Reconstructing Childhood through Oral Histories: Germans from Russia on the Northern Plains

“I was the adopted one,” remarks Ben Ferner of Regina, Saskatchewan.  Born in the small colony of Katherienthal in 1928, Ben experienced firsthand the community support and generosity of Germans from Russia.  As Ben tells it, his childhood would have ended before it started without the help of his ethnic community.  When he was just fourteen months old, Ben’s mother unexpectedly passed away, leaving behind her husband and child.  Unable to say goodbye to his only child, George Ferner, Ben’s father, refused all offers by family members to rear Ben in their families.  Rather, George relied on the kindness and generosity of his community, and reared Ben as a single father.  While his father was laboring on a nearby farm, Ben spent his days at the neighbors’ houses – eating, playing, and learning.  The German-Russian tradition of community solidarity provided George with an opportunity to rear his son, and Ben with an opportunity to have a childhood.               

Ben shares this tragic, yet heartwarming story for the Dakota Memories Oral History Project (DMOHP) on July 29, 2006.  By participating in this project, Ben preserves his individual story, as well as contributes to the preservation of his ethnic group’s history and heritage.  With more than 160 narrators from the Northern Plains, this project reveals this ethnic group’s solicitous memory-making.  The DMOHP narrators insist their ethnic identity is resilient, as they continued many traditions and customs across several borders and generations.  In other words, the second- and third-generation Germans from Russia reaffirm their group’s ethnic and regional identity.  They insist Germans from Russia are people of the plains who have overcome obstacles and persevered.               

These emigrants originated in Germany, emigrated to Russia in the 1700s, emigrated to the United States in the 1800s, and some emigrated (yet again) to Canada in the early 1900s.  Despite this double or triple diaspora, they have retained much of their cultural heritage.  Academic historians, however, have often overlooked much of this group’s rich and complex ethnic history.  Furthermore, most scholars have ignored the second and third generations.  Previous research has largely focused on emigration, settlement patterns, dialects, and traditions of the first generation – an adult perspective.               

An examination of the children’s perspective is long overdue.  The DMOHP narrations reveal the determination of the second- and third-generation Germans from Russia to maintain and shape their ethnic group’s identity.  By participating in this oral history project, each narrator has taken an active role in shaping the German-Russian legacy, history, and identity.  After four years, and more than 160 narrators from South Dakota to Saskatchewan, it is evident that the second and third generations have much in common with the immigrant generation.  They portray themselves as survivors.  Their childhood was hard, yet they overcame it.  As they tell it, Germans from Russia persevered because they were a hard-working, thrifty, pious group that overcame many obstacles and maintained its identity.  This group is determined to leave a legacy and to preserve its history – a history of resilient plains people.