Monday, November 12, 2012

My Tribe


My grandmother, Emma, raised me. She was born in the Old Country, Russia, but was really German. We are what's known as Volgadeutche. Catherine the Great offered us free land, autonomy and freedom from serving in the army in Czarist Russia. So we left Germany around 1760 for the lower Volga region of Russia. We were a nice little colony of farmers there. I wish I could travel back there. Eventually, Russia became a not so nice place for us Germans so we came here to the U.S. in 1913. What was left of the colonies was completely wiped out by a pogrom in Stalins' time. Being apart from the rest of Germany for so long, our German language was quite different from other Germans. Here in the U.S. other German-Americans didn't think of us as true Germans and, of course, we aren't Russians either.
Then, when I saw this fabric I was drawn to it like sauer to kraut!! Could it be the long lost indigenous tribal print of my people? I'm going to say yes!!   

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