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“Buried Alive! – Knock From Inside Casket Heard on Way to Cemetery!”
“Pyramid Scheme Forces Locals Into Hiding”
Curt Renz returned March 15, 2003 to the North Star Chapter with more on the above headlines and about several other stories. Based on his collection of homeland letters to the various prairie-state German-language newspapers, Renz has crafted a revealing, informative and sometimes amusing narrative glimpse of German village life in early 20th century Russia. Cutting excerpts from the numerous letters and stitching them into a themed narration, he weaves a seamless tale that gives us an unprecedented flavor of what life was like for our ancestors who stayed behind, who saw the dawn of a new century that segued into the hell of the Great War and the Russian Revolution.
Covering a span of three decades Renz has amassed a collection of homeland (and sons of homeland) letters from correspondents representing Hoffnungstal, Bessarabia, Güldendorf in the Odessa district, the early Black Sea colony of Alt-Danzig and Neu-Danzig from the Beresan. This is a task he felt obligated to undertake while serving as village coordinator for the four locales. It is just within the last two years that a serious translation project has been implemented through volunteer assistance. The translation count grows steadily as well as the number of newly discovered documents in their original Fraktur type. A parallel project is underway to post the collection of translations as well as their original texts on the “Archives” page of the newly revamped GRHS website.
Curt is a noted genealogist from Ames, Iowa, who last spoke to the chapter in September 1996. He has gained renown as a top-notch resource for Russia-Germans seeking their roots. Over the years his booth at GRHS conventions has become a popular destination for researchers – clueless and professional alike – as well as for his many friends. He is newly retired from a teaching career in the Ames public school system but finds he now has even less time available to fight the addiction called genealogy.
Thanks Curt for providing such an interesting, and little known, insight into our ancestors.
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