Germans From Russia Just another NDSU Library weblog

In the April 2003 edition of North Dakota Living, Jo Ann Winistorfer writes about German-Russian iron crosses.

It was the winter of 1891-92. Diptheria had invaded the rural sod home of Mercer County pioneers, Gottlieb and Dorothea (Habelmann) Krukenberg. Note the spelling variation on Kruckenberg-Krukenberg surname.

Their youngest child–7-year-old Friedrich–had been severely stricken by this deadly disease. Symptoms included high fever, swollen glands, and a thick, choking coating in the throat that made breathing and swallowing difficult. Already this winter, diphtheria had taken the lives of others in the area. The nearest doctor lived in Bismarck, too far away to help.

Trying to save her “little Friedele,” as she called him, Dorothea likely tried various folk remedies she had learned from her female German-Russian ancestors back in Bessarabia, Russia, their former homeland: throat swabs; powdered alum administered to the back of the throat; a hunk of salt pork wrapped up in a woolen sock and tied around the neck. And, most certainly, prayers. Lutheran prayers, recited in German.

Yet despite these efforts, death stepped in to claim little Friedrich on January 15, 1892.

Looking back through the veil of time and tears, one can imagine the grieving father hand-hewing a small coffin to hold his boy.

Diggers wielding pickaxes and shovels, building fires over a pit, coaxing a grave from the frozen earth.

Horse-drawn sleighs carrying mourners to St. Peter’s Cemetery. Relatives and neighbors bidding their last goodbyes. And wafting over the scene, the sad German funeral hymn: “Wo findet die Seele die Heimat, die Ruh?” (Where Does the Soul Find its Home, its Rest?”)

A century and a decade of years after Friedrich’s death, an iron cross in a peaceful country graveyard north of Hazen still marks his resting place.

Click here to continue read the entire article.

Winistorfer, Jo Ann. “Iron Crosses: Sentinels of the Prairie.” North Dakota Living, April 2003, 18-20.

A common German-Russian New Year’s Day tradition mentioned in Joseph Height’s Homesteaders on the Steppe, was the tradition of extending greetings to neighbors and friends in the German villages.

Below is a traditional New Year’s greeting in both German and English as found in Homesteaders on the Steppe.

Ich bin a kleiner König
Gewwe mir net so wenig.
Lasst mich net so lange stehn,
Ich muss noch a Häusche weiter gehn.

Ich wünsch Euch e glückliches Neues Johr
A Bretzel wie a Ofenrohr,
A Zuckerstein wie a Tischplatt
Gebt mr en Schnäpsl, dann geh ich fort.

M’r wünsche dem Herr a goldener Tisch,
uff alle vier Ecke en brotener Fisch,
ond en der Mitte a Kanne Woi,
no soll dr Herr mit dr Familie
‘s ganze Johr luschtig soi!

I am a little king,
Don’t give too little.
Don’t let me stand too long,
I must keep moving on.

I wish you a Happy New Year,
a pretzel big as a stove pipe,
a candy like a table top.
Give me a whiskey and I’ll be off.

We wish the master a golden table,
On all four corners a roasted fish,
and in the middle a bowl of wine,
Then the master and family dear
shall be merry the entire year.

Height, Joseph S. “Folk Festivals and Customs,” in Homesteaders on the Steppe. (Bismarck, North Dakota, 1975), 298.

Homesteaders on the Steppe is available for purchase at the GRHC. Click here for ordering information.

Below is a story Thomas G. Mueller shared with the GRHC a few years ago.

Salomon Mueller came to America in 1905 from Paris, Bessarabia, South Russia when he was 21 years old. He came through Canada because the boat passage was cheaper to Canada than arriving in New York. From Canada he journeyed to Fredonia, North Dakota where he connected with the Christian and Louise Labrenz family, working for them until he married Maria Weispfenning in 1908.

Along with his suitcase he brought with him his German culture. Grandpa Salomon’s grandfather and great grandfather left Prussia in 1832 and moved to Paris, Bessarabia, South Russia. Grandpa Salomon’s great great grandfather left Germany between 1740 and 1750 and moved to Prussia.

A couple of years ago my first cousin, Darlene Mueller Koehn, wrote to me and described how Grandpa Salomon would make his own tree in the 1940’s and 50’s to celebrate Christmas. She wrote, “ I remember Grandpa decorating a handmade feather Christmas tree with red berries in the tips of the feather branches. It was a German tradition of making a tree out of feathers by taking a stick and wrapping the base of the feathers to the stick all the way up the stick. The tree was three or four foot high and he put it on top of the big, tall, floor radio. I still remember the beautiful German ornaments. One was a fragile peacock with a long white tail”. From this one can conclude that the German culture was still deeply ingrained in my family, even though they moved out of Germany 200 years earlier.

Exchanging Christmas gifts is a custom that began in memory of the gifts the wise men brought to Bethlehem for Christ’s birth. The custom of the Christmas tree started about 1200 years ago in Germany. The legend tells of how an English missionary named Boniface came upon a group of heathens preparing to make a human sacrifice beside an oak tree. Boniface stopped the sacrifice and cut the oak tree down. When the tree fell a fir tree appeared. Boniface proclaimed this a miracle and said the fir tree was the tree of life and it represented Christ.

Decorating homes with evergreen branches goes back to ancient Roman times. The Romans exchanged green tree branches for good luck. But the actual Christmas tree is credited to the Boniface story and took place in northern Germany near Geismar, Germany. The Germans were the first to use Christmas tree decorations, decorating them with toys, candies wrapped in bright colored paper, angels and lighted candles.

This year in North Dakota we are celebrating Christmas with a new understanding of how it started and how Christmas was brought to America when people like my grandfather came here for a new life. The most important things he brought with him were in is heart, his traditions, his faith, his German culture and his handmade Christmas tree.

Please post your own Christmas tree memories!

The GRHC published Mueller’s book, The Last Link, in 2004.

This past week North Dakotans have been busy shoveling snow left from a blizzard that visited most of the state. While blizzard conditions are always dangerous, advancement with technology has made predicting and dealing with blizzards much easier than 100 years ago.

The June/July 1984 issue of Prairies magazine featured the article, “Lost in a Blizzard.” The article tells about one family’s struggle during a McIntosh County blizzard in 1912.

The teacher at Coldwater District School, Amanda Ramhold, became frightened when none of the men came to school to fetch the children, which was the normal procedure during a blizzard emergency. As the storm’s intensity increased, the terrified young woman made her tragic error: she dismissed school and took the children to a neighboring farm a few miles away, the Keppert farm. If she had waited just a little longer, men from the children’s families would have reached the school. But the teacher had no way of knowing that.

Despite fierce winds and blinding snow, she struggled with a horse and sled, eventually arriving at the Keppert farm with all the children safe. However, at the farm, the teacher faced a new calamity. Keppert was gravely ill and could offer little assistance.

Click here to read the entire article.

Advances in technology continue to change the way we plant and harvest our crops. Take a minute to remember back to the days of threshing. The GRHC website has several threshing stories that German Russians have shared.

Click to view some of their personal stories:
“Binding, Shocking, Heading and Threshing of Wheat in Kansas” Arthur E. Flegel
“Threshing” Janice Huber Stangl
“Threshing” Rod Beck
“Threshing and Schocks in the Grain Fields” R. Reuben Drefs
“Wheat Harvesting” Milo Bauder

We encourage you to share your own threshing stories by posting to the blog.

“Threshing in the 1930s”
Christina Rose Marie (Bast) Krismer Photo Album

Threshing in the Glueckstal area of South Russia

As we begin another academic year, it brings memories of school days to many people. Each season the Dakota Memories Oral History Project (DMOHP) gathers photographs, certificates and other documents while collecting interviews. Marlene (Kraft) Smith was interviewed by the DMOHP staff during the 2007 season at Penn, ND. Marlene allowed the DMOHP staff to scan several documents relating to her and her father’s (George Kraft) school days. Please click here to view additional documents at Marlene’s narrator profile page at the GRHC website.

Marlene (Kraft) Smith’s Attendance Award
21 June 1948

When the subject of foods and recipes of the Gemans from Russia is shared with subscribers at my Black Sea Mail List and the Germans from Russia heritage electronic discussion group [listserve], there is a great deal of interest.

Jolenta Fischer Masterson, a longtime colleague living in Sequim, Washington, and a native of Strasburg, North Dakota, shared this message about Dampfnudel:

“In our house, this thing was often made on the same day as the bread was being made. Little golf ball sized hunks were taken off the bread dough and put in the heavy pan with a little bit of water and then closed to steam bake. The bottoms fried crispy by the time the Dampfnudel cooked, baked steamed or what ever. Later in life I discovered that a similar item, was prepared in authentic Chinese restaurants in Seattle’s Chinatown. They called it “dim sum”. They had bits of pork inside. It is interesting to note that different cultures had similar foods and ways of cooking them.”

Share your memories and recipes regarding Dampfnudel and other German-Russian foods and recipes with a message at this BLOG.

See the GRHC website at “Recipes & Foodways” at www.ndsu.edu/grhc/history_culture/recipe.index.html.


Dampfnudel image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dampfnudel

We (Fargo) tied our record low temperature of 30 below this morning. With subzero temperatures all week, we’re all doing our best to stay warm.

Every German Russian knows (or anyone with good taste) that nothing warms you up like a bowl of knoephla soup!

Growing up in south-central North Dakota, knoephla soup was a favorite all year long. However, on a cold day like today I can’t help but crave a bowl of mom’s creamy knoephla soup or even one from my hometown cafe. Home Plate Café in Fredonia, ND still serves knoephla soup every Tuesday. On cold days like today, it makes the 150-mile drive sound like a good idea. Maybe I should call and see if they have any left from yesterday. It would definitely hit the spot!

According to www.reference.com:

“Knoephla, also spelled knephla (in English), is a type of dumpling, commonly used in soups. The word is related to the modern German Knöpfle, meaning little knob/button. Traditional knoephla soup is a thick chicken and potato soup, almost to the point of being a stew. It is particularly common in the U.S. states of Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota, where there was significant German-Russian settlement.”

After waking up everyone’s taste buds, I had better leave you with a recipe.

Here is my imitation of my mom’s classic recipe (as with all great cooks she does not have one):

Knoephla Soup

1 Onion (chopped)
1 Recipe Knoephla (or a package of frozen Spätzle or dumplings)
5 Potatoes (peeled and diced)
4 Tablespoons Chicken Bullion (more or less depending on taste)
1 Carton Milk
Cream
Salt & Pepper

1. In a kettle, boil the knoephla and potatoes in water.
2. In a small pan sauté onion with butter.
3. Put carton of milk in soup kettle and begin to slowly warm, adding the chicken bullion.
4. Once the knoephla and potatoes are done cooking, drain and add them to the soup broth.
5. Add sautéed onion to the soup broth.
6. Simmer on medium low, stirring frequently.
7. Add salt and pepper to taste.
8. Prior to serving, add some cream to thicken the broth.

I encourage you to post your favorite knoephla soup recipe.

Stay warm,
Acacia

The Germans from Russia Heritage Collection website features web pages of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Odessa, Ukraine. The web pages were completed in cooperation with Ella Melik, Moxee, Washington.

The purpose of the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church web pages is to build a picture of the historical German community from its beginning in 1827 up to its closure until Stalin. The webpages includes history, clergy, Realschule and links.

Please click here for further information.

St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Odessa, Ukraine

Rev. Leland Elhard of Bismarck donated valuable historical German language documents. These documents printed in old German script are Geschichte Russlands [Russian history] of the years 1814 to 1831. These years are important in the immigration of Germans coming from central Europe to settle in villages of the Black Sea, Crimea and Bessarabia [today southern Ukraine and Moldova].

According to Jay Gage, the GRHC curator, “Theodor von Bernardi compiled four volumes of Geschichte Russlands from 1863 through 1875, with S. Hirzel of Leipzig, Germany, as publisher. Inscripted provenance identifies Rev. A.W. Werder, Wheeling, West Virginia, 1870-1878, and Liberty University Library, Bexley, Ohio.”

“Bernardi’s concisely written political history and culture commentary, also, briefly mentions German former colonists arriving in 1906-1816 for Glueckstal Colonies near Odessa.”

Cover of one of the donated books