Emigration to Zurichtal, Crimea, Russia
By Joseph Buchmann
Life in the late 1700s and early 1800s under Napoleon became oppressive for the Swiss peasantry. The treasured freedom was curbed or repressed. Farmers were now forbidden to fish freely in streams and lakes or hunt in the woods. Patrician families flourished while the working class suffered. Many contemplated emigration to foreign lands, but it was discouraged, even forbidden in many cantons.
Hans Caspar Escher of Zurich was a Swiss who attained the rank of Major in the Russian army and thus had much influence at the Russian court. Some Swiss men eager to emigrate asked Hans Caspar Escher to intercede with the Czar to allow the establishment of a Swiss colony in Russia, similar to an earlier colony founded on the Volga by the Neuenburg Baron de Beauregard. Empress Catherine II The Great of Russia was German-born and was eager to populate the lower Volga and Crimea lands with German-speaking people. Although first reluctant to do so, the Major negotiated favorable terms and conditions with the Russian government for Swiss families to settle in the Black Sea region of Crimea. Each family would receive an expansive 195 Jucharts of land, be free of Russian military service, and be guaranteed religious freedom. A single juchart is a considerable piece of land; historically, it is a land area that one yoke of oxen can plow in one day. So, 'Juch-ar-t' is derived from 'Joch (yoke),' 'Aran' (Indo-European word meaning 'to plow'), and 'Tag (day).'
Late in 1803, led by the Major and his son Friedrich Ludwig Escher, about forty Swiss families risked their lives. With high hopes of a better future, against all good advice, they set off on their long journey to Crimea in Russia.
About one-third of the emigrating families lived in the area of Dachlissen in the Zurich Reuss Valley. Previously part of the canton Lucerne, the Dachlissen (Dachlesen) area had recently become part of the canton Zurich. Many Buchmann families had lived in Dachlissen and its vicinity for centuries. Feudal law prevailed in the late Middle Ages, and land-owning Lords from Lucerne played a big hand in Dachlissen and may have encouraged Lucerne peasants to populate the area. It is thus possible the Buchmanns of Dachlissen originated from Lucerne and were distant relatives of mine.
I researched the migration and wrote this story because several Buchmann families of Dachlissen participated in the emigration. Among the families were Heinrich Buchmann (1767-1813) with his wife Verena Stehli (1759), and their five children: Heinrich II (1789), Johann, Jakob, Elisabeth, Johannes, the youngest Johannes then just born. Also in the group was Hans Buchmann (1760), a farmer with his wife and young son Heinrich. Johannes Lüssi (1762) and his five children from a marriage with Barbara Buchmann joined the group, but Barbara died in 1801, just before the group's departure.
The departure was scheduled for October 1803. The Russian envoy discouraged the trip, calling it 'insane' because of the time of year, just before winter, and because of the makeup of the group of emigrants. The emigrants were poor farmers and farm workers without any means; there were virtually no craft and trade people among them. Heinrich Buchmann, Catholic, felt forced to emigrate because his wife was Evangelical, a situation not tolerated well in Dachlissen, a strictly Evangelical region, but that would not be a problem in Russia. This is intriguing. Could Heinrich's Catholic faith reveal that he was not a native inhabitant of Dachlissen but a recent settler, that he may have come from the nearby Catholic Lucerne area?
The plan was laid out plainly: a long ride by ox-drawn carts to Ulm in Baden-Württemberg, then by riverboat down the Danube to Odesa on the Black Sea, and finally by sail to Sevastopol. As it turned out, the trip was far from simple. The travel was exasperating and tragic. Some boat operators were ordered to refuse the boarding of the emigrants; the land passage was denied by local authorities and had to be renegotiated. Food and funds ran out, and many died, especially young children, including Heinrich Buchmann's 14-week-old baby Johannes and the 4-year-old daughter Elisabeth. Major Escher received six thousand guldens from the Russian envoy in Vienna after he pleaded for help. The money was an advance payment, hoping it would 'keep the beggars off the streets of Vienna.' Ultimately, the only travel on the River Danube was from Regensburg to Pressburg (now called Bratislava); the rest was done arduously over land in tilt-carts.
The group arrived in Crimea early that summer. They soon realized that rosy promises had misled them. Native Tartars robbed them, and some were murdered. Years of misery followed. Many colonists died from disease and epidemics. Crops were lost to drought and grasshopper infestations. Livestock got depleted by snowstorms and cow disease. There was no money for funerals; the dead were draped in rags and buried in the earth. The Russian government helped but could have done a lot more. Neighboring German settlements did not fare much better, but everybody helped each other.
Eventually, the Swiss emigrants built a prosperous and proud colony called Zurichtal in memory of the beautiful Zurich Freiamt they left behind. It became an exemplary community from which Czarist Russia could have learned much. The Swiss mixed with nearby German colonies, adopted the Russian language and slowly lost the sense of Swiss heritage. According to various anecdotal sources, young Heinrich (born in 1790) became prosperous, and his family was one of the most influential in Zurichtal. Later in the century, the colonists lost the treasured exemption from military service. The young men had to serve in the Russian army and suffered inhuman treatment and conditions. Several families decided to emigrate to America.
No one knew of the stark reversal of fortune that lay before them.
A Friedrich Buchmann (1832), the grandson of Heinrich (1767), the son of Jakob (1798), moved to the nearby Alexanderthal. In 1890, he emigrated to South Dakota, USA ('Fulda', 29 June 1890, New York). There are large numbers of descendants of Friedrich Buchmann in the Dakotas and North America. How many grandchildren did Friedrich have? Fifty-five!, 22 girls and 33 boys. The number of great-grandchildren? To be counted.
A hundred years after their first settlement, the fate of the Zurichtal colonists turned: first the Russian Revolution, then Josef Stalin. Their possessions were plundered, and the farms seized. The farmers who did not voluntarily give up their land were extradited to the Ural, deliberately dispersed to hinder any contact among them. Several generations after leaving Switzerland, in desperation, some wrote to the mayors of their ancient communities in Switzerland for help. Help was sent if possible and if citizenship could be established, and the Swiss municipal offices pursued all avenues. Many died of hunger. Because of their German-sounding family names, the Zurichtalers were all treated as Germans. In 1941, the Second World War at its peak, the families of Zurichtal, together with the neighboring German colonists, were declared state enemies and deported by the communists to labor camps in North-Eastern Kazakhstan, geographically part of Siberia. The fate of many is unknown.
Today's name of Zurichtal is Zolotoe Pole. Little of it exists. Most gravestones were reused as building material.
The deported colonists from Crimea and Volga represented a large population of Kazakhstan. They were a suffering underclass, shunned as foreigners and Germans. It was not until the breakup of the Soviet Union that the suffering minority experienced its 'Parting of the Sea'. In the 1990s, almost two million 'Germans' emigrated from Kazakhstan, mainly to Germany and the United States.
For a long time, I wondered if any Zurichtal Buchmanns who were deported to Kazakstan survived the terrible hardship. Then, I received a note from Waldemar Buchmann. He read my web article. In 1993, Waldemar and his close family moved from Blagodatnoe, Kazakstan, to Cologne/Bonn, Germany. They are descendants of Heinrich Buchmann, and through seven generations, they brought many sons and daughters to this world. Before they were expelled from Zurichtal, they owned two farming estates, the Chutor Kalai and the Chutor Scheicheli, daughter colonies of Zurichtal. Waldemar's great-grandfather Bernhard was shot dead by the communists. His grandfather Jakob died before the deportation; his father Adolf lived through the deportation when he was age twelve. I also received a note from a lady in Moscow who is a descendant of Heinrich Buchmann and whose family suffered terrible hardship.
Major von Escher executed the emigrant expedition to Russia so badly that he was banished, and his name was disgraced. But only after he asked his son to organize another emigrant expedition, this time with 1000 artisan emigrants. The funds were wasted, and the emigrant expedition failed before the emigrants left Switzerland. Major Escher's incompetence in finance and planning and a good dose of bad luck were the main reasons for the disastrous undertaking. His son Friedrich pleaded for understanding and came to his father's defense, to no avail. The Major died in St. Petersburg in 1831. Friedrich emigrated, and he died as a plantation owner in Cuba. The oldest son of the Major, Heinrich, emigrated to the USA and returned to Switzerland as a wealthy man. Heinrich's son Alfred became the most successful financier and industrialist in Switzerland. What the Major lacked in skill and flair, his grandson was endowed with a thousandfold.
Sepp Buchmann
