[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Free English language book on German villages; Olendry, Hollanderei

[Nancy Gertner]

Thanks for this interesting exchange.

I visited Poland in 2005, and was very pleased to find a windmill in  
the area southeast of Danzig where my Gaertner ancestors lived 200  
years ago.  We were told the windmills were used as part of the  
system for draining the land.  The system now is pumping stations  
with pumps that are powered by sources like electricity.

My Gaertner ancestors, German Lutherans, left West Prussia for South  
Russia c 1836.

One of the brides was descended from a Deutschmann father that had  
married a Neufeld that was Mennonite, so I'm interested in both the  
German Lutherans and the Dutch Mennonites that settled in West  
Prussia and also in Russia.

My father's maternal ancestors were from Posen Province before  
emigrating to America in 1866.  Ancestors that I've researched in  
Posen (primarily Schokken Evangelical Parish records) include Grams,  
Jahnke, Jesse, Mallas, Sonnenburg, Ziemer.  These names are commonly  
found in Volhynia also.

Nancy

On Feb 16, 2009, at 11:17 AM, Günther Böhm wrote:

> Jerry Frank schrieb:
>> There are clues within the book
>> that the author believes not only that every Olendry was originally
>> settled by Dutch from Holland but that most of them retained small
>> pockets of Dutch Mennonite residents up until 1945 (reference  
>> chapter on
>> 18th and 20th Century Settlements).
> Hello Jerry, Bronwyn and Worth,
> I would like to contribute one more detail:
> In Germany the word "Holländerei" is regionally still in use. It does
> not mean a special type of rural social organization but a traditional
> method to dewater and fertilize wet and swampy areas. An early
> occurrence of this method was in the "Weichselniederung" east of  
> Danzig
> as part of "Preußen Königlichen Anteils" under Polish rule. The  
> "Große Kurfürst"
> Friedrich Wilhelm I. of Brandenburg was educated in the Netherlands
> (like Tzar Peter the Great he learned the shipbuilder's trade) and
> married to Luise Henriette von NASSAU-ORANIEN, the eldest daughter of
> Prince Frederik Hendrik van ORANJE, the stadtholder of Holland,  
> Zeeland,
> Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel. The "Große Kurfürst" was the  
> first to
> bring Dutch colonists to his provinces devastated by the Thirty Years
> War and his grandson, the "Soldatenkönig" Friedrich Wilhelm I. the  
> first
> to emeliorate his halfway sandy and halfway swampy home province of
> Brandenburg (especially the swampy "Rhin-Luch") with Dutch plans and
> under Dutch foremen.
>
> Günther
>