Postcards from Germany: Dutch-German, German-Russian, or Russian Mennonite? How Europe – and wheat – came to the American Plains

You'd never know it from my decidedly English-sounding name, but one of the many reasons for my interest in Germany is my Dutch-German heritage, a heritage I share with many in the Oklahoma Panhandle and southern Kansas.

I heard stories in bits and pieces as I was growing up. I knew that my family had originated in what is now Holland/northern Germany, gone to Prussia and then moved with their entire village to Kansas. I also knew that my great grandparents and some of my great aunts and uncles had spoken German. But I didn’t know much beyond that until I started digging around a bit.

The digging actually started because of a craving: not one to know the history of my ancestry, but an intense and insatiable appetite for my grandmother's swiebocks. These light, flaky and wonderfully fattening bread rolls look like little two-tiered snowmen and take nearly an entire day to bake. I remember being excited when I first arrived in Germany, hoping that I would be able to find them at a bakery somewhere. I was to be disappointed, though. What Germans in Bavaria think of as zwiebacks (the southern German spelling) is actually mini toast bread that's eaten for stomachaches. They are mass-produced, sold in boxes like crackers and sell for under two dollars a pack. Needless to say, I received very strange looks when asking where to find swiebocks and extolling the attributes of my grandmother's particularly good ones.

But when I reached for my trusty Internet to find the pictures that would make my bakery search successful, what I found was surprising. My grandmother's swiebocks were Mennonite swiebocks, and Dutch Mennonite swiebocks at that. Obviously, I had a lot of questions.

I found out that the Mennonite movement had come into being in Holland and attracted many Germans and Swiss during the Martin-Luther led Reformation movement. The community was known from the beginning for their farming skills and was deftly able to use dikes and other agricultural techniques to produce farmland out of marshes and other difficult-to-farm areas. These skills would prove handy when the group experienced persecution after persecution and was forced to move throughout Europe. From Holland, many landed in Prussia, and from there many more had to leave for the Russian steppes. There, they experienced nearly 50 years of religious freedom thanks to the impact their grain production had on Russian and European markets, but in the late 1870s, the political tides changed. The Mennonite belief in a doctrine of nonresistance precluded them from entering military service, a point that didn't sit well with Russian officials when the universal military service act was passed in 1871. Once again, moving was on the horizon.

Luckily, the Santa Fe Railroad had land to sell in Kansas and lots of it. Many Americans considered the area worthless for farming, but the German-Russian scouts who came in the mid-1870s saw the same kind of potential for this area as they had seen in Russia. One farmer purportedly said, "In three years that ocean of grass will be transformed into an ocean of waving fields of grain." Hundreds of German-Russian Mennonites started pouring into central Kansas and eventually spilling over into south Kansas and Oklahoma, bringing with them the seed that would turn the area into the nation's "breadbasket": hard red winter wheat seed. And sure enough, within a few years time, the German-Russian farmers had transformed the area into an incredibly productive farming region that drew even more German-speaking immigrants, this time from myriad religious backgrounds.

For years the Mennonite group remained true to its Russian-influenced but mainly Dutch-German roots. A "low German" dialect called Plautdietsch or Niederdeutsch was spoken extensively, the "low" indicating the flat, lowland northern and coastal areas where the speakers had originally lived. But with the anti-German sentiment that accompanied WWI and WWII, many communities were forced to integrate fast. In many – but thankfully not all – areas, English won out and families spread out so that what remains for most of us is the enjoyment of swiebocks and the dinner-spoiling, four o'clock "faspa" snack time.

If you make it out to the fair this weekend, you might just be lucky enough to find some swiebocks in the baking contest or Home Extension area. And that hard red winter wheat that's being judged this year at the wheat show? Well, now you know the long journey it, and perhaps even your ancestors, took to get to the Oklahoma Panhandle.

tags: germany  russia  prussia  holland  the  netherlands  mennonite  amish  wheat  plains  oklahoma  kansas  swiebocks  faspa