[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Germans and Poland

[Richard Benert]

Margaret,

 We have experts on this list who can better tell you about Loroff, 
Schwochow and Villwock.  My ballpark guess would be that since over the 
centuries Germans and Slavs intermingled in central Europe, these families 
could be genetic mixtures.  If they are, wonderful.  I'm married to a 
Pole/Ruthenian.

But the two cents worth that I really want to throw out (once again) is that 
I think many people are needlessly perplexed by the fact that Germany wasn't 
unified until 1871.  This may make a difference when it comes to who issued 
passports and other papers, but this doesn't mean that there was no German 
"nation" before that.  In a loose sense there was a German nation at least 
as far back as the Middle Ages, when you had, after all, a "Holy Roman 
Empire of the German Nation" (Heiliges Römisches Reich deutscher Nation). 
German literature and history are filled with references to a "nation" of 
Germans.  Above the welter of independent cities and petty principalities 
(and some not so petty), there was at least always a nation in a cultural 
sense.   But this is a complex subject, but I'm pretty sure that what I'm 
saying holds some truth.  Even if your 16th- and 17th-century ancestors were 
partly Slavic, you can still say that they were partly German (as opposed to 
say, Hessian or Pommeranian or Saxon).

Dick Benert

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marlo50" <Marlo50 at bex.net>
To: <ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2007 6:48 PM
Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Germans and Poland


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> I have been following this subject and am totally confused.  I am not 
> German, my husband is.  His ancestry is actually Pommern and that is my 
> question.  His grandparents were from the areas of Stolp,
> Rummelsburg, Lauenburg, and who knows where else.  If Germany was not 
> unified until 1871 into one country and his ancestors lived in the area 
> now Poland what were they in the early years?  I can
> only go back to births in the early 1800's but it was in Pommern.  What 
> were these
> people?  German?  Wasn't this area part
> of what was Poland and partitioned several times to give to other 
> countries?  The ancestors who were born in the 1700's and the 1600's, are 
> what I am curious about.  I
> will never get that far back but I am still curious. What nationality 
> would they have been? The names are Loroff/Lohroff and Schwochow and 
> Villwock. Do they sound German?  The other thing is there are so many 
> villages with the same name.  My husbands maternal grandparents moved to 
> Volhynia from someplace in Rummelsburg (I think) and that only adds
> to the confusion.  Please forgive my ignorance, but it is really a 
> mystery. I wish I could read and speak German, I am sure
> that would make it much easier.
> (Now ask me about Hungary and all their history and appropriating land and 
> losing land and I am pretty well versed, especially the eastern part where 
> my ancestors are from.)
> Margaret
>
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