Why being political is a very personal thing

Part one

Working in the labor camp Trud-Armee was hard for everyone. When my eldest brother asked my grandfather about his experiences in the camp, he told him that he had almost been shot once by one of the Russians who was in charge of the camp. The Russian ordered my grandfather to leave. Grandpa knew if he left, they'd shoot him in the back. So he said to the warden: "No, I am not going. You shoot me, you might as well do it right now and here. At least then I'll know who did it." Whereupon the warden had chased him away angrily and let him go back to the barrack.

When my family was released from the labour camp in the mid-fifties, they settled in Kazakhstan.

Many other Germans shared this fate with them and so they were again a colony, which was also a fortune because so they got some protection and had held their traditions alive. My parents tried to get an application to leave the country, but each time they failed because of the strict Russian policy that refused to allow them to leave. Fifteen more years were to pass before they finally decided to take the first step towards the West.

On 9 September 1955, the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer negotiated with President Khrushchev during a state visit to Moscow about the last 10,000 German soldiers in captivity. The difference between prisoners of war and Russian Germans became very clear. While on 17.9.1955 all collaborators convicted in the USSR and members of the Wehrmacht who had been imprisoned were pardoned and released, the emigrants remained imprisoned and without rights. (Meanwhile 14 years without a court hearing). Adenauer's negotiations later brought relief for the Russian Germans nevertheless. On 13.12.1955 the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR "On the lifting of restrictions on the legal status of Germans and their families living in special settlements" was signed.

Further tough negotiations resulted in 1957-58 in the approval of the Soviet Union for the departure of all Germans from East Prussia and the Memel countries who were German citizens before June 22, 1941.

Actually, our stay in Kazakhstan was not so much dominated by Socialism as we were located so far in the East and German colonists had settled there before the war. Interestingly, the policy got more rigid the closer to the West we moved. Also, the people were tired from all the restless times and wanted to get children and build families.

My parents, when they meant the house in which we lived, spoke of a "Semlanka", which means "earth house". Imagine it like the houses of the Hobbits, some of which are built into a mound of earth.

^{By Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36612474}

One of the main ecological benefits of earth-house architecture lies in its natural insulation. The unique architecture cools the house down in summer and keeps it warm in winter. A further advantage is the higher air humidity of 50 to 70% compared to overheated rooms of conventional houses in winter. Furthermore, as earth houses are impermeable, they can be considered ideal for controlled air conditioning

Kazakhstan has an extreme climate.

In winter it is bitterly cold, in summer it is roaring hot. As far as I know, my mother said that there hadn't been much growth there and the survival and management of plants and animals was difficult. My father worked as a plasterer to earn an additional income.

In the centre of Kazakhstan is the Kazakh Threshold (Kazakh Saryarka), an area characterized by steppes and semi-deserts with many medium-sized (500 to 1500 m) mountains and mountains such as Ulutau, Kökschetau or Karkaraly.

Staple foods were scarce and children were taught how best to steal them. One of my twin brothers (born 1964) remembers how his brother and he, together with my father, took two bags of animal food with them, which they hoisted onto a rickety bicycle and tried to shoot off in a hurry.

Whenever he told this story, you could feel his indignation that our father made his sons thieves. But it is also true that he learned a lot from him and copied the art of improvisation from him in addition to the enduring hardship. Both my parents made a virtue out of necessity and they were very inventive in combining and problem solving.

But how did my parents actually meet?

My mother speaks of an arrangement between the families. My father was officially presented to her and recommended by her uncle as a suitable husband candidate. They organized a meeting in the kitchen, where they got to know each other. According to my mother, it was a rather awkward encounter and it took several attempts to arouse my mother's interest. She finally took him because, as she said, "I felt sorry for your father".

^{Mom & Dad - around 1960}

My mother had such a big heart that she locked him and six children inside and never complained. I've seen my mother cry three or four times in my life. But I found her angry, impatient and in a way tantalized by the many inclemencies imposed on her. She therefore had little maternal tenderness in the sense that she did not touch us children very often, whereas she already knew how to stroke us with words.

As she said, she was at field work with my Aunt Ella during pregnancy when the contractions started and she then went to the hospital. When the obstetricians told her after the delivery of the child that she had not finished because a second one was coming, she was deeply shocked. She was really stunned because she hadn't expected to give birth to twins. Immediately she asked herself there on the bed how it should be possible to get two children and the other three, who were already in the world, through. My parents then seriously considered giving a twin for adoption. They knew a couple who wanted to have children but couldn't have them and thought about which of the twins they could do without.

They racked their brains and their hearts became heavy. Although it seemed reasonable to part with one of the children, my father said: "No, we do not. We can't give it away. Look how small and innocent they are, how are we going to deal with this? We'll be able to take care of everyone!"

How and when did the Russian government decide to let the Russian Germans travel?

Here some dates:

1958
8 April: German-Soviet agreement on cooperation between the Red Cross organisations of both countries opens up prospects for family reunification

This is also the year, my oldest brother is born. Two years later, in 1960, my sister sees the light of day. The second oldest brother is born in 1962, again after two years time.
My sister remembers that my mother worked for a Russian Kindergarden during night-shifts to run the coal stove in the basement so that it wouldn't cool down in the rooms. She feels warm and safe. My mother reads even stories from the children's books she borrows. She sleeps there and spends the nights with my mom who never rests.

1964
29 August: Due to numerous letters of protest and petitions, a decree on the partial rehabilitation of the Russian Germans appears.

Birthyear of my twin brothers.

1965
Two delegations of Russian Germans travel to Moscow and try in vain to restore the disbanded German autonomy on the Volga. Disappointment and increased desire to emigrate to the Federal Republic of Germany in order to find freedom of religion and conscience, legal equality and the hoped-for linguistic and cultural environment.

In 1967, my sister goes to a Russian school when she's seven. When she starts first class, she is considered a small miracle, because she can already read. As my eldest brother starts school a year earlier, she learns through close observation and listening without anyone noticing. My brother's probably telling her some horror stories about his school life.

When the twins have to go to hospital due to illness, they are accompanied by my sister, who is still an infant herself because my mother cannot leave the field and farm. There she is admired by the nurses who tell my astonished parents that the tender little girl reads to her brothers like a big one. Whether this story was indeed so remarkable or whether my mother exaggerated a bit, I do not know.

1970
According to the census, 1,846,317 Germans live in the Soviet Union. 66.8% of them state German as their mother tongue; only 316 Russian Germans are allowed to leave the country.
12 August: Moscow Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet Union.

My own birth-year. Still, we live in Kazakhstan.

1971–1982
More than 70,000 Russian Germans benefit from east-west relaxation. You may leave for Germany.

My family turns West and leaves Kazakhstan in 1971.

Discussions arise between the German folks and they think of where to go next. Some of the men take up traveling and come back to report about the circumstances and opportunities towards the Balkan states. We get permission to leave and arrive in Estonia/Pikva. There, family life and work goes on.

My sister becomes a pioneer because you have to be and receives a regime-compliant education with a morning roll call and national anthem. We Germans are considered fascists there, but the teachers are not all against us. My sister is afraid of the awkward walk home from school. Especially in winter it is arduous and an ordeal.

^{By USSR Post - Scanned 600 dpi by User Matsievsky from personal collection, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42756350}

1972
3 November: Germans and Greeks from Russia and the Bulgarians and Armenians in Crimea are promised by Ukas that they can choose their free domicile again.
1973
30 September: In Karaganda, Kazakhstan, about 400 Germans who want to leave the country demonstrate and are driven apart by violence.

^{My sister with me. She took care of me a lot and was my "second mom".}

In Estonia we are working a farm with cows, pigs, sheep and chicken and some land. We have a compost toilette outside the house and our first huge black and white television where I watch "Mighty Mouse".

^{By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33497041}

Again, farming doesn't provide for all what the family needs and my father starts to work at a kolkhoz as a tractor driver.

A kolkhoz[a] (Russian: колхо́з, IPA: [kɐlˈxos] was a form of collective farm in the Soviet Union. Kolkhozes existed along with state farms or sovkhoz (plural sovkhozy or sovkhozes). These were the two components of the socialized farm sector that began to emerge in Soviet agriculture after the October Revolution of 1917, as an antithesis both to the feudal structure of impoverished serfdom and aristocratic landlords and to individual or family farming.

^{Bundesarchiv Bild Isseroda Traktorist/ Federal Archive Picture Isseroda Tractorist}

The 1920s were characterized by spontaneous emergence of collective farms, under influence of traveling propaganda workers. Initially a collective farm resembled an updated version of the traditional Russian "commune", the generic "farming association" (zemledel'cheskaya artel'), the association for joint cultivation of land (TOZ), and finally the kolkhoz. This gradual shift to collective farming in the first 15 years after the October Revolution was turned into a "violent stampede" during the forced collectivization campaign that began in 1928, as means to counter counterrevolutionary elements, in some instances, allegedly sponsored by the West.

commons.wikimedia.org - Traktorist

Our journey towards Germany takes place in 1974.

My mom and dad pack the necessities and prepare themselves and six children for the three day train drive. We have to pass Moscow to get all the important documents and stamps, so first, the direction is East again. My brother remembers how the children get a lot of ice cream, more than ever before, because the Russian Rubel is to be spent in full. We only take what we need, house, yard and dog are left behind. That was a crazy dog, a German Sheppard. He got insane and we assume that he was very bad treated by his former owners. He was chained to the well and his barks were ever so frightening when strangers appeared.

Finally, we arrive with nothing more than our little belongings and can rest for the first time. Friedland is a transit camp for people like us. It's almost located in the middle of Germany. There we get German food. We find the food strange and unpalatable. A short time later we get another temporary limited accommodation in Unna Massen, where we stay for a few weeks, then we move to a high-rise building in Espelkamp, where we live for about a year on the 7th floor of the 13-storey house. I remember how incredible it was to live in such a huge building! There we wait for our single family house in Lower Saxony, to be finished.

^{Camp with barracks. Source: Von Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F005100-0009A / Steiner, Egon / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5448819}

We receive compensation from the German government and my whole family is even invited to the Bundestag - the German federal parliament not then in Berlin, but in Bonn! There, some officials speak to us, welcome us and honor our efforts and survival. We can only afford the single-family house because we get a starting syringe.

I cannot imagine what it must have meant to them, my grandparents and my parents, that after so many years they were finally not only welcomed warmly but also received financial compensation.

We were among the particularly lucky ones, because the departure at the beginning of the seventies was still something special, since it had been only a few who had emerged. My grandparents were here first - I think about a year or two - and then supported us from Germany in our efforts to leave the Balkan which is under Russian command.

In April 1988, a so-called "third delegation", made up of various local autonomous movements, was to begin negotiations with the state leadership. The composition of this delegation showed that the movement covered all regions of the country, as well as all age groups and social classes. In 1989 there were official signals that gave hope of full political and legal rehabilitation and restoration of the Volga Republic's autonomy by the end of the year. The alliance movement "Rebirth" was founded. The autonomy movement appealed to the non-German population living in the area, who were assured that the restoration of the rights of the German population would not harm them. Rather, they wanted to build a better life together.

I am 18 years old. I do not think much about where I came from. I just started my education as an accountant.

On 14 November 1989, the Supreme Soviet declared the deportations of the war years illegal and criminal and advocated guaranteeing the rights of the deported peoples. However, after a commission of the Supreme Soviet had agreed in principle to restore the autonomy of the Volga region, numerous and sometimes massive protest rallies in Moscow and in the affected region around Saratov prevented further steps.

The fall of the German-German border is of high interest to me. I look where everyone looks. That Germany becomes united again. I just come back from Spain with my very first long term boyfriend. We were having vacation there.

The stalling policy of the government of the USSR, the rejection of the independent Volga Republic and the increasing repression pressure in Kazakhstan and Central Asia led to a further rapid increase in resettlement applications. From 1988 to 1996, the Federal Republic alone had 1,438,703 ethnic German immigrants from the former USSR.

In 1989 the first free elections took place in the Soviet Union and Michael Gorbachev was elected president. At the end of 1991 the USSR broke up. With the emergence of new states, the approximately 2 million Russian Germans were distributed among several new states. According to estimates by the Federal Government and political associations of minorities from 1999, approximately 800,000 Germans still live on Russian territory today.

Our settlement in Lower Saxony becomes the final destination for my family and further generation.

Together with almost the entire village from Kazakhstan we build over time a new community. Many of the old folks have since died.

Just the other day I visited the daughter of my grandma's sister. She got quite happy to see me and was telling me stories from her long life. She is 85 and managed some years ago to build a stone path through her garden, carrying the heavy stones all by herself. Her garden is her life. It's a little paradise in the urban part of town and would win a price if someone were to look at it. She was so pleased with my willingness to listen to her that she entertained me for about three hours. She told me: "Come over, more often. Now, that your mother is no more, I can be your mom, no?"

As children, we didn't see the empathy of the women we grew up with. Our moms were strict and often enough careless with us. Not only my parents but all the other parents of my friends didn't treat us particularly friendly. As I was four years when we came to Germany, I was quickly assimilated by the German attitude and intellectualism I sucked up during my education. I often felt insulted by the harsh speech of my folk and totally misunderstood their behaviors. Also, I adopted a certain form of arrogance towards my people as they appeared to me as simple minded, even stupid characters. But my mom never let us steal her dignity. She knew better and that is that. This clashes between generations which grow up so differently, just happen.

^{My family in Germany in the End of 70s.}

Melting pots

Why am I emphasizing this?

Germany - and many other countries in the world - is a melting pot of cultures. Recently I had a client from Africa. Her daughter refused to go home and decided to stay at her aunts house who became a German resident decades earlier. She told the officials that her mother treats her badly and uses strange habits of curing illnesses.

I won't go into detail but one may be a little disgusted by her methods to treat her children. Now, you cannot just give in and listen to a 13 year old alone. The adults should explain some historical and cultural rules and not artificially scandalize the mothers choices. A mediation process between mother and daughter where nobody is accused of anything is in motion. Already, this case got difficult and the court had taken away the mothers custody right for a limited amount of time. The social institutions and the involved officials do know quite well about the differences in cultures and the goal must be reunion and not separation of family members.

Integration of people isn't easy

in particular when they come from agricultural and simple backgrounds without modern equipment and education. As I see it, people should indeed form their little communities and should be allowed to practice their religion, language and traditions as long as they want. Over time and over passing generations the people will cope more and more to the current nation and habits. One should not think in legislative periods but in long term periods like fifty and hundred years ahead of time. Once you force people to assimilate themselves into the foreign culture they resist inwardly and will create many difficulties and problems with the hosting nation.

This doesn't mean at all to not encourage inclusion and welcome the foreigners and teach them about the culture they start a new life in. See the advantages also from alien food, habits and knowledge which enriches the established.

It is not only the newcomers who should strive for their integrity. Even those who have lived in a country for generations should think and act with integrity.
Where does this fear come from, that one would be inferior to a foreign religion and cultural asset, when the whole world is now going through an immense westernization, is not so comprehensible to me. This development is inevitable, since all modern states outstrip those that are not yet at the same level of technology and education.

I am not afraid to lose my identity, because I have dealt with it and would advise everyone to do the same.

Basically, nobody can take anything from me but my life. My culture, my habits, my experiences in life and profession, as a mother and as part of social communities is inalienable. Apart from that, as a human being I can challenge myself to keep myself flexible and not to think in rigid patterns. Life is always change. Even if all this is part of my story, none of us is what we were twenty or thirty years ago.

I live only in the present.

Thank you so much for reading.

Sources:

German: Dissertation - Walter Graßmann - History of the Protestant-Lutheran Russian Germans in the Soviet Union, the CIS and Germany in the second half of the 20th century. Community, Church, Language and Tradition:
https://edoc.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5378/1/Grassmann_Walter.pdf
German: DEUTSCHE AUS RUSSLAND WER SIE SIND. WOHER SIE KOMMEN. WAS SIE MITBRINGEN. Eckehard Peters - Ausländerbeauftragter beim Thüringer Ministerium für Soziales, Familie und Gesundheit /
Commissioner for Foreigners at the Thuringian Ministry of Social Affairs, Family and Health:
http://apps.thueringen.de/de/publikationen/pic/pubdownload885.pdf
The Germans from Russia - Children of the Prairie: http://www.prairiepublic.org/wp-content/uploads/gfrguide2.pdf
German Russian History: https://library.ndsu.edu/grhc/history_culture/history/index.html

Title picture source:

^{Von Bundesarchiv, Bild 137-000471 / Unbekannt / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5338329}

Why being political is a very personal thing - The story of the Russian-Germans from my family's point of view - Part two