Hardt
Part of our combined heritage starts in Germany and ends up in Nebraska but comes by way of Russia. This is the Hardt family line.
From 900 C.E. until the time of the Reformation, the lands that made up Germany and most of central Europe were composed of literally hundreds of small political units consisting of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities, bishoprics, and entities controlled by a strong figure who could be royalty or religious. These individuals, or in many cases, religious orders of warrior knights, would subjugate an area and then rule as feudal overseers. They pledged their loyalty to stronger dynasties and always the Pope and were often at war with neighbors and or former allies. The common people tried to get along as well as possible and suffered from each war. The men were drafted to fight and those left behind, the old, young, and women as well as their lands were often ravaged by the armies who all lived off the land. Coincident with this the Black Plague raged across most of Europe starting in 1347 and returning periodically for the next 300 years killing about one-third of the population.
By the time of the Reformation in 1521, much of the landmass of modern Germany was composed of small kingdoms under the loose confederation of the Holy Roman Emperor. He had ceded them ever more powers of local rule to secure their loyalty. He was desperate for their support, politically as well as financially, in his battles with the other royal houses of the continent and the several, mostly failed Crusades, and now these smaller rulers wanted more political power as well. Many chafed at the increasingly harsh intervention of a Catholic church that had become more political, temporal, and wealthy than religious. Taxation by both the crown and church was stifling and the hand that ruled many people was heavy. Furthermore, there were dramatic positive changes in the educational level of the general population strengthened by the printing press and the expansion of the university. All of this made the common person less likely to accept at face value the teaching of the Church. German cities and principalities had also seen a rising middle class of merchants and professionals as well as clerics who challenged Church authority.
When Martin Luther published his 95 theses in response to the Medici Pope Leo X who was selling indulgences to raise money to restore St Peter’s Basilica, they went Middle Ages viral. Luther published and distributed the main concepts that promised salvation in a faith not controlled by the clergy. The population embraced the concepts widely and soon other ministries sprung up, some so radical that Luther was forced to lend support in the violent suppression of the other new religions. For many reasons, the various principalities became Catholic or Protestant and any sense of order quickly evaporated. For the next 100 years, the states fought each other in minor religious wars with long periods of uneasy peace. The guiding principle was that each ruler could determine his nation’s faith.
In 1618, the Austrian Catholic rulers tried to force conversion to Roman Catholicism on a newly captured Protestant Prague and the locals revolted. Thus, began the Thirty Years War which involved all the major world powers including Sweden, Russia, France, England, and Spain. This war was fought totally on German soil. It is estimated that several million people were killed and whole regions devastated. As many people died during these thirty years as did in the time of the plague. Entire towns and regions were depopulated. One result was mass emigration following this: one part of the population to the New World; one part of which was the movement of German families like the Giers and Hardts to Russia at Catherine’s request. A second result was the destruction of many of the minor dukedoms and free cities. Ultimately the Austrians and Prussians absorbed many smaller entities and formed rival confederations of the smaller states. France and Great Britain became the world’s most powerful countries and fought an on-again, off-again 100-year war which included the French and Indian War in North America and the American Revolution. These wars also drew in the German states, and it is estimated that over a million German soldiers from the various states were lost during this period. France degenerated into revolution followed by Napoleon and his continent-wide wars of the early 1800s, again mostly fought on German soil. Following the Treaty of Vienna in 1814, the European powers and lands were exhausted and devastated. There followed a relative period of peace and rapid population expansion. Prussia led the way on mainland Germany and rivaled England for world dominance.
Surnames
Much of Europe and Germany in the Middle Ages was by necessity rural, farm, and family oriented because the means to grow and store food in great quantities was still lacking and the urban areas as manufacturing centers were yet in the future. Most people were known only by their first name and a family reference. At the start of the 14th century, primarily as the population grew and the concept of individual taxation came about, there was a need for better individual identification. Therefore, people adopted a surname based on location, occupation, body habitus, or family. Hence a man of a small frame named John who was the baker, and a son of Thomas, could become John Baker, John Small, or John Thompson.
Also, in notes Cindy Taylor recorded from Finding Your Roots, she noted: “The origins of most first names are in the Bible. In 325 AD, the Church outlawed the use of pagan names and later, in 1545, made the use of a saint’s name mandatory for Catholic baptism. As a result, in all the Western countries during the Middle Ages, there were only about twenty common names for infant boys and girls. Then, as now (written by Cindy in 1977) John and Mary dominated as the most common.
In the years from 1760-1767, Catherine II, the Russian Empress, recruited 27,000 Germans, primarily from Hesse and the Palatinate to settle along the Volga River in what was then Russia. Later her grandson Peter enticed many thousand more Germans to settle along the Black Sea. Catherine’s Manifesto of 1763 guaranteed the settlers freedom of religion, self-government, control of their schools, and freedom from military and other state service. They were settled in an area that was mostly unfit for agriculture and had been historically the pathway for Mongolian invaders from Asia to Europe. The rather ambitious plan was for them to make this land their own, show the Russian farmer how to grow crops, stop the invasions, and even convert some of the post-invading Muslims to good Christians.
There were originally 104 settlements located on both sides of the Volga River and these grew to 192 towns all located in the provinces of Saratov and Samara. The enclave became roughly the size of Maryland and straddled the Volga between Saratov and Tsaritsyn. It is now known as Volgograd, called Stalingrad for some time.
Neither Russian nor German, these people were an ethnic group that spoke German but served the Tsars as loyal subjects. When they immigrated to the USA in the 1880’s they were considered Russian by American officials. From 1760on, when they arrived in an uninhabited, undeveloped primitive land as a group of families fleeing a Germany that was mostly a war-torn remnant of the Holy Roman Empire, until the 1870s when they left, the Russian steppes had become overpopulated but a very productive region.
They left Russia in the late 19th century in large numbers but rather than return to Germany, now a home none of them knew, as they were several generations removed and not wanted there, they emigrated to the United States and Canada. People migrate for many reasons although primarily to find a better life for themselves and their families. The replacement of no land or land uninhabitable due to famine, war, or excessive use with free land in the destination; fleeing from religious or political persecution to places with fewer restrictions; and cultural shifts are all reasons people are willing to undergo great hardships to move.
Another factor amongst some groups relates to the difference between a melting pot and a mixed salad. Jackson Turner’s historical concept that the United States was settled by groups that moved ever westward to the frontiers and as those frontiers also moved and ultimately reached the Pacific coast; each group became more assimilated with the greater culture into one huge American melting pot. This frontier experience, according to Turner stripped away the European institutions and veneer and leveled the playing field. There are, however, many groups who move as a single mass and may never totally assimilate for several reasons. Often these are religious, for example, the Mennonites or Amish. The Germans who immigrated to Russia for free land, less taxation, and freedom from conscription into the military in 1760 moved to the United States in 1870 for the same reasons. And one could speculate that having never completely assimilated or become Russian, they had less to leave behind.
This group had always been a predominantly agricultural people and when they went to Russia and subsequently to the US, they sought out rural farming areas.
According to the 1920 census, 22,421 first or second-generation Russian Germans were living in Nebraska and another 21,000 in Colorado.
Most Volga Germans entered the New World with little money but were not handicapped greatly because of available free government acreage and low-cost railroad lands. Those who came after 1890 had fewer opportunities and many migrated into urban areas or worked as for-hire farm laborers or farm sharecroppers.
Why would these Germans go to Russia initially? Germany in those days, the middle of the 1700s, consisted of many small duchies, city-states, and minor kingdoms, with 1786 sovereignties in all by the late 1700s, and were devastated by several centuries of constant warfare. The lands that made up the many German states together have almost no natural barriers and so the wars of the last centuries have been fought in the open plains of Germany. From 1618-1648 Europe was consumed by the Thirty Years War which has been considered the most horrifying and devastating war in the history of mankind. It was a continent wide war fought wholly on German soil and resulted in a population loss of close to half of the German citizens. Because of the geographical setting of the countries of Hesse and the Rhine Palatinate, many of the battles were fought there. A short peace was followed by a Hessian civil war and then a French conquest by Louis XIV, the War of the Spanish Succession, and finally the Seven Years War which started in 1756. We know this as the French and Indian War in America. These wars, which were both nationalistic and religious took a terrible toll on the general population. The men were subject to conscription and in the case of the two Hesse states, were often rented out as mercenaries to other states and forced to fight in locations far from home, even as far as America. The land was either left fallow or the crops harvested but taken by marauding armies. Whole villages were burned or destroyed in the name of one faith or provincial nationality. It is estimated that over 50% of the population died.
In 1756, all of Europe was again at war but on Christmas Day, 1761, Empress Elizabeth of Russia died suddenly and was succeeded by her nephew, Peter III. He immediately ceased hostilities, abandoned Russia’s allies, (Austria, France, Sweden, and others), and sided with England and Frederick the Great of Prussia. The new Tsar was never crowned and being a weak and ineffective ruler, was replaced in a midnight coup six months later by his wife, Catherine II. She was the daughter of a former minor nobility from Germany but became a great and effective ruler for many years in Russia. She had a strong love and appreciation for all things German and soon arrived at a plan to settle German colonists into her most difficult and troublesome lands. She chose German farmers for their work ethic which she hoped would inspire her new Russian countrymen.
She published a series of Manifestos and sent agents into Germany and France to secure colonists. All were welcome except Jews and the settlers were promised that they could settle wherever they wanted, guaranteed freedom of religion, and thirty years tax exemption for those settling in undeveloped territory. Furthermore, they were guaranteed perpetual exemption from military service and the right to buy serfs or peasants. They were also promised interest-free loans for homes, a yearly stipend, and free transportation from their homes to the new lands. All this and the right to return home if things did not work out. Each family was given 80 acres and authorized to Christianize the neighboring people of the Mohammedan faith and acquire them as serfs. Despite all this and the use of agents known as Menschenfaengers or people catchers, and Seelenverkaeufers, or soul stealers, there was little response until 1766 when the provinces of Hesse were targeted. 68 of the original 104 colonies were recruited from these regions. Most of the program was completed by 1766 and after 1768 Catherine withdrew funding and the program closed and there were no more colonists helped. Unfortunately, this left many thousands of Germans in transit from their homes, which they had abandoned, to a Russia that did not want them.
Ultimately 8000 families, some 30,000 colonists were recruited and assisted to travel to the lower Volga region. Most of these were from west Middle Germany, young (half were 16-32, a fourth under age 15) and about half were tradesmen and professionals with the rest farmers. About half were Catholic and the rest were Lutheran or other Protestant denominations, and each religious group was settled in separate villages but next to each other. This was by design, as Catherine was well aware of the religious strife in Europe but wanted some forced interaction to prevent it in a Russia predominantly Christian but Eastern Orthodox. They all traveled to Kronstadt, an island in the St Petersburg region and the cannon-studded seat of the Russian navy, and then onto Lomonosov. They were given the Russian citizenship oath and then transported to the interior. They soon learned that the right to settle anywhere meant anywhere the Russians said and this was along the Volga. From St Petersburg, through which they all had to pass, they were rafted up the 45-mile Neva to Lake Ladoga and then to the mouth of the Volkov River. Another 135 miles by water to Lake Ilmen and the 200 miles overland to the headwaters of the Volga. From there they floated 1100 miles of meandering river to their destination of Saratov. The trip usually took a year or more from signing up in Germany and so they often spent months in Russian villages along the frozen Volga River.
Saratov was an unkempt unwelcoming city of 10,000 people, mostly Tartar. Here the settlers were provisioned with 15-20 rubles cash, two Kalmuck ponies, a cow or an ox, an unassembled plow, 2 shafts, two ropes, simple harness parts, and assorted pots, pans, and knives. They assembled their own wagons and set out with a Russian military escort that took them to where it had already been determined that they were to settle. The settlements were on both the east and west sides of the Volga and were referred to as the hillside or meadow side. The general terrain on the east was vast tableland scarred by several large and small river valleys and, as on the west side, ditch-like coulees that drained the spring flood water and left ponds well into the torrid summer. Think western Nebraska. This leveled off into treeless prairie. Not all the land was available as some of the best had been given to military and minor nobility and there were pockets of land occupied by outlaws, runaway serfs, army deserters, and other brigands who were a source of problems for the new settlers for years.
Along the journey the settlers constantly looked for the villages they had been promised they were going to, only to arrive at a desolate treeless land. They found themselves in a sea of thigh-high grass with distant clumps of small forests, unfortunately often too late in the year to plant crops and just enough time to dig caves and make sod houses to survive the harsh winter. The few trees available were soft wood unsuitable for log homes and then the promised carpenters did not arrive for another year with building materials. Despite all of the hardships the colonies thrived and survived. They tended to form into units with a central theme in which all the people lived in the town for projection and went out to farm the surrounding lands. There gradually arose a communal approach to land ownership and duties. The towns were given Russian names but often took the name of the first mayor.
Hardt Family Colonies: Balzer (Goloi Karamysh) was a Hillside Crown, Protestant colony founded on 8/28/1765 with a population in 1773 of 479 which had shrunk to 11 in 1912.
Huck (Splavnukha) was also Hillside, Crown, and Protestant, founded on 7/1/1767 and had a population of 380 in 1773 and only 10 in 1912
Griess writes: “The establishment of Balzar on the west side of the Volga serves as an example of the difficulties faced by the early Colonists. Balzar lies approximately 47 miles below Saratov. It was founded by nine German families who arrived there on August 28, 1765. Coming from the Pfalz and Hessen, these Colonists took possession of virgin land in the Steinteich River Valley. The valley was rimmed on the north by a ridge of forest clad hills, and in the southern part of the valley floor in a region called the “flat”, three small creeks formed the Kutterteich River. Near one of the creeks was a natural spring which provided cool water to the valley. It was near this spring that the Colonists of Balzer spent the first winter.” With no lumber provided the Colonists lived in dugouts along the river banks. These consisted of caves with thatch roofs. Huck, built in 1767, was one of four neighboring villages, all Protestant. In Balzer, total immigration ceased in 1768 and consisted of 377 people. By 1908, the community had grown to include over ten thousand. Balzer thrived as an industrial center, primarily producing a type of cloth known as sarpinka. By the turn of the 19th century, Belzer “could boast of seventy-two sarpinka factories, with fourteen thousand looms and fifteen drying houses,” in addition to sunflower oil mills, tanneries and textile mills.
Eventually, the colonies had more self-government but initially, there was much interference from the regional officials in both intra colony and inter colony matters. Unfortunately, many regional officials were not as well educated as the colonists and often regarded them as serfs rather than free men and women. It was many decades before this changed to any degree and caused a permanent problem for the assimilation of the colonists. The first several years were complicated by a decade of severe drought that lasted until 1775 as well as the incompetence of the local officials who were often late in getting planting supplies and seeds to the farmers. Despite that, each year the yield of crops grown increased albeit only a small amount and less than needed for sustainability. Two Russian proverbs seem very apt here. “Heaven’s high and the Tsar is afar” to explain how the Tsarina’s good intentions never translated into much local action and, when ultimately, a regional commissioner, the Kontor, was appointed and empowered to handle all local matters; “offer a candle to God and a purse to the judge”. It would seem that the price of justice was high here as elsewhere for a saying was often quoted: “Set a foot into court and a hand goes into your pocket.”
Unfortunately, all historians agree that the Kontor management shaped the enclave into what it ultimately became, a culturally retarded and economically challenged group of colonies that achieved agricultural success, nonetheless. Unfortunately, this meant that the assimilation and positive influence that Catherine hoped the industrious Germans could offer to the Russian native population never occurred and a palpable rancor persisted between the two groups.
In 1767, the new Kontor forced all the colonies to agree to a different agreement under which the colonists were forbidden to engage in any profession, industry, or type of trade. This of course meant relegating even the artists and professionals amongst them to farming. Remember that Catherine had recruited tradesmen and educated people as well as farmers to stimulate the Russian peasants in new directions. Initially, the agreement had ordered the land to be inherited by the youngest son, thereby forcing the older sons into a trade but this was all thrown away by the new decree. However, given the alternative of starvation or farming, the professional half quickly became good farmers.
There were several attempts to escape from the region, but most were unsuccessful and often ended in death. The colonists’ health was of course affected by the conditions and the lack of medical care. They faced the usual epidemics of smallpox, diphtheria, and typhoid as well as, a new disease, the Asiatic plague. The sick were treated by midwives and prayer as there were no physicians. The mortality rate was high.
Unable to go home, mistreated, and forced to survive against overwhelming odds, that is just what this group of people did. In doing so they spawned a new people, the Volga Germans, a tough, hardworking resilient people. They took from their Russian neighbors some traits, foods, and habits but found strength in remaining their own ethnic group and passed this along to future generations.
1775 was the turning point for the colonies. The drought broke and the colonists were able for the first time to harvest enough crops to keep a needed portion of seed to become self-sufficient. The following several years of adequate moisture as well as the adaptation to the land in newer farm implements and techniques allowed the colonies to be successful. Crops grown were hard wheat, rye, and some millet. Potatoes were introduced as well as some minor grains and sunflowers, but these were primarily for home use. The colonists developed a habit of cracking the seeds in their mouths and often took a pocket full for a day long journey, earning the sunflower seed the name of “Volga German peanut”. Tobacco was introduced in the late 1700s and became a huge cash crop for several decades before fading out. Fruits and melons were planted for home use as well as sugar beets.
Despite the drought relief, there were still many causes of crop failure including the Hoehenrauch, a frightening, mysterious Asiatic heat wind that swept in with temperatures of 125 degrees or more and filled with dry sand from the south which would devastate the crops in a single day. Combined with geese, grasshoppers, and ground squirrel infestations, the average ten-year cycle had five or six good years, two years of crop failure, and two poor results. To deal with this each village built granaries with enough grain for two years of seed and some to allow families with crop failure to draw some out. These communal granaries were then replenished by the families with good crops.
The decision to force all men into farming had the secondary benefit of forcing professionals to confront the technical problems of farm production and soon led to many inventions that aided farm production. Ultimately, a total lack of competing Russian industries combined with a new regional government that ignored the imposed anti-industrial fiat reversed the occupational barriers and led to the rapid growth of milling, wagon making, and assorted other industries that the Volga Germans first excelled at, and later exported to other parts of Russia. Some colonies, Balzer among them, became more industrious than agricultural.
They adopted a community model, forced by the government and the conditions, to resemble what was called the Dorf or village model in Germany. In this, the people lived together in town but individually farmed acreage in the country, sometimes some distance away. Later when they immigrated to the Midwest they were forced by the requirements of the Homestead Act to inhabit individual plots of land.
Despite flourishing as a group, the great hope that Catherine had for the region was never realized. The two groups, German Colonists and Russian serfs and Tarter herdsmen never assimilated. There were many reasons but two stand out primarily. The Colonists believed in education and quickly established schools to educate their children, the Russian children were not invited, and education was undervalued in their nomadic culture. Education and religious services were in the German language and many of the Colonists, even the later generations never became fluent in Russian. In addition, intermarriage between the two groups was discouraged by the Colonists because any child born would have to be raised as in the Russian Orthodox Church. Since religious freedom had been a primary reason for immigration, this was a non-starter. Eventually, both groups, the native Russians and the Colonists began to think of the Colonists as foreigners in Russia.
The German colonies did quite well for well over one hundred years. In 1855 the liberal-minded Czar Alexander II ascended to power. He freed the serfs, alienating a great portion of the elites, and he embarked on a campaign to expand further the Russian empire. He had inherited a humbled country recently defeated in the Crimean War and behind the times in Europe. Unfortunately, as he advanced reforms he angered people. To eliminate special privileges, he struck down the Manifestos. Hereafter the German colonies were placed under the Russian Ministry of the Interior: German courts were dissolved, and all proceedings were under the local Russian authorities with school and civil proceedings to be in the Russian language. At the time the Russian army was conscripted from the lower classes, run by officers from the elites, and with many of the middle class exempted. Alexander forced through a universal conscription policy with no exceptions. All Russian men were forced to serve six years of active duty with nine years in the reserves. In addition, special tax exemptions were dissolved. This began the great exodus to the Americas. Initially, the Black Sea colonies due to the predominance of the Mennonites who were religiously opposed to war but soon followed by the original Volga colonies.
Hardt and Geier History
In the decade 1770-1780, the rulers of Hesse recruited or conscripted about 30,000 men to the army and then rented that army to the English King George III to fight in the Americas in the Revolutionary War. Others chose to go east.
In response to Catherine’s offer, two of the early Colonists were the Koch and Geier families. Heinrich Geier was born in 1721 in Kurpflaz, a small village near present day Mannheim Germany. At the age of forty-six, he moved with his family to Huck, Russia becoming one of the first families. Along with his parents was Johan Gregor Geier, also born in Germany, but who met and married Margareta Kock in Russia. She had been born in Isenburg, another small village.
approximately 95 miles south of Kurpflaz, both in the Hesse-Palatinate regions. She had moved to Russia with her folks, Peter Kock and Anna Eckart, also in 1766, to the town of Oranienbaum, Russia, and then relocated to Huck the next spring. One hundred forty-six years later, Jacob “Jack” Geier brought his family to America. His eldest daughter Mary Elizabeth was known to us as Grandmother Liz. They probably came in through Halifax Canada and then crossed into Port Huron, Michigan. They joined the growing community of German Russians in Sutton Nebraska, as Grandma Liz and her siblings were educated in Lincoln. Much of the family including her parents and siblings moved to Michigan in the Detroit region in 1929.
It is a little more difficult to identify the first Hardt ancestors who went to Russia. Amongst the earliest Colonists were three families with the surname of Hardt or Herdt. The surname, by the way, refers to people who live on high fields used for grazing which are close to the forests. They all emigrated to the village of Messer in about 1766. Messer is the next village located to the south of Belzer. All the families were from the Isenburg region of Hesse and all the men were farmers. Likely these families were related, and the common ancestor would be Christoff Herdt. We do know that the first Hardt to come to America was Fred Hardt Sr. He immigrated in 1882 through Ellis Island and quickly moved to Kearney Nebraska where he worked in a cotton mill. While there he met and married Elizabeth Metzler. She was from the adjoining Russian community of Anton; had immigrated to America in 1892 with her parents Fred and Elizabeth Metzler; and was also working in Kearney. After their marriage, they had a daughter Pauline. In 1898 they returned to Russia to show off the children and Elizabeth, in 1900, had twins, Catherine and Alexander. Alexander died in infancy and in 1902 Fred Jr was born. Fred Sr was conscripted into the Russian army and was on the way to China to fight in the Boxer Rebellion when his family was able to buy his way out of the service. They were “in the weaving business” which was very lucrative at the time in Belzer. The Fred Sr family quickly headed back to America. They arrived in 1904 in NYC by way of Saratov and Liverpool, England on the steamship Saxonia.
They moved to McGrew Nebraska where they began farming. There are records of relief packages sent from the extended families back to Saratov and Belzer in 1923 to help with the famine. Fred Jr and Elizabeth Geier were married in Bayard Nebraska in 1922. The Hardt’s for the most part stayed in Nebraska and the Geier’s moved en bloc to Michigan in 1929.
Western Nebraska at the time was a center of beet production and that was a crop that was very familiar to the Volga Germans. Fred Jr was able to acquire several farms, including what is known as Hughes Island in the Platte River. He was also a State Tax Commissioner.
