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What Attracted the
Danube Swabians?
Winnipeg has
played a major role as a gateway for immigration
to western Canada and as a stopover for German
settlement in the West. Upon the completion of
the railway, the lure of free homesteads and
easy credit through the railways gave rise to a
mass exodus from Europe of German land-hungry
immigrants. More than two thirds of them came
from Russia, Austria Hungary and Romania, and it
is safe to say that Danube Swabians constituted
a major part of this group. The city was able
to offer employment to thousands of newcomers.
This enabled many to save enough money for the
first purchases for their homesteads. From
Winnipeg, they were also able to hire themselves
out as farmhands and railway workers during the
summers, while others worked as tradesmen. Many
Banat Swabians who began to arrive in western
Canada from the end of the 1890's, like all
Catholic immigrants, continued on to the
province of Saskatchewan where they established
settlements. Had it not been for the recession
and the beginning of World War I, many more
immigrants would have achieved their dream of
becoming landowners. With the onset of the war,
immigration of Germans came to an abrupt halt.
With the
growing German population in Winnipeg came the
establishment of societies. As early as 1892,
the Deutsche Vereinigung was founded. Except
for a number of years during and after the two
world wars, when it was forced to close its
doors because of anti-German hostilities, the
society still exists today. In 1912 there were
two other societies, the Deutsch-Oesterreichisch-Ungarischer
Verein and the Deutsch-Ungarischer Verein. I
would guess that they too were closed down for
the above reasons, but I don't know whether they
ever reopened.
As had been the
case in the old country, the strongest
organizations for the Germans, and the
Donauschwaben in particular, were their
parishes. Before World War II, there were
seventeen German clergy ministering in churches
of various denominations in Winnipeg. There
were six German parochial schools. St. Joseph’s
German Catholic Church was founded in Winnipeg
in 1906 and was entrusted to the ministry and
leadership of the German missionary order, the
Oblates of Mary Immaculate. The German Catholic
clergy provided for the formation of a
homogenous parish by purchasing a large tract of
land in the suburbs and selling it piece by
piece to German Catholic immigrants. In this
manner they succeeded in creating a closed
German Catholic community around St. Joseph’s
Church. At the turn of the century, a
considerable number of immigrants had also come
from the United States and joined the parish.
Many had been attracted to Canada by the lower
land prices. In 1907 there were 2000 parishioners
in
St. Joseph’s.
By 1921 more
than 60% of the population in Winnipeg’s North
End was of German-speaking origin. The German
postwar immigration wave from 1923 to 1930 again
drew the majority of people from the eastern and
southeastern European German settlements. The
conditions for ethnic Germans in these regions
had deteriorated drastically and the desire to
emigrate grew even stronger than before the
war. The Banat was now partitioned among
Yugoslavia, Romania and Hungary and many
villages were cut off from their old markets.
Germans from the Yugoslavian Banat and the
Vojvodina emigrated in larger numbers now than
other ethnic groups - in 1929 almost 1% of the
German population in the Vojvodina emigrated.
They preferred to go where their relatives and
friends had made their fortunes before the war,
namely western Canada. Unfortunately, with the
1929 economic collapse, the dreams of many
post-war immigrants could not be realized. Many
farmhands did not receive their hard-earned
wages because the farmer simply did not have the
money. Starving and homeless, many unemployed
immigrants ended up in Winnipeg where they found
shelter primarily in the North End. My uncle
and aunt, who had come to Canada in 1926, were
among these unfortunate people, scraping for
their living as casual workers, depending on
relief and standing in soup kitchen lines, or
relying on help from the church. Some people
became so disillusioned with the conditions they
turned Communist. Many of the jobless were
deported back to their countries.
Winnipeg was
my home for 18 years. Reading about the boom
or bust cycle in the times of the pioneers, I
can say that we had a much easier time getting
established in our new country. Our life was
anchored in the community of St. Joseph’s
Church, the Kolping Society and the German
Society. In 1968 we moved to Vancouver, BC for
family reasons, but Winnipeg and the friends we
left behind will always be a part of me. |
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