roughly totaled 1.8 million according to the 1897 census. The largest section of the German Russian transatlantic migrants left Russia after the turn of the century. The peak years for emigration were 1904-05 and 1912. A proportion of these then continued their migration northwards from the U.S., in particular Mennonite settlers who moved into the large settlement centers of their faith community in western Canada.
The main settlement areas for the German Russians were in Oregon and Washington, as well as the prairie areas particularly of states situated in the Great Plains such as Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, which had begun to be settled by both Americans and Europeans in the 1860s and reached their peak in the phase involving the German Russian immigrants. In the two Dakotas there was a self-contained “German Russian Triangle” in 23 counties, where the population had a particularly high proportion of German Russian migrants, who predominantly came from the Black Sea region.
The proportion of urban settlers was also by no means low. Migrant members of the German minority in the Tsarist Empire also turned up in considerable numbers for example among the workforce of the cement industry in Chicago, the roadbuilders in Portland, Oregon, or the seasonal workers for the processing of sugar beet in Lincoln, Nebraska.
With regard to the total emigration from the continent of Europe around 1900, there was also an increase in other ‘Neo-Europe’ areas other than North America, including above all Australia, Brazil, and Argentine, but also New Zealand, Uruguay, and Chile. Before 1850, the U.S. had taken in about fourth fifths of all European emigrants. In the second half of the 19 th century, it was about three quarters, and from the turn of the century round about half. The increase in importance of the destinations outside North America was mainly a result of the opening up of large new settlement zones for European farmers and the discovery of mineral deposits which offered the development and opening up of new work opportunities. For the above mentioned German Russian overseas migrants in this situation, it was not just the United States and Canada that were the core destinations: Members of the German minorities north of the Black Sea and to a lesser extent those from the Volga and Volhynia, bought land in Brazil (here mainly Roman Catholics) or in Australia, or else took up new opportunities for settlements in Asian areas of the T sarist Empire that were being opened up by the Trans-Siberian Railway, and which within a few years also became another ‘Neo-Europe’. From the start of the building of the railway in 1891 up to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, four to five million people settled in Siberia from the European regions of the Tsarist Empire.
Awareness of the opportunities for settlements in Siberia spread rapidly. Settlers who went to Asia without recourse to government organizations, came mostly from the region immediately to the west of the Ural Mountains and already had family contacts in Siberia. Settlers from the European core zones of the Tsarist Empire on the other hand mostly needed first to depend on state support. From 1896, the state encouraged the designation of “scouts,” which made it possible for families and groups willing to establish settlements to send out someone in advance, who would report back on the migration opportunities and make preparations for the settlements. This was to some extent a case of state-funded pioneer migrants. In addition, loans were made available for travel costs – which were at a reduced price for settlers – and favorable conditions for the settlements. Land was parceled out and assigned and in some places the state cultivation of farmland was alongside the line of the railway track. Many of those belonging to the German Russian minority found themselves put together in relatively closely confined settlements, as was already the case in the European part of the Tsarist Empire. In 1914, the year of the start of World War I, the number of Mennonite colonies alone had risen to 93 in Western Siberia.
It is a frequently overlooked fact that transatlantic migration by Europeans was not a one-way street. During the 19th century the migration of predominantly families for the purpose of finding agricultural land for settlements decreased, alongside an increase in the migration of individuals seeking employment in industry, leading to an increase in the rate of return migration. From 1880 to 1930, four million people returned from the United States to Europe with enormous differences between the individual groups. Only 5% of the Jewish transatlantic migrants returned, but 89% of the Bulgarians and Serbians. For those from central, northern, and western Europe the average was 22%. Above all, the overseas migration from Eastern, East Central, and Southern Europe which was dominant at the turn of the 20th century, came less and less to signify definitive emigration and was increasingly a case of frequent returns and repeated, circulatory migration. Half of the Italians, for example, who reached North and South America between 1905 and 1915, returned to Italy. Not infrequently, the money that had been earned overseas was used for the purchase of land, which can also be seen to be the case with the extensive migration to North America of the German minorities in Banat and Bachka (Serbia). A large proportion of the transatlantic migrants returned after only a few years and achieved their goal of using the wages they had saved up for the establishment and expansion of agricultural land.
The Yearbook of German and East European ethnic folk studies volume 54 (2013), brought together contributions to the conference held in November 2011 on the subject of “German overseas migration from Eastern Europe.”
The migrants, including those from the German minority groups in Eastern, Central, and South-Eastern Europe, developed far-reaching networks made up predominantly of family and friends, which contributed to the fact that the majority of their overseas migration in the 19th century led to the formation of geographically tightlyknit communities from their areas of origin in the destination locations. This overseas migration was certainly far from being a unified movement. It can be broken down into groups from different regional, social, and religious backgrounds, which can be differentiated according to the various phases of migration and their motivation, and which have predominantly stayed together in particular settlements, especially in rural areas. This had some repercussions insofar as, in contrast to the attributions made by the Anglo-American host society, they were not identified as “Germans,” “German Russians,” or “Danube Swabians.” It was mainly in the towns that associations developed which contributed to the spread of a “German” identity and bridged the divide between communities with different regional origins. This was less oriented to a territorial “Germany” but rather to a broad cultural area to which Germans from Eastern, Central, and South-Eastern Europe felt they belonged. In the early 20th century, this lost its significance in favor of a German-American identity.
Dr. Jochen Oltmer, born 1965, is Professor for Modern History and member of the board of the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at Osnabrück University. Author and editor of books on the history of migration: (ed. with Klaus J. Bade et al.), The Encyclopedia of Migration and Minorities in Europe: From the Seventeenth Century to the Present, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013; Globale Migration. Geschichte und Gegenwart [Global Migration: Past and Present], Munich: C.H. Beck 2016; Migration: Geschichte und Zukunft der Gegenwart [Migration: History and Future of the Present], Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2017.
From Klemzig to Klemzig: The first Prussian settlers in South Australia
Anitta Maksymowicz
“In recent years our continent has been afflicted with serious drought. If at some time Australia becomes a permanent desert, then we will make our way back to the Oder, to the land of our ancestors,” an Australian friend once joked. Even though this declaration may sound surprising, it is a fact that there are a lot of people living on the opposite side of the globe who are descendants of Prussians from the border areas of Brandenburg, Silesia, and Greater Poland, who emigrated to Australia in the 19th century.
Over a period of more than seventy years, from 1838 to 1914, a large number of people went to Australia from the central area along the river Oder which today lies in western Poland. It started in 1838 with a small group of barely 500 Lutherans from the region around Züllichau/Sulechów, who left their
