Zurichtal
By Joseph Buchmann
Life in the late 1700s and early 1800s under Napoleon became oppressive for the Swiss peasantry. The treasured freedom was reigned in. Farmers were no longer allowed 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 great 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 an area of land that one yoke of oxen can plow in one day.
Late in the year 1803, led by the Major and his son Friedrich Ludwig Escher, about forty Swiss families risked their lives. With high hope 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 Luzerne peasants to populate the area. It is thus possible that the Buchmanns of Dachlissen originated from Lucerne and were distant relatives of mine.
I did some research and wrote this story because several Buchmann families of Dachlissen took part 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 felt forced to emigrate because he was a Catholic married to a wife that was Evangelical, a situation that was 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 Luzern area?
The plan was plainly laid out: a long ride by ox-drawn carts to Ulm in Baden-Württemberg, then by riverboat down the Danube to Odessa on the Black Sea, and finally sailing 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, many died, especially young children, including Heinrich Buchmann's 14-week-old baby Johannes and the 4-year-old daughter Elisabeth. In Vienna, Major Escher received six thousand guldens from the Russian envoy after pleading for help. The money was an advance payment in the hope that it would 'keep the beggars off the streets of Vienna'. In the end, 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.
When the Swiss finally arrived in Crimea in early summer, they realized that they were misled by the rosy promises. What followed were years of total misery. They were robbed by the native Tatars, a few were even murdered. A large section of the colonists died from disease and epidemics, crops were lost to drought, and grasshopper infestations. Livestock was 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 it could have done a lot more. A large number of 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 a lot. The Swiss mixed with nearby German colonies adopted the Russian language, and slowly lost the sense of Swiss heritage. The young Heinrich (born in 1790), according to various anecdotal sources, became very prosperous and his family was 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 for years 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), son of Jakob (1798), moved to the nearby Alexanderthal. In 1890, he emigrated to South Dakota, USA ('Fulda', 29 June 1890, New York). There is a large number 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 that 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. If citizenship could be established, and all possible avenues were pursued by the Swiss municipal offices, help was sent if at all possible. 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 a 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 of the Zurichtal Buchmanns that were deported to Kazakstan survived the terrible hardship. Then, I received a note from Waldemar Buchmann who read my web article. In 1993, Waldemar and his close family moved from the village Blagodatnoe, Kazakstan to Cologne/Bonn, Germany. They are descendants of Heinrich Buchmann and through seven generations, they brought to this world many sons and daughters. 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 about twelve years old. I also received a note from a lady in Moscow who is a descendant of Heinrich Buchmann, and whose family suffered terrible hardship.
The emigrant expedition of the Dachlissen families to Russia was so badly executed by Major von Escher that he was banished and his name was disgraced in Zurich, but only after he asked his son to organize another expedition, this time with 1000 artisan emigrants. The funds were wasted away and the 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 reason for the disastrous undertaking. His son Friedrich pleaded for understanding and came to his father's defense, but to not much avail. The major died in St. Petersburg in 1831. Friedrich emigrated and 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 one thousandfold.
Sepp Buchmann
