Descendants of German-speaking peoples residing in the Western Hemisphere whose ancestors immigrated to the Russian Empire during the years 1764 to 1862 are variously referred to as:

• Germans from Russia,
• Russian-Germans,
• German-Russians,
• Russo-Germans, and
• Russia Germans.

In Russia, these Germans retained their language, customs, and other forms of ethnicity but they were Russian because they were citizens of that country. The Joseph Senger family that settled in Bismarck, North Dakota were Germans from Russia.

The story of the Germans from Russia had its beginning in 1763. Catherine the Great is a name revered by some and cursed by others in Eastern Europe but grizzled old settlers of many American Great Plains villages speak of it with respect. The German-born princess whose indomitable wiles made her the Empress of Russia for thirty years found herself with massive tracts of new land along the lower course of the Volga River in Russia, which were acquired through victory over Turks and Tartars. To stabilize and to develop these lands, Catherine turned to the German peasants of her homeland. Catherine was determined to turn this region into productive agricultural land as well as to populate the area as a protective barrier against the nomadic Asiatic tribes who inhabited the region.

Seeking skilled farmers and artisans, on July 22, 1763, Catherine issued a manifesto inviting foreigners to settle in Russia in the vast uncultivated lands of her domain. As an inducement to encourage emigration to Russia, the manifesto offered the following rights and privileges to incoming foreign settlers:

1. Free transportation to Russia.
2. The right to settle in segregated colonies.
3. Free land and the necessary tax-free loans to establish themselves.
4. Religious freedom and the right to build their own churches. (Implied in this was the right to establish their own schools).
5. Local self-government.
6. Exemption from military or civil service.
7. The right to leave Russia at any time.
8. Therefore mentioned rights and privileges were guaranteed not only to incoming settlers but also to their descendants forever.

These rights and privileges offered a chance for a better life and many thousands of people emigrated to Russia from the Germanic states and principalities of Central Europe. The reasons that so many Germanic people took up this Russian offer were many. The Seven Years' War had just ended in 1763. Whole regions in Germany lay devastated and poverty was widespread. Many Germans emigrated at this time to other lands, including the New World, in order to make a new start in life.

The major settlement areas in the Russian Empire and the years of settlement were:

Volga Region 1764-1767; 1860's
Black Sea Region 1787-1793; 1804-1810
Bessarabia 1814-1816
Caucasus 1816-1818
Volhynia 1830-1860
Dobrudscha 1840-1890

The first German-speaking colonists who responded to Catherine's manifesto were directed to lands along the Volga River in the years 1764 to 1767. Among those accepting the invitation were about 27,000 German-speaking immigrants from the provinces of Hesse, the Palatinate, Saxony, Prussia and others, who immigrated to Russia between 1763 and 1790.

The Black Sea Germans responded to an invitation that was issued in 1803 by Alexander I, the grandson of Catherine. Fifty thousand people, mostly from Württemberg, Alsace (ELSA¼ / Elsass on the map below), Baden, and the Palatinate settled in Russia between 1804 and 1862. The Germans who settled in the lands along the Kutschurgan River were known as Kutschurganers.

The Alsace, as depicted in the map above, is a region that lies along the Rhine River border between France and Germany. Today, it is part of France but over the years it has been part of present day Germany and many Germanic people live in the Alsace today. Strasbourg (Strassburg in German) is the present day capital of this French province.

The Senger family probably lived in the Alsace area before they emigrated to Russia, as the Black Sea Germans named their mother colonies in Russia after the lands that they left behind (e.g., Strassburg, Baden).

Those who traveled to Russia in 1817, as depicted in the map below, went by boat down the Danube and, due to inexperience, many thousands died of disease and exposure. Unique among the water conveyances was the Ulmer Schachtel. These wooden boats made a one-way trip down the Danube River. At the trip's end, they were dismantled and the wood used for other purposes. Some immigrants spent a year and more en route.

Between 1808 and 1811, 449 families (including the Sengers) left their homes near the Rhine river (as depicted on the map below) and traveled to new homes near the Kutschurgan River in what was then Russia (now the Ukraine). Since they traveled during the time of the Russo-Turkish War, the Sengers most likely traveled by land.

1. Strassburg - Strasbourg, France is current capital of Alsace
2. Baden - area east of Rhine River in what is now Germany
3. Selz - Sulz is the current name for a city in France
4. Kandel - German city NE of Strasbourg, France
5. Mannheim - German city north of Baden Baden
6. Elsass - a variation of Alsace

The 52 Surnames among the Founders of the Village of Strassburg were: Baumann, Baumgärtner, Bertsch, Braun, Burgard, Burghardsmeier, Denis, Eisenzimmer, Feist, Feldmann, Feller, Fischer, Fuchs, Geiger, Grinsteiner, Gsell, Gutenberger, Haas, Hager, Herdt, Hoffmann, Holzer, Klein, Kraft, Lauinger, Mangold, Masset, Mastel, Meier, Mitzel, Reinbold, Rerich, Richter, Schaf, Scherer, Scherr, Schlosser, Schneider, Schwan, Schweitzer, Schwengler, Seiler, Selzer, Senger, Streifel, Voeller, Wald, Weidemann, Wenninger, Wolf, Wollsack, and Zentner.

The underlined surnames above were prevalent among the friends, relatives and/or neighbors of the Sengers in North Dakota.

Most of the German immigrants to Russia did not have agricultural skills, but with few exceptions, they were expected to make their living as farmers. Even the agricultural skills acquired in their homeland were of little benefit to them in Russia because of differences in climate and soils. Their German homeland had a humid climate while the Russian steppes had a semi-arid and sub-humid climate. There are striking similarities between the Russian steppes and the North American Great Plains.

The colonies were established on the steppes, natural grasslands. Like the North American Great Plains, the major problems encountered by the settlers of the steppes were a source of water, a source of fuel, and building material. Most of the mother colonies located near a source of surface water (e.g., the Kutschurgan River). Dung and other organic materials were the primary fuels. Building materials consisted, in the main, of natural sod, stones, and reeds.

With the primitive implements and tools available at the time, preparing land to grow crops was, at best, difficult. In the Black Sea Region, a farmer required about 13 years to develop 37 acres of land for crop production.

German farmers broke the sod, drained the marshes, and developed favorable varieties of grain, garden, and orchard produce. New implements were invented and others were improved. Wheat production became the primary agricultural enterprise in most of the new daughter colonies. The German Russians readily accepted the native winter wheat. German Mennonite farmers played a major role in making the Ukraine the granary of Europe (and eventually were responsible for introducing the first American hard winter wheat, the Turkey Red of Kansas).

Because of the high birth rate, land became a scarce commodity for the first generation of Germans born in Russia. By the late 1840's, land purchases from the Russian nobility began. The purchases were financed largely through sheep husbandry. The Merino sheep, famous for its high quality wool, had been introduced into Russia in the early 1800's and became available to the German colonists. The annual wool production paid for the first mortgage on the land purchase.

The original, or so-called mother colonies, established by Germans eventually numbered about 300. The German colonists lived in farmyards, called a Hof or yard, which were located side by side in a village called a Dorf. The land they farmed was outside the village. Some of the lands they were granted were held in common. The original land grants made to the immigrants were, at that time, considered to be very generous. The amount of land granted varied from colony to colony. Colonies usually, but not exclusively, were occupied by people of the same religious faith. As the population grew, more acreage had to be acquired for the landless. Thus, numerous daughter colonies were founded. Eventually there were more than 3,000 ethnic settlements in Russia.

Their peasant past and Russian village experience made ownership of land the paramount value. Survival, status, and leadership depended on it. As families grew there was a continual quest for new land. Some farmers became very wealthy, owning as much as 10,000 acres. Crafts were of secondary value and the professions, arts, and higher education of least importance. Illiteracy was widespread. The German village of Elsass in the Ukraine was 89 percent illiterate in 1812. Later generations saw schools develop, but quality varied with the locality and, though high when compared with the Russian levels, it was low by European standards.

In their long wandering the German-Russians had three precepts drilled into them.

They were:

• Never lose your religion.
• Never lose the mother (German) tongue.
• Never lose your (German) nationality.

As such, the German-Russians strove to be as culturally independent as possible. Their allegiance and fidelity was to the German culture of the 18th and early 19th Century. Religion and national pride made intermarriage with Russians a rare phenomenon. When schools were established, the language was German. The folk music was German, religious customs were German, family structure was German. Though a minority, they felt they were a "superior class" in the Russian countryside. Many adjustments to Russian ways, however, were inevitable.

But as one would expect, the almost idyllic political conditions of the first decades of settlement could not last. The Russian masses were increasing in cultural sophistication and had a population expansion problem of their own. Local resentment began to crystallize against these alien folk who held themselves aloof, occupied some of the best farmlands and were comparatively well off.

In 1861, Tsar Alexander abolished serfdom and created twenty million freemen. Stealing from the more prosperous Germans became rampant. Friction between Orthodox and German religious authorities increased. Local juridical privileges were curtained.

In 1871, Czar Alexander II revoked the preferential rights and privileges given to the colonist settlers by the manifestoes of Catherine II and Alexander I. The colonists, as a result, were reduced to the level of the Russian peasants and under the same laws and obligations to which they were subject. But most oppressive of all, the Germans were now subject to conscription. Military conscription of sons of the German colonists began in 1874 with the institution of the Military Reform Act by Alexander II.

Alexander III came to the throne of Russia in 1881 after his father, Alexander II, had been assassinated. Russification became the official policy and greatly affected the former colonists. Pan-Slavism, "Russia for Russians" became a source of discomfort. for the German Russians. The use of the Russian language in the schools became mandatory by 1892. Jurisdictional changes, which brought increased Russian control into daily affairs, were instituted. Business was required to be transacted in Russian. Also, it became increasingly difficult for the German-speaking colonists in Russia to purchase the land necessary for their expanding numbers. All of the rights of self-government in their villages were lost by the colonists under the changed conditions.

The natural result was that the colonists were dismayed and angry, feeling that the Russian Crown was guilty of a breach of contract. As there was nothing they could do, their thoughts turned toward leaving Russia. But where could they go? To return to Germany did not enter their minds, for when their ancestors had left Germany years before, they had no intention ever to return to their native country.

During the summer of 1872, Ludwig Bette, a former colonist, who had earlier (1849) led a party of 83 friends from the Black Sea to the United States, decided to visit relatives and friends in the Black Sea colonies. Noting the unrest and dissatisfaction among the colonists for having lost their privileged status, he extolled the virtue of the United States, urging emigration there. Shortly after his return to the United States, an emigration movement to the United States, Canada, and South America was set in motion which continued more or less unabatedly until the outbreak of World War I halted further emigration. At first, emissaries were sent to find suitable locations in the New World. Then land was sold often at great loss and, openly or covertly, little bands of families began to depart going to Atlantic ports at Bremen or Hamburg or Black Sea ports such as Odessa (where the Sengers departed from).

In general, Germans electing to emigrate from Russia did not experience any resistance from the Russian government. Among the ports of debarkation in North America were New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore (where the Sengers landed), New Orleans, Halifax, and Montreal.

1873 brought the first major waves of Germans to the Great Plains States. First to Nebraska and Kansas (Volga Germans) then to Texas, Oklahoma, the Dakotas and Montana. The Black Sea Germans acquired land and homesteaded in Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas. Because of the requirements of the U.S. Homestead Act of 1862, the German-Russians who took up homesteads in the United States were required to live on their 160-acre farms. They could not live in villages or colonies as they had in Russia.

The Volga Germans became closely associated with the sugar beet industry in Colorado and western Nebraska, while most Black Sea Germans became wheat growers in the Dakotas and in Canada; some later became orchard and grape growers in California.

The very first settlement of German-Russians in the Middle West occurred in the spring of 1873. This settlement was a direct result of Ludwig Bette's visit to the Beresan District (e.g., Johannestal) in 1872, when he influenced four groups from the Black Sea area to emigrate to the United States. The four groups, numbering 175 men, women, and children, were united at Sandusky, Ohio, where they spent the winter of 1872-1873.

In the spring, the scouts that were sent out in search of land determined that Dakota Territory was the place for them to settle. They loaded their belongings on a special freight train, possibly one or two passenger cars and a few boxcars, and took off for Yankton, Dakota Territory (the end of the rail line at the time). They arrived during the "Easter Sunday Blizzard" (April, 1873). After the weather cleared, they searched for suitable land on which to homestead. They founded the "Odessa Settlement" near the present site of Lesterville, South Dakota (about eighteen miles northwest of Yankton). Here they took up their "claim" provided through the Homestead Act of 1862.

A Mennonite advance party stopped in Fargo, (Dakota Territory) in 1873 after looking at land in Manitoba. Railroad officials showed them land in the Red River Valley. Mennonite skill at farming and internal religious controls made them the most desirable of all German-Russian immigrants. An attempt was made in Congress to set aside homestead limitations to enable them to settle in large compact units but the measure failed. Canada gave them a more favorable reception and received eventually 70,000 Mennonite immigrants. In the United States Mennonite settlement was most extensive in Kansas and Oklahoma.

The heaviest influx of German-Russians came after the most desirable western lands had been settled, in the late 1880's and early 1890's. It was from the middle and western portions of Dakota Territory that they might make their choice. The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad pushed into this heartland area of the Dakota plains, arriving at Aberdeen in 1881, Ipswich in 1883 and finally in Eureka in 1884. Each of these successive terminals became a dispersal point for the homestead seekers.

From Aberdeen and Ipswich they distributed themselves across the northern tier of counties. The first to appear in the southern counties of future North Dakota seems to have been in 1884.

Eureka was the major railroad terminal point at which tens of thousands of Germans from Russia were literally dumped on the Northern Plains. This prairie goliath with its forty-two (42) grain elevators and thirty-two (32) commission houses was a funnel into which the wheat of the Dakotas emptied. From its rail yards settlers fanned out by wagon train to points almost as far north as the Canadian border. Later groups, of course, came directly from the Atlantic seaports over the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads.

Joseph Senger came to the United States with his parents (Frank and Elizabeth (Schnieder) Senger, and siblings in 1908. He was 19 years old at the time. The family left their home in Strassburg, Russia and sailed from Odessa, Russia around October 9, 1908. It took them 14 days to sail (third class) across the ocean. They landed in Baltimore, Maryland on October 23 or 24, 1908. From there the family took a train to Aberdeen, South Dakota and then moved on to Strasburg, North Dakota. Three years later, in 1911, Joseph and the family moved to Bismarck North Dakota. Joseph lived in Bismarck the rest of his life.

Significant German-Russian communities had already been established in the Dakotas by the time that both families arrived in the USA. The good news for Joseph Senger was that he left Russia before 1914, as you will read at the end of this article.

The assimilation of the German-Russians in the Dakotas was not a uni-dimensional process. It would be wrong to say simply that their Americanization was slower or faster than their non-German neighbors. There was a natural selectivity at work; here and there, on various levels, the process of assimilation was speeded up, here and there it was retarded. In the main it did, in fact, take a much longer period than the customary three-generation Americanization process.

This is not surprising, however, for other national groups migrating to the American cities and countryside came directly from their homelands, where they had been part of a dominant majority culture. Arriving in the United States; they found themselves a lower class minority in unfamiliar surroundings. This often led to a considerable degree of confusion and social breakdown.

The German-Russians, it must be remembered, came to the American scene after almost a century of experience in living as a minority among unsympathetic and even hostile neighbors. In some ways they may be compared to the newly-arrived Jewish communities; they had already fashioned certain defensive measures --attitudes, customs, and traits that enabled them to be self sufficient in their prairie homes. Second and third generation disorders such as divorce, alcoholism, juvenile delinquency are at a minimum in German-Russian areas.

Historical circumstances had therefore fashioned in the German-Russians a special sense of identity, a unique set of ideals and aversions. These factors continually affected the adjustment of the first generations in America. In addition, the ecological isolation of their Great Plains settlements reinforced their exclusiveness and moderated the trend toward Americanization.

They came to the prairies when the framework of social institutions had already been quite well established. Counties had been set up and many towns had been organized. Anglo-American political and legal procedures were already in effect. Small numbers of knowledgeable Scandinavian, Old American, Canadian, Scotch and Irish homesteaders and merchants had already preceded them.

In many ways the Black Sea homesteaders were admirably, equipped for Plains settlement. The land was their life; urban living was not attractive. They were familiar with hard and tedious work. Generations of struggle made them thrifty almost to an extreme. A strong sense of family solidarity enabled them to pool their resources. They were thus flexible, yet adamant and could survive drought and misfortune.

The first settlers were anything but enamored with their desolate prairie countryside. Old timers talked with nostalgia of the good times, good soil, good climate of the Ukraine. Many would have returned to Russia if political conditions there had been favorable. Many would have gone elsewhere in the United States, but unlike the Irish, who could go back to friends in eastern cities or the Scandinavians, who could return to relatives in Minnesota, Iowa or Wisconsin, the German-Russians had no place to go. Knowing only the Great Plains they stayed and multiplied.

In the 1930 Census, about 65,000 North Dakota residents had Russian-born parents or were themselves of Russian birth. If one would include the grandchildren of these hardy settlers, the number of those with Russian origins was probably close to 100,000, or at least 15 percent of the total state population. North Dakota numbers twice as many Germans from Russia than does any other state in the United States.

Ninety-eight percent of the Germans in the Dakotas came from the Black Sea colonies, about two-thirds were Evangelical Protestants, the rest were Catholic, with several thousand Mennonites. A comparative handful stayed in Grand Forks, Mandan and Devils Lake to work on the railroads and in allied trades; the rest were farmers.

In the dry 1930's the thrifty ways of the German-Russians enabled them to survive in numbers far beyond that of most other national groups. They provided a stable element in the social and agricultural fabric of many North Dakota counties. In Pierce County, North Dakota, they owned 19 percent of the land in 1910. In 1960 they held 45 percent of the land and farmed much more as tenants.

After the first few years of settlement, with its problems of orientation and land acquisition, most German-Russian communities (especially those of a single religious background) flourished in a unique way. Here in America the immigrants could obtain the fond hopes of their fathers: land for themselves and their sons, a life without government interference, freedom to worship, freedom to be German.

The German-Russians proved to be most flexible and less tradition bound when it came to economic activity. Here they easily adopted the American ways; they readily accepted the Anglo-American system of buying and selling; marketing methods, banks, elevators. This was so, perhaps, because they had to be flexible in that element of life in Russia where they had previously found themselves in an already developed national economy.

They were most resistant to change in the things that they had fought in Russia to avoid; inter-marriage, loss of family solidarity, loss of religion, and for a generation or two, their own particular brand of German culture. They further avoided things in the United States that had been their natural enemies in Russia; politics, conscription, higher education, and the world of high finance.

In German-Russian McIntosh County, the number of votes for Roosevelt fell from 1,900 in 1936 to 318 in 1940. These votes for Harding and against Roosevelt were typical of the German-Russian communities in North Dakota and are no doubt a measure of their dislike for their ancient foe, conscription, and also an index of their reverence for their German homeland.

The Germans were deeply aware of their past. Settlements named Odessa sprang up in South Dakota and Saskatchewan, two were in North Dakota. Most of their village names reflected their immediate past in Russia or their home provinces in Germany: Baden, Selz, Johannestal, Danzig, and Strassburg. The railroad may have given a town site an Anglo-Saxon name but where possible the Germans changed it to fit their traditions.

As described previously, the dorf (village) and hof (homestead) design in Russia contributed to their ability to sustain an unmixed culture, to protect themselves, and to preserve their ideas and beliefs. In Russia the people lived in agglomerated villages which consisted of households bordering the roads. Attached to the rear of each hof were narrow strips of land on which were grown the gardens, the fruits, and other items of domestic consumption. The major farming lands were outside of the villages but the property and animals were collected at the hof.

There is an indication in early reports that the hof arrangement had a slight influence on some of the original German farm structures in North America, at least to the extent that the buildings were built close together or adjoining. But the Homestead Law provision requiring the owner to reside on his land made the dorf, or agglomerated village, impossible. Instead, small churches were erected out on the countryside to provide some sense of community. The prairie church became an important symbol of unity everywhere, for the Germans, especially the Black Sea settlers, tended to segregate themselves along religious lines. Schock says that in North Dakota the German Catholics were found mainly in three mixed communities and thirty-six predominantly Catholic Communities.

German-Russians were almost without exception religious people. The Catholic German Russians had no trouble identifying the local Catholic authorities and institutions but many stormy episodes occurred when they met pastors and bishops of German-American (non-Russian) or Irish traditions. Excommunication, family feuds, interdicts, and fights mark the first decades of their settlement. Yet today the German-Russians supply numbers of priests and nuns in amounts far beyond their proportion of the Catholic population.

At the University of North Dakota only one student identified himself as of German-Russian descent among its 1,215 students in 1921. Only two were to be found at that University among the 1,828 students in 1940. Yet, at least 15 percent and possibly 20 percent of the State's population were of that ancestry. Elementary education was accepted by the Germans but higher education was considered superfluous. On the German-Russian farm, the chores came first, homework came next. During spring and fall work, students would not go to school.

Politics might have interested them (and they voted often along a sort of neo-populist line with a strong attachment to the Nonpartisan League and especially to North Dakota's Senator William Langer) but political office they avoided. The politician in Russia had been considered a thief, a tyrant, or a foreigner. While Scandinavian immigrants entered politics almost immediately, German-Russians are only now beginning to assume high political offices in substantial numbers.

In spite of their numbers, the German Russians are practically unknown to the general American public and even to the world of scholarship. This may be partially explained by their lack of, or rather, their limited sense of national group identity. Their emotional ties were to no existing homeland, but instead to the early eighteenth century peasant life in Germany: Russia disclaimed them, and if one may judge from the reports of Volga and Ukrainian refugees returning to Germany after the World Wars, even Germany looked at them with some disfavor. Furthermore, they had no common region in Russia to harken back to, scattered as they were from the Volga to Bessarabia, from the Crimea to the Caucasus. They remembered only the life and locale of their specific Russian villages.

They had no outstanding leaders (Mennonites excepted), no intellectuals, no poets, no literature and no epics. Coming from different theological traditions, they had no common religion to establish an overall ethnic consciousness. The result was a strong emphasis on family ties and local unity, but a minimum of concern for "other" German-Russian groups.

The drought of the 1930's and especially the disruptive experiences of World War II form a sort of watershed in the cultural development of German-Russian communities. Young men had to move away from home; many took brides from eastern or western states. The German language and culture came under a wartime cloud of suspicion. Land values soared and new property was not easily obtained. Mechanization reduced the number of farms in the home settlements. Loans to veterans enabled some boys to buy land in distant counties, others could attend trade schools and some went to college. Automobiles, good roads, television and consolidated schools made further inroads into the previous isolation of the German communities. The University of North Dakota began to number its German-Russians by the dozens and then in the hundreds.

Today's German-Russian community is still a very distinctive thing. There is a touch of conservatism in the working methods of many farmers. There is a hint of suspicion towards outsiders. Music has an Old Country' flavor and riotous weddings still take place. German is spoken by the old timers. The English of the young has unique German accent. Sunflower seeds, golubtsy and halva are still relished. Elderly women cover their heads with peasant-type shawls. Parental authority, though shaken, is still intact. Many of the old people go to retirement homes in distant towns; the young no longer hear the stories and lore of the past. Religious traditions continue in full force, though an Irish pastor may live in the parsonage.

Several generations of living in America leaves its inevitable mark on every national group. The German-Russian culture has proved to be remarkably resistant to this influence, but nevertheless, it is no exception to the rule.

Hesitating to make the long journey over the ocean, many colonists decided to stay in Russia in spite of the Russification policy. In actual number, perhaps more of the German colonists remained in Russia than emigrated to the countries of North America and South America.

The tragic story of this almost two million people whom remained in Russia in 1914, when the outward flow was stopped, has never been told completely: German armies, Russian reprisals, Bolshevik mobs, mass deportations, and starvation were their lot.

Although they fought and died in Russian military campaigns, they, as a class, were accused of being spies and saboteurs. The German language was forbidden in their schools and churches, and German-language newspapers were prohibited. Innumerable German-Russians were deported to Siberia for "crimes against the state."

With the Russian Revolution of 1917, a period of lawlessness prevailed throughout Russia for several years. Robber bands raided the German villages, ruthlessly murdering many of the Germans. Germans living on estates were driven from their homes with only an hour's notice. Russian regiments revolted, killing their officers, and the Russian soldiers added to the period of lawlessness. The Russian Revolution brought much misery to the German-Russians with many displaced to Siberia and Middle Asia. With the German invasion of Russian in 1941, the entire Volga German population (400,000) was sent into Asiatic Russia. The Crimean and Caucasus Germans were moved the same year.

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