History of the Russian Germans

The history of the Russian Germans spans several epochs.

Prehistory - Germans in Russian cities

Even in the days of the Kievan Rus , Germans came to what is now Russia , as Lübeck merchants set up a Hanseatic office in Novgorod around 1200 . This city-republic stood for sovereign Russia at that time, while other major Russian principalities were under the rule of the Golden Horde .

The eastern neighbor, the Grand Duchy of Moscow under Ivan III. (Reign 1462–1505), subjugated Novgorod (1478) and later also dissolved the Hansekontor. Ivan III was also the first in a series of tsars to recruit foreign specialists. So again Germans came to Russia, some of whom settled permanently in the new power center Moscow.

Ivan IV (1547–1587) succeeded in conquering the previously Tatar territories ( khanates ) on the Volga with the help of German miners . At the same time the way to Siberia was cleared. During the first half of the 17th century, the foreigners coming to Moscow settled mainly under the Russians, but on October 4, 1652 a decree was issued by Tsar Alexej Michajlowitsch (1645–1676), the father of Peter I , on the Resettlement of all Western Europeans behind the city limits of Moscow, in the former suburb of foreigners. Now this place got the name Neu-Deutsche or German suburb ( Nemezkaja sloboda ), because Russians called all people from Western Europe who did not speak Russian as "Nemcy" (from the word nemoj , dumb) or as "Germans". According to the court census in 1665, there were 206 farms with around 1200 foreigners in the German suburb. In 1725 their number was already 2500, but proportionally they made up only 2% of the total population of the city.

Peter I (1689–1725) had the new capital Saint Petersburg built (1703), where most of the recruited professionals lived from then on. Under him, many Baltic Germans , who had emerged from the time of the Teutonic Order , came under Russian rule. In addition to access to the Baltic Sea , he also wanted to conquer the northern Black Sea coast , which, however, only really succeeded Catherine II .

German settlers in Russia

Catherine II

The influence of Germans on the history of Russia increased even further under the successors of Peter the Great: ministers and advisers came from Germany and the tsarist family of the Romanovs mingled with other European houses. A native of Germany Catherine II. (1762-1796) represented as Frederick II. In Prussia , Maria Theresa and Joseph II. In Austria an enlightened absolutism and promoted as this colonization of national, barely or unpopulated areas, so an increased population growth to reach. It was hoped that this policy of population would gain power and wealth for the state. In Russia there was also the fact that some areas were to be protected from nomadic tribes.

Invitation manifest

Since most of the Russian peasants were serfs to their noble masters and the number of free state peasants was not sufficient, they sought out settlers, especially abroad. Their manifesto of invitation of July 22, 1763 promised foreign settlers a number of privileges:

• Religious freedom,
• Exemption from military service,
• Self-administration at the local level with German as the language,
• financial start-up assistance,
• 30 years of tax exemption.

emigration

Monument in Biebrich to commemorate the emigration of Hesse to the Volga. Inaugurated on August 28, 2011

In German principalities in particular, people were lured by the promises that Catherine II had spread through her recruits in newspapers and churches. The motives having to leave the country ( emigration ), resulted primarily from the effects of the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), under which especially the inhabitants of the Rhine Province , Northern bavaria and - badens , the Hessian areas and the Palatinate to had suffered.

Arrival of the first settlers

As early as 1764–1767, around 30,000 Germans - including a smaller number of French , Dutch and Swedes - emigrated to Russia. Thousands did not survive the hardships, hunger and illnesses during the long journey. Only upon arrival did it become clear to many that they should no longer belong to the kind of immigrants that the tsars had brought into the country in the centuries before. The craftsmen among them were not allowed to practice their learned trade in the cities, nor were the farmers allowed to choose the spot on which they settled. Instead, some of these first settlers were taken to the rural region around St. Petersburg, but the majority were taken to the Volga region near Saratov , where all were destined to pursue an agricultural activity.

The colonists were granted around 30 hectares of land per family , although the climate and soil conditions of this land were completely different from what was known from their home regions. This is how contemporary witness C. Trains reports:

“Our guide shouted stop! Which we were very surprised because it was still too early to camp for the night; but our astonishment soon turned into astonishment and horror when we were told that we were here at the destination of our journey. Startled we looked at each other to see ourselves here in a wilderness which, as far as the eye could see, except for a small forest, showed nothing but grass almost three feet high. Neither of us made any move to get off our horse or carriage, and when the first general horror had disappeared a little, you could see on all faces the desire to be able to redirect again ... So this is the paradise that the Russian recruits in Lübeck offer us promised, said one of my fellow sufferers with a sad expression! (…) Of course it was folly of ours to think of a Garden of Eden in Russia's uninhabited areas; on the other hand, the deception was too great to find a steppe for it that did not even meet the most moderate demands. In this inhospitable region we noticed not the slightest move to take us in, even in the course of several days we saw none being made, and yet it seemed with the winter that was no longer distant; To be in a hurry. "

This description testifies to the pioneering work that the 25,781 inhabitants of the 104 new villages in the Volga region had to achieve in order to survive. However, many did not survive. In addition to the climatic conditions, pests and epidemics, the strategic location turned out to be a further problem, because there were repeated attacks by riding nomads ("Kyrgyz ( Kazakhs )") from the east, who destroyed entire settlements and robbed and enslaved their inhabitants. As a result of imprisonment, illness and flight, the number of settlers decimated by more than 7,000 within the first ten years alone. The Russian government tried to counteract the development by means of further loans, but also by expropriating peasants whom it found unfit. The remaining settlers were allowed to administer themselves from now on by choosing their own village and chief schoolmen .

Settlers in the Volga region

Despite all the difficulties, the settlers in the Volga region made progress. "Modest prosperity" (1) was already achieved towards the end of the 18th century . The harvests became better and the population increased many times over, so that in 1815 60,000, in 1850 even 165,000 people lived in the mother and newly created daughter colonies (plus other new settlements such as Am Trakt and Alt-Samara ). In the second half of the 19th century, however, the economic problems grew again, which was mainly due to an agricultural constitution that turned out to be unsustainable. Land was never private property here, but was always only made available - first by the crown, later by the community, which had to ensure that it was distributed as fairly as possible over and over again. After the abolition of serfdom, this redistribution community had already developed with most of the Russian peasants. Favored by population growth and the lack of alternatives to find work outside of agriculture, the problem arose that over time less and less colonist land was available for more and more farmers. Land acquisitions could hardly be afforded, instead the existing land was used all the more intensively and in some cases depleted. This was partly responsible for the bad harvests and famine years in the second half of the 19th century .

Black Sea settlers

Southern Russia as well as the northern Black Sea area with the Black Sea Germans was the second main settlement area of ​​German colonists in Russia next to the Volga region. This country, now predominantly on the territory of the Ukraine , was gained by Catherine II through two wars with the Ottoman Empire (1768–1774) and the annexation of the Crimean Khanate (1783) in the south for the Russian Empire. However, it was not as compact as the Volga region, but the core area of ​​a whole chain of colonies that stretched from Volhynia to the Caucasus . The first German settlers came here from 1787, primarily from West Prussia (now Poland ), and later also from the west and southwest of Germany and the Warsaw area . Mennonites in particular came as religious refugees, who were known as “capable farmers” and who were supposed to take on the role of model farmers. These religious groups had often already had the settlement areas scouted and brought their own tools and cattle with them. In addition, they had often negotiated better conditions in advance (more land allocation, etc.).

In contrast to the settlement areas on the Volga, the farmers in southern Russia were allocated more land right from the start. Most of the farms went undivided to one heir each. Even if the difficulties in founding were otherwise about the same, the economic development of these colonies was overall more successful than on the Volga. The demand for other trades also increased here, so that landless people also had an alternative.

This immigration policy , which is more well thought-out and more oriented towards the needs of the country, of qualified, but smaller groups, was continued by Alexander I from 1804 . Although this was based on Catherine the Great , the selection of settlers was limited to wealthy families through various regulations. After gaining land through the sixth Turkish war, he recruited settlers abroad from 1813 onwards, followed by Germans from the Wartheland and southwestern Germany and settling in the Bessarabia governorate .

The better conditions - paired with modern agricultural equipment - led to an economic boom in the populated areas. In the course of the economic expansion of the Germans in Russia, the infrastructure was continuously improved and the German minority rose to a politically, economically and financially influential group in the Tsarist Empire. They were found disproportionately often in the officers' corps, they owned banks and flourishing factories.

From Privilege to Discrimination (1871-1917)

Abolition of the special status

The abolition of serfdom in 1861 by Alexander II also meant that the Russian peasant class was formally aligned with that of the Germans. In the absence of land reform, however, the released Russian peasants did not get the land on which they had previously worked. Many therefore worked as day laborers for German farmers. This not infrequently led to envy among the Russian peasant population.

The "Equalization Act" from 1871 ensured that the special status of the colonists should gradually be abolished. The self-governing institutions were dissolved, Russian became the official and school language, and military service became compulsory in 1874. This development can now be seen on the one hand as promoting the right to have a say and overall integration, on the other hand as an attempt to patronize and contribute to the assimilation of the Russian-Germans (" Russification "). In times of emerging industrialization , many Germans from Russia saw this forced breakout of isolation as an opportunity, but at the same time they were worried about the burgeoning Pan-Slavism and the hostility towards Germans in the country. Characteristically, the Equalization Act fell on the founding year (1871) of the German Empire , which was now in the immediate vicinity after the third partition of Poland (1795).

These Russification measures in the period from around 1870 to the beginning of the 20th century led to around 300,000 Russian Germans emigrating to North and South America by 1912, which, however, did not have a lasting effect on population growth in this group, as the number of Russian Germans due to a high birth rate by 1914 it had grown to 2.4 million.

Anti-German mood

Towards the end of the 19th century , 270,000 Black Sea Germans lived in three times as many villages as the more than 400,000 Volga Germans . Daughter colonies had arisen around the main settlement areas, but also far away in Siberia and Kazakhstan . The proportion of Germans in Russia grew even further due to immigration from the former Polish border area to Volhynia . This development, referred to as “Germanization” ( 2 ) in nationalist Russian circles , and the envy of the average wealthier Russian Germans in the cities and southern Russia intensified the anti-German mood in the country.

The “enemy within” in the First World War

When the First World War broke out, the Russian Germans - from whose ranks 300,000 soldiers fought in the Russian army - were fought as "potential traitors" and "internal enemy" ( 2 ).

In 1914, the last tsar, Nicholas II (1894–1917), banned the use of the German language in public, among other things. In 1915 there was a pogrom against Germans in Moscow . In the same year, German newspapers were banned in Russia, German-language books were no longer allowed to be printed and laws were issued with the aim of expropriating and expelling Germans at the national borders, later in 1917 throughout the country. The February Revolution of 1917 prevented worse things from happening, even if by that time 200,000 colonists from Volhynia had been economically ruined and driven out or deported to Siberia ( 2 ).

The interwar period

Streckerau (today: Nowokamenka ) on the Volga, 1920

Russian-German refugees around 1920 in Schneidemühl , farming couple from the Volga region

Russian-German refugees around 1920 in Schneidemühl , grandfather and grandchildren

Hunger years 1921/1922

In 1917 the October Revolution came , with which the tsarist empire became the Soviet Union . After the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers , Soviet Russia withdrew from the war. A civil war that lasted for years followed , in which the Red Army of the Bolsheviks fought against a heterogeneous group of conservatives, democrats, moderate socialists, nationalists and the White Army , while at the same time new states (including Poland , the Baltic states) settled on the territory of the proclaimed the old tsarist empire. Many German settlers thus lived outside the sphere of influence of the Soviets. But not the farmers on the Volga and the Black Sea Germans, who now had to make acquaintance with war communism . They had to pay compulsory levies that even included the seeds. Anyone who resisted this was vilified as a kulak and a victim of deculakization .

Years of drought (1921–1923) exacerbated this situation and there was a famine . Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921 could no longer prevent 3 to 5 million people from starving to death despite foreign donations, 120,000 of them from Russia alone (48,000 in the Volga region).

New frontiers

Soon after the end of the civil war (1920), the Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, among others, were founded as new Soviet republics . The term “Russian German” was retained in general German usage, even if the settlement area was often no longer in the Russian Soviet Republic . There, however, areas with a large ethnic minority were often given autonomous status, at least nominally . In 1924, an Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic of the Volga Germans ( ASSRdWD ) was also formed on the Volga . In an area the size of Belgium today , German (along with Russian and Ukrainian) has now become the official and language of instruction on an equal footing.

Oppression under Stalin

Famine in 1932/33

At the end of 1929, Stalin began using terror to enforce the forcible collectivization of agriculture . This led to another, even more devastating famine in 1932/1933 than in 1920/21. The information provided by the victims ranges from 3 to almost 11 million people (see also Holodomor ). Among them were about 350,000 Russian Germans.

Before World War II

Latest with the seizure of power of the Nazis in Germany, the Russian Germans were again regarded as "internal enemy" and secretly recorded in lists (1934). Repressions and arrests of alleged "spies" or "Soviet enemies" increased. In the Ukraine alone, 122,237 Germans were sentenced to death in 1937/38 and 72,783 to prison terms of mostly 10 to 25 years. The situation eased only temporarily after the conclusion of the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939.

Assault on the Soviet Union

The German invasion of the Soviet Union began in June 1941 . With the rapid advance of the Wehrmacht , around 20% of Russian Germans found themselves under Nazi rule. Tens of thousands of soldiers of German descent were suspended from service in the Red Army and transferred to the labor army's penal battalions .

Nazi resettlements

The National Socialists tried to use the relatively smaller part of the Russian Germans on the German side of the front as "ethnic German" instruments of National Socialist racial madness . Some prisoners joined the SS, such as the then twenty-year-old Samuel Kunz , who joined the SS unit "Foreign Guard Guards" together with the convicted war criminal Iwan Demjanjuk and, according to the Bonn Public Prosecutor's office, for aiding and abetting the murder of 430,000 people in the Belzec extermination camp , guilty of hand-handed murder of eight people and the murder of two people.

When the German settlement areas threatened to be reconquered by the Soviet army, the SS agencies began to relocate the population of German origin as administrative resettlers in seven actions in "ethnic German areas":

• The first resettlement operation in early 1942 affected around 3,800 Germans from the Leningrad and Ingermanland areas . They were settled near Lublin in Poland or came to work in what was then the German Empire .
• At the beginning of 1943, the repatriation of around 10,500 Germans from the area of ​​the so-called Central Army Group and from Belarus began . These ethnic Germans were resettled in the Warthegau (in occupied Poland) and what was then the German Empire.
• The third action affected around 11,800 Germans from the North Caucasus , the Kalmyk steppe and eastern Ukraine . These were people who had been spared from being deported to Siberia. They were relocated in February 1943.
• The so-called Russia Action captured around 72,000 Germans from the cities of Cherson , Nikolayev , Nikopol , Kiev , Charkow , Krivoy Rog , Melitopol , Mariupol , Dnjepropetrovsk , Kirovograd , Zaporozhye and the remaining 960 Crimean Germans . These resettlers also came to the Warthegau. The transport took place from September 1943 to March 1944 under bad weather conditions.
• The so-called Black Sea Action affected around 73,000 Black Sea Germans and lasted from August 1943 to May 1944. These people were also taken to the Warthegau.
• The sixth trek was in the Zhitomir area . 44,600 "East Volhynians " came first to Białystok and then to the Warthegau.
• The largest and last resettlement campaign was aimed at the approximately 135,000 Transnistrian Germans who were also resettled in the Warthegau. This action began in February 1944 and ended in early July.

A total of around 330,000 Germans who lived in the Ukraine and the Black Sea region, as well as small groups from the area around Leningrad and Belarus, were victims of the Nazi resettlement.

With the German defeat, about 100,000 of these new settlers came back into the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union or were handed over to the Soviet military authorities by the Western Allies (British and US-Americans) as a displaced person and, if they met one of the five criteria of the Yalta Conference , they were forcibly repatriated regardless of their individual wishes .

Deportations

After the German attack on June 22, 1941 dragged the Soviet Union into World War II, the Kremlin began ethnically motivated deportations. While the criteria for the deportations after the occupation of Eastern Poland in 1939 and the annexation of the Baltic states in 1940/41 still followed a mixture of socio-political and ethnic criteria, now it was about the deportation of entire peoples. Immediately after the German attack, the forced resettlement of almost all Germans living in the Soviet Union began. According to the decree of the Supreme Soviet of August 28, 1941, they were deported from the European parts of the Soviet Union to the east - mainly Siberia, Kazakhstan and the Urals - within a few weeks. With the resettlement, the Soviet Union wanted to prevent far-reaching collaboration between the Russian Germans and Nazi Germany.

The decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 28, 1941 "On the resettlement of Germans living in the Volga Rayons" read:

“Correspondingly credible news that the military authorities have received include thousands and tens of thousands of divers and spies among the German population living in the Volga Rayons, who, following a signal from Germany, are supposed to carry out blasting attacks in the Rayons populated by the Volga Germans.

None of the Germans residing in the Volga Rayons reported the presence of such a large number of divers and spies among the Volga Germans to the Soviet authorities, and consequently the German population of the Volga Rayons hides enemies of the Soviet people and the Soviet power in their midst.

In the event of acts of diversification, which are to be carried out by German divers and spies on instructions from Germany in the Republic of the Volga Germans or in the adjacent rayons, and in the event that there will be bloodshed, the Soviet government will be forced in accordance with the laws in force during the war be to take punitive action.

However, in order to avoid undesirable events of this kind and to prevent serious bloodshed, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR has found it necessary to relocate the entire German population residing in the Volga Rayons to other Rayons, in such a way that that land should be allocated to those who are to be resettled and that state support should be provided for the establishment in the new rayons.

The areas rich in arable land in the Novosibirsk and Omsk regions, the Altaj region, Kazakhstan and other neighboring areas have been allocated for settlement.

In connection with this, the State Defense Committee has been instructed to proceed immediately with the resettlement of all Volga Germans and the allocation of land and usable land to the Volga Germans to be resettled in the new rayons.

The Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR
signed M. Kalinin

The Secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR
signed A. Gorkin

Moscow, Kremlin,
August 28, 1941 "

By Christmas 1941, the Soviet security apparatus had registered 894,600 deported Germans, and by June 1942 1,209,430. Measured against the numbers of the 1939 census, about 82 percent of the Soviet citizens of German origin were deported.

Families were torn apart, the people were transported in cattle wagons and "dumped" somewhere in the steppes of Kazakhstan , where they dug huts in the ground and looked with horror at the coming winter. Still others were assigned to kolkhozes and had to look for ways to survive that were not actually granted to the “ fascists ”. At the same time, their civil rights were revoked and all of their belongings were confiscated, except for a small amount of hand luggage. Most of them were between the ages of 14 and 60 and had to work in inhumane conditions in labor camps. Several hundred thousand - the number that has not been determined fluctuates around 700,000 - died during this time, mainly from poor working, living or medical conditions.

Death and exile

The Germans were placed under the special administration (Kommandantur) and made practically unlawful work slaves, who were then interned in the so-called Trud Army (from труд , “work”) together with German prisoners of war , including civilians , in the autumn of 1941 . Under military arbitrariness, even young people were forced to do hard physical labor with inadequate nutrition and in extreme cold.

After Stalinism

A large part of the Russian Germans did not survive the multiple state interventions in the formerly independent village life. Above all, Stalinism destroyed both human life and the villages and with it the independent culture of the Germans in Russia. The children of the Russian Germans only had access to Russian-language lessons, if at all. Speaking German publicly remained dangerous for a long time and increased the risk of being attacked as an alleged “fascist”. On November 26, 1948, the Supreme Soviet announced that the ban would apply “forever” ( 1 ).

In Siberia and Kazakhstan, the Russian Germans were largely separated from the other Soviet citizens in special settlements. These were regularly subject to a so-called command office with strict reporting obligations, exit restrictions and discrimination. For a long time, camp-like conditions prevailed. A decree to repeal the command offices was passed on September 13, 1955 and implemented from January 1956. From this time on, the Germans were again allowed to look for a place of residence of their choice, but not in their previous settlement areas. The German settlements in Siberia and Kazakhstan continued to exist as villages with a German majority population. Over time, Russians and other Soviet citizens also moved there.

On August 29, 1964, the Germans from Russia were rehabilitated by a decree of the Supreme Soviet that was not published at the time. In the 1960s, Russian Germans began to leave for Germany. Above all, they moved to the Federal Republic. But some families also found a new home in the GDR. It was not until the 1980s, and especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that the flow of repatriates to Germany increased sharply.

Censuses in Russia (1939-2010)

In 1939, before the resettlement, around 1.4 million Germans lived in the Soviet Union. About 860,000 Russian Germans lived in Russia, including 370,000 Volga Germans in the ASSR of the Volga Germans . After the resettlement, the Volga German Republic was dissolved. About 390,000 were counted as Ukrainian Germans . Other larger groups lived in the Caucasus and the Crimea.

In 1959 there were around 820,000 Russian Germans living in Russia. In addition, several hundred thousand Russian Germans lived in Kazakhstan after the resettlement. In 1959, the Altai Region, Omsk Region, and Novosibirsk Region had the highest proportion of Russian Germans in the population. As recently as 2010, Germans from Russia made up the largest minority in the Altai region and in the Novosibirsk region.

Population of Germans from Russia from 1939 to 1989:

1939: 862 504

1959: 820 016

1970: 761,888

1979: 790 762

1989: 842 295

Population according to administrative units in 1939:

ASSR of the Volga Germans: 366 685

Omsk region: 59 832

ASSR Crimea: 51 299

Ordzhonikidze region: 45 689

Saratov region: 42 970

Krasnodar Territory: 34 287

Altai region: 33 203

Rostov region: 32 968

Stalingrad area: 23 752

Novosibirsk Region: -

Krasnoyarsk Territory: -

Kemerevo Region: Administrative unit did not yet exist

Sverdlovsk region: -

Chelyabinsk region: 6 019

Area: Perm: -

Orenburg area: 18 594

Tomsk region: administrative unit did not yet exist

Population by administrative units 1959:

ASSR of the Volga Germans: dissolved

Omsk region: 105 728

ASSR Crimea: transferred to Ukraine in 1954

Ordzhonikidze region: disbanded

Saratov region: 3,379

Krasnodar Territory: -

Altai region: 143 074

Rostov region: -

Stalingrad region: 7 473

Novosibirsk Region: 78 769

Krasnoyarsk Territory: 66 733

Kemerevo region: 65 041

Sverdlovsk region: 53 137

Chelyabinsk region: 48 675

Territory: Permian: 38 928

Orenburg area: 34 639

Tomsk region: 21 152

Population figures by administrative unit 2010:

Altai region: 50 701

Novosibirsk Region: 30 924

Far-reaching consequences of the war

In 1950, 70,000 Germans from Russia (out of a total of 12.2 million German displaced persons) managed to take permanent residence in the Federal Republic of Germany; 5,000 Germans from Russia (out of a total of 4.1 million German expellees) lived in the GDR at the time.

Many ethnic German repatriates who emigrated to Germany decades later report of the consequences of the war that can still be felt today. You had to deal with prejudices of the Russian population in Russia, but also have to contend with prejudices of the German population in Germany. While the Russian Germans in their regions of origin were and in some cases still are accused of being of German origin , Germans from Russia in Germany are often classified as foreigners if they speak German with an accent or, if they speak Russian among themselves, as Russians . Nevertheless, the group of Germans from Russia compared to other groups with an immigrant background good total into German society integrated .

See also

• Museum for Russian-German Cultural History
• Russian culture in Germany

literature

• Federal Center for Political Education (Ed.): Aussiedler . (= Information on political education, ISSN  0046-9408 ; Issue 267). August 2000 ( online edition )
• Reinhard Aulich: Not a trace of romance. The cross-generational fate of the Russian Germans. To a study by Hugo Eckert. In: Suevica: Contributions to Swabian literary and intellectual history. (= Stuttgart theses on German studies. No. 423). Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-88099-428-5 , pp. 467-473.
• Ida Bender : Young people are beautiful ... in happy times . Biographical novel. Geest 2010, ISBN 978-3-86685-195-5 .
• Nina Berend: German dialects in the Soviet Union. History of research and bibliography . Elwert, Marburg 1991, ISBN 3-7708-0955-6 .
• Nina Berend: Russian-German dialect book. The origin, emergence and diversity of a formerly flourishing language landscape far outside the closed German language area . Cornelius Projects Verlag, Halle (Saale) 2011, ISBN 978-3-86237-457-1 .
• Falk Blask, Belinda Bindig, Franck Gelhausen (eds.): I am packing my suitcase. An ethnological search for traces of people who have emigrated from the East-West and those who have resettled later . Ringbuch Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-941561-01-4 .
• Alina Bronsky: Shards Park. Kiepenheuer & Witsch Verlag, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-04150-7 .
• György Dalos : History of the Russian Germans. From Catherine the Great to the present. Trans. V. Elsbeth Zylla. CH Beck, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-67017-6 .
• Hans-Christian Diedrich: Settlers, Sectarians and Stundists. The emergence of the Russian free church. 1st edition. Possibly Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 1985. (2nd edition. Hänssler Verlag, Neuhausen 1997, ISBN 3-7751-2781-X )
• Victor Dönninghaus: The Germans in Moscow Society. Symbiosis and Conflicts (1494–1941). R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-486-56638-5 .
• Alfred Eisfeld, Detlef Brandes, Wilhelm Kahle: The Russian Germans . 2., updated Edition, 1999, ISBN 3-7844-2382-5 .
• Alfred Eisfeld: (Late) emigrants in Germany. In: APuZ. 63 (2013), pp. 13-14, pp. 51-57.
• Walter Graßmann: History of the Evangelical Lutheran Russian Germans in the Soviet Union, the CIS and in Germany in the second half of the 20th century. Community, Church, Language and Tradition . Dissertation. University of Munich, 2004. (full text)
• Walter Graßmann: Lutherans. In: Lothar Weiß: Russian-German Migration and Protestant Churches. (= Bensheimer Hefte. 115). 2013, pp. 74–94.
• Walter Graßmann: German, it can't be more German. Resettlers and late repatriates from Russia. In: immigration. Migration to Germany. (= Praxis Geschichte. 4-2015), pp. 38–41.
• Viktor Herdt, Alfred Eisfeld (ed.): Deportation, special settlement, labor army. Document collection. Publishing house Wiss. und Politik, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-8046-8831-4 .
• 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 .
• Viktor Krieger, Hans Kampen, Nina Paulsen: Germans from Russia yesterday and today. People on the way. 7th edition. Stuttgart 2006. (full text)
• Viktor Krieger: Patriots or Traitors? Political criminal trials against Germans from Russia 1942–1946. In: Karl Eimermacher, Astrid Volpert (Ed.) Seductions of violence. Russians and Germans in the First and Second World Wars. (= West-East Reflections - New Series. Volume 1). Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-7705-4089-1 , pp. 1113-1160.
• Jannis Panagiotidis: Post-Soviet Migration in Germany. An introduction . With a foreword by Sergey Lagodinsky, Beltz 2020, ISBN 978-3-7799-3913-9 .
• Gerd Stricker (Ed.): German history in Eastern Europe - Russia. Siedler Verlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-88680-468-2 .
• Rainer Strobl, Wolfgang Kühnel: Belonging and marginalized. Analyzes of integration opportunities for young emigrants . Juventa Verlag, Weinheim / Munich 2000, ISBN 3-7799-1492-1 .

Web links

• History of the Russian Germans from the educational association for folklore in Germany "Die Linde"
• Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Russland eV
• SW-Radio, a radio station for Russian Germans and more

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Empress Catherine II's manifesto dated July 22, 1763
2. ↑ State Commissioner Ziegler-Raschdorf praises the initiative of the Landsmannschaft der Volga Germans (accessed July 26, 2013)
3. ↑ quoted from Stricker 1997.
4. ↑ see information on political education, issue 267 (see literature)
5. ↑ Administrative resettlers were approx. 228,000 ethnic Germans who, according to an order from the military and civil administration of the Third Reich in the occupied territories of the USSR (Reichskommissariat Ukraine, Romanian Transnistria), resettled in the Warthegau or the Old Reich in the years 1942–1944 without an intergovernmental contract became. Almost all of them had been granted German citizenship by the end of the war.
6. ↑ The Ukrainian Germans during the Second World War
7. ↑ The Trek of the Three Hundred and Fifty Thousands. In: Marburger Zeitung. July 24, 1944, p. 2.
8. ↑ Waldemar Schwindt, Viktor Schäfer, Eduard Stephan: The Seventh Trek; Homeland book of Germans from Russia. Landsmannschaft der Germans from Russia, Stuttgart 2004, p. 8.
9. ↑ Michael Schwartz : Ethnic “cleansing” as a consequence of the war. In: Rolf-Dieter Müller (ed. On behalf of MGFA ): The German Reich and the Second World War . Volume 10/2: The collapse of the German Reich in 1945 and the consequences of the Second World War - Teilbd. 2: The dissolution of the Wehrmacht and the effects of the war. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-421-04338-2 , p. 572.
10. ↑ Treated like a third rate pack. In: Der Spiegel. 32/1983.
11. ↑ Michael Schwartz: Ethnic “cleansing” as a consequence of the war. In: Rolf-Dieter Müller (ed. On behalf of MGFA): The German Reich and the Second World War. Volume 10/2: The collapse of the German Reich in 1945 and the consequences of the Second World War. Volume 2: The dissolution of the Wehrmacht and the effects of the war. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-421-04338-2 , p. 573.
12. ↑ Michael Schwartz: Ethnic “cleansing” as a consequence of the war. Causes and course of the expulsion of the German civilian population from East Germany and Eastern Europe from 1941 to 1950. In: The German Reich and the Second World War. Volume 10/2: The collapse of the German Empire in 1945. Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-421-04338-2 , pp. 572f.
13. ^ Censuses in Russia (1939 to 2010) , in Ria Novosti, 2011.
14. ↑ Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Russia: Timeline from the emigration to Russia to the founding of the Landsmannschaft ( memento of the original from August 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.