Happy New Year

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A Holiday Project: Essential Questions

The holidays are upon us, for those who will be spending time with family this season, consider asking them some not so run-of-the-mill questions. 

Professor of anthropology, Elizabeth Keating, wrote a book entitled Essential Questions: Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations. The Atlantic ran an article by her about it when the book was published. This is a gift link to read the article for free: “The Questions We Don’t Ask Our Families But Should.” 

In her book, Keating presents groups of questions that tap into memories and experiences that can reveal more than you ever thought to ask your family members...or yourself for that matter. These are not the birth-marriage-death, names-dates-places, work-life-faith kind of questions. As an anthropologist, Keating brings an interesting perspective to interviewing our elders about their lives. 

Each section starts with a broad question and has several follow up questions that explore the nooks and crannies of a life. The topics include questions about:

...background (is there a story about your name?)

...space (tell me about the house you grew up in)

...time (tell me about a typical summer day when you were a child)

...social interactions (tell me about a time that you were treated as insignificant)

...becoming (tell me about what the world looked like as you entered it as an adult)

...identity (what did people tease you about when you were a child or a teenager)

...body & adornment (tell me about the clothes you wore as a child)

...belief (how have your beliefs changed in your lifetime?)

...kinship & marriage (what do you wish you asked your parents or grandparents?)

...material culture (what objects from childhood do you still have and why?)

...fear (what has been your bravest act?)

...memory (what songs trigger memories for you?

...and my favorite, what do you wish people knew about you?

If you are not spending time with your elders this holiday, or you are the elder, or you just want to spend some time being introspective without the help of the ghosts of Christmas, Past, Present and Future, head to the library or purchase this book. Then grab a new notebook, a pencil, a cup of coffee and start answering these essential questions. 

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Last updated 14 December 2024

"De-rehabilitation" of Rehabilitated Soviet Repressions

Many of our German ancestors were among those who were victims of Soviet repression and who were “rehabilitated”—exonerated of their supposed crimes—as the Soviet Union fell and in the years following. Most of the crimes were related to being ethnically German. Some of these rehabilitations occurred after a sentence was served, or decades later, often posthumously.

There are collections of names in both in online memory books of the repressed and paper-published books. AHSGR has one for Kazakhstan specifically that is very good. But deportations of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union to labor camps and special settlements were all over the northern regions of the European part of RSFSR, east into the western part of Siberia, as well as the SSRs in Central Asia. These collections include the person’s name, father’s name, place and year of birth, arrest date, sentencing date, the sentence, where they were deported, and the rehabilitation date.

Because I’ve been working with the Black Sea Germans on these lists lately and mapping the locations, this just published article in The Atlantic caught my eye. Russian president Vladimir Putin has decided “de-rehabilitate” and reinstate the original charges. 

Seriously? 3.5 million defendants, mostly deceased, in a collapsed regime for the purpose of nostalgic glory of Stalin’s terror?

Wanting to be civil, I looked up a nicer way to say what I wanted to say: 

Unsatisfied with the softer alternatives, I will stick with my original thought: that was a dick move. 

In the end, does it even matter? No, probably not. It’s one man spinning out in his final years on Earth and creating busy work for those around him and to what end. What I don’t know how it might affect the descendants of the repressed who still live in Russia. There is no reason not to think that the descendants would be further punished for the crimes of the their ancestors. Ridiculous. Yes. Also “not very thoughtful,” a “poor choice,” “not very kind,” “not very fair,” and “could be handled differently.”

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Last updated 5 December 2024

Happy Thanksgiving

 

A year ago, I was included in an email thread where I learned that Thanksgiving was celebrated by some people in Alsace in honor of American friends and cousins, and also in honor of the American troops who liberated Alsace in November and December 1944. I was a bystander in the conversation, but I was touched by what I thought was a truly lovely sentiment. I thought about it several times this year. There is much to be grateful for in both the present and the past. 

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Last updated 12 March 2025

"Have you seen the comet?"

This is something I started in October when I was going out in the evenings to look at Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. It was billed as a “once in a humanity” event with the comet not coming around again for 80,000 years. Seemed like there was at least a modest amount of pressure to see it...you know...for humanity. It was one of several unfinished thoughts that I am taking the time to go back and finish. 

"Have you seen the comet?" appears first among the happenings reported in Eureka, SD and surrounding areas. Die Eureka Post, 27 January 1910, p. 5

14 October 2024

The last few evenings, I’ve been out looking at Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. I recalled seeing a reference to Halley’s Comet this past summer near an article about the 100th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Beresan colonies. Halley’s Comet was visible in May 1910.

I wondered...what did our ancestors think about the comet?

Around the turn of the last century, some German-language newspapers in areas where Germans from Russia settled in the U.S. ran letters to the editor written by Germans in both North America and South Russia. The correspondence was published in each issue and kept everyone in both the old and new countries up to date on births, deaths, marriages, crops, and other news of interest, including comets. A search of the digitized issues of the German-language newspapers that circulated in both North America and in South Russia turned up reports of not only Halley’s Comet but an earlier comet known as the Great January Comet of 1910, or the Daylight Comet.

Here are excerpts from a few letters.

• • •

Letter dated 20 January 1910, published in Der Staats-Anzeiger, 10 March 1910, p. 2

…A comet is also visible in the sky. Its appearance was announced to us from St. Petersburg. The comet, with its long fiery tail, looks quite frightening. Those who are easily excited therefore predict much misfortune and even death…. [This was the Great January Comet. —SSP]

 

Michel Gerhard — Elsass, Cherson, Russia

• • • 

Letter dated 30 January 1910, published in Deutscher Herold, 10 February 1910, p. 10

…For some time now we have been observing a comet here every evening on the western rim. Some people are superstitious and think it means the end of the world in a short time; but it will not be that bad. A large meteorite is said to have fallen in North Dakota, but we do not know whether it is true because we cannot believe everything that is written in newspapers (?). Hopefully everything will turn out well again because we still have use of the world, especially when there are good harvests. New officials have also been elected, and they want to have their share of the world first… [This was also the Great January Comet. —SSP]

 

J. Adam — Lucien, Oklahoma, USA

• • •

Letter dated 8 February 1910, published in Der Staats-Anzeiger, 24 March 1910, p. 2

…It almost looks like spring, but our farmers haven’t settled in yet. The seed grain has not been cleaned, the harnesses have not yet been mended, the plows have not yet been sharpened, and yet they are supposed to go to seed in a few days! But it’s still too early! Should Halley’s comet perhaps have a hand in this?Alas! If it already has such an influence on Mother Earth, despite its infinite distance, what will it do in April, when it is supposed to be closest to the Earth? But I think the old God is still alive, and with His help, we will probably overcome the comet….

Martin Stroh — Ponjatowka [Langenberg], Cherson, Russia

• • •

Letter dated 12 February 1910, published in Die Eurkea Post, 17 February 1910, p. 7

...Dear Editor, I would like to know more about the comet that was recently visible on the horizon. Is it Halley’s comet, which is supposed to shatter the Earth by May, or does it have something else to prove? It’s the first one I’ve ever seen. [The editor responded that the comet was not Halley’s Comet but one that had never been seen before so it was called the “1910 comet.” Halley’s Comet would be visible at the end of April and May. —SSP]

John J. Huber — Hosmer, South Dakota, USA

• • •

Letter dated 16 May 1910, published in Der Staats-Anzeiger, 26 May 1910, p. 2

The sowing has long since finished in this area, but unfortunately we are experiencing great drought, as the many winds and night frosts have dried out the soil thoroughly, making it difficult for Halley's comet to cause damage because Mother Earth has become very hard. The comet will therefore find a tough opponent when it hits the earth, which will certainly tear a huge hole in its body…I also read in No. 41 of the paper a correspondence written by J. Wall in Strassburg, South Russia, in which a young woman is reported to have spoiled 80 loaves of bread in a short time, as she did not know how to bake bread. This is of course very bad, but anything is possible in this world. I would like to say to Mr. Wall that, as we are in a comet year, perhaps even more strange things will happen…As I read in the same issue, wine is said to be the best in comet years...

Heinrich Scherr, son of Johannes — Allan, Saskatchewan, Canada

• • •

Letter dated 4 June 1910, published in Der Staats-Anzeiger, 16 June 1910, p. 10

….There is not much news from here. However, the comet does give us something to talk about. The comet came and went and Mother Earth is no better and no worse as a result. The Earth did not pass through the comet's tail at all, as the astronomers predicted, nor did anyone suffocate from the gas. The fear of the comet and the earth's demise produced very peculiar results, so that some people threw away their money with both hands, buying all kinds of useless things because they thought that they would be of no value to them later. But these people would be happy to have their hard-earned money back now!…

Bernhard Pflueger — Hub, North Dakota, USA

• • •

Letter dated 12 November 1910, published in Der Staats-Anzeiger, 8 December 1910, p. 3

....Our harvest and threshing time is now over, and we can be satisfied with the result. Unfortunately, the price of some crops is very low. Barley costs 9.40 Francs for 100 kilograms (1 kilogram equals 2 pounds. -Ed. Staats-Anzeiger.) Wheat from 14 to 20 Francs (depending on purity); flax was good and costs up to 42 Francs per 100 kilograms; rape 28 to 30 Francs and Welschkorn up to 12 Francs. Unfortunately, despite the comet year, the wine remained quite sour. The yield has decreased considerably compared to previous years. However, the gardens that were sprayed well with Kupvervitriol [copper sulfide solution] are an exception. Here, not only is the yield more satisfactory, but the quality of the wine is also better....

William Facius — Malcoci, Dobrudscha, Romania

13 October 2024, 6:45 p.m., Oro Valley, Arizona, USA

14 October 2024, 6:43 p.m., Oro Valley, Arizona, USA

16 October 2024, 6:41 p.m., Oro Valley, Arizona, USA

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Last updated 23 November 2024

Holodomor Remembrance Day

 The fourth Saturday of November is Holodomor Remembrance Day. 

— Holodomor Museum in Kyiv

— What do maps tell us about the holodomor?

— “‘A Gift to Posterity’: Four Men Who Risked the Wrath of Stalin to Photographed the Holodomor”

— “We'll Meet Again in Heaven” (documentary)

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Last updated 23 November 2024

A Visit to Karamyshevka, Kazakhstan

Mike Brown of Wyoming began looking for Germans in Kazakhstan in 2016 and accidentally discovered a village that was founded by his relatives.

Brown knew the name of his ancestors’ colony was Bauer in the Volga region. Its Russian name was Karamyshevka, named after the river Karamysh that ran by the colony. What he didn’t know was that there was another Karamyshevka far from the Volga that was established in 1906 after land reforms had opened the area in Western Siberia for resettlement. He knew that it was likely that people from the Volga Karamyshevka who established the Kazakhstan Karamyshevka, and that some of them were probably his relatives. He was right.

Watch the AHSGR Treffen Tuesday presentation below where Brown tells the story of his visit to Kazakhstan this year and his visit to the village. A local TV news station also did a story on his visit, too.

The map has been updated to include the links to the videos. 

Treffen Tuesday: A Quest for Relatives in Kazakhstan

Khbar News: An American Citizen Found the Cemetery of His Ancestors in Kazakhstan (English translation)

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Last updated 18 November 2024

A Contribution to AncestryDNA Communities

Note: Two months after this was posted, Ancestry renamed its “ethnicity estimate” to “ancestral regions” and “communities” to “ancestral journeys.” Both terms make a lot more sense to me. My guess is that there was much learned during their German DNA communities project from the different German groups with which they were working and the response after the update was released. Ancestry has a blog post about it if interested. 

Ancestry, the genealogy company, updated their German DNA communities last month. Now among the 266 communities are four Germans from Russia communities. If you have had your DNA tested with AncestryDNA, your communities may have been updated from a broad description to something more specific…maybe more specific than you ever thought you would see outside of our own Germans from Russia research communities.

How did they do that?

From the support article “AncestryDNA® Communities,”

People in a community are connected through DNA, most likely because they descend from a population of common ancestors. Once we identify a community, we look for patterns. These patterns help us learn about the original group that still connects people through DNA today.

First, we find out where the ancestors of people in a community lived. We do this by comparing birth locations in their trees, using only trees linked to DNA tests.

Then, we find common journeys and migration routes using birthdates and birthplaces. When a parent was born in a different place than their child was, we know the parent moved. Once we know where these people lived and when and where they moved to, we match these facts with the history that explains it. This should answer the question, “What story binds the members of this community together?”

Earlier this year, Ancestry reached out regarding a German migration project related to their DNA communities. They had identified several communities with sub-communities in the areas that were on my maps. Having seen my research, they asked if I was interested in helping name the communities and tell their stories from a very broad level. Who were they? How were they connected? What prompted their migrations? What were their lives like? What bound them together?

It sounded like fun. It also sounded like a good way to get the stories of Germans from Russia onto a major genealogy platform. Those who first learn they are descendants through DNA tests might get on the right research path sooner simply by knowing one of their communities was Volga or Black Sea German or German Anabaptist.

For now, I will spare you the details of the several weeks long geek out that I enjoyed analyzing the data. It was a lot of fun. If you are interested in sausage making, let me know. 

In short, I was assigned four communities. Within each, there were between 4 and 12 sub-communities of that larger community where the DNA indicated there were closer relations. The names given to the communities made little to no sense and were more placemarkers for the data scientists: Large Dot North; South and North Dots, Less East and Romania; Might Be More Concentrated. For each, there was a list of surnames along with two sets of maps: one plotted the surnames, and one plotted the migrations.

After going through the data provided, filtering out the noise of non-relevant DNA cousins going other places and doing other things, and setting aside some odd places that ended up getting mapped, the four groups assigned to me shook out as I suspected they would: by region and religion. The regions were Volga and Black Sea, and the religions were Catholic, Protestant, and Anabaptist (Mennonite and Hutterite).

The divisions of the Protestant Reformation were still held tightly in the German colonies of the Russian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries. Our ancestors moved in groups to an isolated territory far from other Germans. This isolation of the enclaves of Germans created ideal conditions to observe how an ethnic group with strong religious propensities would behave over several generations. They married and had children with members of their own ethnicity and religion over and over. This has always been a part of our narrative history and supported by our paper trails. DNA also seems to confirm it among those who tested with AncestryDNA.

I was concerned about suggesting community names with religion in them. I tried not to. All of the other example communities I saw gave some kind of geographical description. My old community name was very broad, “Germans from Austria-Hungary and the Don Steppe.” Because the data was broken down so finely into these subcommunites, there was no other way to differentiate and describe the larger group without using religion, especially in the Black Sea region. I knew that the names would resonate with those who knew their family history and would provide breadcrumbs for those who do not. The sub-community names identify the enclaves or the individual colonies that the surnames tracked to most in the earliest time periods. The colonies were originally settled by religious confession, and that was how the religion was identified to add to the community name. Make sense?

Answers to Questions You May Have

• I never saw your DNA results or your linked trees. Ancestry’s science team did that analysis. 

• The DNA communities and sub-communities are not new discoveries exactly but a refinement of the previous, larger communities. Communities may change again and become more refined as more people test their DNA and the sample size gets larger.

• Volhynia did not show up in my analysis. I looked for it, but it was not a part of my assignments.

• All of the Volga Catholics were in one sub-community that was discovered late. That may be why it is not as refined as the rest of the Volga sub-communities.

• Crimea showed up but did not have a strong signal in the data as a migration destination and did not appear as a sub-community. Even though I knew the story was there, I could not tell a story that was not represented in the data from Ancestry.

• Migration to and settlement in South Prussia before Russia was mostly absent. This could be because the time spent there was too short to generate enough births to trigger migration lines, and/or the linked trees did not include the intermediate migration step.

• Migration and settlement in Hungary (the Donauschwaben) before Russia was long enough to generate enough births to trigger migration lines, and enough people had that information in their linked trees.

• Later migrations to Dobrudscha, the Don, the Caucasus regions, and Western Siberia were faint but present. These were all just parts of original DNA communities and sub-communities moving around.

• For the mass migration to North America beginning in the 1875 time period, the data showed everybody leaving. We know that was not true, but that is what was in the linked trees and that was the story that I was to follow. I struggled with telling the story between 1925-1950 because of those left behind and whose stories did not get told.

• The place name mapping was not perfect. Ancestry did its best to map whatever places you had in your linked trees, but very few, if any, place name authorities are going to know about our ancestral colony names, much less what their names are today and how often they have changed during our ancestor’s time there. I am still in favor of using ancestral place names in trees. Our history is not the problem here. I spot checked many of the odd migration places thinking maybe there was a story I was unaware of. Some I understood what was going on (creative place name spellings mapping to incorrect places, choosing the wrong place from a dropdown menu, bad data replicated in trees, etc.), while others I had no idea. Some were so out of bounds that I disregarded them as a glitch. I hope to understand this better at some point and maybe even help fix it. But it still comes down to what you put in your trees. So, if the migration lines on your maps of the Russian Empire look a little strange, this is why. It does not reflect in any way on the validity of your DNA communities. 

My DNA Communities

Below are a few screenshots of my communities. I am the spawn of a Black Sea Lutheran father and a Catholic mother, so I was assigned both Protestant Black Sea Germans and Catholic Black Sea Germans. The communities assigned to me did not surprise me. My known Volga DNA connection (Hi, Hannah!) going back to mid-1700s Baden was too weak to show up. I was hoping for a surprise Mennonite connection, but no luck.

Go to the DNA tab and choose Discover Your Origins. You will see your Ethnicity Estimate. Scroll down on the panel on the right until you see DNA Communities. The map will change, and you will see your assigned communities. See the image at the top of this post.

My communities are to the left along with my sub-communities. The Catholic side includes sub-communities linking me to Bessarabia and the Kutschurgan, Beresan, and Liebental enclaves—essentially, the Catholic colonies in Bessarabia (Krasna) and the Odesa region. And I also have one sub-community that links specifically to the Kutschurgan colony of Mannheim. This tracks what I have seen in my DNA matches over the years. I tested in 2017, and nearly all of of my maternal DNA connections link back to the Biegler (Bichler) and Hoffart families of Mannheim, and specifically to common ancestors Karl Ludwig Biegler and Armelia Hoffart who came to America in 1894. Their descendants seem to be the most curious about their DNA. 

My Protestant Black Sea German community has no specific sub-community. My paper trail places my paternal ancestors in the Glückstal colonies, the trail also leads to the Beresan enclave in the early 1800s and the Liebental enclave in the late 1800s. Most of my DNA connections have specific sub-communities in the Glückstal colonies, including some that go into Bessarabia. For what it’s worth, I identify as a Glückstaler.

Click on the community or sub-community name to zoom in and get a timeline of the lives of the people who lived there. As you scroll down, the map and descriptions change. See my note above about the strange places where migrations appeared in the Russian Empire.

Above are my Catholic ancestors and cousins moving into the Dakotas. All of my direct lines arrived between 1886 and 1913. 

Above are my Lutheran ancestors and cousins leaving the Dakotas and moving west, growing in numbers up in Saskatchewan and Alberta and, of course, the migration to Lodi, California. You can zoom in close to see the areas of concentration. 

Under your DNA communities, there is a button labeled Compare my DNA. Here you can choose among your matches and compare your ethnicity estimates or your communities. Below I chose DNA communities to compare. The new communities made it much easier for me to figure out which side of the family my matches are on. 

Above I have compared some of my Catholic Black Sea German matches on my maternal side. For privacy, I have removed the names and replaced them with the number of centimorgans we share. I had to try pretty hard to find two that did not include Mannheim. Most are connected through the Kutschurgan colonies, but there is one from the Liebental enclave near Odesa. I think I might know how this match fits in to my tree. Seeing the colony Kleinliebental is my clue. 

Above are some of my Protestant Black Sea German matches on my paternal side. I have not looked at their trees, but I suspect both their parents were both descended from Protestant Black Sea Germans, whereas I come from a mixed marriage. Why, you may ask, are there two sub-communities listing Wittenberg, Alt-Posttal, and/or Kulm? The data scientists found evidence in the DNA that there was a difference between the two groups and made them sub-communities. 

Summing Up

This was a fun project. Like really fun. I am glad I had the opportunity to do it and tell our stories. If you have done an AncestryDNA test, check out your communities. If you had parents or grandparents or other older family members tested, it may be even more interesting. If they are still around, get them tested. I wish had. 

The next time I ask the question “How did you find out you were a descendant of Germans from Russia?” I hope someone says “I saw it on Ancestry!” 

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Last updated 12 March 2025

Research Communities

When I have a question about one of our ancestors, I look to our Germans from Russia research communities. I do this because I know that we all know our respective ancestral neighborhoods, our surnames, our records, our place names. I know that those that are maintaining websites care about what gets put onto them. They take the time to locate, extract, transcribe, and translate records to make it easier for people to build their trees with good data. I know that no one is going to try to tell me that a Glückstaler family member’s baptism in 1874 happened in “Novorossiisk, Black Sea Guberniya, Russian Empire” or in “Alaska, Vereinigte Staaten.”

This is old news to many but new to me since I do no search FamilySearch often. I use it mainly to go to specific films. At least a year and a half ago (I know, where have I been?), their “Russia, Lutheran Church Book Duplicates” index began to include event places in some incorrect places, namely Novorossiisk, Black Sea Guberniya, Russian Empire and Alaska, United States (not even Russian America). They are wrong.

The search result and the record do not even match up. The name of the colony where these baptisms occurred was just a few images prior to this record. It should be Kassel, Kherson province, Russian Empire. 

Novorossiisk, Black Sea Guberniya, Russian Empire is a city in the Caucasus region on the Black Sea. I kinda get where they might have been thinking. They (am assuming it was a human and not AI) saw “Novorossiysk” and thought New Russia. Okay, that was indeed a name for the southern part of Russia in the 19th century. And then they saw “Black Sea Guberniya” and thought, oh, that must the Black Sea region where all those Black Sea German Lutherans were. But it’s not. 

Alaska, Vereinigte Staaten or Alaska, United States. Yeah. There is so much wrong with this, I can’t even. Before you try to defend this, yes, there probably were Germans in Russian America and in the settlements in Alaska. However, I doubt there were Lutheran parishes in Alaska, and if there were, they would not have been a part of the St. Petersburg Consistory and been sending duplicate church books to St. Pete. Why would this even be an option in the dropdown menu?

No one looked at the actual records to transcribe and translate the origin of the records. Newbie genealogists under the impression that FamilySearch is an authority on the subject may just pick it up and use it as it. This is how bad data propagates in trees in FamilySearch and elsewhere. 

Please use Germans from Russia research communities. I’m not saying you shouldn’t use FamilySearch or Ancestry or MyHeritage or any of other big genealogy sites. You absolutely should. I, too, sometimes have complicated relationships with these sites. Forget about other people’s trees, in the end, these big genealogy companies offer the largest repositories of records at your fingertips, some of which you may not find anywhere else. But use them in conjunction with a GR research community that knows your ancestral neighborhood. And continue to fight the good fight about using our ancestral place names in your trees and not letting our history be erased. 

On my map, I have an “About” pin for each layer that often gives sites where you can find out more about the people who lived in the colonies and other settlements. Below is a list of some of the research communities that know their German ancestral neighborhoods in the Russian Empire, have translated records, and will help you figure out your family tree.

American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (AHSGR) https://ahsgr.org/

Black Sea German Research (BSGR) https://www.blackseagr.org/

Eastern European Genealogy Society (EEGS) https://eegsociety.org/

Germans from Russia Heritage Society (GRHS) https://www.grhs.org/

Glückstal Colonies Research Association (GCRA) https://www.glueckstal.net/

GRanDMA https://grandmaonline.org/

Mennonite Genealogy https://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/

Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe (SGGEE) https://sggee.org/

Volga Germans https://www.volgagermans.org/

Volga German Institute https://volgagermaninstitute.org/

Volga Records https://www.boydhouse.com/darryl/volgarecords.com/

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Last updated 12 March 2025

New Video: German Settlers of the Black Sea Region (Thickets)

In my inbox this morning was a link to this new video by Thickets (Huschi) titled “German Settlers in the Black Sea Region.” Many thanks to Dmytro Yesypenko, Research Assistant at the Kule Folklore Centre and PhD candidate at the University of Alberta, for making me and several of my colleagues aware of it.

The video is well done. Honest and raw about the historical narrative of those who lived in the Odesa area, what it was like, what’s left there now, who among those who occupy the old German houses even knows about the history.

The question of “founding” or “renaming” Odesa struck a bit of a chord with me. In my own research, I've found German colonies on old maps that were there under another name before they were “founded” per Karl Stumpp. Where did the original residents go before the Germans were moved in? Who were they? There are many historical narratives competing in Ukraine. The Russian narrative is just of them, albeit the most destructive one at the moment. Stumpp, the “father of Russian-German” research was, among other things, an German ethnographer with an agenda. His is another narrative to confront.

All that aside, it is always nice to see recent video of our ancestral colonies since visiting there is not an option. Those mentioned in the video include the following: Grossliebental, Kleinliebental, Alexanderhilf, Neuburg, Josefstal, Mariental, Peterstal, Freudental, Liebental, Lustdorf, Blumenfeld, Alt-Annental, Selz, Kandel. If you have visited the Odesa area, you will undoubtedly recognize some of the architecture seen in the video. And even if you haven't been there, you will recognize the churches. Notably, and I had never thought about this, the Catholic church in Selz was truly a cathedral. As the narrator says, “Now we are actually in Salz [Selz]. This is the village that today is called Lymanske. And here is the largest Catholic church, or the ruins of the largest Catholic church, in the entire South. This is not in Kherson, not in Mykolaiv, not in Odesa, or in any other large cities of southern Ukraine. Even though the Catholic community there was much larger,  the largest Catholic church in the entire south of Ukraine was built here.”

One story toward the end made me laugh and that was about how the Germans produced so much wine that they filled their wells with it to keep it cold and drank wine instead of water. I laughed because that was not the first time I had heard that story. 

The video is in Ukrainian, but you can turn on captioning and have the captions translated into English or German. Here is a short video on how to do that. You may also want to scroll down and click on “show transcript” and follow along that way, too. I have included a full transcript here for anyone wanting to read it.

This video project is one to watch. They’ve produced several others, too. Check out those on their YouTube channel.

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Last updated 4 June 2024

SLIG Fall Virtual: Slava Ukraini! Genealogical Research in Ukraine

I am pleased to be a part of the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy Fall Virtual class “Slava Ukraini! Genealogical Research in Ukraine” where I will be teaching a session on the German colonists who lived within the historical borders of modern-day Ukraine. 

A description of the class, a short video, and the full schedule is available. (archived link)

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Last updated 12 March 2025

Pending Toponym Changes in Ukraine

Ukraine’s Parliamentary Committee on Regional Development is in the process of evaluating and recommending renaming some of the country’s toponyms (place names—cities, villages, districts) to comply with its law “On condemnation and prohibition of propaganda of Russian imperial policy in Ukraine and decolonization of toponymy.”

To date this year, it has recommended 347 toponyms be renamed because they “contain symbols of the Russia imperial policy, or do not meet the standards of the state language.” Some of the current names of our German ancestral colonies will be renamed if all the recommendations are approved by Ukraine’s Parliament. 

This is not the first time Ukraine has renamed its cities, villages, and regions. Prior to this in 2016, Ukraine passed a law decommunizing toponyms. Two years later when comparing the current places names on the maps of this project with the official new names, there were several that were changed but not yet updated on Google Maps. It takes a while for place name authorities to catch up and for them to filter into online maps and genealogy software that uses current place names. 

I will update the maps of this project when parliamentary approval has been obtained and a final list of changes is available. Until then, I’m keeping tabs on it. If you’re interested, you can read the committee’s meeting notes here. Let your browser translate the page for you and then search for the word “renaming” on the page. Click on “All news” to see previous news posts. 

None of this should matter too much in your family tree. Ideally, you are recording the historical name of the place and country as it was at the time of your ancestors’ life events, be it imperial, interwar, Soviet, or modern. If you are recording current names or have written narratives of your family’s history using current names, you may have some updates or annotations to make.  

More on this to come as it becomes available. 

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Related Posts:

1. Map Update — De-Russification of Ukrainian Place Names (posted 11 January 2025)
2. Map Refresh: A Living Document (posted 6 January 2018)
3. Map Refresh: Place Name Changes in Ukraine (posted 26 January 2018)

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Last updated 12 March 2025

Remembering the German Settlements in Ukraine

 

Remembering the German settlements in Ukraine on this day, 24 February 2024. Between 1766 and 1942, Germans lived in over 3,000 places within the borders of Ukraine today, in both urban and rural settlements. Many were established by Germans after 1804. These places—whether they still exist or not, whether their names are the same or not—remain in the hearts of the descendants as one our ancestral homelands.

Slava Ukraini!

🇺🇦🌻

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