Volga - Kazakhstan - Braunschweig
What follows is the first part of a smaller series aimed at casting some light at how Germans from Kazakhstan have resettled in their ancestral homeland. A translation of an acticle that appeared in the German local paper Braunschweiger Zeitung portrays the typical Russian-German emigrant’s story.
A family story: The life paths of Katharina Huck (79) and her grand nephew Andreas Pfeifer (24)
By Bettina Thoenes
There are no Hucks left in that village near the Volga. The brother-in-law had been there once again. People weren’t too friendly to him.
“Everything got torn down or converted”, says Katharina Huck about her birthplace in the former autonomous German colony of Saratov. Village Huck was the name of the place - named after its founding father.
Katharina Huck (79) grew up there, but her grand nephew was born fifty years later in Kazakhstan - Katharina’s third life station after the Volga region and the Urals. Today both grand aunt and nephew live in Braunschweig.
Their home? That had never been the village Huck nor Kazakhstan. “My father always said: ‘We are not at home. One day we have to reach home. The time will come’. He gave this feeling to all of us,” says Katharina. He had been a religious man. The family lived with the consciousness they’d return to their roots one day. That is god’s will.
The most beautiful time of her life, of course, was youth spent together with her husband - despite aggravating reprisals against Germans in the Soviet Union, despite Germans being named as the inner enemy that got deported, banished, and driven into forced labour.
Like Katharina, who had to leave her village head over feet in 1932. She worked in a kolkhoz until she got - thousands of kilometers away from her village - deported to the Urals for forced labour. She worked in the trudarmiya, the workers’ army. Katharina shared her room with many others. In the Urals, she met her future husband. Like Katharina, he was from the village Huck. From there, his parents were deported to Kazakhstan in 1941.
Katharina and her husband could only follow them in 1958. The Germans had it easier in Kazakhstan, she says. As good labourers, they were respected there.
What can Katharina Huck tell about her family history? She shrugs. One didn’t talk about that. “The less you know, the better”, people said.
And one’s German roots weren’t showed around too widely. Once letters arrived of a relative from East Germany, family members were afraid. As downright traitors many Germans were viewed when numerous of them resettled to their reunified ancestral homeland in 1991. The papers reported wrote about it - and the articles weren’t all too positive.
In 1995, Katharina Huck arrives in Germany, too. Her nephew Andreas was with her, as she flew to her new but old home country.
“How beautiful”, she thought. She was thankful for all that which might come. Life has taught her to look ahead. “I’ve never really turned around”. Only one thing hurts: She won’t be able to visit the grave of her parents anymore.
The 13-year-old Andreas has his life ahead when he sits on a plane in 1995, astonished by the motorways further down. “That’s a traffic jam”, one of the fellow passengers told him. The illuminated streets, the abundant green, all that was new to him. The first months passed by like in a dream. “It was simply beautiful.”
Andreas Pfeifer arrived in a country whose inhabitants would regard him as an emigrant (Aussiedler). He left a country in which he was a German. A stranger.
But the family is there. Relatives haven’t lost track during the tumultous history, 127 of them live in Braunschweig.
Katharina, without children herself, is grandmother to all - for nephews and nieces, grand nephews and grand grand nephews. There is no birthday party with less than 60 or 70 guests. Within the family, there was no discussion about the move to Germany - the time had come.
Andreas Pfeifer feels at home in Braunschweig. He took part in each of his school excursions and after a mere year, he spoke German fluently enough to master all his school assignments. He speaks almost without an accent now. And there is the occasional brawl with grandma’ Katharina over the correct use of the German language: “People here don’t speak proper German anymore”, finds the 79-year-old.
Andreas’s mother is an optician. Her vocational training certificate from Kazakhstan is not recognised in Germany. After the premature death of her husband, she had to make ends meet by cleaning other people’s houses. “She gave all”, says her son. And Andreas, who is 24, had the early goal of earning money and support the mother.
After school, he found a training place to become an industrial mechanic. As one out of a few, he got a job by the same firm that trained him. Besides his full-time job, he now attends school and wants to become a technician. His brother has just begun studying. “We were given a chance and used it”, says Andreas.
What does grand aunt Katharina wish from life? “That it doesn’t get worse. And that there’ll be work. Then everything is fine.”
on September 23rd, 2006 at 5:58 am
What an impressive life story. Unfortunately, it reminds me of all the other stories told by Kazakh - Germans. I am impressed with those Germans, so much pride, dignity and optimism! Not many people know how much these people suffered. And yet, they still remain positive and have this amazing believe in the future. What keeps these people alive? Quite incredible! There is no sign of bitterness or revenge or any other feelings that one would possible develop after so much suffering. None of it! Just sheer positivism! And some kind of strange love for life! And yet it seems even more incredible once you know that the suffering for Kazakh-Germans still goes on. Being not accepted in Germany and being viewed as different again and again, with the difference that it happens now in their “home land” Germany. The country that most of them saw as the salvation from the “horror” that they endured over generations in Siberia and Kazakhstan. A country that they thought would welcome them back would treat them with respect they deserve and most importantly, a country where they can finally feel at home. A country that was part of their dream that kept them alive in the constant near dead existence in Kazakhstan and Siberia. Did their dream come true? Yes, it did, however with horrendous consequences for the younger generation of Kazakh-Germans. The consequence of being uprooted from the culture they knew, that is Kazakh or Russian, and being put into the soil of the “Motherland Germany” that refuses to accept the roots. Most of the younger generation Kazakh – Germans feel confused about their identity, their belongingness their future in this new country that supposed to bring them happiness.
The coldness and the integration policy of Germany (which involves two steps: “firstly, you integrate into our culture, so that we don’t see any difference, otherwise you will not be accepted and secondly, we are not interested in where you are from and how you can enrich our culture and improve our understanding of you”) makes it even more difficult to feel accepted and gives Kazakh-Germans more the status of immigrants and not of Germans coming home. The qualifications “immigrants” gained in Kazakhstan are not accepted, which leads to the majority of people ending up doing job just to survive, which are mostly below the educational level they received. Parents’ eagerness to integrate into the society, with one of the goals not to be part of the lowest socio-economic class, wrongly advise their children to start working as early as possible, which, unfortunately, results in Kazakh-Germans continuing being at the lower end of the social economy. They view Gymnasium or University as something that should be attended by privileged children – not Kazakh – Germans! There is much more going on that cannot be discussed here in this little short comment. My question is how much does the returning to the “Motherland” make those people happy? Not much! Maybe just confused!
“But that is the common issue in immigration”, I was told once in a psychology seminar. That means that Kazakh-Germans are immigrants and are not really returning home. Maybe if we leave it by that, and change the hypocritical comments of German politicians stating that Kazakh-Germans are returning home to Germany, maybe then, it will make it easier for people. It least they will know what to expect – which will definitely not be the anticipation to see the “Dream Land”.
Reading this comment written by myself, it seems to me that I need this “optimism pill” used by my ancestors who survived in Kazakhstan (and did not in Siberia) to be able to survive in this “Dream Land Germany”. I genuinely admire their optimism. To my living and my already dead ancestors!
Sorry for such a long comment, it was not intentional. I hope it all made sense!
Thank you for reading
Helene Wolf
on December 31st, 2006 at 6:38 am
Glad to have found this story about Volga Germans emigrating from K’stan to Germany. I come from an “All Volga Deutsch” heritage. My grandparents emigrated to Wisconsin at turn of last century. In 1989 we got word from cousins of my mother who made it from Siberia to Karlsruhe. We visited them and then in 1993 we visited more relatives in Russia and in K’stan (Rudnyy). In the late 90’s many of the relatives from Rudnyy emigrated to Germany also.
The success of their emigration is mixed. Most were able to eventually resume the careers they had, or were studying to have, in the old country. The least successful had less education or less transferable skills like a bus driver in Koeln.
Several relatives had married local non-Germans and their children felt no connection to their mothers German heritage. They did not emigrate. But one young man with a Russian wife did manage to bring her to Koeln. They and their children are doing very well. Their young daughter is a champion show dancer. Several of her older cousins are professional musicians.
on June 11th, 2007 at 1:48 am
I’ve just posted another story on Russian-Germans, this time about those preparing their move back home.