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Gnadenflur

Names
Florskaya
Florskoye
Gnadenflur
Pervomaiskoye
Pervomayskoye
Perwomaiskoje
Гнаденфлюр
Первомайское
Флорское
Daughter Colonies
History

Gnadenflur was founded in 1850 on the left bank of the Bolshoi Karaman River 150 kilometers east of Engels and 15 kilometers north of Fyedorovka.

The Volga Germans in Gnadenflur were deported on 8 September 1941 to the village of Shmakov in Zalesovsky District of the Altai Region.

Today, what remains of the former Volga German colony of Gnadenflur is known as Pervomaiskoye.

Church

The Lutheran parish in Gnadenflur was established on 5 October 1861. The resident pastor there served several of the neighboring Lutheran parishes.

Pastors & Priests

The Gnadenflur parish was served by the following pastors:

1862-1888: Karl Erich Wahlberg
1890-1892: Hans August Leyst
1894-1894: Ernst Theophil David
1895-1909: Johannes Parstrauts
1909-1912: Alexander Rothermel
1912-1913: Adalbert Hugo Willigerode
1913-1931: Otto Heinrich Harff

Population
Year
Households
Population
Total
Male
Female

1857

68
 
228
 

1859

 
478
 
 

1883

 
552
 
 

1889

 
609
 
 

1897

 
647*
339
308

1904

 
929
 
 

1910

 
1,046
 
 

1920

175
1,199
 
 

1922

 
981
 
 

1923

 
927
 
 

1926**

216
1,001
487
514

1931

 
1,807***
 
 

1939

 
2,479
 
 

*Of whom 642 were German.
**Of whom 986 were German living in 207 households (475 male & 511 female).
***Of whom 1,770 were German.

Sources

- Amburger, Erik. Die Pastoren der evangelischen Kirchen Rußlands (Lüneburg, Germany: Institut Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1998): 143.
- 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.
- Russian Settlements in the Years 1917-1941 [in Russian] (wolgadeutsche.net)
- Schnurr, Joseph, Die Kirchen und das Religiöse Leben der Russlanddeutschen - Evangelischer Teil (Stuttgart: Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Russland, 1972): 197.
- "Settlements in the 1897 Census." Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (Winter, 1990): 16.