Dear all I am a total novice in family research, but have found the GER-Volga list really helpful and absolutely fascinating. I am hoping someone can help me. We are trying to find out how my husband's father, Gottfried Brandt, ended up in the German army during the war, and also about his Volga origins. Gottfried Brandt was born in 1903 in Kraft. Like his father Friedrich Brandt, he was a master shoemaker. He married Maria Andrejevna and had 11 children. Six died in their first year. Maria and surviving children were deported to Kazakhstan, but only two children survived beyond 1942. Gottfried, his brother Heinrich and brother-in-law Peter Fischer all ended up in Germany during the war, but we don't know how. Gottfried became a translator with the German army and stayed in West Germany after the war. Believing his family were all dead, he remarried and had two sons (one is my husband). Then the Red Cross traced the first family in Kazakhstan. Gottfried and his second wife had both died by 1963, leaving two orphans. Our information about Gottfried comes from two sources: 1) confused family stories from in-laws in Germany. 2) his daughter Anna from Kazakhstan, who has migrated with several of her children to Germany. Meeting her for the first time last year was incredible. As she was only three in 1941, her memories of the deportation period are vague. She believes Gottfried was conscripted into a labour army. I have read various things about the 1941 deportations, including Otto Pohl's very valuable blog. Were all the forced labour armies of German men sent to Siberia? If so, could Gottfried and the others have been captured by the German army when they were so far east? Could they have travelled to join the German army as volunteers before the deportations? Where do I begin to look to find this out? Are there German sources to investigate? We are travelling to Saratov in May and would like to know as much as possible about the Brandt ancestry beforehand. John Klein has kindly checked the original immigrant list and the 1798 census and found three of the original colonies had emigrants with the name Brandt or Brand, including Kraft. I have also read David R Schultheiss's article on Kraft in the AHSGR Journal (1987), which includes a picture of his sister, Anna Schultheiss Brand. Could she have had a marriage connection with our Brandt family? David Schultheiss's father and brother were also master shoemakers - perhaps another connection. I would apprreciate any suggestions on how to take this further. Sorry this is so long and rambling. Clare Cowen-Brandt