Volga German

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Volga German pioneer family commemorative statue in Victoria, Kansas, USA.
Volga German pioneer family commemorative statue in Victoria, Kansas, USA.

The Volga Germans (German: Wolgadeutsche or Russlanddeutsche) were ethnic Germans living near the Volga River in the region of southern European Russia around Saratov and to the south, maintaining German culture, language, traditions and churches: Lutherans, Reformed, Roman Catholics, and Mennonites. Many Volga Germans immigrated to the Midwestern United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and other countries in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the late 20th century, many of the remaining ethnic Germans returned to Germany.

Contents

[edit] Catherine the Great

After displacing Peter III from the Russian throne, his wife, Sophie Fredericke Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst, a German native of Stettin, took the vacant imperial throne under the name of Catherine II in 1762. "Catherine the Great" published manifestos in 1762 and 1763 inviting Europeans to immigrate and farm Russian lands while maintaining their language and culture. Although the first had little response, the second improved the benefits that were offered and was more successful. In addition to land development, an important consideration for Catherine was the provision of a buffer zone between her Russian subjects and the nomads to the east. Germans responded in particularly large numbers due to poor conditions in their home regions. People in other countries such as France and England were more inclined to migrate to the colonies in the Americas than to the Russian frontier. Other countries, such as Austria, forbade emigration. Those who went to Russia had special rights under the terms of the manifesto. These were later revoked when the need for conscription into the Russian army arose in the latter part of the 19th century. This was especially offensive to the German Mennonite communities, whose doctrine teaches against war and aggression. The Germans, who had little commitment to the Russian Empire, often emigrated to avoid the draft, though many did remain behind.

[edit] The 20th century

After the Russian Revolution, the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was established from 1924–1942. Its capital was Engels, known as "Pokrovsk" before 1931.

As the Nazis advanced into the Soviet Union towards the Volga, Joseph Stalin became worried about the possibility of Volga Germans collaborating with them. On August 28, 1941, he ordered a 24-hour relocation of Volga Germans (and Germans from a number of other traditional areas of settlement) eastwards, to Kazakhstan, Altai Krai, Siberia, and other remote areas. Similar deportations happened for other ethnic groups, including Poles, North Caucasian Muslim ethnic groups, Kalmyks, and Crimean Tatars.) In 1942 nearly all the able-bodied German population was conscripted to the labor army.

[edit] Present-day

The Volga Germans never returned to the Volga region. After the war, many settled in the Ural Mountains, Siberia, Kazakhstan (2% of today's Kazakh population are recognized as Germans - approximately 300,000), Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan (approximately 16,000 = 0.064%). Decades after the war, some talked about resettling where the German Autonomous Republic used to be, but this movement met with opposition from the population resettled to their territory and did not gain momentum.

Since the late 1980s, many Volga Germans have immigrated to their ancestral homeland of Germany, taking advantage of the German law of return, a policy which grants citizenship to all those who can prove to be a refugee or expellee of German ethnic origin or as the spouse or descendant of such a person (e.g. Greece had a similar law for the Greek minority from the former Soviet Union). This exodus occurred despite the fact that most Volga Germans speak little or no German. In the late 1990s, however, Germany made it more difficult for Russians of German descent to settle in Germany, especially for those who do not speak some of the Volga dialects of German. Today, there are approximately 600,000 Germans in Russia (Russian Census (2002)), a number that increases to 1.5 million when including people partly of German ancestry.

[edit] North America

Volga Germans immigrated to the United States and Canada and settled mainly in the Great Plains; Alberta, eastern Colorado, Kansas, Manitoba, Michigan, Minnesota, eastern Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, South Dakota, and Wisconsin, as well as in Oregon, Washington and Fresno County in Central California, often succeeding in dryland farming, a skill learned in Russia. Many of the immigrants who arrived between 1870 and 1912 spent a period doing farm labor, especially in northeastern Colorado and in Montana along the lower Yellowstone River in sugar beet fields.

Bernhard Warkentin, a German Russian, was born in a small Russian village in 1847, and traveled to America in his early 20s. Interested in flour mills, he was especially impressed with the wheat growing possibilities in the United States. After visiting Kansas, Warkentin found the plains much like those he had left behind in his native Russia. Settling in Harvey County, he built a water mill on the banks of the Little Arkansas River - the Halstead Milling and Elevator Company. Warkentin's greatest contribution to Kansas was the introduction of hard Turkey wheat into Kansas, which replaced the soft variety grown exclusively in the state.

Modern descendants in Canada and the United States refer to their heritage as Germans from Russia, Russian Germans, Volgadeutsch or Black Germans. In many parts of the United States, however, they tend to have blended to a large degree with the much more numerous "regular" Germans who dominate the northern half of the United States.

[edit] South America

Germans from Russia also settled in Argentina (see Crespo and Coronel Suárez among others), Paraguay, and Brazil (see German-Brazilians).

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ According to the Asociación Argentina de Descendientes de Alemanes del Volga there are more than 1,200,000 descendants of Volga Germans in Argentina (Figure this number does not include other German communities).
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../v/o/l/Volga_German_f2ac.html"