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This Lecture was largely about the Russian Germans. We started the lecture with a quote of one of their songs. It tells the story of how they are set to leave their adopted home land and make the long, one way journey to a new land. They believe they will be leaving the next day never to see each other again, families and lovers alike, torn apart. The decision was usually that of the father of the family although he would pass the blame on to the establishment or any other circumstances. The new land held many promises, that of opportunities, prosperity and freedom. Not just civil freedom, but ethic and religious freedom as well. The first wave of immigration peak around the 1880's, they were mainly Northern and Western Europeans. The second wave peaked around the 1900's with most of the immigrants coming from the southern and eastern portions of Europe. There was renewed settlement on the plains with new land opportunities available. For awhile the railroad was shipping immigrants over and the immigrants would work their passage off on the railroad once they arrived here, until congress put a stop to that. Then the railroad created section houses. They would then fill empty rail cars from Mexico with immigrants and ship them up to the different section houses. Once again the railroad had cheap labor and the immigrants’ transportation into the “Land of Opportunity”. We talked about group colonization of the Russian Germans. It is interesting to note that the Russian German population has now out grown that of the Norwegians in our home state.
Jo Lene Kjonaas