Kyrgyzstan Germans

The term Kyrgyzstan Germans is a collective term for people of German origin who lived in today's Kyrgyzstan or still live there today.

number

Most of the Kyrgyzstan Germans have emigrated to Germany or Russia since the mid-1970s and especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of Kyrgyzstan in 1991 , as a large number of their jobs were lost with the collapse of the collective farms and state-owned industrial enterprises. In 1989 there were around 110,000 Kyrgyz Germans living in Kyrgyzstan; today the remainder of around 20,000 is only a small minority of around 0.4% in the Central Asian country.

religion

The Kyrgyzstan Germans are mostly evangelical Christians-Baptists and Mennonites , partly also Lutherans , partly also Adventists and Catholics .

history

First settlements in the Talas Valley

The first German traces in Kyrgyzstan go back to around 1860, when Russia conquered the Central Asian khanates . At that time, a few Germans, mostly Lutherans from the Baltic States , settled down as specialists in Central Asia. In 1880 devout Russian mennonites from the Volga region and southern Ukraine got permission from St. Petersburg to emigrate to Turkestan . For the most part, they no longer wanted to stay in European Russia for religious reasons, as they were threatened with compulsory military service there . They undertook two years of wandering and then finally came to the "Holy Land", as they called it themselves. The governor of Turkestan in Tashkent gave them land in the Talas Valley for settlement in 1882 . They founded four small villages between the Talas tributaries Urmaral and Kumuschtak: "Köppental", "Nikolaipol", "Gnadental", and " Gnadenfeld ". When it was entered in the register of Russian settlements in Central Asia in 1893, the German names were not recognized, and three of the four villages were given Russian names: Köppental became "Romanowka", Gnadental became "Andreewka", and Gnadenfeld became "Wladimirowka". Only Nikolaipol kept its old name. Gnadenfeld / Wladimirowka consisted of seven farms at the time and was therefore given a second name by the Kyrgyz - “Djetykibit” (Kyrgyz for seven houses).

With the arrival of more settlers in the Talas valley, the village "Orlowka" was created in 1890, later the village "Nonnendorf". In 1909 Mennonites moved from Ak-Metschet near Khiva to the Talas Valley and founded the village of "Hohendorf" 6 km from Dimitrovka, which had 18 houses at that time; in Russian it was called "Chiwinka". A few years later, other immigrants founded "Johannesdorf" in the Talas valley. In the early 1920s, German settlers founded the village "Kalinowka - Kalininskoje". About 18 km from Aule-Ata there was another village established by Germans, "Bogoslowka", next to the Russian village Serafimowka.

In the Talas Valley, most Germans lived compactly together in village communities; therefore a German Wolostj (district) was created here towards the end of the 1920s . School lessons were also held in German until 1938.

Immigration and settlement phase

In 1920 there were already 4,000 Germans living in Kyrgyzstan, and in the 1930s there were even more because of the famine in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan (Kyrgyzstan was spared) and the deportation of large German farmers to the Volga. These were defamed, expropriated and forcibly resettled as kulaks as part of the forced collectivization under Stalin .

For the most part, the Germans residing in Kyrgyzstan were arable farmers . The Kyrgyzstan Germans suffered less from Stalinism than their relatives in the European part of the Soviet Union.

In 1925, land in the Talas Valley became scarce and many newcomers could only find work as landless day laborers. The government therefore released additional land in the Chui Valley for settlement. As a result, the village "Grünfeld" was created, a subsidiary colony of the four original villages in the Talas valley. A few years later this settlement was named "Jurjewka". In 1927 the government of the Soviet Republic of Kyrgyzstan allocated further land for settlement, and settlers from the Talas valley founded the village " Bergtal ", where landless people from Bogoslowka also found a new home. In 1931, Bergtal was renamed " Red Front ". Today Rot-Front / Bergtal is, besides the Mennonite settlement “ Solnzewka ” in Russia, the only predominantly German village in the countries of the CIS .

The German villages " Luxemburg " and "Friedenfeld" in the Tschüi -Ebene were also founded in the 1920s and 1930s. Most of the settlers came from Siberia and the Volga, mostly as refugees from the famine there.

Many Germans also lived in Russian villages, in Iwanowka, Vodnoje, Pokrowka, Talas, Tokmok , etc.

The third wave

The next big wave of immigration came from Siberia and Kazakhstan . Many Germans who had been deported to Kazakhstan by Stalin due to the dissolution of the Volga German Republic in 1941 moved to Kyrgyzstan after Stalin's death because the climate there was more bearable than in the Kazakh steppe. The special command for Germans was abolished in 1956. The Germans were not allowed to return to their original homeland, from which they had been resettled before and during the war years. Many of them therefore tried to move from the cold Siberia and Kazakhstan to a warmer area. In Kyrgyzstan there were no legal restrictions on entry and settlement at the time, so it was an obvious choice to relocate there. In 15 years, therefore, the number of Germans living in Kyrgyzstan doubled.

Mailuusuu

The settlement of Germans in the mining town of Mailuussuu in the south of the country has a different story. After the Second World War , from 1946 to 1948, many Germans were sent here from all over the Soviet Union. Many were also deported from occupied Germany as so-called “repatriates” to work in uranium mining in the area around Mailuusuu . According to a study from 2006, Mailuusuu is one of the most dangerous and contaminated places on earth.

Migration back after 1970

After the law was changed in 1986, when an application to leave the Soviet Union became possible, and especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, most Germans emigrated to the homeland of their ancestors. Applicants who could not get a permit to enter Germany went to Siberia, to the re-established national districts of Azovo near Omsk and Halbstadt in the Altai Republic or to the Kaliningrad region . However, the vast majority of the Kyrgyzstan Germans decided to move to Germany. In a short time, almost 100,000 Germans left Kyrgyzstan.

Personalities

Prominent Kyrgyzstan Germans - all born in Kyrgyzstan and emigrated to Germany - are the athlete Lilli Schwarzkopf , the cyclist Kristina Vogel , the former professional soccer player Vitus Nagorny and Aleksandra Nagel , participant in the sixth Germany's Next Topmodel relay (2011).

literature

Robert Friesen: In the footsteps of the ancestors. 1882 - 1992. The prehistory and 110 years of the Germans in the Talas Valley in Central Asia . 2nd Edition. R. Friesen, Minden 2001, ISBN 3-9805205-5-2 .