Preuss
Preuss was on 12 May 1767 by colonists who had been recruited by LeRoi & Pictet.
The former colony was abandoned due to the creation of the Volga Reservoir in 1961, and today what was the former colony of Preuss is mostly under water.
Preuss was a Roman Catholic colony with a parish founded there in 1768.
During the first decades, worship services were held in the Bethaus (combination school/church building). A wooden chapel was built in 1820 and was consecrated by Father Ernst in the name of St. John. A parsonage was constructed in 1822.
A church building was built in 1824 and was consecrated by Father J. Schrednitsky in the name of St. Michael the Archangel.
In 1873, an organ built by the German company Orgelbau W. Sauer (owned by Wilhelm Sauer) in Frankfurt an der Oder [Germany] was installed in the church.
The church was officially closed in 1939. Today, nothing remains of the church building.
The parish in Preuss was served by the following priests:
- Alois Löffler (1803-1804)
- Fidelis von Grivel (1804-1805)
- Nikolaus Aubry (1805-1820)
- Joseph Ernst (1820-1821)
- Anton Johann von Padua Zerr (1872-1877)
- Adolf Ulrich (1890-1895)
- Joseph Wanner (1896-1898)
- Raphael Dietrich (1922-1930)
|
Year
|
Households
|
Population
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Total
|
Male
|
Female
|
||
| 1767 |
132
|
403
|
210
|
193
|
| 1769 |
122
|
402
|
207
|
195
|
| 1773 |
99
|
382
|
204
|
178
|
| 1788 |
|
359
|
|
|
| 1798 |
|
459
|
|
|
| 1816 |
|
636
|
|
|
| 1834 |
|
1,105
|
|
|
| 1850 |
|
1,787
|
|
|
| 1857 |
|
|
|
|
| 1859 |
|
2,194
|
|
|
| 1889 |
|
2,194
|
|
|
| 1897 |
|
3,293*
|
1,671
|
1,622
|
| 1905 |
|
5,219
|
|
|
| 1910 |
|
5,579
|
|
|
| 1912 |
|
5,735
|
|
|
| 1920 |
767**
|
4,755
|
|
|
| 1922 |
|
2,787
|
|
|
| 1923 |
|
2,612
|
|
|
| 1926*** |
556
|
2,744
|
1,351
|
1,393
|
| 1931 |
|
2,920****
|
|
|
*Of whom 3,286 were German.
**Of which 755 households were German.
***Of whom 2,726 were German (551 households: 1,342 male & 1,384 female).
****Of whom 2,909 were German.
- Beratz, Gottieb. The German colonies on the Lower Volga, their origin and early development: a memorial for the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the first German settlers on the Volga, 29 June 1764. Translated by Adam Giesinger (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1991): 352.
- Diesendorf, V.F. Die Deutschen Russlands : Siedlungen und Siedlungsgebiete : Lexicon. Moscow, 2006.
- The German Settlements in the USSR before 1941 [in Russian] (Moscow, 2002): 117.
- Orlov, Gregorii. Report of Conditions of Settlements on the Volga to Catherine II, 14 February 1769.
- Pallas, P.S. Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen Reichs. Theil 3,2, Reise aus Sibirien zurueck an die Wolga im 1773sten Jahr (St. Petersburg: Kaiserl. Academie der Wissenschaften, 1776): 609.
- Preliminary Results of the Soviet Census of 1926 on the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Pokrovsk, 1927): 28-83.
- "Settlements in the 1897 Census." Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (Winter, 1990): 16.
Map showing Preuss (1935).
Catholic Church in Preuss.
This map overlays several maps that show the location of Preuss (about center, across the tributary to the north of Hölzel) before and after the inundation of the Volga Reservoir in 1961.
Source: Vladimir Kakorin.
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