Die Wolgadeutschen Unsere Familien

Book excerpt: This book is the second of a two-volume set, which together, tell the story of die Wolgadeutschen, the Volga Germans, from both a big picture and small picture perspective. The first volume, Unsere Leute (Our People), uses a wide-angle lens to tell the broad, overall story of the Volga German people and their place in history. This volume, Unsere Familien (Our Families), zooms in and narrows the focus to tell the personal family stories of the author's paternal Leikam and Karlin ancestors, and the family stories of two Russian cousins from another branch of the Leikam family, and the closely related Weilert family. These four interwoven families lived closely together in Katharinenstadt on the banks of the Volga, for over a century, until the 1870s, when changing economic and political conditions led many to seek a fresh start in the New World. Their histories took widely divergent paths from this point. The author's ancestors were among the waves of Volga German immigrants who left Russia in the late 1870s, to establish new settlements on the virgin prairies in northwest Kansas; survived the severe economic hardships of the Great Depression/Dust Bowl era; fought against their primordial fatherland in two world wars; and eventually assimilated into the fabric of modern American culture. His Russian cousins’ ancestors remained in Russia. Their family stories are both poignant tales, filled with drama and tragedy, that play out during the terrible decades of the Communist Revolution, the Russian Civil War, the Great Famine, collectivization, Stalin’s reign of terror, and the deportation after the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941. But both are also positive stories of the survival of human decency and goodness in the midst of profound evil. This book is a must for anyone related to or interested in these families. The comparison and contrast of the parallel histories of these four closely related families also makes it a great addition to the library of anyone interested in the history of the Volga Germans in general.