My family was German - what the heck were they doing in Ukraine?

 

Distance, expense and finally the pandemic and war have prevented me from visiting my grandfather’s ancestral village of Landestreu, which was located in Eastern Europe in what was once Galicia. Luckily, I came across Andriy Dorosh, owner of Dorosh Heritage Tours and Ancestry Research based in Lviv Ukraine. Andriy and his team were able to visit Landestreu and produce a wonderful video tour of the village which is now known as Zelenyi Yar, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Ukraine. You can visit my You Tube channel to see the video here:

Of course, that raises the million dollar question: my grandfather Jacob Besler and his family were German speaking Lutherans. How the heck did they end up in what is now the western part of Ukraine? Here’s a quick history lesson that explains it all!

Our family originally came from the tiny village of Biedesheim located in the Rhineland-Palatinate area of Germany. Approximately 650 people live there today and there probably weren’t many more in the 1700s. Though the region contained good farming land, the region was impoverished due to frequent wars with nearby France. Many Palatinates left for North America in the early part of the 18th century. Our family chose a different route.

Meyers Gazetteer

In the late 1700s the Hapsburgs, led by Empress Maria Theresa, ruled the powerful Austrian-Hungarian empire. Austria, along with Prussia and Russia, wanted to solidify its position in Eastern Europe. This led to the partitioning of Poland. In the first partition in 1772, Austria took a piece of Poland known as Galicia. This part of the world had good farm land but was sparsely populated. The Empress tried to encourage her Austrian subjects to move to Galicia, hoping that good Catholic merchants and artisans would settle there. Very few took her up on the offer. After her death, her son Joseph II took a different approach. In 1781 Joseph opened up settlement in Galicia to German Protestant farmers. Potential settlers were offered tax exemption, exemption from military service and freedom of religion. Hoping for a better life, about 14,000 Germans took the offer and decided to emigrate to Galicia. About 1/3 of these people came from the Palatinate. Immigration to Galicia was boosted by the American Revolution which had stopped travel to North America.

Baptism of Johann Konrad Besler 1750 archion.de

The earliest record I have from Biedesheim is the marriage of my 5x Great grandparents Michael Besler and Margaretha Elisabeth Knickel on 7 October 1738. My 4x Great grandfather Johann Konrad Besler was born on 15 March 1750 in Biedesheim (see record above). He married Maria Katharina Vetter on 3 January 1773. Their first three children Philip Heinrich, Johann Heinrich (our 3x Great grandfather) and Susanna Anna Margaretha were born in Biedesheim in 1773, 1775 and 1779. Shortly afterwards the family packed up for the moved to Galicia.

This map shows the current route from Biedesheim to Landestreu in Galicia. By car with paved highways the journey takes a good 16 hours. Imagine the journey in a horse drawn cart with three young children. The full journey in 1783 took many weeks. First they travelled from Biedesheim to Ulm where they would have boarded a riverboat that took them along the Danube to Vienna. From there they would have joined a caravan consisting of other settlers and government officials bringing carts loaded with supplies. The Beslers made it, arriving as one of the founding families in their village. 

List of original settlers of Landestreu familysearch,org

Support was provided by the Austrian government in the form of food, accommodation, livestock and household goods. Land was confiscated from Polish kings and monasteries and turned into farms. Most of our ancestors described themselves as Kolonist or Grundwirt (landowner) though there were blacksmiths, millers and teachers in the mix. The village was named Landestreu -  true land in German. The village remained almost exclusively German speaking and Protestant.

As this map shows the village was laid out as a parallel two line row settlement. A church was soon built. Farming was good - orchards were plentiful and Landestreu was the only German village in Galicia to have a water supply. In addition to the fresh water there was a salt water spring and a bell foundry. As the settlers prospered many children were born and many survived. As a result many young men were not able to find land to farm when they came of age. In our grandfather’s case, he had two older brothers and his prospects were poor. This led to his decision to emigrate to Canada in 1902. This turned out to be a wise decision. You can read more about his journey to Canada here.

Everything soon changed. After World War One Galicia was returned to Poland. I noticed that church records began to be written in Polish instead of German. The German population was resented by their Polish neighbours. The village was renamed Mazurówka. In 1939 Galicia was divided between Poland and Russia due to the Molotov Ribbentrop agreement. The Eastern section where the Beslers lived was now controlled by the USSR. The German population was encouraged to relocate closer to the homeland under a program called Heim ins Reich. The remaining Beslers left their home in Landestreu to be resettled on farms in Poland that had been seized from their Polish owners. You can read about their experiences here. Those who survived the war probably ended up in Germany but I have no idea where.

From Der Treck der Volksdeutschen

The village of Landestreu was resettled by Ukrainians like the gentlemen interviewed in the video. It’s sad that nothing really remains of my grandfather’s village but the video gives a good flavour for life in the village. The gentleman in the video lives in the house of the former Jacob Haas, house #6 on the map. My family lived in house #7, right next door. I can imagine my grandfather walking down the main street of the village, until he was 18 and left for Canada. You can read about his journey in this earlier post here and I have a new post to follow with more information on his trip.