Hardship to Homeland recounts the Volga German saga from Germany to Russia and across the Atlantic. Burdened by war and debt, impoverished European peasants suffered until a former German princess came to power in Russia. Seeking to increase borderland population, provide a buffer against Ottoman Empire incursions, and bring agricultural ingenuity to her country, Russian Empress Catherine II issued a remarkable 1763 manifesto inviting Europeans to immigrate. Their passage paid, colonists would become Russian citizens, yet retain their language and culture. For the next four years, some 27,000 settlers came - mostly from Hesse and the Palatinate-founding 104 communities along both banks of the Volga River near Saratov. But a century later in 1871 the Russian Senate revoked the original settlement terms. Facing poor economic conditions and a forced Russian army draft, 100,000 Volga Germans joined other immigrant waves to the New World. After a decade of hardship in the Midwest, some moved to the Pacific Northwest, becoming one of the region's largest single ethnic group migrations. They settled throughout the Columbia Basin, along the coast, and into northern Idaho, Oregon, British Columbia, and Alberta. They transformed their new homelands into centers of productivity and significantly influenced North American religion, politics, and social development. Hardship to Homeland is a revised and expanded reprint of The Volga Germans: Pioneers of the Northwest, published in 1980 and long out of print. This edition offers a new preface as well as Volga German folk stories from the Pacific Northwest, collected and retold by Richard D. Scheuerman, with illustrations by Jim Gerlitz and photographs by John Clement.
Hardship to Homeland recounts the Volga German saga from Germany to Russia and across the Atlantic. Burdened by war and debt, impoverished European peasants suffered until a former German princess came to power in Russia. Seeking to increase borderland population, provide a buffer against Ottoman Empire incursions, and bring agricultural ingenuity to her country, Russian Empress Catherine II issued a remarkable 1763 manifesto inviting Europeans to immigrate. Their passage paid, colonists would become Russian citizens, yet retain their language and culture. For the next four years, some 27,000 settlers came - mostly from Hesse and the Palatinate-founding 104 communities along both banks of the Volga River near Saratov. But a century later in 1871 the Russian Senate revoked the original settlement terms. Facing poor economic conditions and a forced Russian army draft, 100,000 Volga Germans joined other immigrant waves to the New World. After a decade of hardship in the Midwest, some moved to the Pacific Northwest, becoming one of the region's largest single ethnic group migrations. They settled throughout the Columbia Basin, along the coast, and into northern Idaho, Oregon, British Columbia, and Alberta. They transformed their new homelands into centers of productivity and significantly influenced North American religion, politics, and social development. Hardship to Homeland is a revised and expanded reprint of The Volga Germans: Pioneers of the Northwest, published in 1980 and long out of print. This edition offers a new preface as well as Volga German folk stories from the Pacific Northwest, collected and retold by Richard D. Scheuerman, with illustrations by Jim Gerlitz and photographs by John Clement.
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