[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Estonian church records

[Paul Rakow]

  Thanks Katrin,

        Thanks a lot for the historical background. I had read something
  similar before - the Pastor of the Heimthal church before World War II
  later wrote a couple of short articles (in German) about the colony,
  in the 60s.

       The Pastor was Baltic German, and he seems to have been rather
  shocked at how superstitious some of his Volhynian parish members
  were, still being scared of witches in the 1930s.

      I looked at the Saaga archive web-site, it took me about an hour
  to track down my two Estonian cousins:

  Gustav Gruenke, No 136 on page
  http://www.ra.ee/dgs/_purl.php?shc=EAA.1267.1.309:16

  and Robert Gruenke, No 6 on page
  http://www.ra.ee/dgs/_purl.php?shc=EAA.1267.1.308:4

  The Gustav Gruenke entry is very easy to read - I just need to
  learn the Estonian numbers.

          Thanks again,

             Paul Rakow


On Sun, 5 Jan 2014, Katrin Hanko wrote:

> Hi Paul,
>
> Annenhof (the Estonian name would be Lilli-Anne) was a support manor of the 
> knight manor Schlo? Sommerpahlen (the Estonian name S?merpalu). In 1912 
> Annenhof together with two other support manors - Petrimois (Peetrim?isa) and 
> Mustel (Mustja) was divided into farm land and 40 German families from 
> Volhynia were invited to live there. As far as I know, some of the German 
> colonists brought land from local peasants too. You can consider it as a 
> reaction against the russification politics which started in Baltic 
> governorates about 1880-1890.
>
> I just make a copy from the e-mail I have sent to Beth Burke, who has also 
> asked me about the German colonies in Estonia:
>
> This piece of history of German colonies in Estonia is very interesting
> indeed. You have to draw the line between these colonists and Baltic
> Germans - this is a different story. Very brief summary would be as follows:
>
> The German peasant colonies in Estonia were established appr. in 1912-13
> when some German families came from Poland, Volhynia and Volga area and
> gained land (just buying from local peasants). There were 3 such colonies -
> the biggest and the most important one was the Peetrim?isa or Heimthal
> colony. In 1934 there were 198 inhabitants in the colony plus 115 persons
> living outside of Heimthal. There were 35 farms (with farm names like
> Kleinhof, Neumanshof, Mittelhof, Osthof, Friedenthal, Neuhof, Marienberg,
> Birkenruhe, Birkenthal, Sorgenfrei, Johanneshof, Wilhelmsh?he, Eckhof,
> Sonnenburg, Strasshof, etc.). The capacity of the land owned or rented by
> colonists were 627 hectares. In 1926 a school-house and a church were built.
> The church was badly damaged during the WWII and afterwards, but now it has
> been restored - a very beautiful small church (I have visited it a couple of
> years ago).
>
> The location of the Heimthal German church
> http://xgis.maaamet.ee/xGIS/XGis?app_id=UU82&user_id=at&punkt=666875.2,6423005.8&zoom=807.853496319149&setlegend=FUUKAT102_82=0,FUUKAT103_82=1&LANG=1
>
> The other colony was in Viira village, appr. 20km north-east from Heimthal,
> with only 8 German families and 100 hectares land.
>
> And the third one was in Visusti-Kaarepere area, not a compact settlement,
> the members of the colony did not own the land, they used to live here and
> there all over the Tartu and Viljandi di counties. In 1936 there were all
> together 50 German families with appr. 300 members. The centers of the
> colony were the Visusti and Kaarepere villages
> http://xgis.maaamet.ee/xGIS/XGis?app_id=UU82&user_id=at&punkt=645852.4,6504942.4&zoom=17691.6051916225&setlegend=FUUKAT102_82=0,FUUKAT103_82=1,UUKAT1L_82=0&LANG=1
>
>
> Well, I can add one more link to a map from 1935-1939 
> http://xgis.maaamet.ee/xGIS/XGis?app_id=UU41&user_id=at&punkt=666904.3,6423057.4&zoom=8038.37529192574&setlegend=UU41_ajal=1,FUU1511=0,FUU6722=1,UU41_topo=0&LANG=1
>
> You can see the German farms there, the word "Kool" in the middle means 
> "school" - it was the location of the German school and the church.
>
> The Sommerpahlen manor with its support manors were situated in the Urvaste 
> Parish (Kirchspiel Anzen), but the Heimtal Germans did not went to Urvaste, 
> they preferred the neighbouring parish church in Kanepi (German name 
> Kannap?h) due to logistic reasons perhaps. You can find the parish member 
> list of Heimtal congregation here: 
> http://www.ra.ee/dgs/_purl.php?shc=EAA.1267.1.304:3  It's mostly written in 
> Cyrillic, so it's perhaps hard to read for someone not familiar with Cyrillic 
> text. The later version of parish member list of Tallinn Oleviste German 
> congregation to which the Heimtal or Peetrim?isa sub-congregation was 
> connected to and which's link I have added to my e-mail below, is perhaps 
> easier to read.
>
> The Heimtal church looks like this nowadays 
> http://urvaste.eelk.ee/abikirikud.htm - well restored, a wonderful place 
> (sorry, the page is only in Estonian).
>
> Best regards
> Katrin
>