As we went into the year of 2004, George’s long-time-before announced wish to resign as President of the Chapter became a final decision and I want to thank George again for having been a great and enthusiastic leader of our Chapter for so long. Being in this situation, new decisions needed to be made. What I found really sad, was the fact that there was nobod who would take over. The Chapter fell into a coma that I tried to revive when I volunteered for nomination. Now that I have been elected as the new President, I would like to use this newsletter to share some thoughts with you.
I personally would like to ask for the support of every member and ask everybody not to believe that the Board of Directors and the President is there to initiate something. Everybody is invited to come up with ideas, suggestions, concerns and complaints that we will tackle together.
Thus, I want to remind every member of the objectives of our club. Our Chapter registration papers clearly outline as the objectives of the society:
One issue that comes to my mind is an issue raised at our last gathering at Marlborough Community Hall regarding financing of such major events, which all are paid by the members coming out. Many in the Club make this fact responsible for the stalling growth of our Chapter, it always are the same people who come out. If these events are just a coming together of friends sharing the bill, we don’t need a Chapter. Currently we have three major events each year where we expect all Canadian Chapter members to come out and meet with us. One is the New Year Breakfast in January, which is usually well attended. Others are the Spring Fair in April, which is also the venue for our Annual General Meeting and a summer convention in Saskatchewan or Medicine Hat. The New Years Breakfast and the Spring Fair are the events that are specifically initiated and organized to provide an opportunity to meet up with the key players in the Club and to actively participate in Chapter work, as well as to use the library and displays to research our German ancestry. Since the founding papers provide for the utilization of financial planning we should make use of it and decide if we want to use Chapter assets for such events instead of haggling about how we spend the member fees which also cover the newsletter. The alternative of not utilizing our money for our causes might be: that once the Chapter closes, the money is sent to Bismarck. Saying that, I would like to include club members more in the process of decision making in the preparation of these kinds of events and want to ask everybody to express their feelings and ideas about the following questions:
What value do you assign to our Chapter and the events organized by the volunteers?
Do you think the Chapter should contribute financially to such events to appreciate the time and efforts of those that actively come out and share our Chapter objectives?
How do you think that should happen? Should we think about the creation of an “Activity Fund” or alike? Glimpsing back to our Chapter objectives I believe it is just and fair to consider that possibility.
Other Announcements:
The new Chapter email contact is GRHS-CDN@web.de. My personal email is flowing over with stuff and I decided to create a separate email account. Please send your response and inquiries to that address.
NEXT EVENT:Friday Oct 22, 2004 is an outing to CARBON, where we can enjoy German cooking and get together for a supper. Betty Lang is organizing it and asks all to respond. Everybody who expressed an interest to come should send a confirmation; or those who did not know about it yet should to let her know immediately. At the sign-up at Marlborough Hall we had about 22 people who might want to come. Please get in contact with us or directly with Betty so that we can order the number of meals and possibly organize car pooling.
Betty’s contact: b_lang@telusplanet.net
Chapter contact: GRHS-CDN@web.de
NATIONAL HOLIDAY: I would also like to remind everybody that October 2 is the national holiday of Germany. After the “2 plus 4 negotiations” the Second State Treaty between all allied forces and Eastern and Western Germany led to the closure of the final chapter of foreign occupation of Germany in 1990. The Second State Treaty, signed August 30, 1990, was the final step in the many marches during the peaceful German revolution of 1989/90 and declared October 2 as the new National Holiday of the re-unified Germany. Therefore, we celebrate the 14th anniversary of an officially unified and independent Germany what I am very proud of because I was one of those marching the streets for it.
Yours,
Christiane Grieb
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Some of the Canadian Convention Attendees
By John and Ann Riehl. An account written for the Watrous Manitou
We, along with more than 650 people, attended the 34th annual international convention of the Germans from Russia Heritage Society in Bismarck, ND The theme for this year was Cherishing Their Memories.
Early convention goers could attend a documentary on the Gleuckstal area people on the evening of Wednesday, July 21st. The convention was officially opened Thursday morning. Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings and afternoons were filled with workshops, all covering many topics and from which one could choose. Some of those topics included research updates for Bessarabian, Kutschurgan, Beresan, Grossliebental, Crimean, and North and South Caucasus regions; genealogy workshops; a workshop on how to write and publish your life story and another about how to organize and create a genealogy treasure book. There was a presentation on post cards- a window to the past and very moving slide presentations, Lost in Russia, Colonies in the South Caucasus and a background to the memoir Though My Soul More Bent.
Saturday morning the Society held its annual general membership meeting, which was very well attended.
The convention organizers continue to make sure everyone has time during the convention for maistube (visiting), eating, singing, social hours and dancing. Friday and Saturday afternoon coffee breaks included kuchen (rhubarb, peach, cottage cheese and plum---mmmm). One of the evening dinners had a GR menu too – sausage, sauerkraut and knoephla soup. At each luncheon and dinner there was good entertainment and much laughter.
Sunday morning a non-denominational worship service was held in both English and German. During the service a memorial tribute to all GRHS members who have passed away during the past year was held. As representatives of the Alberta Chapter, we lit a candle and placed a flower in memory of Yvonne Fettig, Linda Rabb, and Dr. Adam Giesinger. The convention torch was passed to the 2005 Convention hosts, Die Deutsche Glieder Chapter GRHS in Pierre, SD. As a closing to the worship service and to the 2004 convention, Gott Mit Euch Bis Wir Unds Wiedersheh’n (God Be With You Till We Meet Again) was sung.
Alex Leeb has noted that photos from the 2004 convention can be viewed at http://www.grhs.com/docs/conv2004.html
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On Sunday, August 22, about 40 descendants of Georg Ohlhauser, one of the first settlers of Freudental, gathered at Carbon, Alberta. These included the descendants of Friederick and Jacob Ohlhauser, (grandchildren of Georg) who emigrated to North Dakota. in 1884, and in 1909 completed their move to Carbon as early settlers of the Canadian prairies. Also included in that gathering were descendants of their brother, Lucas, and their sister, Katherine Entzi, as well as two couples who were descendants of their uncle Conrad.
These two brothers. Friederick and Jacob, left their families behind when they came to the U.S.A. One of their sisters, Eva, and her husband, Simon Schock, joined them in North Dakota in 1903.
The reason for the great occasion this summer was the visit of Edwin Ohlhauser and his wife, Amalie, from Munich, Germany with whom we have just connected in the last 9 months. Edwin is the great-grandson of their brother, Lucas. It was particularly interesting to be brought up to date on the fate of the descendants of Lucas.
Through information Edwin brought, we now have further leads to descendants of one of the other brothers who remained behind in Russia and correspondence will begin with Edith Gemmie as soon as possible. She knew very little of her own family history because of the prison camps and exiles in Russia. I am looking forward to meeting her and helping her fill in some of the Ohlhauser family information.
Robert and Rosalie Ohlhauser were also in attendance and, through Edwin’s records and my own, we were able to trace his family line with more accuracy, for which he was very delighted.
Edwin was only 2 months old when he and his mother was taken from Berlin and sent to a labour camp in Tadjikistan. They remained there until 1976. With the help of the German Red Cross, they were able to get permission to move to Germany. His aunt was also sent to Tadjikistan in the sixties, and through both women, Edwin was able to learn much about Freudental and his own family history. His mother had married a German soldier who was killed in the last days of fighting around Berlin, but that did not save her from being exiled.
In 1928 and 1929, his grandfather and grandmother were taken away, never to be seen again. His mother, Lydia, at 17, was sent along with about 30 other families from Russia to a forestry camp near Archangel in northern Russia. Also included in that group was her grandfather, Lucas Ohlhauser, then in his seventies. The family has no record of how long he survived. Lydia somehow managed to connect with some cousins in that group, and they were able to escape and make their way on foot back to Odessa where they lived as fugitives. They had no identity papers and lived in fear that they would be recognized and arrested again.
I shall be forever grateful to the Almighty God that my grandfather, Jacob, and his brother, Friedrich, felt led to leave Russia to move to America, even though they really did not know what they were going to. Certainly they had their struggles with the early pioneering and setting up homes and raising families, but in the end they were wonderfully blessed. They knew of the circumstances in the old homeland, which was reinforced on the arrival in Canada of one of their nephews in 1924. It would have been extremely painful for them to live through those memories.
I felt I had hit a “Genealogical Jackpot” when I made the acquaintance of Edwin Ohlhauser, and now I am even more excited to make new contacts through Edwin, and provide more information about the lives of residents of Old Freudental in Russia.
Some of the families that have been added to my list of searching are Heitzmann (wife of Lucas Ohlhauser) and that family line and that of Gottlieb Ohlhauser, married to Elisabeth Harsch. In all of this, I have also been able to add details of the descendants of my grandfather’s sister, Katherine Entzi.
So if anyone reading this has links or information, I would be happy to correspond with you. Slowly, but surely, we are building the Freudental Georg Ohlhauser line.
Betty Lang, #204 4555 Varsity Lane NW, Calgary AB T3A2V6.
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Lois Sparling writes:
While the court action(s) crawl along for the unconditional release of the 1911 census, our lobbying effort is continuing unabated. The only long term solution to our census problem is through the political arena. The court actions are to get their attention as much as anything
else. We are being asked to collect signatures on a new petition. Alberta has always provided a disproportionate number of signatures on these petitions and I know our comrades in this campaign are counting on us once again.
This is our third petition but tenacity is surely one of our common attributes. This is a NEW petition and we all need to sign again - one for the House of Commons and another for the Senate.
http://www.globalgenealogy.com/Census/
Lois Sparling
http://www.afhs.ab.ca
http://www.family-roots.ca
Please access this website for more information, print the petition and circulate it in your community. Every signature on the petition counts. I have downloaded the petition, printed it and will circulate it among our Calgary members. Editor
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Teams from the three prairie provinces continued to transcribe the 1906 Census during the summer. As of 25 September, 2004 the following progress has been made:Go to top of newsletter
Records date back to the late 19th century, and the database can be queried by surname, given names, place, and year of event.
Certified copies may be purchased from the government but basic information is available free of charge at this site: www.gov.mb.ca/cca/vital
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Historical and present-day maps of Europe are for sale and some are online at www.euratles.com
The website www.genealogy.net has information on regional research in German speaking countries, German dialects, German settlements around the world, ways to locate a German town, and much more. It is searchable in English or German.
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Membership in GRHS
With the Canadian dollar approaching 80 cents US, a membership in the GRHS is more affordable than it has been in nearly a decade. Membership in the GRHS gives access to village coordinators and to other members searching your same family names. Members receive newsletters and a wealth of information in the Heritage Review. Membership helps the Society provide a storehouse of books, films and artifacts accessible to current and future generations of family researchers.
Join the Germans from Russia Heritage Society
online at http://www.grhs.org/membership
Minimum Annual Dues (US Funds Only)
Membership $40.00
Life ($100 per year) $650.00
Membership year is January 1 to December 31.
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