The 2003 Kalendar includes an impressive map, "1803-2003: 200 Jahre Gruendung Deutscher Kolonien am Schwarzen Meer'.
The Kalendar features color photographs and historical biographies of these important persons to the Germans from Russia history and culture: 1) Richelieu, a Duke from Odessa, born in Paris, France; 2) Heinrich Johann, Friedrich Ostermann, Stateman and Reformer, born in Bochum, Germany; 3) Peter Koeppen, scholar from the Crimea; 4) Georg Leopold Koenig, born in St. Petersburg; 5) Friedrich Gross, painter from the Black Sea born in Sudak, Crimea; 6) Julius Heuss, the chocolate king, born in Waldorf, Germany; 7) Prof. Karl Lindemann, an advocate and writer; 8) Dr. Jakob Augst, a dentist in Odessa, born in Bessarabia; 9) Friedrich Falz-Fein, founder of nature parks, born in Askania-Nowa; 10) Bishop Alexander Frison, the last German-Russian Catholic Bishop, born in Baden, Kutschurgan District, Odessa; 11) Heinrich Neuhaus, teacher of piano, born in Jelisawetgrad; and 12) Victor Klein, writer, born Warenburg, Volga Region. The cover of the calendar features color portrait images of Deutsche Kaier Franz II and Russischer Zar Alexander I.
For further information, consult the website of the Historischer Forschungsverein der Deutschen aus Russland, see the website: https://www.hfdr.de. The website is in the German language only.
Heimat is History and History is Our Order!
About the Origins of This Calendar for 2003
The Ordeal of Selection!
You are reading the new edition of the Wall/Picture Calendar 2003, which is dedicated to the 200th anniversary of German settlements in the Black Sea area, and which is intended to remind us all of the courage, daring, and accomplishments of our ancestors.
We are reminded of their courage because they managed, though with a heavy heart, to leave their ancestral home and to set out to emigrate toward the unknown East. We are reminded of their daring because they traveled thousands of miles across Europe, under precariously adventurous circumstances, via horse and wagon, many only with a simple pull cart, some downriver on the Ulmer Schachtel. Most certainly they had to exert immense physical effort and they needed all of their human strength to overcome various obstacles during their travels. It is their deeds that we wish to honor with this edition, and to provide a reminder of a great wave of migration that took place at the onset of the 19th century. Without it, there would be no Spaetaussielder, and there would be no Germans from Russia today.
It is said that the paths of migration are unfathomable. This is particularly true for the meandering paths taken by our ancestors, who, under dire circumstances accompanied by war, destruction and famines across Middle Europe, migrated in a southeasterly direction. At the time, Germans did indeed wander toward all points of the compass – to North America, South Africa, Spain, and to the Black Sea, where they had been promised land, a great deal of land. The very basis of all material existence in the 18th and 19th centuries was the soil, and rapid population growth made it a scarce commodity. To be able to feed their children, often four to five in a family, our ancestors left for foreign soil, where they were promised better living conditions. As one calls to mind the events of Europe in those times, the following picture emerges:
As Alexander I Pavlovich was ascending the Tsarist throne, Russia was already involved in the Napoleonic wars, and the country was forced to exert strong efforts toward economic development of the region near the Black Sea. Via his ukase of 06.24.1803 he promised German farmers land ownership of up to 65 desyatin per family, freedom from taxation for ten years, and exemption from military conscription. With these promises in hand, he had his Consul Bethmann (cf. the Kalender 2000) provide travel papers for German farmers.
Even though the requisites for immigration obligated the good farmers to bring along not only their families, but also a sum of 300 gulden, such a great mass of people undertook the trek to Russia that they experienced great settlement difficulties early on. The first 29 families arrived by land on August 24, 1803 in Dubossary on the Dnyestr and settled next to the small river Baraboy at Großliebental near Odessa. On the second page of this calendar we pay tribute to this event. The initial families were followed by 20,000 additional settlers, as the Russian government came to call them, and by 1820 they settled down in various areas near rivers: Baraboy (Großliebental), Beresan (Landau), Molochna (Melitopol), Kutchurgan (Selz), among others. Further settlements were begun in Crimea, in the Causasus, etc. Most initial settlements were started during the era of Richelieu (1803 – 1814), who was actively assisted and advised by the knowledgeable and expert Samuel Kontenius (1748 – 1830).
Following Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow (1812) and the Battle of Nations near Leipzig (1813), Austria, Prussia, and Alexander I were celebrated as the “Liberators of Europe.” Married to the Princess Marie Luise of Baden (Yelislava Alexeyevna), Alexander I was well-disposed toward the inhabitants of Southwest Germany, and during his march toward Paris and the trip back to the Vienna Congress (1814 – 1815), he personally participated in the recruitment of farmers. In this campaign he was heavily influenced by Baroness Krüdner (nee Viertinghoff, born 1764 in Riga, died 1824 in Karasubasar/Crimea), who strongly encouraged Alexander I, in Heilbronn and in Vienna, toward the “Holy Alliance” and toward resettling Schwabians for pietistic reasons. Subsequent to these meetings several thousand farmers undertook the adventurous trip on the “Ulmer Schachtl” from Ulm all the way to the Danube’s estuary, finally reaching the former military barracks designated for temporary residence, but ending up staying almost two years to await the end of the plague that had befallen Odessa, after which they were allowed to continue on to the Caucasus. At the same time, other colonists settled in Bessarabia, an event of which we are reminded by such names as Beresina, Leipzig, Tarutino, Paris, and others. The “Liberator of Europe,” as the Tsar was called at the time, together with Metternich (1814/1815) was forging the “Holy Alliance,” which was to form the foundation of a hundred years of peace in Europe. Alexander I and his politics achieved – by the sword – victory over Napoleon, and – by the plow – the settlement of “uprooted” farmers and the cultivation of the border regions of his country. Even so, the German colonists were merely a means toward his political ends, and they were expected to be the exemplars for proper farming and land ownership in South Russia. This settlement project would prove to be one of very few successful works of Alexander I, one that would outlast him for a hundred years.
--- Anton Bosch, Vorsitzender Chairman
Design: Linda Bosch, Munich, Germany
Printing: Hofmann, Regenstauf, Germany
Photographs and final editing: Reinhard Uhlmann, Schwabach, Germany
Translation from German to English of the 2003 Calendar prepared by the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, North Dakota State University Libraries, Fargo, ND, with private funding.
