Volga Germans

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Peasant couple from the Volga region in the Schneidemühl refugee camp , 1920
Volga German settlements

Volga Germans are descendants of German immigrants who settled in the Russian Empire under the government of Catherine the Great on the lower Volga . In the total number of Russian Germans, they make up 25%. The center of the Volga Germans was the city of Pokrovsk (since 1931 Engels ). Between 1924 and 1941 they were organized within the Soviet Union in the Volga German Republic .

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The settlers , most of whom came from Bavaria , Baden , Hesse , the Palatinate and the Rhineland , followed the invitation of Empress Catherine II of German descent to their new settlement area between 1763 and 1767 , where they founded 104 villages. They were recruited to cultivate the steppe areas on the Volga and to contain the raids of the equestrian peoples from the neighboring areas. Over time, they developed a thriving agricultural economy in this region with exports to other regions of Russia.

The German settlers found favorable conditions in the Russian Empire, including: They were given a special political status, which included the right to retain German as the administrative language, to self-administration and to exemption from military service. These self-determination rights were restricted by Tsar Alexander II in 1871 and completely abolished in 1874, which led to a wave of emigration to the USA , Canada and South America (e.g. to Diamante, Gualeguaychú and Villaguay , departments in the Entre Ríos province ).

Further restrictions and reprisals followed shortly after the establishment of the Soviet Union , when Stalin took the entire grain harvest from the Volga Germans and sold it abroad . Thousands of Volga Germans died in 1921/22 as a result of the famine it caused .

In 1924, the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Volga Germans was created after the area had gained autonomy from 1918 after the October Revolution .

The Volga German Republic, which was dissolved in 1941, had about 600,000 inhabitants, about two thirds of whom were of German descent.

After the attack by the German Reich on the Soviet Union in June 1941 ( World War II ), Stalin had the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR pass the decree “On the resettlement of Germans residing in the Volga region” on August 28, 1941. The approximately 400,000 remaining Volga Germans were accused of collective collaboration , deported to Siberia and Central Asia and there forced into labor camps of the " Labor Army" (Трудармия), thousands of whom died. Most Russian Germans (men and women) were drafted between October 1942 and December 1943.

It was not until 1964 that they were officially exempted from the accusation of collaboration - with restrictions. (1964 ended the Khrushchev era , which had begun in 1953 after Stalin's death. The thaw period lasted from around 1956 to 1964.)

The Federal Republic of Germany has made it possible for the Volga Germans to enter and naturalize the Volga since the 1970s (see also the Federal Expellees Act ). In 2002 there were still around 600,000 ethnic Germans living in Siberia, many of whom state Siberian German as their mother tongue. According to the 2010 all-Russian census, around 400,000 ethnic Germans lived in Russia (34 percent fewer than in 2002), including Russian mennonites .

Well-known Volga Germans

Well-known Volga Germans are:

See also

literature

  • August Lonsinger, Edited by Viktor Herdt: Factual folklore of the Volga Germans. Settlement - shelter - food - clothing. BAG-Verlag, Remshalden, 2004, ISBN 978-3-935383-23-3 .
  • Michael Schippan, Sonja Striegnitz: Volga Germans. History and present. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1992 (with maps, documents attached), ISBN 978-3-320-01770-5
  • Viktor Diesendorf: Dictionary of the Volga German Marxstädter dialect. Saratow, 2015. - 602, ISBN 978-5-91879-552-1 (Volume 1) and ISBN 978-5-91879-553-8 (Volume 2)

Web links

Commons : Volgadeutsche  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Volga German  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Remarks

  1. ↑ Lydia Klötzel: The Russian Germans between autonomy and emigration. The fortunes of a national minority against the background of the changeable German-Soviet / Russian relationship . Lit, Münster 1999, ISBN 3-8258-3665-7 , p. 123.
  2. ↑ George Geilke: "rehabilitation" of the Volga Germans? In: Jahrbuch für Ostrecht , Vol. 6 (1965), pp. 35–59.
  3. ↑ День в истории: ликвидация АССР немцев Поволжья, начало депортации поволжских немицев в Сисаназ. August 28, 2019, accessed May 28, 2020 (Russian).