Bessarabien Deutsche Kolonisten am Schwarzen Meer

By Ute Schmidt

Deutsches Kulturforum östliches Europa, Postdam, Germany, 2008, 419 pages, includes map, hardcover, German language only

Leipzig, Bessarabia, 1941.

Between Djestr and Pruth has 130 years of German settlements, largely under the reign of changing the preserve cultural autonomy.

Of all the former German settlement areas, Dobrogea Bessarabia was quite forgotten. Today's generation still does not know that until 1940, near the Black Sea in areas which today partly on Ukraine, partly to the Republic of Moldova, a more or less closed German settlement area existed. A settlement area, moreover, in which one - with a few exceptions - from deep pietistischer evangelical piety.

The author of this monograph, Ute Schmidt, herself has family roots in Bessarabia. Since 2005 she teaches as a private lecturer at the Free University and director of the research network SED state. Circumstances for which they make such a book. Her love for the region speaks from each line.

A mixture of peoples

Church in Lichtental, Bessarabia, 1910.

One region, since the ancient times in a very unusual degree is a meeting point of cultures. Starting with the Greek colonies on the Getae and Dacians, Slavs, Romans, various Germanic tribes such as Goths and Avars, then Huns, Bulgarians, Hungarians and an incredible number of Turkic peoples. In the High Middle Ages, the region was only rule area of the Prince of Wallachia, and later of the Vltava. Then came the Turks and later the Russians.

The deutschstämmige - originally a princess of Anhalt - Czarina Catherine II called the first German settlers in by their newly conquered areas. Even during and after the Napoleonic wars led her grandson, Alexander I of this settlement policy continues and built it. The immigrants arrived in large extent from southwest Germany - sometimes political, sometimes religious repression half - but also to Russia from the fallen former Prussian parts of Poland.

Winter in Sarata, Bessarabia, 1936.

Slow development

The settlers received generous privileges and state aid. However, life in the first generation hard. But the colonies have been growing steadily increased, agriculture flourished, and schools and churches could and should be solid foundations.

The situation deteriorated to the settlers, as their sons to the Russian military and have been drawn to the throne of Czar Alexander III. Nationalist currents increasingly gained importance.

Confirmation class in Tarutino, Bessarabia, 1938.

The Hitler-Stalin pact left Nazi Germany in the Soviet Union this region, and in June 1940, Romania was forced to within a few days deducted. The Deutschstämmigen but were "home to Germany". Once they found - as well as the family of our German President Koehler - largely in the Warthegau and West Prussia. From where at the end of 1944 and early 1945 had haste to flee.

Bessarabien Deutsche Kolonisten am Schwarzen Meer

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