Mennonite settlement of Old Samara

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The Mennonite settlement Alt-Samara (also Alexandertal ) is a former settlement of Prussian Mennonites in the Samara Governorate in Russia . It was founded in 1859 and existed as a German settlement until 1941.

history

The colony of Old Samara lay northeast of the intersection of the 54th parallel and the 68th longitude (east of the Ferro Meridian , corresponding to 50 ° 20 'east of Greenwich ) on the Kondurtscha River , a tributary of the Sok , which flows into the Volga , about 90 km east of the Volga and 130 km north of the governorate city of Samara .

The settlement was founded in 1859 by the settlement manager Claas Epp on the special privilege of Tsar Alexander II . The Mennonite part consisted of 11 villages or farmsteads, which were administratively combined to form the Alexandertaler Wolost in Ujesd Samara . From 1863, Lutheran settlers from the area around Łódź also settled a little further north in the area and founded villages that formed the Konstantinower Wolost (today: Bolschaja Konstantinowka) in Ujesd Samara.

Old Samara was a collective name for the entire colony, including the Lutheran part. The Mennonite part was called the Alexandertal colony and the Lutheran part was called Konstantinow. In 1941 the entire German population of the Alt-Samara settlement was deported to Kazakhstan . This ended the history of these places as a German settlement. Today some villages have been completely destroyed, the others are mostly Tatars , Russians , Chuvashes and members of other ethnic groups. This article deals with the Mennonite part of the colony.

Establishment of the colony

After the establishment of the Mennonite colony Chortitza (1789) and the Molotschna colony (1804), a considerable part of the Mennonites immigrated to Russia from West Prussia . Tsar Nicholas I , however, prohibited this immigration by law in 1835. However, the political developments in the German states, especially the revolution of 1848/49 , had disturbed many Prussian Mennonites and moved them to search for new settlement possibilities. For example, the Fürstenwerdersche Dorfschulze Claas Epp (1803-1881) obtained a special privilege from Tsar Nicholas I in 1853 for establishing the Mennonite settlement Am Trakt and in 1859 from Tsar Alexander II, who had recently come to the throne, a special privilege to found the colony of Alt-Samara. The first families arrived in September 1859 and founded the village of Alexandertal in honor of the tsar who had invited them here. Overall, the Mennonite part of the colony consisted of the following villages:

Village founding year Land ownership per family Population 1913 Today's name
Alexandertal 1859 65 dessjatines 55 families (255 people) Nadeschdino
New hope 1860 65 dessjatines 25 families (142 people) (to Nadeschdino)
Mariental (in honor of Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna ) 1863 65 dessjatines 26 families (137 people) Novaya Shizn
Grotsfeld (in honor of the governor of Samara (1853–1861) Konstantin Grot ) 1863 65 dessjatines 8 families (45 people) Jagodny
Muravyovka (in honor of the Minister for State Goods (1857–1861) Mikhail Muravyov ) 1863 65 dessjatines 16 families (59 people) -
Orloff 1867 32 dessjatines 17 families (73 people) Orlovka
Love valley 1870 32 dessjatines 11 families (41 people) (to Orlowka)
Schönau 1870 32 dessjatines 25 families (132 people) Krasnovka
Lindenau 1870 32 dessjatines ? ?
Marienau 1870 32 dessjatines ? ?
Rescue valley Gradually bought off by the Lutheran settlers around 1900 ? ? ?

The emigration of Prussian Mennonites to Old Samara continued until around 1878. Settlement manager was Claas Epp (1803-1881).

Church and School System

When the ordained preacher Dietrich Hamm (1814–1873) from Ladekopp (West Prussia) came to Alexandertal in the summer of 1862, the Mennonite congregation was officially established and Dietrich Hamm became the first elder. The church building was erected in 1866 and is still standing today and has been used as a village club since 1934. In 1887 a Mennonite Brethren Congregation was also founded in Old Samara .

Around 1900 the colony had primary schools (grades 1-4) in the villages of Alexandertal, Mariental, Grotsfelde, Murawjewka and Schönau and a ministerial school (grades 5-9) in Alexandertal. Most of the students were taught by Mennonite or Lutheran teachers in German. It was not until the Soviet era that Russian-speaking teachers began to come to the Mennonite schools. In 1934, Russian language schooling was enacted by law.

Development of the colony until 1917

Because of the remoteness from the sales areas, economic development was slow but steady until the turn of the century. In 1870 there were 6 motor mills, 2 brick factories and 4 blacksmiths in the colony.

In the 1890s, four farmers formed a dairy cooperative, which quickly promoted cattle breeding in the colony. The Tilsit cheese produced here soon became known in all parts of Russia and was not missing at any agricultural exhibition in the country.

Around 1900 a rapid economic boom began, favored by the established dairies, the improved cattle and horse breeding, as well as the introduction of new types of wheat and the connection through the new railway line. As a result, land prices tripled in 10 years and general prosperity spread.

In 1906 the trading house Harder, Wiebe und Co was founded, which sold agricultural machines in the colony and the wider area. As early as 1907, the trading company opened a branch in Koschki , a larger Selo north of the colony (today the Rajon administrative center ) not far from the railway line (Volga-Bugulma Railway) from Simbirsk (today Ulyanovsk) to Tschischmy, which was under construction at the time and completed in 1916 at Ufa .

In 1910, the Russian Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin visited the colony. In the same year 1910 an agricultural association was set up to try out new seeds and agricultural machines on its own test fields. This association ensured that the traditional three- field economy was replaced by a multi-field economy. Through his work, cattle breeding and horse breeding experienced a great boom.

As usual with the Mennonites, the colony of Old Samara had its own insurance system. The colony formed a branch of the Molotschna fire insurance company, but had its own "fire elder" (from 1895 to at least 1913 Heinrich Görz from Murawjewka). Within the colony there was a horse insurance against theft, a separate transport regulation against fire damage, in order to procure building material and to reimburse damaged feed and grain, as well as an own inheritance regulation.

The colony remained relatively small. In 1913, 182 families with a total of 884 people lived in the Mennonite Wolost Alexandertal (excluding the daughter settlements).

Establishment of subsidiary settlements

When the land in the colony became scarce for the growing sons, some residents of Old Samara bought land in the area and established daughter settlements there:

  • Alexandrowka (1897) - 750 Dessjatinen new territory, around 1914 around 50 inhabitants
  • Besentchuk (1897) - not far from Besentchuk , 40 miles from Alexandertal; 1500 Dessjatinen new territory, around 1914 around 100 residents
  • Bugulma (1910) - not far from Bugulma ; 1000 Dessjatinen new territory, around 1914 around 50 residents.

Old Samara in Soviet times

After the October Revolution of 1917, the rich peasants were expropriated, but they got some of their property back after the Russian civil war .

In 1924 the first electrical station in the entire area was set up in the village of Alexandertal.

From 1929 to 1930, private property in the entire settlement was collectivized and the richer farmers were sent to the Arkhangelsk region . The Mennonite villages were grouped together in collective farms. These kolkhozes became known for breeding pedigree horses and producing opium for medicinal purposes.

After the outbreak of war against Germany in 1941, the entire German population of the colony was deported to Kazakhstan in the Karaganda area between December 3rd and 5th, 1941 .

Old Samara today

The descendants of the inhabitants of Old Samara now live scattered in Germany, the USA, Canada and occasionally in Russia. In September 2002, the surviving residents of old Samara and their descendants held a memorial meeting in Höningen for their old colony.

On September 12, 2009, a commemoration ceremony for the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the settlement took place in Frankenthal (Palatinate) . On September 19, 2009, today's residents of the former German villages of Alt-Samaras also celebrated the 150th anniversary of the colony in today's Nadeschdino (formerly the villages of Alexandertal and Neuhoffnung). There were higher government representatives of the area and a delegation of descendants of the Samara Mennonites from Germany.

The still existing villages of the colony belong to the rural communities Nadeschdino (with the districts Jagodny and Novaya Schisn) and Orlowka (with the district Krasnovka), both in the Koschki district of Samara Oblast.

Sons and daughters of the colony

  • Claas Epp , 1803–1881, founder and settlement manager of the colony
  • Dietrich Hamm , 1804–1873, the first church elder in the colony
  • Bernhard Harder , 1878–1970, co-founder of the trading house Harder, Wiebe and Co , later head of the Metropolitan Mission for Hamburg and Altona
  • Johannes Harder , 1903–1987
  • Hermann Riesen , 1882–1960, representative of the AMLV from Alt-Samara

literature

  • NA Arnoldov [u. a.]: Iz Istorii Nemzev Koshkinskogo Rayona Samarskoi Oblasti (1858-1941). Samara 2009. ISBN 978-5-91568-032-5
  • Viktor Fast (Ed.): Temporary home. 150 years of praying and working in Old Samara (Alexandertal and Konstantinow) . Steinhagen: Samenkorn 2009. ISBN 978-3-936894-86-8 .
  • Bernhard Harder : Alexandertal. The history of the last German tribal settlement in Russia . Berlin: Kohnert n.d. [1955].
  • Bernhard Harder : The German settlements in the Kujbyschev (Samara) area , in: Heimatbuch der Ostumsiedler , Stuttgart 1955.
  • Christian Hege , Christian Neff (Ed.): Mennonite Lexicon . Weierhof 1913-1967.

Web links

Coordinates: 53 ° 54 '30.2 "  N , 50 ° 38' 18.6"  E