Journal, Vol. 02, No. 1 – Spring 1979

Cover: The cover depicts a Mennonite mother and child arriving in China as refugees.

Content:

An article by John B. Toews, “Flight Across the Amur Into China,” discusses the flight between 1929 and 1934 of hundreds of Mennonite, Lutheran, and Catholic colonists from Russia across the Amur River into northern China.
Emma S. Haynes provides valuable information in “Researching in the National Archives” and in passenger lists.
“A Passenger List From Canada” is provided by Adam Giesinger, who continues the series “Villages in Which Our Forefathers Lived” with translations of the chronicles for the Mariupol colonies of Grunau, Tiegenhof, Kaiserdorf, and Eichwald.
Dr. Giesinger also continues his translations of memoirs of Volga settlers in “Early Chroniclers Among the Volga Germans.”
The series “Passage to Russia: Who Were the Emigrants?” continues with Part III, “The Unequal Settlers,” translated by Douglas Austin.
Ingrid Rimland gives us greater understanding of her novel with “The Wanderers: What Is Fiction? What Is Fact?”
“The 1915 Deportation of the Volhynian Germans” by Alfred Krieger has been translated by Adam Giesinger and “The Homeless: The Tragedy of Volga German Farmers” by Roger Welsch.
Lewis R. Marquardt finds beauty and art in the “Metal Grave Markers in German-Russian Cemeteries of Emmons County, North Dakota.”
Alexander Dupper gives us a short “Note on Catherine’s Signature” with a map of early Odessa, and we enjoy “A Voice From the Old Country: The Staerkel Letters,” translated by Paul G. Reitzer.
Lawrence Weigel continues to provide us with notes on our musical heritage with a discussion of “Herz mein Herz.” Folklore Forum includes “Proverbs and Proverbial Expressions Among the Germans From Russia” by Timothy J. Kloberdanz and “Volga German Proverbs and Proverbial Expressions From the Colony of Dreispitz” by Mary Koch.
Additions to the Loan Collection reviewed are: The Punished Peoples: The Deportation and Fate of Soviet Minorities at the End of the Second World War by Aleksandr M. Nekrich; Lasst sie selber sprechen (Let Them Speak for Themselves), a collection of stories from Germans from Russia now living in West Germany, edited by Katharina Drotleff; Michael J. Anuta’s East Prussians from Russia; Germans from Russia in Colorado, edited by Sidney Heitman; The German-Russians: A Bibliography of Russian Materials with Introductory Essay, Annotations and Locations of Materials in Major American and Soviet Libraries by James Long; “A Survey of English Usage in the Spoken German Language of German Russians in North Dakota,” an unpublished thesis by Allen L. Spiker; and Nina Farley Wishek’s excellent Along the Trails of Yesterday.