JULY 2003

Prof. Karl Lindemann Born 1844 in Nishny Novgorod Died in 1928 in Orlov/Molochna An Advocate for Farmers

July 2003
Prof. Karl Lindemann – Member of the duma, Advocate for the Colonists
The small residence of the famous scholar was filled with great hustle and bustle on April 19, 1917. In Prof. Karl Lindemann’s office the “All-Russia Congress of Russian Citizens of German Nationality” was being planned, and Lindemann would be its director. The purpose was to coordinate the development of the German colonists during the drastic changes taking place in Russia and the downfall of the Tsarist Empire connected with it. For forty years there had been consistent efforts designed to dispossess the German colonists, even to exile them to Siberia. It all started in the [18]70s, soon after the formation of the German Reich and after the original privileges and rights of the German colonists were being rescinded. Slavophiles agitated against everything German, the final result being that in 1909 the then prime minister, Stolypin, introduced draft legislation into the Duma which had as its aim the Russification of areas settled by Germans. Lindemann succeeded in having this legislation withdrawn, largely due to his connections in the Empire’s Duma in St. Petersburg and his membership in the “October 17 Society,” the strongest faction in the Duma. Subsequent to Stolypin’s assassination in 1911 it was Interior Minister Makarov who again attempted to introduce legislation against the Germans in Russia and, most importantly, against their properties. Lindemann was informed of this by Duma members and again called together a conference of representatives of the colonists plus the Octobrists. Their collective protest succeeded in the withdrawal of that draft legislation. When the war began in 1914, German subjects were cursed in the most vile manner and denounced as collaborators, thus paving the way for the manufacture of a basis for enacting the “Liquidation Laws concerning German Landowners” without involving the Duma. Lindemann attempted, by word and in writing, to fight against it, but this time without success.
Who was this Karl Lindemann, who so intrepidly dared to throw his scientific reputation into the fray to spare the German colonists from the discriminatory anti-German laws and the threat of dispossession and banishment? His doctor father had immigrated from Dorpat in the Baltic region and settled down in Nishny-Novgorod, where he enjoyed great popularity far and wide. His son was born there on October 26, 1844. He must have been very talented, because at the very young age of 15 he received official permission to begin medical school in Kasan. At 21, he took his final exam in 1865 in Dorpat. During the same year he became well known in scientific circles due to his discovery of a parasite that dwells in the human body. This agent was later designated by the Latin term of “sarcocystis lindemanni.” In 1870, when he was 26, he was named Professor at the Agricultural Academy in Moscow and in his Teaching Chair for General Zoology he specialized in research on agricultural pests. His research activities took him to a great variety of Russian regions, where he did not only investigate the effects of pests on agriculture, but also took the opportunity to study economical conditions in the various regions. In this way he became the best authority on Russian agriculture. He published more than 200 treatises and 30 books about his research, not counting the innumerable articles in newspapers and his lectures throughout Russia. Following the Revolution in Russia he traveled, from 1919 to 1921, throughout the German colonies in order to familiarize himself with the their decline and decay. In 67 colonies he investigated the economic conditions there and gave 147 lectures in front of thousands of listeners. Again and again he stated his thesis: without the German colonists’ farms there could be no improvement in Russian agriculture. The University at Simpferopol offered him a professorship, which he served in until 1925. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, the Communist newspaper “Die rote Krim [Red Crimea]” published a report honoring him, a self-declared opponent of collectivization. Thereafter he lived in the colony of Orlov/Molochna until his death in 1928. Only a year later the Communist regime showed its true face when it destroyed not only the small conclave of German colonists, but in its brutality did not shrink from harming its own farmers. Who knows, Prof. Lindemann might also have become a victim of these cleansings.

Compiled from writings by Lindemann: “Von den deutschen Kolonisten in Russland [About the German Colonists in Russia],” Heimatbuch der Deutschen aus Russland, 1957. Gerhard Walter, Ludwigsburg

Translation from German to English by Alex Herzog, Boulder, Colorado