How I got here

I am not of "Germans from Russia" heritage.  Many people from the Dakotas are.  We were different.  Redlin's are Prussian.

 

Our Stambuch (Family Tree) goes back as far as 1271.  We were rooted originally in Estonia which at that time was a Germanic area.  We were Pastors, College Professors, Farmers, Shoemakers, and Crusaders.  We liked going to war.  Later when Martin Luther did his thing we were part of the peasant wars.  There are actually two little towns named REDLIN in Germany, one near the town of Wittenburg where Luther posted his 95 thesises, and one in protestant Mecklenburg Vorpommeran, Germany.  I have visted both of these places.

 

My people were pushed out of Pommerania (now Poland) after Kaiser Bill lost it.  Here's a picture of the Church my Great Great Great Grandfather was baptized and married in. 

 

They came to America on a boat in 1888.  They had been pushed off their land, moved to Schleiswig-Holstein in Northern Germany, and then to Iron Ridge Wisconsin and then to homestead in South Dakota north of Watertown.  I was born there 55 years later.  Remements of the old homestead sod house and all still stands kind of.

 

Germans from Russia were socialistic. ND Bank, State Mill and elevator. etc

They lived communally.  Voted NPL.  Were pacifists. That's why ND is considered to be one of the most socialist states in the union.  That's why is still screwed up today electing liberal representitives and voting for Bush.  ND doesn't know who it is.

 

We were never part of any commune, socialist movement, NPL, and we were supporters of the military. 

 

We are just a little different from other Germans in ND.  We were Fiecely Christian, Conservative, Independant, and just a little hard to get along with.

 

We still are.