Frankreich

Names:

Frankreich

Selyanka

Франкрейх

Солянка

Mother Colonies:

Galka

Shcherbakovka

Schwab

History:

Frankreich was founded in 1861 by Lutheran colonists resettling from Galka, Shcherbakovka, and Schwab, but there were already German colonists living there before that time. It is 6 miles northwest of the Russian town of Pallasovka on the left bank of the Solyanka River.

In 1888, 62.5% of the population was considered literate. In the colony at that time were 97 houses built of wood, 27 built of adobe, and 70 built of brick along with 9 commercial and industrial establishments and 1 drinking establishment. The settlers had 40 iron plows, 6 winnowers, 462 work horses, 122 oxen, 263 dairy cows, 816 sheep, 6 goats, and 248 pigs.

Following the 1941 deportation of the Volga Germans, Frankreich was given the name of Solyanka after the river nearby.

Church:

The congregation in Frankreich belonged to the parish headquartered in nearby Alt-Weimar.

Surnames:

Immigration:

Milwaukee Metropolitan Area, Wisconsin

Ohio, Blaine Co., Oklahoma

Population:

Year	Households	Population
Year	Households	Total	Male	Female
1857			58
1888	76	544	272	272
1897		749*	369	380
1908	178	806	413	393
1910	117	1,032	534	498
1912		1,000
1920	188**	1,294
1922		1,367
1926	184	1,081	508	573
1931		1,951***

*Of whom 740 were German.
**Of which 886 were German households.
***Of whom 1,670 were German.

External Links:

Frankreich (wolgadeutsche.net) in Russia

Sources:

- Diesendorf, V.F. Die Deutschen Russlands : Siedlungen und Siedlungsgebiete : Lexicon. Moscow, 2006.
- Koch, Fred C. The Volga Germans: In Russia and the Americas, from 1763 to the Present (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977): 312.
- Preliminary Results of the Soviet Census of 1926 on the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Pokrovsk, 1927): 28-83.
- Schnurr, Joseph. Die Kirchen und das religiöse Leben der Russlanddeutschen – Evangelischer Teil (Stuttgart: AER Verlag Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Rußland, 1978): 198.
- "Settlements in the 1897 Census." Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (Winter, 1990): 17.