Volga German Project

Question

Russ Gunther is now the Project Coordinator.

Just check out the changes he has made to the Freespace page.  I feel he is going to be a Great asset to the project.

Comments

That looks great!

My family has DNA matches with some Volga German descendants, but our actual eastern German ancestors lived in Poland (Posen area). It would be interesting to figure out which relatives went further east.

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Awwe thank you kindly, but as any leader knows, its totally a team that is built that achieves lasting great success. Our Volga German family of cousins are amazingly talented and we're looking for them to make what contributions they can! I'm here to help lead, inspire, and get out of the way!

Volga German descendants, join our project when you see this, so you're on the team and learning all along together with us! Every family member has different talents, treasures, ideas, and experiences to discover, develop, and share.

Reach out with questions, comments, ideas, or just to cheer on another one of our cousins! Vielen dank!

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I'm in the project and my grandmother was a Volga German. Let me know what I can do to help! I focus on my family, of course, but if I can, I will help with other tasks. :)

Answer 1

One branch of my family belonged to a splinter group of the evangelical church in Wuerttemberg (the Temple Society), which also had adherents in the Volga region. There may be a connection there, as some of the church members emigrated to Russia in the 1860s before settling in Palestine.

Comments

Hi Gus,

Do you have an idea of what village your family went to?

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My geography and my memory are not what they used to be :) There is actually only relative I can find now, and he came from Liebenau, which at the time was in Southern Russia (now in the part of Ukraine that Russia wants back...) near Molochnya. This is quite a distance from the Volga. Sorry :)

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Which era's name for this area was being used, Gus? Baden or Wurttemberg? Or both names hyphebated? I have ancestors in the area who were Lutheran and/or Catholic. I'm not sure of the dates encompassing which or both of the names.

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Baden-Wurttemberg came into being in 1948, so anything prior to that should refer to either Baden or Wurttemberg, never the hyphenated form. From 1850 there was also Hohenzollern, technically a province of Prussia, but separated out. And prior to 1806 there were a number of other, quite small territories. All my ancestors came from Wuerttemberg, and I try to use that designation consistently. (Some software is making this rather difficult...)

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thanks so much for the synopsis of useful names. I had to ask. But I'm consistently bothered by what I don't actually know by using it. I''ll now use it.

still on the question: sometimes I see a record that comes straightforward as "Prussia"--Would you go straight to Wikipedia for that map-ish name? and could the larger region be called Austro-Hungary?

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Nope. Wikipedia should be able to tell you pretty quickly that Prussia was never part of the Austro-Hungarian empire; you should probably record it as just "Prussia". (Affiliation may change over time, especially after 1871. There "Prussia, Germany" might be more appropriate.)

Now, things get even more tricky in the Austro-Hungarian Empire because a. it is an empire with lots of component parts and b. its borders changed over time. Prior to 1918, Austria was reasonably stable, as was Hungary, Bohemia and Moravia, but the rest can be a can of worms.

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How facile we humans are and how centered in what we think, even that long ago, elevating it to the status of "Obvious, everyone gets it."

But then again, that's one of the jillion reasons for the existence of encyclopedias. It's the "catch-up mode."

(kidding, of course)