ABOUT US
Our mission is to share and preserve the history and culture of the Germans from Russia in North Dakota and the Northern Plains.
Our focus is on Bessarabian, Black Sea, Crimean, Dobrudscha and Volhynian Germans and their descendants in North Dakota and the Northern Plains.
History of the GRHC
As a land-grant university, there was interest in establishing a collection of materials about Germans from Russia ancestry, which includes a large population of North Dakota. The GRHC was established in July 1978, and was first housed with the North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies.
Scholars interested in establishing the GRHC included Dr. Armand Bauer, Department of Soil Science, NDSU, editor of Heritage Review, published by the Germans from Russia Heritage Society; Dr. Timothy Kloberdanz, Department of Anthropology-Sociology, NDSU; and Michael Miller, a reference librarian with the NDSU Library. Dr. Karl Stumpp of Germany, a well known scholar who was born in the Black Sea German village of Alexanderhilf near Odessa, Ukraine, attended the 1978 Germans from Russia Heritage Society International Convention in Fargo, and donated books from his library to the GRHC.
Currently the GRHC houses numerous books, manuscript collections, and photographs, as well as oral histories, and other historical material. GRHC in cooperation with Prairie Public has produced award-winning documentaries of the Germans from Russia Series beginning in 1999. GRHC’s Journey to the Homeland Tours began in May 1996, with the 23rd Homeland Tour in May 2019.
Since its inception in 1978, this specialized archive has become one of the most comprehensive collections of German-Russian resources in the world.
View or print our informational brochure by clicking the link.