Norka a German colony in Russia Origins
A panoramic view of Norka in the year 1912. The church stands in the center of the colony.
According to Normal E. Saul in an article titled The Migration of the Russian-Germans to Kansas, the Russian-Germans were not the only people of Germanic ancestry residing in the Russian Empire in the 19th century. Germans formed an important part of the merchant population of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and another large German ethnic group was absorbed as the result of territorial expansion, particularly in the 18th century. The "native" Germans consisted mostly of the "Baltic" Germans living in what are now the Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. By contrast, the "Russian" Germans were those who migrated to Russia to farm, beginning in the reign of Catherine the Great (1762-1796) and continuing through the first third of the next century. The first territory to be settled by these Germans was on both sides of the middle Volga River near the cities of Samara and Saratov. Catherine the Great was interested in the agricultural development of this region and the pacification of an unruly frontier when she first issued the invitation for foreigners to colonize in 1762. A subsequent Manifesto of July 1763 promised free lands, expenses for the move, freedom from taxation for 30 years, and exemption from civil and military service for themselves and their descendants. The empress’s agents recruited settlers especially from the poorer German states devastated by the Seven Years’ War.
Katherine II Czarina of Russia
Several thousand colonists, usually from towns rather than villages, both Roman Catholic and Lutheran, accepted the Russian invitation and made the long trek eastward across Russia to the Volga. Under haphazard military supervision and through the turmoil of the Pugachev revolt (1773-1775) they suffered great hardships, but by the beginning of the 1800’s, under the more lenient supervision of a special office of the Ministry of Interior, the Volga Germans prospered, at least relative to the Russian peasantry in general. Others joined them, especially during the Napoleonic wars, and by the 1860’s they numbered around 250,000, approximately the then population of the state of Kansas, and dominated the economic life of two of the Russia’s most productive agricultural provinces; Samara and Saratov.
Map of the Mother Colonies in the Volga Region by Dr. Karl Stumpp in his book The Emigration from Germany to Russia in the Years 1763 to 1862 - click on the thumbnail to enlarge this map
Norka, one of the mother colonies in the Volga region, was founded August 15, 1767 by emigrants primarily of the Reformed faith from Hessen and the Palatinate areas in Germany. These colonists responded to recruitment by the Russian government of Catherine II.
According to Reuben Bauer in his book One of Many, after over a year of travel from their homelands, the first colonists arrived on the banks of a small river called Norka on 15 August 1767. This date was commemorated as a public holiday in the colony known as Herkommstag. Since they were unable to cross the Norka river safely during the unusually high water level for that time of the year, they were forced to stay and make this region their home.
In the months that followed other immigrant families moved in. They began their lives in Norka by making use of axes, shovels, spades, and hammers in building their first primitive underground huts called Semlinka, in order to live through the first winters.
Norka is situated on the Bergseite (hilly side) of the Volga River in the Canton (district) of Balzer, about 65 kilometers southwest from Saratov, the primary city in the region. Saratov is also the name of the Oblast (province) in which Norka is located. The colony was also known as Weigand in the early years of settlement. The name Weigand was likely given in honor of one of the prominent families of the colony (the original settlers list shows three Weigand families). Norka is now known by the Russian name Nekrasova - possibly named after the famous Russian writer, Nikolai Nekrasov.
In the Russian language, Norka is the name for the European mink, or means "burrow".
Norka was originally settled in August 1767 on an allotment of 11,418 desyatina (approximately 30,829 acres). This allotment increased to 21,468 desyatina (approximately 57,964 acres) in 1886.
According to the original settlers list, extracted from the Saratov archive by Vladislav Soshnikov, there were 218 families (373 males and 379 females) that settled in Norka during 1767. Karl Stumpp, shows a total of 957 original settlers (501 men and 456 women, 215 families). By 1912, there were 14,538 people in the colony declining to 7210 in 1926 according to Richard Sallet's book, Russian-German Settlements in the United States. The population peaked at 17,827 in 1894 according to Leibbrandt. Norka was one of the largest colonies in the Volga region.
The decline in population was due largely to emigration to North and South America beginning in the late 1800's and starvation from famine in the early 1920's. Under orders from Joseph Stalin, all ethnic Germans were deported from Norka in August 1941 to Siberia, Kazakhstan and other remote regions of the Soviet Union. Stalin had falsely branded all ethnic Germans in Russia as spies and saboteurs when war broke out with Germany.
Learn more....
Read Human Capital: The Settlement of foreigners in Russia 1762-1804 by Roger P. Bartlett.
Read The German Colonies on the Volga: The Second Half of the Eighteenth Century by Igor R. Pleve, 2001, published and available from AHSGR.
Read The Volga Germans by Fred Koch, Penn State Press, available from AHSGR.
Read from Catherine to Khrushchev by: The Story of Russia's Germans by Adam Giesinger, 1974, available from AHSGR.
Read The German Colonies on the Lower Volga: Their Origin and Early Development by Gottlieb Bertaz, 1991 translation by AHSGR of the 1914 German edition published in Saratov, published by and available from AHSGR.
Read Dr. Karl Stumpp's classic book The Emigration from Germany to Russia in the Years 1763 to 1862, 1973, published by and available from AHSGR.
Review Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet 1764-1767 (Immigration into the Volga region), Volumes 1 and 2, 1999 and 2002, by Igor Pleve, published by Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis and available from AHSGR. The first two volumes of a three volume set have been published. These books list the names, ages, occupation, home area in Germany or other country of origin, spouses, children and other information for all of the original settlers in the Volga region. The first two volumes cover the villages alphabetically from Anton to Kukkus. The third volume, which will include information for the Norka colonists, is expected to be complete by 2004.
Read Brent Mai's
Transport of the Volga Germans from Oranienbaum to the Colonies on the Volga
1766-1767. AHSGR acquired copies of nine of the transport lists of German
colonists of the journey from Oranienbaum to German colonies along the Russian
Volga. The years of 1766 and 1767 are covered but the exact dates of each
transport are not indicated. There are a total of 7,501 individuals mentioned on
the nine transport lists. Published
and available from AHSGR.