Disaster

Week 9

While my family like all families has survived floods and droughts, I think the most significant disaster the family faced was a combination of several really bad things happening in quick succession, not all natural either....

Conrad Keuhn and his wife Elizabetha,  Johann George Hix along with his wife Gertraut, Claudius and Anna Bernhart, Johann Rothe and Cecilia, Johann and Frederika Fuchs, Johann and Anna Frick, Johann and Katarina Kirschbaum.  These are the names of my ancestors who immigrated to Russia in response to Catherine the Great offering land and freedom.  These are just a few of the people who became "Germans from Russia".  (Just a side note here, can you see the whole same name thing going on?) 

Keep in mind that there is no country of Germany in the 1600 and 1700's, there are collections of city/states each with their own rulers (princes, barons etc.).  The Holy Roman Empire rules them early in this period and by the end of the 1700's the Austro-Hungarian and Prussian Empires are coming to the front.

In 1618 the 30 years war (actually a series of wars) began and it ended in 1648.  Chroniclers of the time estimate that around one half to two thirds of the German population died during this time.  Those who were not killed in the fighting starved or succumbed to plague and pestilence. This was the time of the writing of the Grimm's Fairy Tales, which were quite grim before Disney got hold of them.  This was also the peak of the 'Little Ice Age' that held Europe for about 300 years.  Rivers froze and the growing season was short. There was another war in the area that is now Germany at the end of the 1600's that resulted in a 'scorched earth' sort of effect inside the German borders. The 'Nine Years War', which had different names in other places (French and Indian War in America) happened 1754-1763 adding even more hardship to the lives of the average people.

In 1681 William Penn took his mostly German colonists to America, it would be another 80 years before my family decided they too needed to leave. 

Catherine the Great, Czarina of Russia, did not think much of the farmers/peasantry of Russia.  She was much more impressed with the industriousness, neatness and skill of her native German farmers and she had a dream of making the Volga River the breadbasket of Russia.  In 1763 she offered the new colonists free land, exemption from taxes, religious freedom and exemption from military service.  They came by the thousands, they found hardship initially but in the end they did make the Volga River valley the breadbasket of Russia and had a relatively good life until the late 1800's when they began to see the precursors of the revolutions to come.

They immigrated again to America this time.  I am glad they did.  Sometimes disasters lead to good things!