[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Games of Volhynian Germans

[Karl Krueger]

Well my family wasn't from Volhynia, but I haven't heard of this game either. My father liked playing cards but he may have learned this after being drafted into the army during WW II. He knew and taught us hearts, rummy, and Skat (a traditional German game). 
 
Card playing by these Germans brings up an interesting issue. Many of these Germans were very devout to the extent that they avoided any kind of activity that resembled "sin". This included card playing and other things like dancing, drinking alchohol, etc, etc... I'm talking about Germans with a Lutheran background too.
 
You will find different standards by different people, and certainly not everyone was an "abiding Church goer"  so I would be interested to know just how prevalent card playing was among our ancestors.
 


Jerry Frank <FranklySpeaking at shaw.ca> wrote:
Did your ancestors play any games that may have had origins in Volhynia?

This past week I was researching the rules for a card game our family had 
played when I was a teenager. The author of a card game website advised me 
that it was a game of Ukrainian origin called Hola. Our family had called 
it Seven Holler. Since we did not live near any Ukrainian community in 
Manitoba, I wonder if the game may have had origins in our ancestry and 
migrated with them to Canada.

Do any of you other readers recall this card game? Briefly: 7s are 
wild. Aces and 10s are counters. You play as partners. Each person has 4 
cards in hand. Leader plays a card and others discard on it. He retains 
the lead until someone plays the same rank card or a 7. After each round, 
you replenish your cards in hand from the stock. Objective is to collect 
as many points as possible. Few more rules than that but that is the basic 
play.

Do you know of any other games you played that may have had ancestral 
origins?

Or were our ancestors too busy surviving to play games?



Jerry Frank - Calgary, Alberta
FranklySpeaking at shaw.ca 

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