With this post we begin to explore the history of Franztal by working through the earliest historical record about the village: the 1848 community report (Gemeindebericht). The original German text of the report is available online here but will be repeated in this series as well.
The Franztal report was first published in the Odessaer Zeitung, a German-language newspaper based in the Russian (Ukrainian) Black Sea coastal city of Odessa. However, this first publication did not take place until 1904, over half a century after the report was first written. Other community reports never did see the light of day until Margarete Woltner finally retrieved them obscurity and published them all together in 1941.
As with Alexanderwohl, the posts will first provide a translation of a portion of the Gemeindebericht, then offer commentary as needed on any significant or unclear details. The Woltner collection also includes various notes to the text, which will be added to the commentary when appropriate. With that background, we are ready to begin with the first paragraph (the German original appears at the end of this post).
In April 1820, fifteen families from the district of Schwetz near Kulm in West Prussia arrived to establish a colony among the others. It was considered appropriate by the authorities and a commission chosen for settlement to set up each colony for twenty fireplaces but to cultivate only fifteen of them and to leave the others empty for their descendants. However, in a subsequent review of the plans, it was found that the colonies would not get their proper land, so all fireplaces had to be occupied immediately and one colony had to be distributed among the others. So it happened that on 18 May of the same year, eight more families of immigrants from the same district were added to the colony.
In April 1820, fifteen families … arrived. The founding of Alexanderwohl was dated to 1821 even though most of its original residents had arrived in Molotschna in late 1820. Thus, when we read that the first families of Franztal arrived in April 1820, we should allow for the possibility (which we will explore later) that some, if not all, of the earliest settlers had arrived in late 1819. It seems that the report is concerned most with dating the establishment of the village, not with the arrival date of its original residents.
district of Schwetz near Kulm in West Prussia. The map below shows the Schwetz district in 1879; the boundaries were basically the same half a century earlier, when the Franztal residents left the area for Molotschna. The red dot is the location of Kulm (modern Chełmno). Approximately 3 miles to the northwest, the red X marks the location of the Przechovka church. Thus the community report is consistent with what we concluded at the end of the Przechovka Emigration series: Franztal’s earliest settlers came from the Przechovka church.
colony. As we have noted before, the word colony, as used by government officials and residents of that time, is what we refer to as a village. Thus the report is noting that the fifteen families arrived in order to establish a new village among the other villages.
fireplaces. The German word Feuerstellen does signify a fireplace, but in this context the term is no doubt to be taken more figuratively for the home. An idiomatic English equivalent might be hearth. As we will soon learn, however, the term encompassed more than a physical house; it also included the associated land allotment. What is really in view here is a Wirtschaft, an economic unit consisting of a lot for one’s home in the village and ownership rights over 65 dessiatines (ca. 175 acres) of farm land.
the authorities and a commission chosen for settlement. This is an intriguing reference that raises all sorts of questions: Who were these authorities? Who served on the commission? Were these all Russian officials, or were Mennonites from Molotschna also included? Did this commission leave any records of their deliberations and decisions?
twenty fireplaces … fifteen. The meaning of what follows is not entirely clear, but this part of the report probably means that each of the villages established alongside Franztal (hence the reference to “among the others”?) was planned for twenty Wirtchaften, five of which would be left vacant for the descendants of the original settlers to inhabit. Recall that seven other villages were established in the same area in 1820 (see the map here).
the colonies would not get their proper land, so all fireplaces had to be occupied immediately. It seems clear enough that leaving Wirtschaften unoccupied for a long period of time was not permitted; all the village plots were to be assigned relatively soon after the founding of the village. That is, the residents could not hold Wirtschaften back for their children to settle; if they did not settle them now, others would be assigned the plots instead.
on 18 May…, eight more families … from the same district were added to the colony. It appears that fifteen families had been assigned Wirtschaften in April of 1820. In early May, however, another eight families were also allocated plots. Several things are worth noting. First, the latter eight families were from the same district (Kreise) as the others, namely, Schwetz district. One has the impression, then, that the eight families were part of the same group who had journeyed to Molotschna. Second, the addition of eight more Wirtschaften brings the total for Franztal to twenty-three, not the twenty mentioned earlier. This gives us another datum to check against the immigration and census records, which we will do after working our way through the community report.
***
The picture as we have it after the first paragraph of the report is relatively simple: in early 1820 twenty-three families formerly from the Przechovka area founded the village of Franztal. The reality, however, was anything but simple and smooth, as we will discover in the following paragraph of the report.
Note: Woltner (1941, 132 n. 3) reports that in 1855 there were twenty-four Wirtschaften and thirty-five landless (Anwohner) families; Franztal had a total population of 184 males and 160 females). In 1857 the twenty-four Franztal Wirtschaften (accounting for 129 males) farmed 1,560 dessiatines (ca. 4,211 acres); the nine landless families in the village accounted for forty-five males. The sharp reduction in homeless families from 1855 to 1857 is worthy of further exploration.
German Original
Im April 1820 kamen 15 Familien aus dem Kreise Schwez bei Kulm in Westpreußen hier an, um unter anderen auch diese Kolonie zu gründen. Es wurde von der Obrigkeit und einer zur Ansiedlung gewählten Kommission für zweckmäßig erachtet, jede Kolonie für 20 Feuerstellen einzurichten, aber nur 15 davon zu bebauen und die übrigen für die Nachkommen leer zu lassen. Bei einer kurz darauf erfolgten Revision der Pläne find es sich jedoch, daß die Kolonien nicht ihr gehöriges Land bekommen würden, weshalb alle Feuerstellen sogleich besetzt und eine Kolonie auf die anderen verteilt werden mußten. So kam es, daß am 18. Mai desselben Jahres dieser Kolonie noch 8 aus dem selbigen Kreise eingewanderte Familien beigefügt wurden.
Work Cited
Woltner, Margarete. 1941. Die Gemeindeberichte von 1848 der deutschen Siedlungen am Schwarzen Meer. Sammlung Georg Leibbrandt 4. Leipzig: Hirzel.
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