Black Sea Germans
The Black Sea Germans (; ; ) are ethnic Germans who left their homelands (starting in the late-18th century, but mainly in the early-19th century at the behest of Emperor Alexander I of Russia - ), and settled in territories off the north coast of the Black Sea, mostly in the territories of the southern Russian Empire (including modern-day Ukraine). Black Sea Germans are distinct from similar groups of German settlers (the Baltic Germans, Bessarabia Germans, Crimea Germans, Dobrujan Germans, Russian Mennonites, Volga Germans, and Volhynian Germans), who are separate chronologically, geographically and culturally. History. Germans began settling in southern Ukraine  and the Crimean Peninsula in the late 18th century, but the bulk of immigration and settlement occurred during the Napoleonic period, from 1800 onward, with a concentration in the years 1803 to 1805. At the time, southern Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire. Designated New Russia, and often colloquially South Russia (or "Südrussland" by its German-speaking inhabitants), these lands had been annexed by the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine the Great after wars against the Ottoman Empire (1768–1774) and the Crimean Khanate (1783). The area of settlement was not as compact as that of the Volga  territory; rather it was home to a chain of colonies. The first German settlers arrived in 1787, first from West Prussia, then later from Western and Southwestern Germany and Alsace, France; as well as from the Warsaw area. Catholics, Lutherans, and Mennonites were all known as farmers (see Molotschna for Mennonite settlements in the Melitopol area); the Empress Catherine, herself an ethnic German, sent them a personal invitation to immigrate to the Russian Empire, as she felt they would make useful subjects and enrich her realm. She granted them privileges such as the free exercise of their religion and language  within their largely closed communities, also exempt from military service and taxation. After the Bolshevik Revolution and the formation of the Soviet Union, Black Sea Germans, prior to World War II, were subjected to the forced starvation of man-made famines, the closure of German-language churches, schools, and community organisations, and were required to change their language of instruction from German to Russian. The 45,000 Germans in Crimea (along with other Black Sea Germans) were forced into exile in Siberia and Kazakhstan, many into forced labour camps. Many did not survive the labor camps. Many were deported as a  result of the collectivization of all Soviet agricultural land in 1930/1931 by Stalin's first five-year plan. The German farmers were labelled "kulaks" (rich peasants) by the Communist regime, and those who did not voluntarily agree to give up their land to the Soviet farming collectives were expelled to Siberia and Central Asia. The mass deportation of the Germans was based on social and ethnic criteria, the German Russian settlements probably suffered more than any other communities. About 1.2 percent of the Soviet population was classified as "kulak" and deported to the "GULag", based on a total Soviet population  of 147 million, according to the 1926 census. The number of ethnic Germans sent to the camps as "kulaks" was about 50,000 out of a German population in the Soviet Union at the time of the same census of 1.239 million, that is, about 4 percent of the German population. The Germans were not the only ethnic group deported in large numbers during the collectivization drive, as many ethnic Poles also suffered the same fate. Germans, however, comprised the single largest foreign-origin minority sent into internal exile in the Soviet Union. There appeared to have been a deep prejudice  against German communities because many Soviet officials considered all German farmers "kulaks." After Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the Soviet leadership decided to label all ethnic Germans from Russia as enemies of the USSR, and accused them of collaborating with Nazis, most were arrested, even killed or deported to labor camps. The Supreme Soviet decreed the first evacuations, which were really expulsions, as the inhabitants were never allowed to return. Action to deport every ethnic German from the Crimea began on 15 August 1941. Although the decree stated that old people would not have  to leave, everyone was expelled, first to Stavropol, and then to Rostov in southeastern Ukraine, near the Crimea, but then all were sent on to camps and special settlements in Kazakhstan. Given only three or four hours to pack, the deportees were not told where they were going, how long they would stay there, or how much food to take. The result was starvation for many and, due to the confusion, the separation of many families. In all, perhaps as many as 60,000 ethnic Germans were expelled from the Crimean peninsula alone at this time. Other parts of Southern Russian  were also affected. Although the majority of the Black Sea Germans avoided deportation due to the rapid advance of the German Army, Stalin, nevertheless, had sufficient time to arrest and exile those living east of the Dnieper River. Between 25 September 1941 and 10 October 1941, approximately 105,000 ethnic Germans were exiled from this region and forcibly deported to Soviet-held areas far to the east beyond the Ural mountains. In terms of total numbers deported to Siberia and Central Asia, between 15 August and 25 December 1941, the Soviet authorities expelled and exiled 856,000 German from Russia. Because of  the quick conquest of Soviet territory by the Axis in the early months of their invasion, the Soviet regime was not able to deport the majority of the ethnic Germans from the western part of the Soviet Union, that is, the area west of the Dnieper river. The German towns and villages in the Western Ukraine, in Volhynia, and the Black Sea region all came under Nazi German rule, first under a military government and then under that of the Nazi Party or the SS, as Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Evacuation of Ethnic Germans during World War II. With the defeat of  the German Army at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942–1943, the Soviet Red Army began its offensive, recapturing more and more German-occupied territory. SS Head Heinrich Himmler made a decision to evacuate all ethnic Germans and bring them to the Reich. Evacuations began in scattered German communities in the North Caucasus, where in February 1943, 11,000 people were transferred. Shortly thereafter, 40,000 German Russians were sent westward from the area between the Don and Dnieper Rivers. When the Soviet troops neared the Dnieper River in October 1943, the "Chortitza" Mennonite communities, totaling about 35,000 people, had to flee. In  October, 45,000 ethnic Germans from Volhynia (Western Ukraine) were also forced to leave, and, by February 1944, it became clear to the Germans in Southern Ukraine that the Red Army could not be stopped; thus, they began their hurried evacuation. About 135,000 fled to the West. Approximately 280,000 ethnic Germans were successfully brought out of the occupied Soviet Union, which represented almost 90 percent of the registered German population, according to the 1943 Reich census. On the basis of the articles pertaining to the repatriation of nationals in the Yalta Agreement, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to  return each other's nationals at the end of the war. Of the almost 300,000 ethnic Germans who were evacuated by the Germans from the Soviet Union, about 200,000 were caught and sent to the labor camps by the Red Army, either as they fled from the Warthegau in Western Poland, previously incorporated into the German state, (about 120,000), or elsewhere in Eastern Europe or when they were forcibly repatriated from occupied Germany to the Soviet Union. Colonies. Schwedengebiet. This enclave of German settlement, established by the Russian imperial government, lies on the west bank of the Dnieper river in  the Beryslav Raion district of Kherson Oblast, Ukraine, some 12 kilometers (or 7 Versts under the old Tsarist system of measurement) east-north-east (16.6 km by car, and 16.4 km by approved footpaths ) of the town of Beryslav on the same side of the river. Originally settled in 1782 by manumitted ethnic Swedish serfs from the Baltic island of Dagö in present-day Estonia who were freed by Catherine the Great and invited to settle here, the district took its German name — "Schwedengebiet" translates as "Swedes' district" — from these earlier settlers, despite the fact that once the Germans began  to arrive as official settlers during the Napoleonic period, they soon outnumbered their Swedish precursors. Due to attrition, Swedish numbers had fallen within a few years of their leaving their Baltic homeland. To make up for this shortfall, new settlers, mostly ethnic Germans originating in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, such as Württemberg, and the Austrian Habsburg hereditary lands, as well as Poland and Alsace-Lorraine, were invited to settle in the area from the turn of the 19th century. Both the arrival of the Swedes and the later advent of the Germans formed  two stages of the same official Russian imperial policy designed to secure what was then a relatively new part of the Russian Empire which had only been in Russia's sway since they had defeated of the Ottoman Empire in 1774 and won these vast southern territories, known first as New Russia, and later as Southern Russia. The oldest village, first established in 1782, was the Swedish Lutheran village of Gammalsvenskby. In the period 1802–1806, after a generation alone, during which their numbers had been supplemented on occasion by Swedes captured in war and other, mostly temporary, sojourners from Danzig , the local Baltic Swedish community was faced with the arrival of German speakers. This not only meant that they no longer had this area to themselves, but the Swedes had to share their original wooden church with some permanent incomers, ethnic German Lutherans. As it happened, the Germanophones also included Roman Catholics, which was another source of community tension. The Germans of either denomination called the village "Alt-Schwedendorf" (literally, "old Swedes' village") after the existing Swedes settlers. Basing themselves in Alt-Schwedendorf for a time, the Germans established several entirely German villages ("Kolonien"). In addition, some Germans also remained  in Alt-Schwedendorf. In all, there were the following four initial settlements. They were initially established along confessional lines first in 1782, with the latter ones created in the period 1802 to 1806, viz.: By 1886, around the time when large-scale emigration to North America began, the population of the four villages was as follows: Later, as the original villages' population continued to burgeon, despite overseas emigration, there were "Tochterkolonien", i.e. daughter colonies, formed, such as, the following, viz.: During the Second World War, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the district was  occupied by the Wehrmacht, and, in 1942, the inhabitants, both Swedes and Germans whom the Nazis considered together as "ethnic Germans" ("Volksdeutsche", in German) and others (such as Ukrainians), were assessed and inventoried by officers of the Reichssippenamt operating under the direction of Kommando Karl Stumpp, the former historian of the area. As a result of the impending German attack, the Soviet authorities had already exiled many of the adult males among the ethnic German population of the district to areas of refuge and captivity east of the Ural mountains. During the German occupation, the area was officially under the  Nazi civil administration of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine until the Soviet Red Army's successful counteroffensive drove the occupation forces, both military and civil, from the region in 1944. In addition, from 1891 onward, some of the Germans of these villages emigrated from Russia to North America, notably Canada's province of Saskatchewan, where they left descendants. Dr Karl Stumpp and Dr Adam Giesinger both published materials on the settlement and history of the Swedish District and its villages. The historical part of this overview is drawn primarily from Stumpp's "The Emigration from Germany to Russia in the Years 1763  to 1862" (English translation from the original German, American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1973), and Giesinger's "" (1974). Beresan. Beresan Colony settlements Miscellaneous colonies. Colonies in Maximovich, South of Donetsk: