[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] conscription age

[Günther Böhm]

  Richard Benert schrieb:

>After the war, German writers were unanimous in claiming the
>injustice done to the colonist soldiers by this transfer.  They
>insisted that these troops had been totally loyal and willing to die
>for the Tsar, and their transfer was purely the result of anti-German 
>meanness.
>This version of events has basically come down to
>us as the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  But the sources
>I've been reading are giving me increasing reason to wonder about
>this, for there can be no denying that many Russian Germans, when
>called to the colors in 1914, were extremely conflicted over the
>idea of fighting against other Germans.  Many of them may also have
>been reluctant to fight FOR a country that didn't always appreciate
>them, and who could blame them for this?
>
Hello Richard,
I think the matter is rather complicated and the stance depended on the 
development of Russian nationalism. Up to the eighteen sixties there was 
no anti-Russian attitude under the colonists. Wilhelm HAMM wrote in his 
book "Südöstliche Steppen und Städte, nach eigener Anschauung 
geschildert", Frankfurt/M 1862:

    The majority of the German colonists "weiß nichts von Deutschland,
    will aber auch nichts mehr davon wissen." Their perceptions and
    perspective dreams are Russian though they adhere in their types of
    buildings, costumes, given names and dialects. They have inherited
    the Russian sheepskin, Russian foods and beverages. "Der Colone baut
    Wassermelonen und Mais, weiß die Zwiebeln und den Quaß zu schätzen,
    wie der ächteste Russe, und den Branntwein leider manchmal fast noch
    besser als dieser."

Traditionally, Baltic German generals and officials served the Tzars 
truly and sacrificially. Some of them like Konstantin KAUFMANN extended 
the Tzar's territories. When in 1848 the revolution griped West and 
Central Europe, the mennonites of Molotschan manifested "unser 
Festhalten und unsere treue Anhänglichkeit an Thron und Vaterland, an 
der bestehenden gesetzlichen Ordnung und Regierung." During the 
Russian-Turkish war of 1877 German colonists provided masses of food and 
horses for the Russian army, initially appeared as its members and some 
of them even recieved high decorations. But since the modernization 
policy and the lifting of the colonial statute by Tzar Alexander II and 
the 'Russism' policy of Alexander III (which happened in result of the 
strengthening of Germany and the German nationalism after 1870/71), 
things became complicated.

I think, the German colonists were never Russian "patriots" but true 
followers and subjects of the Tzars. All over the world patriotism and 
nationalism are urban, especially bourgeois or petit-bourgeois 
phenomena. The Russian army in turn consisted of peasants and just the 
officers and specialists were in their majority urban citizens. The 
German colonists never became dangerous to the Russian state but since 
they had no hope to benefit from the war, they weren't the best soldiers 
and none of their families was impatient to sacrifice fathers, brothers 
and sons to a strange national hysteria.

Günther