[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] sugar beet connections

[Guenther Boehm]

Royal Natzke schrieb:

>My question: did the Germans from Russia/Volhynia raise sugar beets in the old
>country, or did they just pick that up as entrance level employment when they
>came here? I don't recall if we saw sugar beet fields when we were in western
>Volhynia in '01. We did see them in western Pomerania in Kreis Greifenberg
>(Trieglaf - where my people came from).
>

Hello Royal,
the sugar beet is an old European economically useful and garden plant 
and was first mentioned in the Greek literature by 420 B.C. It was 
introduced as a substitute of sugar cane during the anti-napoleonic 
continetal embargo led by Great Britain. In advance, the German 
scientist Andreas MARGGRAF showed in 1747, that the white crystals made 
of sugar beet syrup, are of the same nature like those of suger cane. In 
1801, the first European sugar factory was built in Cunern, Lower 
Silesia (Prussia). Napoleon tried the beet sugar in 1811 and immediately 
ordered to grow sugar beets on 11,000 hectares (110 square kilometers). 
Within a few years, sugar factories were built in northeastern France, 
Germany, Austria, Russia and Denmark. In Russia, the production of beet 
sugar was introduced by D.W. KANSHIN and promoted by Count BOBRINSKI, a 
son of empress Catharina II and her lover Grigorij ORLOV, in early 19th 
century. In Russia, sugar cane was not grown before and the predecessor 
of beet sugar was good old honey. So it is quite sure that the Germans 
in Volhynia knew and grew sugar beet because they knew and loved sugar 
much more than their Russian or Ukrainian neighbours.

Guenther
of Hilden, Germany