Halbstadt 12

Our progression through the story of Halbstadt’s founding and early history continues. With the village name explained (see the previous post), we are ready to learn of the establishment of the village itself.

The houses were built for the most part already in the first summer of a framework filled out with prepared loam. In support, every settler received from the high crown the lumber needed for a dwelling and 125 bank rubles for the purchase of cattle and farm implements. This advance was to be repaid without interest, according to the immigration edict, after the graciously granted ten free years over the ten following years.

the first summer. As we discovered earlier, twenty of Halbstadt’s founding families arrived on the same day: 21 June 1804 (see Halbstadt 6). Here we learn that, during the first three months of their residency, they constructed their initial (and no doubt temporary) houses.

framework filled out with prepared loam. The community report’s description of these first houses is both clear and frustratingly vague. It is clear, for example, that the houses used lumber in the frame and sod in the walls. Less clear is the extent of the framing, whether it was limited to doors and windows or extended to the roof or beyond. Given the limited information found in the report, the best we can do is to suggest a reasonable and provisional reconstruction of these houses.

We have periodically noted that Mennonites were not the only ones settling in the area at this time. One such group of settlers, the Prischib enclave or colonies, was located to the west across the Molotschna River opposite the Molotschna Mennonites. These settlers were primarily German Lutherans who arrived in the region at roughly the same time as the Mennonites. They, too, were under Russian imperial authority and likewise were required to compose their own village Gemeindeberichte. The community report for the village Hochstädt, which was 8 miles west-northwest of Halbstadt, offers additional details:

The first dwellings were hastily constructed earth-covered cellars called Semljanken. Two to three years passed before some were able to leave their “hamster dwellings,” since they were in no hurry to build houses. (Woltner 1941, 65; German original below)

The dwellings that the Höchstadt setters constructed are referred to as cellars, which indicates that they were at least partially, if not entirely, below ground. The report further identifies the dwellings as Semljanken, which appears as a German word but is in fact a Russian term adopted by German speakers living in a Russian context. The Russian term землянки, or semeljanken (more precisely, zemljanka), refers broadly to any house constructed of earth or specifically to dugouts, which would include the earth-covered cellars mentioned here.

Although the Russian term semeljanken does not provide additional details about the type of house, it does point us in the right direction. When Russian Mennonites settled in Manitoba in the late nineteenth century, their first houses were constructed of sod, just like the first dwellings in Molotschna earlier in that century. These sod houses were known as semlins, a term that clearly stems from the Russian term semeljanken and its German derivation Semljanken (note the repetition of the letters s-m-l-n). Based on this correspondence, we can now construct a likely image of the sod houses that were hastily constructed in Halbstadt.

According to Allen Noble,

semi-subterranean structures were utilized because alternative building materials were not immediately available when a group migrated into an area, or because sufficient time was lacking to construct an above ground dwelling before the onset of the first winter. German-Russian Mennonite settlers entering the largely treeless prairie provinces of Canada in the mid-19th century resorted initially to the old dwelling forms called the semeljanken or semlin.… The semlin which the Mennonites created was a rectangular, excavated pit about three feet deep, with low, above-ground walls of large sods upon which rested a timber and sod roof of gentle pitch. Average dimensions were 24-30 feet long by 12 feet wide. Some reports suggest that farm animals as well as humans occupied the earliest such structures. (Noble 2007, 128).

If, as seems likely, the Halbstadt dwellings were roughly the same as the Manitoba semlins, then we can safely imagine that they resembled the semlins reconstructed on the grounds of the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada (see their website; all photographs courtesy of Shahnoor Habib Munmun).

Of course, we should not imagine that the original Halbstadt dwellings were exactly like the semlins in Manitoba more than half a century later; apart from the sod, the available building materials no doubt differed. Nevertheless, the general size and shape of the these semisubterranean sod houses probably was the same.

The interiors of the Halbstadt houses are an even greater mystery. As shown below, the reconstructed Manitoba semlin has wood walls and floors, and it is possible that the Halbstadt semeljanken shared this finishing touch.

The community report states that the houses were constructed of “prepared loam” (zubereitetem Lehm), which one might take (as in the translation) as a reference to the cutting of sod into building blocks; however, the German can also be translated “finished loam.” In this sense one might envision not the preparation of the loam but the finishing of the loam walls inside the structure. Does that mean, then, that the interior was finished with lumber, as shown here? Although this is possible, if the term means finished rather than prepared, it seems more likely that the loam itself was finished.

This understanding finds support from other Russian Germans who settled in North America, specifically Germans who in 1876 resettled from the steppes of Russia’s Volga region to Kansas. Albert J. Petersen Jr. writes:

At first they constructed temporary shelters on the chosen village sites. The first dwellings were semi-dugout sod houses. Although often attributed to the American experience, the German-Russian sod dwelling, or semljanken, actually had its origins on the Russjan Volga. Unlike American sod houses, the semljanken was set three feet in the ground. The walls were built of sod, projecting several feet above ground level. The interior walls were plastered with a combination of mud mixed with dried prairie grass. (Petersen 1976, 19)

Note first that the adoption of the semljanken (or semlin) form was not exclusive to Mennonites; other residents of Russia shared that architectural feature. More significant for the specific question at hand is the final sentence: the interior walls of this sod house were plastered, or finished, with mud mixed with dried grass. If the phrase zubereitetem Lehm refers to the finished state of the sod walls, rather than the preparation of the sod blocks themselves (I do not know which is in view), then it likely refers to a type of plastering similar to that described by Petersen.

The next post will finish the rest of the current paragraph by commenting on the lumber used in house construction and the other forms of government support of the new settlers.

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Höchstadt community report:

Die ersten Wohnungen waren eilig angefertigte, mit Erde bedeckte Keller, welche Semljanken genannt wurden. Bei einigen vergingen 2 bis 3 Jahre, bevor sie ihre Hamsterwohnungen zu verlassen im Stande waren, weil sie sich mit dem Häuserbau nicht gerade beeilten.

Works Cited

Noble, Allen. 2007. Traditional Buildings: A Global Survey of Structural Forms and Cultural Functions. International Library of Human Geography Book 11. London: Tauris.

Petersen, Albert J., Jr. 1976. “The German-Russian House in Kansas: A Study in Persistence of Form.” Pioneer America 8:19–27.

Woltner, Margarete. 1941. Die Gemeindeberichte von 1848 der deutschen Siedlungen am Schwarzen Meer. Sammlung Georg Leibbrandt 4. Leipzig: Hirzel.

On the general topic of this post, see also the following resources:

Butcher, S. D. 1904. Sod Houses, or The Development of the great American Plains. Kearney, NE: Western Plains. Primarily photographs available online here.

Dick, Everett. 1954. The Sod-House Frontier, 1854–1890: A Social History of the Northern Plains from the Creation of Kansas and Nebraska to the Admission of the Dakotas. Lincoln: Johnson.

Francis, E. K. 1954. “The Mennonite Farmhouse in Manitoba.” Mennonite Quarterly Review 28:56–59. (unavailable to me)

Germans from Russia Settlement Locations blog. Includes map and information about the Prischib colonies.

Noble, Allen G. 1981. “Sod Houses and Similar Structures: A Brief Evaluation of the Literature.” Pioneer America 13:61–66.

Vashakmadze, Shota. 2017. “Solomon Butcher’s Architectural Image.” Avery Review 25. Available online here.

For German Semljanken = Russian землянки, see https://amtrakt.de/tagebuch/.