Luxemburg. German settlement in this region developed gradually in several stages. German Catholics settled around Goodsoil, about 100 km north of St. Walburg, during the 1920s, and later around the neighbouring community of Peerless, as well as further west with Mennonites around Pierceland, near the Alberta border. In 1929, immigrants arrived directly from Germany (mostly from Thuringen, but also from Holstein, Westfalen, Mecklenburg and the Baltic coast) to establish the Loon River settlement between St. Walburg and the more northerly communities mentioned. These immigrants, as well as the Germans around Goodsoil, apparently were ardent nationalists: Goodsoil boasted the strongest Deutscher Bund chapter in the entire province; and strong Ortsgruppen (chapters having at least fifteen members) were organized at Loon River, St. Walburg, and Paradise Hill, as well as a Sttzpunkt (chapters having from five to fifteen members) at Blue Bell near Pierceland. In view of their strong pro-National Socialist sentiments, the Loon River Germans decided in 1939 to return Heim ins Reich -- home to the Reich . However, a German presence in this particular district was maintained, the return migrants being replaced in 1938-39 by German refugees from the Sudetenland, newly annexed to the Reich. In 1971, people of German origin constituted little more than a quarter of the population of St. Walburg, but almost two-thirds of Goodsoil and a majority of the population in the Barthel-Loon River district. Finally it should be noted that throughout Saskatchewan substantial Lutheran minorities often developed within predominantly Catholic German settlements. German Protestant