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Subject: Re: [POSEN]  Research suggestions for Germans from Russia
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 12:36:32 -0500

This I found in a newspaper and it might be interesting for everyone looking for German names in the Volga area. I hope noone mindes,I am well aware that this is originally a Poznan-list.I have had this translated by a machine, so sorry if something is a bit strange translated:
Well two dozen of humans met. The atmosphere is solemn, one converses in the whispering clay/tone. In few minutes minister Harry Asikov, for which from that 100 kilometers removed Tiflis traveled, will begin with the celebration. An older lady enters the area and looks out for a seat opportunity. It must search not for a long time. "Hoi Klara. How gohts? Squat ago to me!", you call one the present ones too. Swabian tradition German song property, Streuselkuchen and Swabian dialect at the foot of the small Caucasus? In Bolnisi the Swabian culture has a long history. Irina Peder and the 78-jaehrige Klara Walker were born here, exactly the same as their already long deceased parents. They are descendants of those emigrants, it at the beginning 19. Century from the southwest of Germany to the southeast edge of Europe pulled. The miserable economic situation in the homeland and the outlook on its own piece country let hundreds of become impoverished farmers break open at that tim!
e toward the east. More than 100 years, after the Trecks had sat down after filter defiency guarantees and to the Volga in motion, the swabia country was seized again of a departure wave. These emigrants established themselves in the Georgian Caucasus. From this altogether eight Swabian Kolonistendoerfer developed: Alexanderdorf, Annenfeld, Elizabeth valley, Helenendorf, Marienfeld, new Tiflis, Peter village and evenly Katharinenfeld, the today's Bolnisi. In November 1818 a Treck with 135 families achieves the bald steppe landscape at the foot of the small Caucasus. The first winter, which the newcomers in tents and earth holes spend, dezimiert the colony considerably. 256 persons die at Auszehrung, cold weather and hunger. Also during the following years, in which the settlers develop the place, emergency and misery prevail. 27 August 1826 marks a tiefpunkt in the history of the recent place: A troop Tartaren falls on this day over Katharinenfeld ago. From 400 inhabitants 2!
50 survives. Only after it the life in the new homeland begins itself to normalize. The immigrants make the country arable and put on vineyards. The good drop of the Swabian evacuees does not only enjoy in the region of large popularity, he becomes estimated even in Moscow. Also culturally Katharinenfeld takes an upswing. The immigrants make the country arable and put on vineyards. The good drop of the Swabian evacuees does not only enjoy in the region of large popularity, he becomes estimated even in Moscow. Also culturally Katharinenfeld takes an upswing. Choirs, orchestras, chapels and a theatre ensemble are created. Beginning 20. Century penetrates those customer from a new kind of sport to Katharinenfeld. On it the football club Katharinenfeld is created briefly. 1935 and 1937 the association will reach even the final games of the circle crews in the USSR. The village Luxembourg in the Georgian neighbour municipalities the Germans are accepted. The First World War termi!
nates the peaceful coexistence. Emperor Wilhelm sends a battalion of the realm resistance for the protection of the emigrants. Without ever into combat to be entangled, the troop at the end of the war takes off again. 1921, four years after the October Revolution, engage the Bolsheviks in Katharinenfeld. Socialism reaches the place however only at the beginning of the 30's. Katharienenfeld becomes the memory of to 15. Jaenner 1919 of free corps soldiers murdered German Kommunistin rosa Luxembourg in Luxembourg renamed. The new name prepares the Swabia in the Caucasus of fewer problems than the obligation collectivization of their enterprises. Katharinenfeld is seized by the first departure wave. Some families dissolve their households and resettle again to Germany. But most of the Swabian emigrants do not want to leave their new homeland any longer. They arrange themselves with new conditions. Many of them should repent this decision. The terror of the Stalin time does not m!
ake also before Luxembourg stop. Until 1938 becomes 352 inhabitants arrested, kidnapped and murdered. The assault of Hitler on the Soviet Union in June 1941 means the end of the Swabian culture in the Caucasus. Nearly all inhabitants of Luxembourg are deportiert to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Only some dozen ethnic German inhabitant, that is married with native ones like Klara Walker, may remain. After the "cleaning" the place gets a new name in October 1941 - Bolnisi. The Soviets eliminate the German past. Roads are gradened renamed, the cemetery, the church of the place later into a cinema and into one sport-resound converted. Still today here the Ringerstaffel delivers its fights. Only after the end of the Soviet Union and the fall of the communist regime the memory revives to the German past again. 1994 are opened the "house of the German culture", in which readings, German courses and services are organized. Where once the German cemetery was, today a monument reminds of th!
e Kolonisten and their descendants. The time that Swabia in the Caucasus seems nevertheless run off. "most emigrated, only a few old person remained, and later anyway away" Klara Walker pull, say the Georgian children, who learn German today with us. Then it begins with a long Litanei of names of the neighbours, friends, acquaintance and used, who are returned home in the swabia country. Local change upper village at the Neckar: In the block of flats of the Evangelist community center lime tree yard Irene and Franz Oesterle expect the reporter to the interview. Since 1990 the two are in Germany. "had agreed as Helmut Kohl and Mikhail Gorbatschow, we immediately a departure request placed, and since that time are we here", tells Franz Oesterle. Bolnisi had left the two at this time already for a long time behind itself. "on 16 October 1941, the wine harvest had brought in not yet completely, had we of one day on the others away from Katharinenfeld", remembers the 80-year old.!
After meet-long journey by course and ship the Treck of the ethnic Germans finally concerned in Nowosibirsk. "there we lived in earth holes. Only it meant that we might in three months back home. After three years we gave, say hope up "Oesterle. Work inputs in the forests and coal pits, hunger and the fear, in a Siberian punishing camp to end coined/shaped the everyday life of the Deportierten. The year 1956 brings a small easement in the life to the Russian-German. They must announce themselves no longer daily to the Kommandatur. Irene Oesterle returns again after Katharinenfeld. 1981 travel it illegaly to the homeland, for the wedding of an old Russian friend. Their parents' house finds it half purged. "at that time I knew that the return to Germany is the only chance". But the Oesterles in the country of its Vorvaeter until today does not feel so correctly domestic. "in Kazakhstan we were the fascists. Here we are the Russians ", say Franz Oesterle.

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