[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Czechs Moving to Lodz Area

[gpvjem]

    More questions seem to arise than are answered in "old" church records.  I can not answer your questions specifically.  All I can tell you that as I recall most of the Catholic men, if not all, had surnames that indicated they were of German descent.  Without going into a detailed history, suffice to say  there were large numbers of ethnic Germans in Tschechei for centuries.  That was the excuse Hitler used to invade Czechoslokia in 1938.

    The full translations of the Lodz church records gave no indication why men from Tschechei came to Lodz.  Usually people move from place to place for economic reasons and Lodz was in a modest "boom" during the mid 1850s.  BTW the full translations I used to prepare the Legacy file are now in the SGGEE library in Calgary. 

    As I mentioned previously, it would be interesting to examine the Catholic church records for Lodz  for the period 1825 to 1850 to see how many similar Czech migrants were recorded, and to whom they were married etc.

John Marsch 
In still sunny Saskatchewan

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  I'm very interested in something John Marsch recently wrote regarding
  marriages at Trinity - Lodz between Catholics and Lutherans:

  "Another interesting  tid-bit that I noticed, many of the Catholic men had
  come to Lodz from Tschechei (now the Czech Republic), likely to work in the
  textile industry for which Lodz was famous at the time."

  Does anyone know more about those who left "Tschechei" to come to Lodz?
  When did they leave?  Did they only leave to seek jobs in the growing
  textile industry in Lodz, or was there another reason?  If there were
  Catholics who married in Lutheran churches, does that mean they converted
  to Lutheranism?

  Natalie
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