Talk:Germans from Russia Historical Geography

This map contains several errors which hopefully can be corrected.

1. The Germans of central Poland shown here in blue were in fact 99.9% Lutheran with a small percentage of Baptist and Moravian Brethren.

2. The Germans of the Volga River area shown in orange as Mennonites were in fact primarily Lutheran / Reformed or Catholic.

Jerry Frank

Do you know any published or Internet sources I could use to verify your two statements above? I'd be happy to make corrections, but I'd prefer to verify where possible. I have a source that leads me to believe plenty of Mennonites settled the Volga colony. Convince me and I'll change the map. Diltsgd 20:21, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Regarding Russian Poland, see http://www.sggee.org/church_parishes/LutheransInRusPoland for a list of German Lutheran Parishes known to exist there. In 23 years of doing genealogical research in this region and Volhynia, I have only encountered no more than half a dozen queries about Catholic Germans in these areas.

The Volga region is a little more difficult to substantiate. This page http://www.odessa3.org/collections/refs/link/villhelp.txt lists villages with religious origins. If you were to download the page and insert into a spreadsheet, you could sort out those designated as Volga and see the origins of same.

Mennonites have, for the most part, been most vociferous about their Russian origins but they were always largely outnumbered by the Lutheran / Reformed and Catholic Germans that came to many of the same regions.

I can't readily find any other proof sources on line for Volga. One of the better book resources which includes maps of all settlements is From Catherine to Kruschev by Giesinger. It would be helpful in substantiating my claim about this region.

Jerry