The Germans from Russia Heritage Collection houses, preserves, and makes available items related to German-Russian heritage. Included are documents and heirlooms brought to North America by German Russian immigrants and objects displaying cultural heritage that were made or used by people during the early years of Germans from Russia settlement in North America. We also collect artifacts illustrating the impact of assimilation, while retaining cultural identity, and some items representing continuing traditions created by descendants of German Russian immigrants.

Examples of materials in the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection are family documents, letters, photographs, books, certificates, publications, funeral cards, and textiles. If you have questions about donations, please visit the GRHC Donations page. 

Blankets, head coverings, shawls, and other textiles and clothing donated to the GRHC are housed at the Emily P. Reynolds Historic Costume Collection located on the NDSU campus.

Most donated books are catalogued and kept in our Research Library. To search our books, visit the NDSU Library Catalog, enter a search topic and select Germans from Russia in the search drop box to the right of the page.

Archival Collections in the GRHC

The Germans from Russia Heritage Collection processes archival donations and makes them available through Finding Aids. A finding aid is a document that features detailed information about a collection contained within an archive. Each searchable collection within the GRHC will have a finding aid. This is an ongoing process and new finding aids are published as new collections are processed.

We also collect books that are not cataloged because of their value or condition. These include hymnals, theology books, songbooks, and sermon books. They are listed in the Finding Aid for their respective collections.

To view our processed collections, visit our finding aids catalog and enter a search topic into the search box. 

Textiles and Clothing Collection 

Our textiles and clothing donations are housed at the Emily P. Reynolds Historic Costume Collection (EPRHCC), Department of Apparel, College of Human Development and Education, Design, Facility and Hospitality Management, E. Morrow Lebedeff Hall, North Dakota State University, Fargo.

Selected Collections: