Germans From Russia Just another NDSU Library weblog

23 May 2009
Chorne More Hotel
Odessa, Ukraine

Warmest regards from the lobby of the Chorne More Hotel where I am using my small laptop I purchased in Berlin, Germany, before arrival in Odessa.

Our 15th Journey to the Homeland tour group arrived on 22 May with an evening welcome dinner at a Ukrainian ethnic cafe. Tour members are all doing well.

Today tour members traveled to various locations including Bessarabia, Kutschurgan and to villages near Kischinev, Moldova. You should be receiving comments from tour members of their memories visiting the villages upon their return to Odessa with a later email. Some of the tour members are staying overnight in Tarutino, Bessarabia (today in Ukraine) and in Kischinev.

On 18 May in Berlin, there was a gathering of the local Germans from Russia – primarily Spat Aussiedler and some Aussiedler. Some of the tour members and I who traveled earlier to Berlin before the beginning of the tour, had a memorable experience at this event. The gathering was organized by Alexander Rupp, who attended the AHSGR/GRHS Convention in Casper, Wyoming in July 2008.

With best wishes from Odessa, Ukraine

Michael M. Miller

Organizers of the Dakota Memories Oral History Project are coming to Richardton, N.D., to conduct a workshop that will teach participants how to conduct their own oral histories. The event is set for Saturday, May 30, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Sacred Heart Monastery, 8969 Highway 10 West, Richardton.

Acacia (Jonas) Stuckle, special collections associate, will provide information about the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection as well as the Dakota Memories Oral History Project.

Jessica Clark, project coordinator and recipient of the Germans from Russia History Doctoral Fellowship, will present the methodology of oral history from literature to application. She will teach participants how to find materials, narrators and places and how to manage oral histories. The workshops also will provide circuit training on digital recording devices, digital processing equipment and interviewing techniques.

Andrea Mott, 2009 Dakota Memories Oral History project interviewer, will assist with the workshops.

Public interest in documenting and preserving German-Russian ethnic identity inspired the launch of the oral history project in 2005. Since then, organizers have been traveling the Northern Plains, gathering stories and documenting family relationships and childhood memories of second and third generation Germans from Russia. Michael Miller serves as director of the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection and the project.

“Our project only focuses on Germans from Russia, yet there are plenty of other groups out there with rich histories – histories that should be documented and preserved,” Clark said. “So, we are hoping by sharing our techniques and our methodology, individuals will be able to conduct their own histories regardless of their ethnicity.”

Workshops are free and open to the public. Cookies and refreshments will be provided. Lunch is not included in the cost, but it will be available on-site for a fee. If you wish to register for lunch on-site, call Stuckle by May 25.

The workshop is sponsored by the Dakota Memories Oral History Project, Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, NDSU Libraries, NDSU Extension Service and NDSU Extension Service Center for Community Vitality.

The Dakota Memories Oral History Project is a privately funded project sponsored by the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection at the NDSU Libraries. For more information on the collection or the project, contact the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection at (701) 231-6596 or www.ndsu.edu/grhc/dakotamemories.

Michael M. Miller, director and bibliographer of the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection at the NDSU Libraries, will lead the 15th Journey to the Homeland Tour from May 20-30 to Odessa, Ukraine and Stuttgart, Germany. Tour members will visit their ancestral former German villages near Odessa and nearby Moldova. While in Stuttgart, tour members will visit the Germans from Russia organization’s museums and take day trip to visit Alsace, France. Six members of the Volk family with Devils Lake roots are included with the tour group. Miller will stay additional days in Germany for work in Berlin, Freiburg, Stuttgart and Augsburg and Strasbourg, France.

While in Berlin, he will meet with Dr. Ute Schmidt, author of Bessarabien: Deutsche Kolonisten am Schwarzen Meer. Plans are to translate this book to English to be a Germans from Russia Heritage publication.

The 16th Journey to the Homeland Tour is scheduled for May 20-30, 2010.For further information, go to http://library.ndsu.edu/grhc/outreach/journey/index.html.

Watch for email messages sent from the internet cafes in Odessa, Ukraine and Stuttgart, Germany.

Organizers of the Dakota Memories Oral History Project are coming to Napoleon, N.D., to conduct a workshop that will teach participants how to conduct their own oral histories. The event is set for Saturday, May 16, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Downtowner Bar & Steakhouse, 310 Main Avenue, Napoleon.

Acacia (Jonas) Stuckle, special collections associate, will provide information about the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection as well as the Dakota Memories Oral History Project.

Jessica Clark, project coordinator and recipient of the Germans from Russia History Doctoral Fellowship, will present the methodology of oral history from literature to application. She will teach participants how to find materials, narrators and places and how to manage oral histories. The workshops also will provide circuit training on digital recording devices, digital processing equipment and interviewing techniques.

Andrea Mott, 2009 Dakota Memories Oral History project interviewer, will assist with the workshops.

Public interest in documenting and preserving German-Russian ethnic identity inspired the launch of the oral history project in 2005. Since then, organizers have been traveling the Northern Plains, gathering stories and documenting family relationships and childhood memories of second and third generation Germans from Russia. Michael Miller serves as director of the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection and the project.

“Our project only focuses on Germans from Russia, yet there are plenty of other groups out there with rich histories – histories that should be documented and preserved,” Clark said. “So, we are hoping by sharing our techniques and our methodology, individuals will be able to conduct their own histories regardless of their ethnicity.”

Workshops are free and open to the public. Cookies and refreshments will be provided. Lunch is not included in the cost, but it will be available on-site for a fee. If you wish to register for lunch on-site, call Stuckle by May 11.

The workshop is sponsored by the Dakota Memories Oral History Project, Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, NDSU Libraries, NDSU Extension Service and NDSU Extension Service Center for Community Vitality.

The Dakota Memories Oral History Project is a privately funded project sponsored by the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection at the NDSU Libraries. For more information on the collection or the project, contact the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection at (701) 231-6596 or www.ndsu.edu/grhc/dakotamemories.

Prairie Earth, Prairie Homes is a field school that celebrates, investigates, and encourages the preservation of buildings built of earth on the northern plains. Too often considered a temporary expedient of pioneer times, earth buildings are, we argue, an environmental response and a cultural signature of the people of the plains, fixtures in the prairie way of life. As we come to understand them, we are better able to preserve the buildings themselves and the life ways that invest them. Restoring and preserving earth buildings in a region of continental climate offers challenges both technical and logistical, but those challenges can be met. In this field school, offered by North Dakota State University, we learn how.

Experiential learning is at the heart of Prairie Earth, Prairie Homes. Participants in the field school take part in the restoration of an amazing and significant historic property – the Hutmacher Farmstead, in Dunn County, North Dakota. The Hutmacher house and outbuilding walls are constructed of sandstone mortared with clay, both quarried on the farm. The roof uses ridgepoles and rafters locally cut and covered with successive layers of brush (chokecherry, plum), flax straw, clay, and aggregate. The house was built by the children of German-Russian immigrants and was occupied into the 1970s.

In order to broaden the learning experience, participants also will tour and study examples of the earth building traditions of the various cultures to occupy the West River country of the northern plains:

• Mandan & Hidatsa earth lodges
• Sod houses of Anglo-Americans
• Earth houses of the Germans from Russia

Depending on the enrollment option chosen, students will engage in preparatory readings and study prior to the field experience, write curricular materials adapted from the content of the course, or pursue independent research projects springing from it.

Instructors of the field school are Tom Isern (Professor of History & University Distinguished Professor at NDSU, founding director of the Center for Heritage Renewal (www.ndsu.edu/heritage) and Suzzanne Kelley (historian & editor, PhD candidate at NDSU, president of Preservation North Dakota). Tom is instructor of record for regular undergraduate or graduate credit; Suzzanne (an experienced public-school teacher) is instructor of record for the teacher workshops and coordinator of learning vacation experiences; and they share overall responsibility for organization and management of the field school.

Who will benefit from the field school?

• Degree-seeking undergraduate and graduate students seeking a rich, hands-on learning experience preservation
• Professionals desiring professional development in earth building restoration and interpretation
• Teachers looking for an active option in continuing education with direct curricular applicability
• Vacationers looking for a learning experience at compelling sites in an unforgettable landscape to 6 hours of credit, undergraduate or graduate

Course Bibliography & Online Resources at:
http://www.ndsu.edu/grhc/instruct/isern/earth

Tom Isern

Note:
Additional information regarding the Hutmacher Farmsite is at this GRHC webpage:
http//library.ndsu.edu/grhc/history_culture/arch/index.html.

I have always had a passion for storytelling. And as a student of history, I have daily opportunities to hear stories, tell stories, and give voice to those historical figures that no longer have breath to tell their own tales.

During this spring semester of 2009, I have begun work on telling the story of a North Dakota family. Since January of this year I have been processing the Baumgartner Family Collection, an enormous collection of photographs, documents, and various other artifacts.

This is a unique experience for a history student, to independently manage the processing of such a large archival collection. It is also an exciting opportunity for me personally, to help to preserve the history of a family closely tied to the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection.

I have sifted through hundreds of photographs, unfolded dozens of baptismal certificates, and dusted several framed portraits, and through this process have learned about the Baumgartner family.

The collection mainly focuses on Philippine (Baumgartner) Berglund. Over twenty binders of photographs trace Philippine through her high school years, college education, her career as a teacher, and her marriage to Gus Berglund. In the collection, one can see the record of nearly every course she studied in high school, a sample of her wedding lace, and the nameplate that sat on her husband’s desk. The entire collection is comprised of personal belongings and candid family portraits, giving the viewer an intimate glimpse at Philippine (Baumgartner) Berglund’s family.

While piecing together the Baumgartner family’s story has been a puzzle at times, it has been amazing how clearly the family’s voices tell their tale through photographs and letters. So, while no longer around to share her story, Philippine (Baumgartner) Berglund lovingly preserved her history in scrapbooks, saved letters, and documents tucked into photo album pages, and with my help, and the help of the GRHC, we will continue to preserve and share Philippine (Baumgartner) Berglund’s story.

This is the goal of the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, to preserve and promote the German Russian history, heritage, and culture, especially in North Dakota. And this is my goal as a young historian, to learn, preserve, and share the stories of those who can no longer tell their own.

Working on the Baumgartner Collection has been an amazing opportunity, and I am certain that the experience I have gained at the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection will be beneficial as I enter the professional history field. And who would have thought that I could someday turn my love for storytelling into a career!

Ann Erling
GRHC Archival Assistant

Ann Erling looking through photographs from the Baumgartner Collection.

The NDSU Libraries was included during the biannual Higher Education Showcase, sponsored by the Public Affairs Council of the North Dakota University System on March 4, 2009 at the State Capitol in Bismarck. Each of the public colleges and universities in North Dakota had displays. The Institute for Regional Studies, the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection and the NDSU Libraries was featured for North Dakota State University, Fargo.

Standing at the NDSU Libraries table display is (l-r): Michael Miller, Director of the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection; Jim Heilman, NDSU Student Body President; Governor John Hoeven; and John Bye, Director of the Institute for Regional Studies.

Standing at the NDSU Libraries table display is (l-r): NDSU President Joseph Chapman; Michele Reid, Dean of Libraries; and Frank Jennings, NDSU Development Foundation President.

The NDSU Libraries display.

The GRHC now offers Family Recipes from German Tradition. The cookbook is available for $20.00 plus shipping and handling. Click here to find out more about this cookbook.

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.

The GRHC now offers The Volga Germans: The Volga Flows Forever, Book Two by Sigrid Weidenweber available for purchase. The price is $30.00 plus shipping & handling. Click here for more information about this book.