and ran away. He was crazy the cross. Then the lid was easily nailed to the coffin from that hour on and screamed in a terrible manner, and remained there. At the cemetery when the earth especially at midnight. was being shoveled on the grave, the people thought the earth was coming to an end. It became so dark and The most different ethnic German tribal group to enter there was such a storm one could not stand. However, Volhynia was that of the polonized Holländer. They settled in that was only at the cemetery and nowhere else; the the Brest district of Poland in the colonies of Neudorf and storm didn't happen in the surrounding area. Neubrau on the Bug River. This was in the late 1500s, although now there is some discussion about the validity of that date. Some think it might have been as late as 1623. Their Protestant religion played the role the linguistic border usually 657 Thieves' Spell (Diebsbann) does and kept them isolated from the Orthodox Ukrainian and The Schwab in Adamow of whom other things the Catholic Pole. Thus, when then-daughter settlements were told (366, 710, 713) was able to cast spells on spread into Polesye and Volhynia, the folktales were already thieves. Whichever garden he cast a spell on was safe changed because of the 300-year isolation from German from thieves. If such a thief came and crossed over the reinforcement. Stories of the wild hunter mixed with the fence in order to steal fruit, he was spellbound and werewolf and devil legends were recorded. No legends were could not move from the spot- He had to stay so long recorded which stemmed from the original Holländer colonies, until the farmer to whom the garden belonged arrived only the daughter colonies. The wild hunter was not to be and beat him properly. Then the spell was broken and found in Ukrainian or Polish settlements, only in this group the thief could leave. The farmer had only to ask the with German roots. This mixing of characters was not unusual magician nicely, and he cast the spell for the farmer in those settlements on the edge of German culture. Karasek- and gave him peace from thieves. In his own garden Langer suspects the night hunter was corrupted because of the the magician always spellbound the thieves in the tree linguistic polonization. Other characters of German legends tops, and they had to sit there several hours, then they were freed.

AHSGR Journal /Fall 1991 Page 45 do appear, however, such as the AIp, or demon, and the 892 The Pinsk Swamps (Die Pinsker Sümpfe) ghostly white horse which do not appear in their Slavic Russian farmers told the following story to the neighbors' stories. Germans in Kamienne about the beginning of the Pinsk Marshes: The Empress Catherine traveled on the sea—there where still is the large swamp, 194 The Werewolf (Z)er Wolkolak) the Waleser Swamp, which has no end, going Because the night hunter chases women, in from here to Pinsk and also far on the other side. It Volhynia the polonized Holländer liked to mix was at that time a large sea and the Empress him up with the werewolf, A schoolmaster from traveled on it. There her child fell in the water and Oleszkowiec told him the following; This drowned. She then cursed the water: Moss and happened with the Holländer—I was ten years old brush should grow there and grass and reeds at the time and had just come with my father from should smother (the lake)! That is how the swamp Poland to Oleszkowiec. They always said that a came to be. person could change into a wolf, and then one heard howling in the woods if he went hunting. It was a person in a wolfs skin and he was called a In the legends there is much overlapping of material of the Niederunger, Swabians, Pomeranians, and the Silesians since night hunter. Once a wolf attacked a woman in the they lived among one another in Congress Poland where they dead of night and wanted to touch her. She began were part of the northeast colonization stream and had begun to pray to God, and all at once a man stood in their assimilation there. This integration was expanded even front of her, no longer a wolf. He did nothing more in Volhynia to the point that Karasek-Langer and more to her. There is also a street on which people Strzygowski called it a new culture. While the research was being done, the authors stated that did not want to go at night because the night the researchers were overwhelmed by the devastation still hunter traveled around. He led many people present in Polish Volhynia as a result of World War I and the astray. There was a woods behind a stream, and in deportation. To quote the author, "Thus, we found the entire the woods was heard the barking of hounds and German ethnic group in a paralyzed uncertainty and oppressive the howling of wolves. He howled like a wolf, and situation. The emotional shock of the war experience had given rise to a religious crisis." the Holländer called him werewolf or night hunter. With this upheaval different religious sects were trying to establish themselves, which demanded a different approach to life. This frequently resulted in the involved German ethnics 197 Cloven floof(Pferdejuss) casting off old tradition. Karasek-Langer goes on to say that it The night hunter also showed himself to a was a nearly purely peasant culture who "served their God in brooding seriousness and ceaselessly worked the earth which certain man called Roll. He went home at night sustained them. Solely and alone for the sake of their German and with that he met the night hunter in the woods. origin they were caught up in the wheels of history." He had on a black suit and a black hat with a red These events in addition to the problems associated with feather on it. His one foot was a cloven hoof. The nobles and surveyors in the acquisition of land all greatly night hunter lead Roll astray across meadow and influenced the development of the legend in Volhynia. Mutual suffering and difficult times provided the bond that crossed swamp until it was daylight. tribal borders to distill all input into becoming uniquely German Volhynian. These people had colonization in their blood. This The legends of Polesye were used as examples of what colonistic mentality necessitated creativity, and this creativity happens with the oral tradition when it is not reinforced by manifested itself in the developing German-Volhynian folklore new blood and circumstances as was the case in Volhynia. and oral literature as well as in aspects of their daily life. Polesian settlement occurred earlier than Volhynian and was Following are more legends taken from the text. History is quite stabilized when the various groups began migrating into reflected in these narrations, even though that was the last Volhynia. The narrative development progressed quite thing on the colonists' minds at the time, I am sure. differently than in Volhynia because of the lack of newcomers into the area and resulted in reflecting back upon themselves. There was no reinforcement of German culture as a result of a new migration. There were no references to a previous homeland or ancestors but to another colony in Polesye or to "olden times." These stories were recorded over one hundred years after settlement and obliteration to homeland had occurred.

Page 46 AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 5 Black Horse (Schwarzes Pferd) in the ground, in the table drawers and then in the One time in the night our horse whinnied terribly dressers, in the smallest compartments, even banging and kicked. I went into the stall, and there among the in the cigar boxes on the entire estate of the horses stood a black horse, an entirely strange horse. nobleman. It had really large eyes, so fiery! I ran fast into the living quarters and told Mother. She took the Bible and went into the stable. Then the strange horse 434a disappeared. Only then were our horses calm again. A similar story was told in Wilhelmowka. Near (Antonowka II) Beresteczko was a noble who sinned much in his lifetime. He didn't leave a woman alone and always 80 The Three Prayers (Die drei Gebete) had a large number of beautiful muzhik (unschooled Once a Jew was walking who found a bound calf Ukrainian peasant) girls on his farm. He always hit on the path. He rejoiced and took it along, carrying it the young lads and men with a strap (kantshuk) if they home on his shoulders. But it became so heavy finally let up the least in their work. After his death no one that he could not carry it any more. It was a Jewish could stand to be on his farm any more. The hex made tailor to which this was happening, and he began to loud noise and commotion in the night. Thus from pray in Polish (Catholic), because he worked for twelve o'clock to one o'clock no one was able to sleep some Polish people and so was able to pray thus. But there. They tried everything but nothing helped. The that did not help. Then he began to pray in Hebrew, hex always returned. but that also did not help. Because he had worked with the German people, he could also pray in German. He had learned it from the children and out 435 Nobleman and Surveyor of necessity he prayed in German (Evangelisch). The hex got off him immediately and disappeared. He (Edelman and Landmesser) said, "The German prayer is the best, in spite of In many places one hears of the dead surveyors everything!" who for punishment of their sins always had to return and wander forever. A schoolteacher from Marynkow reported the following. The surveyor walked around 431 Blasphemed (Gelästert) about midnight. He was surveying and the nobleman, This happened in the vicinity of Topcza. A who was already dead, argued with him about it. They Russian count or prince lived there. He had squabbled as they did when alive. The surveyor was blasphemed God somehow. What he did I no longer being bribed by the nobleman so that less land went to know. Several days after that he disappeared and was the colonists. The nobleman was named Trzebinski. being looked for. All the muzhiks and colonists from As for the surveyor, I don't know his name. This the area were involved in the search. He was nowhere happened in the old homeland, in Martysin. After to be found in his house. He was found out in the their death they came in the night and the surveyor forest under an oak tree. There was a large swamp and said, 'I surveyed falsely for you. You paid me, I did as the oak tree, which lighting had struck, stood in the you told me to do, and now I have no rest." But the middle. There was the count with his head in the nobleman said, "If I let things take their course, the water and otherwise completely scorched. He was colonists take the land which belongs to them and my recognized by his clothing and his head. heirs receive less." Then they both argued, "Here is the stake! Here is the stake!" As twelve o'clock 434 A Noble Haunts (Edelman geht um) passed, all arguing ended. That happened every time, The following story was told in Ochozyn about and I myself heard the measuring chains rattle once in sinful nobles. The nobleman von Sturz was a very bad the twilight as I was going home. nobleman. If anyone crossed his land, he accosted him and took away whatever he carried. He took away the saw and ax of a worker who worked in his woods and 558 Mouse Out of the Mouth sometimes cut a walking stick. He was terrible in his (Maus aus dem Mund) leadership. When he died and night fell, there was In Tagaczyn they tell: if a person dreams sawing in all places and chopping in all corners on the something, a mouse runs out of their mouth and runs farm, in the living quarters, in the cellars, in the around the world, until it returns the person's dreams. bedrooms,

AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 Page47 636 Russian Witch Helps Against Bad 650 Fire Spells (Feuerbann) People can also do bewitching through magic-like People actions. For example, in Ploszcza-Lomanowski a fire (Russische Zauberin hilft gegen Klattern) happened at a muzhik's place in a neighboring village. In the colony of Kolwert there was a young married Because of that they got the banners from the church— couple. The man had been a blacksmith, and they bought that should help [put out the fire] but they burned. Then themselves a small piece of land. With this purchase a a man came who was able to cast fire spells. First he toast was drunk; the couple drank with him who sold the displayed a barrel with water, then he ran three times land. With this drink the wife became very hot, and she around the house. Then he recited fire sayings. The went afterwards to the feather stripping. An old woman flames followed behind him, and he quickly jumped was there who, a man said, practiced witchcraft. At the into the barrel of water. The flames were raging so hard feather stripping there was also drinking. Now, several that they did not notice the water at all. The water put weeks later the young wife gave birth to a child. The the flames out. witch was present at the birth. Two weeks later the woman became a bad [unkempt] person. Now she 730 Thief Magic {Diebenzauber} thought that must be the hex. She ran at once to different There is a series of magical means which thieves use fortune tellers. The one fortune teller told her that she in order to be able to steal undisturbed. In Jamki it was had drunk a toast with the purchase of the land, with the reported that a Pole had a magic book in order to learn feather stripping, and with the birth of the child. Then the the art of how he could steal without anyone seeing him. sickness began. But he could not help her. Nevertheless Whoever has such a book can no longer pray to God. he tried to talk away the sickness, but it would not help. Now she ran to a real doctor who also had the reputation that he could do magic. He gave the young wife medicine BIBLIOGRAPHY and told her that she should no longer go to another Karasek-Langer, Alfred and Strzygowski, Elfrieda. fortune teller or magician. The medicine also did not help Sagen der Deutschen aus Wolhynien und Polesye and did not heal the young woman. Then she ran to a (Legends of the Germans in Volhynia and Polesye). Russian magician, an old lady, and the old lady com- Leipzig: G. Hirzel, 1938. pletely healed her. Janke, Leona S. "Ethnic German Melting Pot— Volhynia." Clues, 1988, part 2: 31-33.

Some of the legends were illustrated by Frederick Kunter. This sketch accompanies the legend of "Black Horse" (Sch\varzes Pferd).

Page 48 AHSGR Jounwl / Fall 1991 EVALUATING FAMILY HISTORIES AND TRADITIONS FOR EVIDENCE OF MEDICAL ILLNESS USING ALZHEIMER 'S DISEASE AS A MODEL Thomas D. Bird, M.D. Neurology genealogies. As a medical geneticist I study hereditary diseases Service VA Medical Center that occur in generation after generation of families, so I really University of Washington Seattle, have to be a medical genealogist. I draw family trees and ask detailed information about the individuals in the families. We

WA 98108 want to know about aunts and uncles and grandparents, great- grandparents and cousins and nieces and nephews. The whole This article is an edited transcript of the presentation with idea is to talk to a family and build a story for what's going on slides which Dr. Bird made at the convention. medically in terms of illness running in the family. The family trees that I draw are a bit different from those of a genealogist, I am very pleased, in fact honored, to be here this morning. so I brought this slide to show you what a medical genetics Before I begin, I particularly would like to thank your society family tree looks like. (A demonstration is given of drawing a and especially Ruth Stoll and Tim Kloberdanz for inviting me family pedigree.) The way you read these family trees is that to speak to you. I'd also like to thank some people back in my circles are women, squares are men; if two siblings are joined home state of Washington for all the assistance they have given together by a triangle, that means they are twins, and if they me on the project I am going to describe, particularly Alvin have a line connecting that means that they are identical twins. and June Kissler, Betty Schmoll, and, of course, Richard So there are all these shorthand ways of indicating family Scheuerman, who was previously of Washington State. I also relations, including showing marriages and whether or not thank Nancy Zimmerer of Lingle, Wyoming; couples have had children. So in this family you can see these Esther Reiswig of Beaver, Oklahoma; and Ellen Nemens, the brothers and sisters and their parents and their aunts and research nurse dedicated to this project, for all their valuable grandparents. It is really a family tree. But we are interested in assistance. their medical problems. This son was mentally retarded, the You just heard in Leona Janke's talk that there are legends, mother had some muscle weakness, she had a brother who also folklore, and stories about people being hexed, bewitched, or had muscle weakness and had early onset of cataracts. There possessed. Why do these stories exist? What were they talking was another cousin over here who was mentally retarded. There about? Where did those ideas come from? They obviously have been a number of miscarriages and stillbirths in the came from behavior that the families had seen over the family. Although that doesn't mean much to you, to me as a generations. People were acting strangely, were acting medical geneticist, I immediately understand ,that this is a differently. There was something not quite right about their family that probably has a very specific kind of muscular behavior. In fact, you just heard the description of a woman dystrophy. The family has a type of muscular dystrophy that is who wasn't behaving properly and wasn't taking care of associated with weakness, mental retardation, and frequent herself, wasn't taking care of her home, had matted hair, and miscarriages. So as I build the family story and talk to this wasn't washing. She was interpreted as being hexed or family, I am making tentative diagnoses of diseases that run in possessed or bewitched, but there are people who actually the family on the basis of what they tell me. behave like that. Bewitching was the folklore explanation of We have some other interests in common as well, including what was wrong with them, but in medical terminology, an interest in Germany. I traveled to Germany to a scientific perhaps there really was some disorder or disease that was meeting a couple of years ago, to Würzburg in Franconia, causing that kind of behavior. As I explain my project this which you will recognize as not being far from Frankfurt and morning, we may come up with some explanations for these the area of Hesse. There is a small village just south of kinds of folklore traditions of people being bewitched, hexed, Wrzburg called Markbreit. This is one of the downtown and possessed. buildings on the comer, main corner, in the village of Markbreit I am a neurologist and a medical geneticist, and you many (figure 1). This is a 200-year-old home in downtown think that is very far afield from the kinds of things that you are interested in, but, in fact, we have a number of interests in common. One of those things is

AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 Page 49 period of years, died after eight or nine years of the disease, and her brain showed these very unusual characteristics in the nerve cells. Other pathologists began to look at autopsy material from their hospitals and discovered other cases of this disease. We now suspect it is probably not a single disease, I show Alzheimer's here in the middle of the slide. There is probably more than one cause of AD, but this isn't known for certain. No single cause of Alzheimer's is known for sure, but there may be things in the environment that lead to the disease. We also know, however, that there can be genetic causes, and as a medical geneticist, this is what I am particularly interested in. For example, children who have Down's syndrome (trisomy 21) usually develop Alzheimer's disease if they live to be over the age of 40. This is really quite remarkable. No one knows exactly, but we know they have an excess of chromosome 21.

Figure 1. Buildings in the village of Markbreit, Germany, near Würzburg. This town was the birthplace of Dr. Alois Alzheimer. Figure 2. Microscopic picture demonstrating abnormal Markbreit and this is yours truly chatting with local villagers. I nerve cells in the brain tissue of a person who died with was there for a specific reason. The 200-year-old house had a Alzheimer's disease. The individual was a member of a plaque that was just affixed to it to designate it as the German-Russian family. (Courtesy of Dr. S.M. Sumi.) birthplace of Dr. Alzheimer. He was a neuropathologist born in Markbreit, had his medical training in Würzburg, then spent I wish to point out that demented persons with AD may act a great deal of his medical career in Frankfurt. very confused and disoriented, often in seemingly bizarre As you will recognize, it is the disease of the brain, ways. Perhaps years ago they would have appeared bewitched Alzheimer's disease, that is named for Dr. Alzheimer. As a or possessed to their family and friends. pathologist he wasn't really so much interested in dementing In 1932, Dr. Schotke, in Germany, published the first report illnesses or problems with memory as he was doing of a familial AD, This was a family in Germany, and he had experiments with stains of microscopic slides of brain tissue of followed them and had information over three generations and people who had died and had autopsies in Frankfurt, One day documented that they had Alzheimer's disease. It wasn't just a he was staining the slides of a woman who was 51 years old single case in the family, it was multiple individuals over who had died of severe dementia. He was staining the multiple generations. This was the first known instance of an microscopic slides with a special silver stain, and this is what apparently genetic cause of AD. he saw in the nerve cells in the brain tissue of that woman. Genetic diseases can be inherited in different ways. They They all had this silver-positive, dense, black, tangled material can be recessive, they can be X-linked, they can no one had ever seen before because they had never applied that kind of stain to that kind of tissue (figure 2). He was quite amazed by it, wrote up the case, published it. This is actually the picture that he drew of those cells from that report in 1907. This became known as Alzheimer's disease (AD), named after him because this was his report. That is, the woman had dementia, severe memory loss that became progressive over a

Page 50 AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 be what is called dominant. Dominant means that if someone This particular family told me that they were from Russia has the disorder, the chances that a child (male or female) will but they were not Russians, they were Germans. That is no inherit the disease from the affected parent are 50/50. In this news to you in terms of ethnic background, but it was news to example there were four children and two of them have me. I never heard that kind of story for a family background inherited the disease. So if you have a dominant disease, your before. children each have a 50/50 chance of inheriting the disease. Of As a geneticist I am interested in ethnic backgrounds, so I course, what's inherited from our parents are the chromosomes. packed that away in the back of my mind but did not make There are 23 pairs of chromosomes, and we get one of each much of it at the time. I then learned of another family in pair from our father and the other of each pair from our mother. Oklahoma that had AD, and I traveled to Oklahoma to This is what is passed on from generation to generation. The interview them. This is a picture of a large family reunion from chromosomes contain the DNA, the double helix of inherited 1960 of individuals from this particular family. This is their material that codes all the proteins and enzymes and chemical family pedigree. Again, tremendously remarkable in terms of reactions that occur in our bodies. It is all controlled by what the number of individuals who had serious progressive we have inherited in the DNA from our parents. dementia, and you can see three autopsies documenting AD in We don't think that all AD is genetic. I don't want to leave this family. you with that idea, but we do know that in at least some I was sitting in the home (yes, doctors still occasionally families it can be a genetic disease. We don't know if that's 5 make house calls) with the spouse of a man who had died of percent of all Alzheimer's disease or if it's 25 percent of Alzheimer's in this family, and I was chatting with her about Alzheimer's disease. But at least once in a while AD appears to her husband's family. I asked about their ethnic origin, and she be a genetic disease. Our research project at the University of said, "Well, you know, my husband's family were from Russia Washington in Seattle was to gather families that seemed to but they were not Russians, they were Germans." I said, "Wait have a heavy load of Alzheimer's disease, to collect blood a minute, I have heard this story before, this is ringing a bell." samples from these families, and to determine who had the She went on to explain to me that her husband's family had disease and who didn't. We also needed to prove that it really come from a village called Walter, Russia, of which I had was Alzheimer's disease by autopsy whenever an individual never heard. She was a member of your historical society, got died. Examination of the brain is the only way to absolutely out a map, and showed me where Walter was. I said, "I have document AD. Then we planned to look at the DNA that is heard this story before, I want to get back to Seattle and find being inherited from generation to generation in these families out about my other family." So I went back to the family that I and see if we could discover the gene for the cause of AD in had found in Seattle, talked to them, and discovered that they these families. We hoped that research would eventually lead came from the village of Frank. It did not take much effort to to some kind of treatment or prevention or better get the map and see that Frank and Walter were right next to understanding of why these individuals are developing the each other. These families did not have any known common disease. So we began to accumulate AD families by word of relative or ancestor. They had different family names. mouth, by advertisement and by asking our other colleagues. We checked the other AD families that we had accumulated We found Alzheimer's in all ethnic groups: Japanese, Jewish, over the years at the University of Washington, and I reviewed German, French Canadian, Scandinavian. You name it, we another family I knew was German- The granddaughter of a found a family that has Alzheimer's disease. demented woman was a medical student at our school, and she This is a pedigree of one family that we uncovered in came to me and told me about her grandmother having a Seattle, and you can see I am not talking about one or two diagnosis of AD. She said that there were many other people in cases of Alzheimer's disease. The individuals who are the family with AD, and she wanted to bring that family to our darkened in these pedigrees were known to have documented attention. Because they were German, we contacted the family dementia or probable AD. The ones that are cross-hatched and discovered they also came from the village of Walter were probably demented, but we don't have specific (figure 3). documentation of it. An "A" under a symbol indicates that the My colleague. Dr. Tom Lampe at the VA hospital in person died, had an autopsy, and the autopsy documented that, Tacoma, had told me the previous year that he had run across a in fact, it is Alzheimer's disease in this family. So this is one of branch of family that was in Alaska, which, as you know, is a the families that we have ascertained. They have had dementia suburb of Seattle. He had told me that one of the relatives in over at least three generations with many affected individuals. this family had been a minister, was very interested in You can see why we think this looks like the dominant kind of genealogy and had written a book called Volga Pilgrims. I disease that I was talking about. asked him what this meant. He said, "I don't know, but the man is apparently an author and has published an interesting book about the

AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Page 51

/Fall 1991 history of his family." I remembered that story and said, gene for AD and this has recurred and been passed down "Volga pilgrims? That all sounds familiar." We asked this generation after generation. Perhaps it has something to do with family where they came from, and they too were from the the folklore traditions of individuals who were bewitched or village of Frank. So you can see that we were building a story hexed or possessed or had very strange behavior. That would for familial Alzheimer's disease in this group of families that not surprise me at all. We have not found that common were of Volga-German ancestry and, in fact, had all come from ancestor; I do not know who it was. Some of these families we the villages of Frank and Walter, Russia. have ascertained have surnames in common, but most do not. This Russian map is probably more familiar to you than it is Here is an example, however, of what we have been able to to me, but it shows the Canton of Frank. To make it a little do. This was the HD family from Seattle and the E family that easier to see, here is the Volga River, there is Saratov, and here had a branch in Alaska and another small family we found that are Frank and Walter right next to each other. At this point, as we refer to as the LO family. We were able to determine that Ruth Stoll has told you, I started reading about the Germans these three families were related to each other and that they had from Russia and read many of the wonderful books and manu- common ancestors. We are trying to put more of these families scripts that are available about your culture. I was totally together so that we can see how they are related and perhaps enthralled and fascinated by it, as I know you are, too. I find some common ancestors. We have been able to do it with contacted your national organization and got in touch with a few of them. The more families we can find, the better. We Timothy Kloberdanz. Tim Kloberdanz came to Seattle, told us require lots of people. We have been scouring particularly the about the Germans from Russia, and gave a delightful talk Midwest and the West to see if we can come up with additional about German-Russian folklore. families of any ethnic background with AD, but obviously we We placed a small advertisement in your newsletter a would be particularly interested in finding persons of German- couple years ago, simply saying we were interested in AD, and from-Russia ancestry to see if we can fit them in with any of if there is anyone out there in the Germans-from-Russia our families. I would certainly be most interested to know if community that has three or more persons in their family with any of you here today are aware of AD or any dementia-like Alzheimer's, please contact us. I mentioned nothing about illness that has occurred in any families similar to this. villages—no village names whatsoever. We received a letter We have recently placed ads in a few western newspapers from Nancy Zimmerer in Lingle, Wyoming, and I packed my and simply asked for families with AD. We didn't mention bags to travel to Lingle to meet with Nancy. She told me that Volga Germans, but we were particularly interested in that, so there had been three individuals in her family who had we put ads in papers where we knew there were Germans from autopsies and that there were many persons in the family with Russia in the community. We got quite a few responses, and I dementia and severe progressive memory loss and they had will show you some of the data. Alzheimer's disease (Figure 4). We are quite certain that AD We have sixteen fairly large AD families that are Germans occurred in at least three generations in her family. Not having from Russia. The average age of onset for the loss of memory mentioned any of the village names in the small advertisement, in these families is 59 years of age. We often think of we discovered that her family came from the village of Walter. Alzheimer's disease as being a disease of older individuals, and Another family from the state of Washington contacted me. it usually is. It is age related. The older the population gets, the This is their pedigree. You can see there have been more than a more common Alzheimer's is, such that if you are over the age dozen individuals with dementia and with probable of 80 in a population there is a relatively high frequency of Alzheimer's disease in this family. Their ancestors came from Alzheimer's disease. But we have also seen individuals who the village of Frank. have developed AD in their 30s and in their 40s. So, in some of What do we make of all this information as medical these families, the age of onset is actually relatively young. researchers? This is familial AD. We know it happens. We They then survive for about eight to ten years, and usually die know it occurs. As I have said, it is not restricted to any one in nursing homes or in state hospitals. ethnic group. In fact, I doubt that it is a disease that is of We have found, however, so many families that they have particularly high frequency or incidence in Germans from also made the whole issue more complex. As always in Russia. I don't think your group as a whole has an increased scientific research, more questions are raised than answers. For frequency of Alzheimer's disease. What we suspect is that example, this is a family that contacted us. There have been at there is one gene for familial AD that existed in some ancestor least four and possibly five demented individuals in this family way back, probably many hundreds of years ago and that this over three generations. But they are Black Sea Germans, not has been passed on from generation to generation. Volga. So how does that fit with the Frank and Walter Probably all these families I have been showing you are families? We don't know. related. They may all be distant cousins and have a common early ancestor. Perhaps back in Germany hundreds of years ago it was a single person who had the

AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Page 5 3 It is possible that it is a different condition in a different cause the disease? So it could be when we study Alzheimer's group of families and they don't have exactly the same disease. that we are mixing different families like apples and oranges. But it is also possible that they have some common ancestor. That is what makes it difficult to study the disease, because Are they in some way related to the other families, or is this a each case may not have the same cause. It is very important to different disease? What's going on here? We don't know. These identify a group of Alzheimer's patients where you feel are questions that need to be answered. If we ever find a confident that they probably have the same cause of their marker in the DNA that can tell us specifically what is causing disease. So if you have a group that has the same ethnic the AD, we may be able to compare the DNA with a family background with a familial disease, and you even think they like this and the DNA with other families to see if it is the may have a common ancestor, you can pool the scientific data same kind of genetic disease. from such families to make a much more powerful research These are the totals we have thus far from our concerted study. effort to find families that are Germans from Russia with AD, The hope, of course, is that we will find what is wrong with A total 74 families have contacted us and have told us that they the genetic material in these individuals. That will lead to clues have at least two or more individuals in the family with a for what is wrong with the chemistry in the brain, which will diagnosis of AD. You can see that the bulk of them are Volga lead to some kind of treatment or even prevention of the Germans, many from the villages of Frank and Walter, but not disease. That is the long-term goal, which is of major all of them. Many of them trace their ancestry back to other consequence to the health care of Americans. villages, 18 are from Black Sea villages, 10 know for sure that Secondly, there is a practical reason that has already been they are Germans from Russia but the village of origin of their alluded to in your group. This research is an additional reason family is obscure. Their grandparents and great-grandparents for people in the Soviet Union to open up the records of the never passed that information along, so they simply do not German families in that country. It is of scientific research know. There is one family in which one branch is Volga importance, not just curiosity on the part of some families m German, and the other branch is Black Sea German. the United States. There are now compelling scientific issues Look at the map of migration of the Germans to the Russian that are involved as well. I think that is a very helpful reason. area during the reign of Catherine the Great. Not surprisingly, Finally, and I think this pertains particularly to making this because we have Alzheimer's families from all ethnic groups, kind of a presentation in a folklore symposium, there are we also have families whose ancestors migrated directly from deeper reasons for doing genealogical research. We are not Germany to the United States. Some of these families come really interested in just collecting thousands of names of from the area of Franklurt and the Hesse-Rhineland region. individuals and the villages from which they came. The real Could there be a connection, here? Is it possible that we are in issues are: Who were our ancestors? What kind of people were fact again dealing with a common ancestor problem? We have they? Where did they go? What were their struggles? What families who came from Germany, and they have familial were their triumphs? What were their tragedies? How did they Alzheimer's disease. We also have families from Russia that cope with life? How did they survive? My contention is that have familial Alzheimer's disease that originally came from medical problems such as Alzheimer's disease are clearly a Germany. Could these families all have a common ancestor? crucial aspect of an individual's life and a family's story. Such There are families living in Germany right now with AD. things are part of the fabric, the texture, the richness of human Could this all be one big family that has this common gene? experience of our for-bearers. These are some of the aspects of Isn't it interesting that Alzheimer's original case was from the their daily lives that fascinate us and draw our curiosity. area of Frankfurt? We know the married name of that original Hopefully, learning how they coped with their lives will teach case, but I don't know her maiden name. I would love to know us something about ourselves and our own pursuits of it. Wouldn't it be fascinating to know if it matched up with one happiness here in the twentieth century. of these other family pedigrees? Thank you for inviting me to share this information with In closing, I think there are at least three reasons to continue you. this kind of research. One is that it is very important scientifically. One of the problems with Alzheimer's disease References research is, as I pointed out to you, that we don't know how Bird,T.D.,Lampe,T.H., Nemens,E.J.,etal. 1988. "Familial many causes there may be. In some people could it be a virus? Alzheimer's Disease in American Descendants of the Volga In some people could it be old head trauma? Could it be some Germans: Probable Genetic Founder Effect." Ann Neurol. chemicals or toxins in the environment? Is it genetic? Is it 23:25-31. always genetic? Is it sometimes genetic? When it is genetic, Bird, T.D., Sumi, S.M., Nemens, E.J., et al. 1989. does one family have the same genetic cause for it as other "Phenotypic Heterogeneity in Familial Alzheimer's Disease; a families, or are there different genes that can Study of 24 Kindreds." Ann Neurol. 25: 12-25.

Page 54 AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 THE BROTHERHOOD/ BRÜDERSCHAFT George Dorn Brotherhood Conference was held on the Volga back in 1873. The people accepted this type of mission as the formal My name is George Dorn, and I am from Winter Haven, church stayed very rigid in its form of preaching and teaching, Florida. My wife Shirley and I moved down there about a year and with no minister around, they made their own programs. and a half ago from Maywood, Illinois. I was born and raised The formal church did not really reach the people, who lost in Maywood, which is one of the western suburbs of Chicago, their spiritual vitality. The evangelistic style of preaching was about fifteen miles west of the Loop. The adjoining villages of mostly of an impromptu nature and was usually a narrative of Maywood and Bellwood must have had thousands of Volga- the story of salvation through the blood of Christ. The German residents. The whole center of the town was German missionaries held to the beliefs that only ordained ministers Russian with a core that was Jewish. As the people died and could administer the sacraments and that they would not be a moved away, the whole town changed. The Germans lived in separate church. In other words, the ministers said only they Melrose Park, on the other side of the tracks. All of us went to could administer the sacraments, but the people said that if the the same church and had the same names, but they were dif- ministers were never there, how could they keep the ferent people and even talked different German. sacraments? Anyway, I would like to tell you a little about the The people were very pietistic, and in order not to reflect a Brotherhood from the past and what I remember as a boy in worldly nature, the men did not wear neckties. You would Maywood. Much of what I learned is taken from the book always see them with the top shirt button buttoned, but no ties. Pietism and the Russian Germans in the United States, by The women wore their black shawls to church or when George J. Eisenach. visiting. Dancing was strictly forbidden, and drinking and Our forefathers were a very religious people and the smoking were frowned upon. But what good German could persecution they suffered in Germany was one of the reasons resist a little beer or schnapps? for their migration to Russia where Catherine had promised When the persecutions began again in about 1871, many of them religious freedom. Most of the colonies were settled our people began to immigrate to America where once again according to religion, and of the 103 colonies settled between they were promised religious freedom. The Brotherhood was 1763 and 1768, 75 were Protestant and 28 Catholic. Of the now ingrained into many of them, and they elected to continue Protestants, 78 percent were Lutheran and 22 percent were this mission here in America, especially since they were once Reformed. By 1914, a census of church membership numbered again outcasts in a foreign land and needed each other's help to 488,000 people. survive. In the 1880s a number of Brotherhoods began in There was a severe shortage of ministers among the Nebraska and Colorado. In 1887 the first conference was held Protestant churches, with many of the ministers being of poor in Sutton, Nebraska. quality. In 1820 there was such a shortage of ministers that the I can only speak now of what I remember about Maywood, Roman Catholic priests ministered to the Protestants. There but I feel sure the memories are fairly common all over. When was an average of one minister per 6400 souls. The preacher I look back, we probably should have continued the meetings, normally lived in the largest town and traveled on a circuit to but we wanted to go the American way. the smaller towns performing marriages and baptisms. The The brothers met in Maywood or Bellwood, or wherever school-teacher led the church in prayers when the minister they could, until they decided to build their own church. They couldn't make it, or the members conducted the meetings banded together and donated money and time to actually put themselves. up the building themselves at about 13th and Randolph in the Pietism was born among our people out of desperation. heart of the German-Russian community. It still stands today When they arrived in Russia, there was nothing but a vast plain as a Baptist church. waiting for them, along with all the raiding nomadic groups There was a rule throughout the Brotherhood that a person like the Tatars. The people suffered famine, illness, crop had to be a member in good standing of a conventional church failures, and all sorts of other problems. They finally decided in order to be a member of the Brotherhood. Most of the that only by turning to God could they have any hope of people in our area were Lutherans. survival. Meetings were held on a regular basis, a Wednesday Then along came the Moravian missionaries, especially the evening prayer meeting and an afternoon and evening service Rev. Johann Janet, who along with Brother Johann Langerfeld on Sunday. In addition, we were required to attend our regular worked the fertile ground of the Volga Germans. They church Sunday mornings. That meant we went to church three organized local prayer meetings (Andacht), conducted local times on Sunday. Although we didn't have them in Maywood, revivals, and gave religious instruction. This mission grew some meetings had Saturday night services also. rapidly and became very powerful, until 1821 when the heads Once a month there was a special meeting on Friday of the Moravian missions ordered it to be stopped after fifty- seven years of growth. I understand that the first

AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 Page 55 night for Ermahnung, where confessions or transgressions were play for the gatherings. I can remember in the 1940s the band given along with a plea for forgiveness from the other marching up and down the streets of Maywood playing members. This was always a very emotional night, with much religious songs and the brothers and sisters marching along weeping and pleading prayers. If you have ever heard fifty men singing. My uncle Alex Schneider made recordings of much of on their knees weeping and praying, well, it is something to the music, but it was lost when he died. My dad belonged to a behold. They believed that they had to be forgiven by their group called the Chicago Brotherhood Band, and I have a fellow members and really worked hard on their prayers, picture from about 1930. You will recognize some of the The services were always lay conducted with a board of names of the members: Conrad Menzer, Heinrich Yurk, Christ three members seated at the head table to oversee the meeting. Seng, Herbert Engel, Fred Martin, Fred Groh, Gottlieb Martin, The members were always divided with the men seated on the and Fred Christ. right, the women on the left, and the children in the rear on the I met a group of people from Flint, Michigan, yesterday. same side as the men. There were always a lot of kids, and we One of them remembered that my dad used to ride his usually ended up in the back row. Especially at Ermahnung, we motorcycle up to Flint and to Saginaw with his violin strapped would be listening to the men crying and weeping (and some on the back. That was even before he met and married my really got carried away), and we would giggle and point over at mother. I have a picture of the Flint Brüderschaft Band from one and say, "Look at Bruder Spomer." All of a sudden from about the mid-1930s. My uncle Henry Kempf was in the behind, WHACK, you got one on the back of the head, Bruder picture. The people from Flint identified all but one person in Knoll was always back there, and he had knuckles of cement. the picture. Flint still has a band which plays and records. The We have some pictures here, and I can still pick him out: he record sold in the society bookstore has a lot of the old songs, was like the big cop on the comer. and they say it sounds today just like it did fifty years ago. The hymns were mostly sung from memory, although there I can remember some of the conference cities that were were Gesangbücher in all the pews. I can remember when my mentioned, especially Jefferson Park, where we used to go a Dad had to sell the church and we picked up all the lot. When Maywood closed, my dad would go to "Jeff" every Gesangbücher. I could not remember anyone ever picking up a Saturday night. Other cities were Milwaukee, Sheboygan, book to sing. Usually one person would start out a hymn, and Manitowoc, Riverdale, Flint, Berrien Springs, Saginaw, Walla the rest of the group would chime in. They didn't need a piano, Walla, and Fresno. although they had both a piano and a band. Between hymns Dad traveled to Weatherford, Oklahoma, in 1944 because someone would get up and begin speaking about a particular my brother, who was in the service in Texas, was riding his Bible passage, and anyone else that wanted to would follow up motorcycle home, and it broke down. Someone got him to the until one of the board would begin a closing prayer. On special train station, and he came home to be transferred then to holidays they could get carried away for an hour or more. My another base. He asked Dad to go down to Weatherford to get Dad could talk on Revelations for days—and often did! his bike. Well, it was the middle of the war, but Dad got a pass An aside story. We were in church one Sunday at St. Paul's from the railroad and stood for three days, all the way to in Melrose Park, where the elder Pastor Kluender was talking Oklahoma. On arriving at the farm he needed to go to, he about something in Revelations, when all of a sudden my dad found a Volga German. This man immediately got on the twitched and said, "Oh, no, he's wrong!" After the sermon, he phone, and that night they had a meeting. He was tickled pink went to the pastor's office for a talk. The next Sunday the to go all that way to find Volga Germans. pastor got in front of the church and apologized and said that he The Brotherhood failed to interest the young people, who was wrong. That's the way my dad was. I wish I knew one were more interested in being Americanized and usually percent of the Bible he knew—I'd know a lot, resented their activities being interrupted by the meetings. We There was much kneeling, always up and down almost like wanted to be Americans, and were not too interested in being a wave. There was always weeping and much crying, German Russians who went to church three times on Sundays. especially among the men who it seemed couldn't pray without Then age began to catch up with the brothers, and their weeping. Everyone would pray at once, out loud, and you can numbers went down rapidly. I think my dad used to go to a imagine the murmur in the building when one hundred or more couple of funerals a week. The wakes were often held in the people would all be talking at once. home, and the brothers and sisters would gather and sing, The Brotherhood stretched all across the country and on songs and pray. At the cemetery they would sing a song called occasion would gather for a conference. People would travel "Paradise," which was very beautiful. many miles to attend. The conferences usually lasted from And then, my dad was the last of the brothers, and he had to three to seven days, and I can remember people sleeping on the sell the meetinghouse. Oh, how he cried. floors, front porch, the lawn, in basements on concrete floors— The Brotherhood is not yet dead, and meetings and anywhere they could. conferences continue, although much diminished. There is to The Brotherhood formed bands and orchestras to be a conference in September in Flint, Michigan.

Page 56 AHSGR Journal / Fall 1991 WE HONOR OUR HERITAGE THROUGH FAITH Werner K. Wadewitz through faith in Christ Jesus. We are today called upon not to forget, not to neglect, but to persevere in being faithful, Dear Friends: because we too have become convinced of the truth that We are living in a world which is rapidly changing in a sustained our forefathers and foremothers and grandmothers, manner contrary to all predictions. We hear of economic and which truth they taught us in the simple risking of their very political upheavals. Volcanic eruptions, tornadoes and tidal lives, teaching the children about the Lord Jesus and praying waves the world over are impressive signs of the times, with them. symbols of the human and inhuman events and atrocities, of Across the centuries comes the apostle's voice calling out to terrorism and mass destruction the world over, eruptions of us. From infancy you have known the inspired scripture truths, rebellion and revolutions in every comer of the globe. These remembering from whom you have learned them. These truths are explosions and expressions of angst, the worldwide anxiety your mothers and grandparents wanted you to know, to give and perplexity and even helplessness. you more than gold or silver. Their spiritual legacy is the most The Apostle Paul wrote about two thousand years ago, precious part of the heritage you received from them. "Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will Two years ago in Uzbekistan, near Tashkent, we could be persecuted by men of depraved minds who oppose the personally verify the faithfulness of our Christian relatives, truth—evil men—impostors often having the form of godliness cousins, and their families, true to the faith their mothers but denying its power." planted in their hearts. The fathers and uncles, sons and That sounds like a description of the Verschleppung brothers had been literally "dragged-away" from home. So the (deportation into exile) of our forefathers from their womenfolk had to be "priestesses" in the home. Autonomous German Republic on the Volga. That was their And what would they have you do today? They bid you "holocaust" with unimaginable dimensions of brutality. Much follow the encouragement of Paul, to continue to cling to the of the history of that era is only now coming to light. faith and hope of your forebears; to study and leam and train in Now, we here today are their descendants, and what is the godly righteousness, so that you may be equipped for every heritage, we ask, they could possibly leave for us? What advice good work. The experiences of your ancestors have confirmed and admonition comes from them to us? Or what challenge? to us the true value of "a faith that will not shrink though You know it well! For that is the reason for our organization— pressed by many a foe, that will not tremble on the brink of AHSGR—and it is the motive for this convention and for this poverty or woe." The treasure in their hearts was so real and service here today, which stands as an exclamation point at the proved to be so formidable, so strong, that it kept them sane end of the convention. and faithful in the squalid, vermin-infested slave labor camps, In the inspired words of St. Paul, "Live a godly life in Christ in the Trudarmia, in the Siberian forests, in the Ural Mountain Jesus'" He says, "Have courage to cherish and to cultivate and mines, in the fisheries of the frozen north around Norilsk, on to celebrate your Christian heritage." transports by cattle cars; in the unending hours of hardest In the third chapter of the second letter to his young friend work, in the darkness and loneliness of separation from homes Timothy, Paul says, "You know all about my teaching, my Old and families, from loving hearts, from friends and neighbors. Testament theological education in Jerusalem as a Pharisee. We dare never forget that this our heritage was indeed bought You know my way of life, how I persecuted the Christians with blood. To be true and worthy descendants of those ferociously and had my heart and mind changed by Jesus, stalwart men and women, many of whom are still alive— some being called to be a messenger for the gospel of salvation are among us—we must honor that which we have learned through faith in the Redeemer Christ Jesus. You know my from them, what gave them strength, endurance, and hope! purpose, my faith, my patience, my love, my endurance in With such an attitude we will be "thoroughly equipped" to persecutions and sufferings, yet the Lord rescued me from all celebrate the heritage they purchased and preserved for us of them." Timothy had been an eyewitness of the life of Paul, under the most trying conditions. hearing his witness and seeing him stoned and left for dead, We are reminded of a saying of Johann Wolfgang von and yet chose to follow in Paul's footsteps. Again, that life Goethe, who wrote: Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast, shows many similarities with the life of our people in Russia erwirb es. um es zu besitzen! An English equivalent: 1922-1991. What you have inherited from your father, purchase it, redeem "But now as for you, you chose to continue in what you it, work at it, invest it in order to truly possess it as your very have learned." You also, as remnants of that holocaust that own. This is what it takes. This is our task, my friends. uprooted your ancestors two or three generations ago, you also And the peace of God the Father, which transcends all have a high and solemn purpose in your life having the understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ knowledge of the holy scriptures which are able to make you Jesus. wise for salvation

AHSGR Journal/Fall 1991 Page 57 MEMORIAL Lydia Jesse "Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate weary, they shall walk and not faint." (Is. 40:31) us from the love of God," (Ro. 8:38-39) We take time now to remember with thanksgiving the lives of We are ever grateful to our parents and forefathers for having those who have passed away since we last met. In this time our a strong will and determination to seek a better way of life in a nation has fought a war, and we remember well with deep land unknown and for the wonderful memories and the heritage gratitude those who made the supreme sacrifice, the many who we share today. lost their lives in "Desert Shield" and "Desert Storm." Let us pray: As we remember the lives of our loved ones no longer with Gracious God, we thank you that in all the moments of our us, we realize that death is not so much the extinguishing of a lives you are present with us. We thank you for the lives of these lamp as the putting out of a light because the brightness of dawn dear loved ones whose physical presence we miss, whose spirits has come. In this past year, a new morning of eternal life has we feel a part of us always. Strengthen us that we may take up dawned for them all. the work they have left unfinished, that their lights may continue We thank God for their lives, for the ways in which they to shine through us, and that our lights may so shine before touched us, the ways in which they brought their gifts to the others that they will see our good works and give glory to you. world. And even as we grieve their deaths, we find assurance in We pray that you comfort us, and that you fill us all with a the words of the Apostle Paul that "...neither death, nor life, nor deeper sense of reverence for the gift of life which you have so angels, nor rulers, nor freely given. Bless us and continue to sustain us, in your name we pray. Amen.

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