[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Seelenland

[Jerry Frank]

You are on the right track, Richard.  See the Fritzler story at http://www.ahsgr.org/conorthe.htm 

Interesting to note that the Russians did not consider women to have souls.  They were not considered eligible to be part of the land distribution.



Jerry





----- Original Message -----
From: Richard Benert <benovich at imt.net>
Date: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 12:18 pm
Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Seelenland

> 
> 
> Is anyone familiar with the term, "Seelenland"?  I have found it 
> used by a Volga German schoolteacher describing how things were in 
> 1915, saying that "Da wurde vom Gouvernement das Seelenland zu 
> Staatseigentum erklärt und den 9000 Flüchtlingen 
> Anteilberechtigung am Lande zugesprochen."  In other words, a 
> crowd of refugees from the west, sent to the Volga region, were to 
> get slices of (Seelen)land taken from German colonists there.   
> Could "Seelen" refer to the number of "souls" in a family which 
> determined how much land a family could use in a Volga village?
> 
> I might add that I cannot find the word even in my Harper-Collins 
> dictionary, which seldom lets me down.
> 
> Dick Benert
> 
> 
> 
> 
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