[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Some general questions

[Jerry Frank]

At 09:19 PM 25/11/2001 -0800, greg swanson wrote:

>1) Wat area exactly does Volhynia cover. After reading
>all the web pages, etc, I still can't figure it out.
>Looks like it's Russia or at least the area East of
>Congress Poland.

Volhynia historically was the northwestern most province of Ukraine 
extending eastward from the Polish border almost to Kiev.  Today the region 
is made up of 3 provinces, Volhyn, Rowno, and Zhitomir.  Prior to the 
partitions of Poland, it was part of Poland, then Russia, and between the 
WW it was split in two with the western part in Poland and the eastern in 
Russia.  Probably 75% or more of all Germans in Volhynia had origins in 
Russian (Congress) Poland so there are many strong family ties between the 
two.  About 200,000 Germans lived there around 1900 with most migrating to 
Volhynia after the second Polish rebellion of 1861.


>2) Could someone recommend a good book on the German
>settlement of Poland? My family tradition is that our
>family (at least some) left Germany around 1800 to
>avoid being conscripted into Napolean's army.

There are several in German but none that I know of in English.  I have 
been working on writing one but it is difficult because of the need to 
translate German language resource material.  The only way to get bits and 
pieces is from back issues of Wandering Volhynians magazine (no longer 
being published) or from the currently published SGGEE Journal.  If you can 
read German, a good start might be Die Deutschen in Polen seit der 
Reformation by Oskar Eugen Kossmann.

There is some potential truth to the conscription story except that it 
wouldn't have lasted long as Napoleon captured what is now central Poland 
and created the Duchy of Warsaw in 1806.  It is my contention that most 
migration took place for economic reasons and that stories of evading 
military service and religious persecution tend to be altruistic adding 
colour to an otherwise ordinary history.


>3) I went to the genealogy library. What few records I
>could find were in Polish. It appears therefore that
>the parish records were actually civil records.
>Otherwise I would have expected the German chuches to
>do their records in their native language.


This is correct.  The churches as authorized by the government, collected 
the civil records.  The only parish I know of with available records in 
German is Ilow.




Jerry Frank - Calgary, Alberta
jkfrank at shaw.ca