[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Seelenland

[Richard Benert]

Is anyone familiar with the term, "Seelenland"?  I have found it used by a Volga German schoolteacher describing how things were in 1915, saying that "Da wurde vom Gouvernement das Seelenland zu Staatseigentum erklärt und den 9000 Flüchtlingen Anteilberechtigung am Lande zugesprochen."  In other words, a crowd of refugees from the west, sent to the Volga region, were to get slices of (Seelen)land taken from German colonists there.   Could "Seelen" refer to the number of "souls" in a family which determined how much land a family could use in a Volga village?
 
I might add that I cannot find the word even in my Harper-Collins dictionary, which seldom lets me down.
 
Dick Benert