​‘An understanding of the Russia Germans’

By Michael M. Miller

Rev. Salomon Joachim, pastor of Zion Lutheran Church, Beulah, North Dakota., delivered an address to the Western Conference of the Dakota District of the American Lutheran Church in 1939. His presentation was called: “Toward an Understanding of the Russia Germans.”

Rev. Joachim pointed to the results of the United States Census of 1930. At that time, 103,532 Russian Germans lived in the country.

“The Russia German element is with us to stay,” he said. “Today this group constitutes the largest German-speaking group in the state of North Dakota. In 1930, South Dakota had a foreign-born population of 22,617. In the same year the children of immigrants of Russia German stock numbered 64,455. South Dakota’s heaviest Russian German settlements are found in the counties of Walworth, Brown, Edmunds, McPherson, Campbell, Meade, Douglas, Bon Homme and Hutchinson.”

Joachim identified the earliest settlements in North Dakota located near Coldwater, Ashley and Zeeland, beginning in 1884. Settlement continued into western North Dakota until the outbreak of World War I. Joachim states that the heaviest settlements in North Dakota were found in the counties of McIntosh, Emmons, Logan, Mercer, Sheridan, Grant, Adams, Dickey and Stutsman.

“How may we best approach the Russia German in order to understand his mind and his soul?” Joachim writes. “First of all, I wish to express my profound admiration for this man who for nearly 200 years was a stranger in a strange land, a man who had severed all connections with his fatherland and who was prohibited from returning home, a man who was poor in things material. I admire him because he arose by sheer will power, perseverance and patience to influence, power and wealth against titanic odds. He retained an unsullied tradition and custom.”

“Forgotten and despised by his old fatherland, cursed and defamed by his own blood when he traveled through Germany on his way to America, but he yet is more German than a German,” he continues. “The Russia Germans have a legitimate right to be proud of his record and achievements. He kept the faith, he remained loyal to the heritage he received from the fathers.”

“The Russia Germans created their own language,” Joachim adds. “Originally, they spoke the German dialect current in the province of their origin in Germany. Some were of pure Swabian tongue, others spoke Low German, and still others spoke High German. People of all these differing tongues settled in the same colony (in Russia). In time, these tongues were fused into one. The result was the language of the Russia Germans. Listen to the soft, rolling, musical tongue of the man from Sarata [Bessarabia]. Give ear to the slow, surrounded ending of every word uttered at Rohrbach [Beresan District]. Let the broad, accented words of the colonist from Arzis [Bessarabia] fall upon your ears. In each case, it sounds like a greeting from home — different from anything you have heard before.”

“The Russia German is a church man,” he writes. “His home had scarcely emerged from the grass-hut stage when the Church was established as a necessity. The Lord’s Day was a holy day. On Saturday evening, the Sunday clothes were laid out, the body bathed, the face shaved and then one could sleep an hour longer in the morning. Mother and sister put the home into holiday dress and even prepared a special meal for the holiday dinner. If the pastor could not be present, either the school teacher or a lay read would read the sermon. The church was used for Sunday afternoon instruction of the young and it was used for baptisms, marriages and funerals. Mothers and their daughters sat to the left, men and boys to the right.”

“The Russia German made his greatest contribution to society in the form of manual labor,” Joachim explains. “By profession he is a tiller of the soil, a farmer, a producer of food. He feels it is his lot to receive land in the semi-arid regions of Russia, Siberia, the Americas and Canada. He built a granary out of the steppes and the prairies.”

“He did not shout that face to the world. A real farmer lives too close to the ground and too near to God to become a braggart. He stays humble. The dust of the earth and the smell of new-mown hay does not blur his vision.”

“What the National Geographic Magazine in its August 1937 issue has to say about the Russia German beet farmers is true of all their farming. They will move into a territory which other nationals have abandoned and will conquer it through thrift, industry, and sheer love of work. ‘Arbeit, komm her, ich fress dich auf.’ (‘Come, work, I shall devour you.’) This quote has become proverbial with them.”

“Educators and statesmen have often expressed regret that no systemic attempts were made earlier to understand these people, their peculiarities, their weaknesses, and their strengths, and to reduce them. In a more intelligent and sympathetic manner, to enter whole-heartedly into the affairs of their communities and their state.”

“The Russia German pioneers were farmers by profession, tillers of the soil, but today their children are found in every vocation in American life, thoroughly assimilated into the warp and woof of the nation’s fabric,” Joachim concludes his 1939 address. “These people deserved closer and more sympathetic study. They are anxious to know us as we should be eager to know them. They are patient individuals, and if we are patient with them, we shall succeed in exploring their souls.”

For more information about donating family histories and photographs, or how to financially support the GRHC, contact Jeremy Kopp, at jeremy.kopp@ndsu.edu or 701-231-6596; mail to: NDSU Libraries, Dept. 2080, PO Box 6050, Fargo, N.D. 58108-6050; or go to ndsu.edu/grhc. You may also contact Michael Miller michael.miller@ndsu.edu or 701-231-8416.