[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Catholic Poles and Lutheran Germans

Sat Sep 14 13:29:32 PDT 2013

The records will confirm any theories you have though I don't know if a mixed marriage would ever be recorded at a Jewish synagogue.  An important thing to remember is that recording at authorized churches or synagogues pre WW I was mandated in Russian Poland.  That same mandate did not exist in Volhynia.  

The sound of a name, the shape of a nose, nor any other of the other often thought of indicators do not imply Jewish heritage.  I have seen all kinds of reasons given for a supposed Jewish heritage.  A lot of people insist I must be Jewish because of my surname but it simply isn't true.  Now a letter written in Yiddish by a family member as reported by Kenneth Browne in a previous message, that may be a different matter.  Here you have some kind of physical evidence.  For a typical German, Yiddish might be used to communicate at a market town but not in a letter.  I would not rely on a close dna match telling you about Jewish connections.  She may be just as misinformed as many others are.  I don't want to discourage your research.  I just don't want others jumping on the same bandwagon based on vague notions.

As for Ashkenazi roots, I think almost everyone with east European connections shows some percentage of Ashkenazi roots.  It however proves nothing in terms of Jewishness.  If it were possible to check the dna of an ancestor from 1000 years ago, you might find that the percentage has not changed much because other factors have changed a lot.  

I am not anti-Jewish.  I just find that some people (not necessarily you) have an unusual obsession with a need to be Jewish in some way and good research time gets wasted in going in that direction.

Jerry Frank

----- Original Message -----
From: "Linda Bowen" <lindakbowen at cox.net>
To: ger-poland-volhynia at sggee.org
Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2013 1:33:43 PM
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Catholic Poles and Lutheran Germans

I  have  ordered a  Catholic records film for Ostrog. My second great 
grandfather on my mother's side was Polish. I'm hoping I might find 
information on his family in these records.
The film is back ordered so it may be awhile before I get it.
I became involved in my family history because of him. Jaruschewitz 
sounded  like a very Jewish name to me.

My great grandmother's baptismal records indicates he was Catholic and a 
settler.
My grandmother was horrified when my uncle became engaged to a Catholic 
girl.   I'm not sure she realized that her grandfather was Catholic.
They ended up not getting married and in the end he married a nice" 
German girl" with Volhynian roots.

I had my autosomal DNA  done at ancestry and then uploaded my raw data 
to GEDmatch and to FTDNA.
My younger brother tested for YDNA  and MTDNA at FTDNA
My autosomal DNA  really surprised me when it gave me a mix that 
included only 7% central Europe.
It turns out I'm a real mutt, roughly 1/4 British Isles, 1/4 
Scandinavian , 31 % eastern Europe  and 11% Volga-ural.

One of my best matches on GEDmatch and also on FTDNA  told me that some 
of my fairly close matches are Jewish.
My brother's YDNA  is more prevalent in eastern Europe than it is in 
Germany and several of the matches  for his YDNA indicate they may be 
Askenazi Jews.

Message for Lynda Radke.
One of my  4th cousin matches  on ancestry has the name Radke  from 
Wladymir Wolynsk area.
Wilhelm Radke married Eva Kreuger
There is a Gustav Radke born in 1885, Emil Radke born in 1890 . Emil 
married Olga Hammerling.
Radke is a very common name in Volhynia, but just thought I'd mention 
these names in case something fits.

On 9/14/2013 11:51 AM, Jerry Frank wrote:
> I have not heard of Lutherans being registered in Catholic churches in Volhynia.  If any readers find such records, please let us know.  Most certainly they did so in Russian Poland, not because they wanted a church connection but because they were mandated to do so by the government as long as there was no Lutheran church nearby to accommodate the registration.  Jews also registered at Catholic churches until their synagogues were given permission to do registrations, I think in the 1830s or so.  Mennonites registered at Lutheran or Catholic churches because they were not officially recognized as a church.
>
> In Volhynia, government regulations were more lax, at least until the 1890s.  Although parish buildings were few and far between, a Betshaus (literally prayer house) was a common entity.  Registration was done through the local Lutheran Kantor (lay preacher / teacher) which most communities, or groups of communities, had.  He was authorized to perform baptisms, conduct funerals, and teach confirmation class.  Only the pastor could serve communion and perform marriages.  When the pastor came through the area, he would copy the Kantorate records into the official church book.  The Kantor did not always do a good job.  I recall seeing a note on one of the pages of St. Pete records where the pastor was decrying the poor quality and accuracy of the records he had received from a Kantor.
> If some records for a particular event are missing in Volhynia, it is not generally because they are recorded at a Catholic church but rather that the Kantor missed the entry, the pastor missed copying it, a book for a particular period of time is missing, etc.
>
> German Catholics in Volhynia were quite rare.  Those there were often in the cities, occupied in some special trade rather than in farming.
>
> Jews in Volhynia were not large estate owners.  They were not permitted to own land in the 19th century.  They were numerous in number, being part of the Pale of Settlement.  I don't know the percentage of farmers vs. tradesmen but for those that were farmers, think "Fiddler on the Roof".
>
> Rumors of Jewish connections seem to abound among Germans from Russia but I have never seen any verified stories of such a connection.  Don't forget that Jews did not use surnames until mandated to do so by Napoleon in the late 1700s.  It is far more likely that they adapted or adopted a German surname than that they are your ancestor.  I am not saying that the possibility should never be explored but if other options remain open to you, consider them first.  I am not aware of any particular history that suggests that German Lutherans married Jews, certainly no more so than that they married a Catholic, a Pole, a Ukrainian or any other faith or ethnicity.  Such events occurred but they were very rare in the 19th century or earlier.
>
> And finally two comments from the other part of the thread.  The Vistula Germans tag is commonly applied to those Germans who lived along the Wisla River east of Thorn and on to Warsaw.  As of 1815, this territory became part of Russian Poland so after that year there would be no migration of Vistula Germans to Russian Poland.  They were already part of it.
>
> And regarding Germans being known as Russians after 1854 - this was not the case.  They always remained German by ethnicity (of course often adapting some local customs and food items along the way).  But they became Russian as a nationality based on the controlling power at the time.  For example, in 1921, the Germans in western Volhynia who had been Russian, now became Polish.
>
>
> Jerry
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Charlotte Dubay" <hoeserhistory at aol.com>
> To: ger-poland-volhynia at sggee.org
> Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2013 9:45:57 AM
> Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Catholic Poles and Lutheran Germans
>
>
>
> Linda Susak wrote on Sept 14, 2013:
>
> In my family, Vistula Germans, before they moved to Russian Poland sometime after 1860s, the difference was between Catholic and Lutheran.  The people married each other or people from other German villages.  It was a great "sin" to marry a Pole because he/she was Catholic.  One sibling of my grandmother did this, and the family never spoke to him again.  He was totally ostracized from the community.
>
>
> From: Krampetz at aol.com
> To: hoeserhistory at aol.com, ger-poland-volhynia at sggee.org
> Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 8:56:29 PM
> Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] German Prussians vs German Russians
>
> There are two kinds of Germans from Russia too..
>      Those that were from Russia (Volhynia) and
>      Those from Poland, who gave Russia as their home.
>             -because they  were told they were Russian sometime after 1854(?)
>
> Char writes:
> Yes, prejudice between Catholics and German Lutherans ran deep. (I married a Catholic, and they loved him, but hated it when I "converted"- big to do on both sides - and this was in early 50s!)
>
> But actually in Heimthal and Volhynia area it was sometimes different - out of necessity. As I previously wrote, there were few actual parish buildings for church attendance. (The brick manse/church at Heimthal in particular wasn't  built until after my family left there in 1894.) So history shows that the Lutherans many times were married, or baptized USING A CATHOLIC CHURCH! Guess they figured it out: some church was better than none church!
>
> The Catholic church records are said to be thorough; I don't know procedure to get to the records, so I have not done this search. Should. I am missing protestant baptism records that were not found at St. Pete's.
>
> I haven't done research to see what the population was in Volhynia for Catholics. Should do that, too. That would be interesting.  I know that Jewish farmers were rare. The Jews were generally business men and ran almost all of the factories in the full Volhynia region when my ancestors were there (100 some factories, and more than 100 run by Jews - I forget the statistic). Just a small % of the Jews were "farmers", (if I remember, like 3%) and they were generally owners of larger estates.
>
> I tried to do some research on local Judaism because some cousins think that our ggrandmother's family was Jewish, and perhaps converted in Heimthal. This thought is held because of old photos and whisperings in the family years ago. But I have had no luck finding Bonderman(n) history. Even had a Jewish genealogist do some checking for me in his records, but can't seem to find the surname Bonderman anywhere near. Weichman(n) families held Christian baptisms way back into history. And logic doesn't hold that there would be a peasant Jewish family in with all the German peasants/farmers - for love and marriage to happen...
>
> New thought: isn't it strange that there is history shown that German Lutherans married Jews, but held such animosity toward Polish Catholics! hmmm. (Prejudice toward Poles was also very great in the Dakotahs as my German Lutheran ancestors arrived there. Couldn't date a "Polack" - or a "Russian". Guess that they took their opinions with them wherever they went. hah)
>
> My ggrandfather lived in Bromberg as a child, and they hated Poles. The Prussian government would not allow Polish to be spoken on the streets of Bromberg just prior to my ancestors leaving the area. You were jailed if you did. No churches, or Polish schools were allowed to be built in Bromberg then, even though Poles were the majority and had been there way longer than the Germans (which you all probably know...). This was in early 1860s. We assume that his father died in the 1848 wars for "freedom" and more peasant rights. History seems ironic - and certainly seems to repeat itself.
>
>
> Charlotte DuBay
> hoeserhistory at aol.com
>
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