Volga Germans

Volga German are descendants of German immigrants, who in the reign of Catherine the Great on the lower Volga were established in the Russian Empire. In the total number of descendants of German settlers in all areas of the former tsarist empire they form a proportion of 25%. The center of the Volga Germans, the city was Pokrowsk ( Engels 1924 ). Between 1924 and 1941 they were organized within the Soviet Union in the Volga German Republic.

History

→ Main article: History of Germans in Russia

The settlers who came mainly from Bavaria, Baden, Hesse, the Palatinate and the Rhineland, followed in the years 1763-1767 the invitation of the German -born Catherine II in their new settlement area, where they founded a hundred villages. They were recruited to cultivate the steppes along the Volga and curb the attacks of the horsemen from neighboring areas. The German settlers found in the Russian Empire before favorable conditions, inter alia, they received a special political status, which included the right to the maintenance of German as a language of administration, self-government, as well as exemption from military service. They developed in this region a thriving agricultural economy with exports to other regions of Russia. This self-determination rights were Tsar Alexander II (1818-1881) restricted. This led to a wave of emigration to the USA, Canada and South America ( eg after Villaguay ). Other restrictions and reprisals carried out shortly after the founding of the Soviet Union. Stalin took the Volga Germans, the entire grain harvest and sold them abroad. Thousands of Volga Germans died as a result of the famine caused thereby. 1924, the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Volga Germans was created after the area had already attained after the October Revolution in 1918 autonomy. The ' Volga German Republic ', which was disbanded in 1941, had about 600,000 inhabitants, of which about two-thirds were of German descent. After the invasion of the "Third Reich" on the Soviet Union in June 1941 ( World War II ) were accused of the approximately 400,000 remaining Volga Germans of collective collaboration and deported to Siberia and Central Asia, there to labor camps of the " labor army " ( Трудармия ) forced, where thousands died. Most Germans from Russia (men and women) were called in the period between October 1942 and December 1943.

Not until 1964 that they were officially freed from the charge of collaboration (1964 ended the Khrushchev era, which began in 1953 after Stalin's death. The thaw lasted from about 1956 to 1964 ).

The Federal Republic of Germany allowed the Volga Germans since the 1970s, the entry and naturalization (see also Federal Law on Displaced Persons ).

Famous Volga German

Famous Volga German are:

  • Sergio Denis, Argentine singer
  • Georg Dinges (1891-1932), scholar, linguist and ethnographer
  • Andreas Dulson, scholar, linguist, ethnographer and archaeologist
  • Helene Fischer ( born 1984 ), singer
  • Zhanna Friske (* 1974), Russian singer ( Volga German and Russian Cossack origin)
  • Andre Geim ( b. 1958 ), Physicist
  • Anna German (1936-1982), singer
  • Stanislav Güntner ( b. 1977 ), director of the movie Nemez
  • Jacob Hamm, former director of an organization for the construction of facilities for German emigrants in the Ulyanovsk Oblast and businessman
  • Gabriel Heinze (born 1978 ), football player
  • Naty Hollmann ( Naty Petrosino)
  • Cristina Fernández de Kirchner ( born 1953 ), current President of Argentina, ( has a German mother russia )
  • Alfred Reingoldowitsch Koch ( born 1961 ), Russian politician
  • Robert Korn, historian, writer, Chairman of the homeland of the Volga Germans eV
  • Andreas Kramer, poet and writer
  • Bernhard Ludwig von Platen (1733-1774), poet
  • Igor Pleve, scholar and politician, historian
  • Paul Rau, scholar, archaeologist
  • Boris Rauschenbach (1915-2001), scholar, physicist
  • Bruno Reiter, politician and scholar, biologist
  • Eduard Rossel (* 1937), politician
  • Carl Ferdinand von Wahlberg, doctor, writer
  • Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998), composer
  • Tanja Szewczenko ( born 1977 ), figure skater, actress, ( has a German mother russia )
Volga River Engels, Saratov Oblast Eastern Front (World War II) Collaborationism Khrushchev Thaw Federal Expellee Law Alfred Koch Integrated Authority File
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