Most of the descendants of the Wends in the United States do not know the impact that Old Lutheranism had on their Wendish forefathers who came to Texas in the middle of the 19th century. What is Old Lutheranism?  Who were the Old Lutherans?  Actually the Old Lutherans were just plain confessional Lutherans, but because […]

The table shows the German migration to the United States from 1821-1900*. 1821-1830             9,987 1831-1840         157,265 1841-1850         439,270 1851-1860         976,678** 1871-1880         781,273 1881-1890      1,641,571 1891-1900         728,348 Total               5,552,946 * Taken from Deutsch-Amerikanische Geschichtsblaetter, Vol III, No. 3 on page 30. ** Includes the large Wendish immigration of 1854.

Names of the provinces of modern Germany in German and English. GERMAN                                                      ENGLISH Baden-Würtemberg                                      Baden-Wuertemberg Bayern                                                        Bavaria Berlin                                                          Berlin Brandenburg                                                Brandenburg Bremen                                                       Bremen Hamburg                                                     Hamburg Hessen                                                        Hesse Mecklenburg-Vorpommern                             Mecklenburg-West Pomerania Niedersachsen                                              Lower Saxony Nordrhein-Wesfallen                                      North Rhine-Westphalia Rheinland-Pfalz                                          

To better understand the Oder-Neisse Line, the modern boundary between Germany and Poland, please refer to Map I. The 1937 eastern boundary is outlined by the heavy black line.  Hitler and Stalin divided Poland in 1939.  See Map II.  The light-shaded area in the east (four dark arrows) covers Polish territory that was annexed by

The emancipation of the peasants of Silesia was set in motion by the Oktoberedikt of 1807. This edict brought many reforms which abolished the feudal system.  It freed the peasants as of St. Martin’s Day (November 11), 1810.  The emancipation set aside servile or compulsory labor and services of the peasant class.  Those peasants who did

While searching for my roots I discovered that eleven of my ancestors were on the BEN NEVIS that brought the large immigration of Wends to Texas in 1854.  There were seven on my father’s (Otto Biar) side and four on my mother’s (Lydia Biar, nee Moerbe) side. Three of the seven ancestor’s on my paternal

It is a pity that so much of the history written about the borderland between Slavs and Germans is steeped in bias and prejudice.  There were no early Slavic historians. Much of the early history of the Slavs was written by Germanic writers.  Since Germany was not a  homogenous nation, the early writers represented Germanic

Early German and Slavic tribes did not know the art of construction with brick and stone as the Romans did, but used wood.  Later on as wood became scarce a method usually referred to as “HALF-TIMBERED” construction was employed. In England it is also known as “WATTLE AND DAUB” construction and in Germany it is

Nearly all information for this article was taken from Die Ortsname der Oberlausitz (Place Names of Upper Lusatia) by Jan Meschang. (Please note that throughout this article the German Umlaut is used.  This simply means that quite often the diacritical mark (“) appears over the vowels a, o and u to indicate umlauts.  It would

The practice of assuming other surnames (aliases) by some of our Wendish or Sorbian ancestors in Lusatia makes research rather difficult at times. An example of an entry in the records that indicates an alias is “Jakob Dzick genannt Mitschke.”  It simply means that Jakob Dzick assumed the surename Mitschke.  In this case the surname