Why did Germans choose emigration to a largely unknown Russia at the onset of the 19th Century?
For many Schwabians in particular, his offer to German settlers, tendered via ukases of March 27, April 10, and October 17, of 1803, and reiterated in a further manifesto of February 20, 1804, must have seemed like an act of salvation. In our Heimatbuch issue of 1990/1991, Dr. Georg Bodamer summarizes this aspect as follows: — here (i.e., in Wuerttemberg): Suppression by foreign powers and local government; there (i.e., in South Russia, “New Russia,” today’s Ukraine): the possibility for developing a better life; — here: service in armed forces and in fighting various wars; there: exemption from service in the military; — here: economical deprivation, years of famine, insufficient farmland, and oppressive tax burden; there: generous allocations of land, freedom from taxation; — here: cold churches and a king (Frederic I) who “desires to fight with all available means against the plague of pietism,” there: Alexander I, Frederic I’s visionary nephew, who offered the assurance that Ch
