Pommerania = Prussia http://feefhs.org/dpl/dv/pommern.htmlLatest Update: 24 March 1998 POMERANIAN HISTORY by the late Myron Gruenwald founder of die Pommerschen Leute The MIGRATION which is the primary concern of this association is the CHAIN MIGRATION set off by the OLD LUTHERANS. These "Alt Lutherische" were determined to leave their homeland after King Friedrich Wilhelm III (1797-1840) issued the Proclamation of Union between the Lutheran and the Reformed churches of Prussia. He and the Junkers, the land owners and aristocracy of Prussia, were Reformed, and a majority of the peasants were Lutheran. He reasoned that he could write one service that would please both factions. When on April 4 of 1830 he authorized to the states full power to enforce the new liturgy, the people were at first confused (because the Catholics, Jews, and Mennonites of Prussia were tolerated) and then angry. The Lutherans were forced by gun point to break up their own churches and attend the "Union" churches. The idea of the emigration did not originate with the Pomeranians, but rather by the people of Brandenburg to the southwest; but by 1837 it had the greatest number who were willing to migrate. Observers had been sent to the United States to find conditions most like the Baltic lands that they knew. These were to be Buffalo, NY, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as stated elsewhere in these pages. In November of 1838, the first five ships left Prussia. The people landed at New York harbor, then took the Erie Canal up to Buffalo. In 1839 another flotilla of 5 ships arrived at Buffalo, but this time some 40 families chose not to remain there but moved on through the Great Lakes to Milwaukee. They set up a colony called Freistadt - just to the north. A third, and final, complete flotilla arrived in 1843. For the first years, up to about 1855, the greatest amount of migration was from the push for these religious reasons. By that time the economic conditions (and their great difference reported by friends, family, and neighbors in America) represented both a push from the Baltic and a mighty pull from America and elsewhere. The migration pattern actually formed a chain that can be followed by their settlement patterns today. This was from Buffalo, jumping on to Milwaukee, and spreading out first through the state of Wisconsin. As the best lands were filled up and the forests well occupied by these Baltic Teutons; they extended their migration to Minnesota and Iowa. Always in a direct link of advice and assistance from those who had gone before (die Vorfahren), They then followed along the chain and moved forward. As Minnesota and Iowa began to fill, and others had gone into the western shore of Michigan and farther down to Chicago, Illinois; the chain took the people into Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota. One must recognize that by this time, the glacial topography had changed, but the persistent pioneering spirit of the Baltic Teutons urged them forward. The GLACIAL geography, history, and topology of the Prussian Baltic region and the area around Buffalo, New York and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, were, for all practical purposes, identical. Both regions had been affected by the same four glacial periods. (See Two Worlds for their identification.) The Great Lakes themselves are the same shallow, dangerous glacial lakes as is the Baltic Sea (Ostsee). The Baltic had the sand dunes and escarpments at its southern shore. This was true of Buffalo, also, but in the case of Wisconsin, it was the eastern shore of Wisconsin and southern shores at Indiana that had the sand dunes and fine beaches. The end of the glacial push in each case was composed of depressions called "kettles" and small hills of deposited material called "kames". Both areas have the long narrow "drumlins" of deposited glacial material along former fissures of ice, that were then smoothed over with the next glacier. The temptingly smooth land mass is loaded with small (and some terribly large) rocks - all of which had to be cleared from the land in order to be planted. There are large areas of small lakes dotted across many miles and intertwining rivers, marshes, and swamps that either had to be cleared, as in the case of Pommern, planted with swamp hay, or turned into recreational parks, as in Wisconsin. But this was the land the Baltic Germans knew how to cultivate! The seemingly endless woods that had to be cleared and the great forests that were turned into wood products were a welcome sight. Were they discouraged by the task before them? No! This was the land they knew and loved and could cultivate and produce on. BALTIC TEUTONS is what the name of these people became over my years of study and writing. From the name, "die Pommerschen Leute (Loyte, as pronounced)" one can see that it all started with the people of this one province. As ancestral data came in and other history books were written, it was found that the history of these people was quite similar (a matter of the eastern expansion of the Teutonic Knights into what would be called Prussia) and the migration was almost identical. They were coming over in the same time period, often on the same boats, for the same purposes. They joined the same churches and married each other. The name was extended to Baltic Germans. By the last book, the extension of these people out of the glacial areas of Wisconsin and Minnesota into the lands further west, it was evident that there were also the Lutheran Scandinavian migrants of the Baltic region who were part of this same expansion. Previous books and articles had explored the Teutonic history evident in the Scanadinavians, the Germans, the English, the Normans of France as being parts of the Teutonic tribes (differentiated from the Celts of the earliest migration period into Europe and the Slavs of the period later than the Teutons). Therefore, the more inclusive term applied to the immigration. and they became Baltic Teutons. The BORDERS of central Europe have always had an ebb and a flow of their own based on the migrations of the people. There was the difference of the early "claims" of what constituted Poland in 966, and the reality of settlement by the Poles and the Germans. Thus, too, at the eastern Polish border between Poland and the Soviet people. Sections of Pommern (Vorpommern from Stettin and west of the Oder River) were awarded to Sweden following the Thirty Years' War in 1648 which they held in various sizes until after the Napoleonic period in 1815. The Teutonic Knights were changing the relationship of Germany/Prussia along the Baltic lands - all the way over to Koenigsberg. The Germans were invited into the Silesian lands as farmers, miners, businessmen, traders, and a settlement and governing expertise. This same thing was happening in what was to be the Sudetenland between Germany and the present Czech Republic as Bohemia. This land provided the Holy Roman Emperor, Karl IV, in 1400. He then also took Silesia for Bohemia (of which he was king) and for the Holy Roman Empire (in actuality still the 1st Reich of Karl the Great's (Charlemagne's) Germany). Then from 1773 until 1918 Poland dissappeared as a nation on the map entirely - distributed among Austria, Russia, and Prussia. This encouraged the book By the Content of Their Character when I asked the question, "Were there any Poles born when there was no Poland?" This was an historical corollary to the question, "Are there any Pomeranians being born when there is no Pommern that exists for Germany?" (The answer was yes, in both cases.) This brings us to ATTRIBUTES AND CHARACTERISTICS. This topic was covered most extensively in the book By the Content of Their Character. This book goes through the development in general of characteristics in any given culture, from both the nature of birth (those valued physical characteristics decided by a people) and nurture (those desired attributes determined to be carried on by the culture of the society). After going through this acquirement in these two manners, the book explores the specific characteristics of Germans and even further to the sub-group of Pomeranians (as contrasted, say, with Bavarian or Bohemian southern Germans). Another book that looks in depth at the acquirement of these traits is Pomeranians; the Persistent Pioneers. In this book the trait of being the "persistent pioneer" is not treated as a chosen characteristic or a determined attribute, but rather as a form of making an uncon-scious series of decisions over an historical length of time. What it presents is the series of conscious choices that members of the larger group made such that it pealed off the more adventuous from the gene-pool. It follows (along with its companion tale, Baltic Teutons; Pioneers of America's Frontier, five sieves whereby each time a certain section of the population made a choice. The previous book, By the Content . . . , finished with an examination of the place the German people, particularly the Pomeranian persistent pioneers, would/should/could have in a multicultural America. It is from these concerns, the place of us in America's culture and success, that the entire set of essays (topics based on the author's opinion) is presented as in the book, Don't Confuse Me With That Other Person. Some few of these essays were taken from previous newsletters; most of them were orignal for the book; and essays continue to be developed in the newsletter on this vital subject. Somewhere along the line we must decide "What is an American?" and "How can we best achieve this for our wildly differentiated society at this time?" LUTHERANS and CATHOLICS, their churches and peoples, present a major division of the German people, and their characteristics, and the German nation. We have already seen in the section on migration what an important part the Lutheran church played with this entire 19th century movement of peoples. In my works the first reference to the northern part of Germany becoming Lutheran (Protestant) is in the book One Cubit of Stature, where the Order of Teutonic Knights takes immediate advantage of the results of the Thirty Years' War and shifts from the Catholic Order of crusading knights (in which they had served in Palestine until the last crusade proved so disasterous - and then transfered their headquarters to the eastern Baltic front where they were conducting crusades against the indigenous Baltic tribes) to become the leading Protestant advocates. Luther's leadership into the Protestant movement allowed them to remove themselves from the vows with the Papacy, become Lutherans, help to spread the Protestant word, and, incidentally, become the Junkers of Prussia. The most detailed look at the relationship of the Protestant church to the Catholic church is in the books Odin's Inheritors; the Essays. What is compared and contrasted in these two volumes is the difference between Christianity formed and interpreted based on the Mediterranean legends of the people before Christianity came to them and the Christianity formed and interpreted upon the northern myths of the people of the Teutonic lands before Christianity came to them. The ANCESTRAL DATA and its concommitant INDEXES are the crux of the research benefits to our members. The member gets all the history and philosophy of their people in the books and in three-eighths of the pages in the newsletter; the data and research information is presented in the other five-eighths. One-half (four-eighths) of the newsletter is in double columns of full paragraphs of data which has been supplied by the new member. The data is laid out in the same form each time. It begins with the full names, full dates, and places of birth, marriage, and death of the emigrants; the first family to establish a home in the new country. Included within this is the first and last names and birth and death YEARS of their ancestors and their birth places. Then are listed the first names of each of their children (the first generation born completely in the new land), their birth and death years, and their spouses' "born" surnames. It is these corollary surnames that often lead to additional help from persons who have already researched them. Finally, the SIBLINGS (in this case the brothers and sisters of each of the main persons) are listed by their first names, birth and death years, and spouses' born surnames. It often takes more than one entry for those with several surnames from the area. Upon completion of the entry the place names are entered into an alphabetical index. The place names are indexed to the submitter's "membership" number. (Currently on May 31, 1995, there are 1999 registered members who have donated data and 3567 (many duplicated from different members) place names.) Upon publication, Mr. Gerald Dalum of San Antonio, Texas, types up the full names given, the partial names, and the surnames of those who married into another family (over 77,000 in May 1995, 89,000 in mid-1996) and indexes them to the submitters' membership numbers. Both of these indexes are sold, along with complete sets of the "die Vorfahren" entries and membership address lists, at a reasonable price to institutions and individuals. These "die Vorfahren" indexes are both entered into the Internet, addressed at http://feefhs.org/dpl/dpl-dv97.html by which you can research a single town or a single surname at a time. COSTS the cost of the Alphabetical Name Indexes, Alphabetical Town Index, etc. will be provided here in the near future - see DPL Status and Future Plans BACK ARTICLES from each of the BANDE (plural for BAND - volume) are also available as well as the BOOKS and the INDEXES. What was done was to separate the complete pages of the "die Vorfahren" from the newsletter master. Then the articles were cut out of the pages, eliminating the duplication inherent in a newsletter form and the single time notices. These articles were repasted on to sheets and sold as complete sets for each "Band". The complete set of articles from BAND 1 through BAND 17 are avaialble. These sheets include the separate sections of "Maps and Graphs" cut out (and sold) separately and the "Geographie of Pommern" (5 sheets) also sold separately -- see DPL Status and Future Plans. AMERICANS as ethnic Germans remain the oft divided group as they were/are in Germany. In their specific areas of settlement in the U.S. they are not satisfied to be known simply as German-Americans. In Wisconsin we have the center of the Pomeranian-Americans just north of Milwaukee as the Pommerscher Verein Freistadt. In Minnsota, one can find the central organization of the Bohemian-Americans. In North Dakota there is the central depository for Germans-from Russia - Americans. All three of these groups exist in our city of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The first on the east side, the 2nd on the south side and the third group on the west side of town. One can understand this "breaking into smaller groups" when you look at just the Lutheran Synods which the Protestants formed upon their arrival and history in America. The Poles and Italians and Greeks have the luxury of all being Catholic (for the first two) and Orthodox (for the latter). Being Protestnat and Catholic has severly torn the Irish apart. (Although we are accustomed to think of them as all being Catholic because of the Bing Crosby movies, usw.) The Spanish now entering America - the Hispanics of the Carribean Islands, Central America, and South America have the major luxury of(mostly) being Catholic. So the Spanish Fiestas of the summer are held in common rather easily. I'm not close enough to know how the Protestant-Catholic Irish Fests go. But every year it is a miracle that the German Fest comes off in Milwaukee. The Swabians, the Pomeranians, the Bavarians, the Saxons, the Bohemians, the Austrians, the Mecklenbergers, the Volga-Deutsch, - - and I am not even into all THEIR divisions, have a great task before them to pull it off. The German-Americans in Wisconsin are by far the largest section of the population. In fact, the 6th Congressional district of Wisconsin is the most German area in the United States, with 4 other congressional districts running not far behind - before we go on to Minnesota. This "church" attitude (within Lutherans themselves in the U.S. and Germany) is what makes it difficult to get access to historical documents from individual churches and an entire synod in Germany proper." Webmaster's Note: Myron Gruenwald died 6 February 1998, but his legacy of Pommern genealogy continues. With the exception of changes in the "Costs" and "Back Articles" paragraph above, this article was as written by Myron Guenwald and last revised by him 19 January 1998.