Welcome to KGOU’s How Curious. I’m Rachel Hopkin and the question I’m seeking to answer in today’s episode is “Who are the Germans from Russia in Oklahoma?”. A lady named Harriett Wahler who suggested this subject. She’s a member of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (AHSGR) Central Oklahoma Chapter, and when I met her at a recent meeting, she explained why she’d suggested this subject: “People just don’t know we’re here. There are a lot of us. And we don’t get counted. People might say ‘what ethnic culture are you?’, and people say ‘German.’ That’s different from Germans from Russia. And we want to educate people, specially our own.”
“I tell people ‘we’re the Other Germans’”, said Dr Philip Bryan. Bryan is President of the AHSGR Central OK Chapter and a retired surgeon. Both he and Harriett grew up with German-speaking grandparents and assumed themselves to be simply German. Harriett didn’t learn about the Russian part of her heritage until she was in high school, when an aunt set her straight. Meanwhile “Dr Phil” – as Harriett calls him – didn’t learn about his Russian heritage until he was almost 60 and his mother gave him an old family passport from there.
For my part, I had heard of Germans from Russia living in Oklahoma thanks to another of their descendants – Shirley Lorenz. If you’re a regular How Curious listener, you may remember Shirley from our Shattuck Windmill Museum episode. It all started, she’d told me, with Catherine the Great: “She was actually a minor German royal who married Peter and embraced Russia like it was her home.” She did not, however, embrace her husband. And just months after he became Tsar in 1762, Catherine helped engineer a coup against him, usurping him as Russia’s leader in the process. That’s when she started reaching out to Germans among others to come to Russia. As Shirley told me: “She felt that the land to be farmed in Russia wasn’t being farmed very well so she started sending out invitations to other people, especially Germans but not exclusively Germans, to come to Russia to start farming.”
This was a period before Germany as we know it today existed. So what we’re talking about here are peoples living in a large swathe of central northern Europe and speaking some kind of German dialect. Anyway, back to Catherine; getting the land developed agriculturally wasn’t her only priority, as Dr Phil explained to me: “Through several Russian Turkish wars, they had gained all of the land that is now southwest Ukraine. There were marauding tribes that devastated the land. So she was wanting peoples to become a buffer against those tribes and basically elevate the level of her country.” Not surprisingly, Catherine failed to mention anything about being a buffer in her invitation. What she did include sounded enticing. “She promised a living stipend initially, freedom from taxes for 10 years, freedom from conscription which was particularly important to the Mennonites who are pacifist. They were allowed to have their own language, their own churches, and basically their own civil governments in the villages. And so the first group came to the Volga in 1763, 1764. Then there were several later waves. Basically any time there were turmoils in Europe, people were looking for a way out and Catherine gave them an exit.”
Not that it was exactly a bed of roses in Russia, according to Dr Phil: “There were a lot of hardships: diphtheria, cholera, locusts, droughts, famines. So they had good times and bad times. Some of the areas developed quite well. And because they were given this autonomy, so they kept their traditions, they kept their language, they kept their religions. So they maintained their identity throughout that whole time.” “Then,” Shirley Lorenz told me, “as things started to foment in Russia. And a lot of them ended up here.”
Whenever emigration occurs, there are push and/or pull factors involved. One of the big issues pushing these German groups out of Russia was the fact that many of the privileges that had been granted to them by Catherine – who was now long dead – were being rescinded. The reinstatement of compulsory military service was especially unpopular, not least among the German Mennonite communities who’d settled in Russia.
I met Dr George Bert Flaming – or Bert – at the Corn Museum, Corn, OK. Bert is in his early 80s and his great-grandfather and grandfather were members of one of the 13 original Germans from Russia families which settled in Corn, Oklahoma. It’s one of a number of towns in the state – also including Shattuck - which were basically founded by Germans from Russia. And as in Russia, the Germans from Russia now in the US tended to develop in communities centred around a specific church. In Corn, that church was Mennonite.
The Flaming family had initially settled in Marion County, Kansas when they first moved to America in 1873 along with the entire Mennonite Brethren Church from their village back in Russia. One of the main pull factors drawing them and other Germans from Russia to the US at the time had to do with the railroads. The railroad companies had been given the lands either side of the tracks and they wanted to populate people who would create products that could then be shipped using their trains. Who better than these Germans in Russia who’d gained renown as highly skilled farmers?
One of the most successful crops they’d cultivated in Russia was robust hard wheat known as Turkey red. When they relocated to the US, they brought grains of it with them and started raising it here – thus helping the central part of the US where they settled gain its nickname “the bread basket of America.” (By the way, amidst those wheat grains lurked some seeds of the Russian thistle – better known here as tumbleweed.)
In any case, it wasn’t long before the Flamings and their Mennonite neighbors farming in Kansas ran into a problem. As Bert told me: “These Mennonites had a lot of children.” Bert’s grandfather, for example, who was born in 1876 was one of 17 siblings. “After one generation, there was nowhere for them to farm, so they started looking for other places to go.”
A man by the name of John Kliewer had established a Mennonite mission close to where Corn is now. After the 1892 Oklahoma Territory land run, some of the land in this area remained unclaimed, so when Kliewer encouraged his colleagues in Kansas to check it out. After doing so, the Flamings – along with 12 other Mennonite families – decided to start homesteading here and moved in 1893. A year later, the community had built itself a church. Within a decade they’d also established the first Christian school west of the Mississippi – the Corn Bible Academy. Its prominent home was just across the road from the Flaming general store which Bert’s grandfather started in 1898 and which later became home to the Corn Post Office and where he became the official Postmaster in April 4th of 1903. I asked Bert how the place came by its name, since it sounded like they grew more wheat than corn: “It originally started off as being Korn Valley, and then they found out there was already a post office named Korn Valley and so they decided to drop the Valley.” It then changed from Korn with a K to Corn with a C in 1918 because of persecution fuelled by anti-German sentiment during WWI.
Gretchen Reimer is descended from another of those 13 original Corn families, many of whom had continued to use German dialect as their primary language after they moved there. As anti-German sentiment grew, this made them a target – especially the men, like Gretchen’s great grandfather’s brother who was lynched. “He had to kiss all the stars on the flag and they kicked whatever out and so he was swinging, but the law cut him down and said ‘you need to give this guy a chance’. And he lived in Collinsville, OK, at the time. Because of that happening, that created a lot of fear in the things that were going on here, they went to Canada for a short time, and then they came back.”
Of course, there was also no exemption from military service here, but during the First World War, many Mennonites were allotted non-fighting but still vital roles – as firemen, for example. During the second world war, however, things changed, causing friction in the Corn community. As Bert recalled: “Some people, they got drafted and they decided they would just be in the military. When they came back from the war, the Church wanted them to ask for forgiveness for being in the military because that was against our religion and they refused to do so, so they formed their own church just across the street. That’s how the Baptist church came into existence.”
Bert led me towards a photo of one those Corn men who’d joined the military and asked if I had ever “heard of John Deutschendorf?” I had not, but apparently that was the original name of singer songwriter, John Denver. The photo was of Hank Deutschendorf - John Denver’s father – who became a very distinguished pilot and is in the Air Force Hall of Fame. Bert said he knew “Hank very well, and he grew up just across the road.”
Hank Deutschendorf had already moved away from Corn by the time he became a father and the family never returned there to live, but they often visited and sometimes their son would work there during the summers. For example, for one season, he worked for Gretchen Reimer’s Uncle John and Aunt Selma Martin. She recalled "being at some reunion and Uncle John’s grandkids were telling me a story when John Denver worked for them. He would always play his guitar in the evenings and he’s always say he was going to be big, going to be famous, was going to make it. And they always felt so bad because they didn’t have the heart to tell him he didn’t have a very good voice.” We all laughed.
Gretchen Reimer now lives in Kansas, though her sister – Chris Loewen – remains in Corn. Bert has had a couple of stints living elsewhere – he actually trained as a doctor alongside Philip Bryan and went on to practice in Oklahoma City for 9 years. He came back to Corn because he wanted to raise his family on a farm, and then spent time in Alaska – again, working as a physician – before retiring here. None of his children live here.
Bert told me that at the last Census, Corn’s population numbered at just over 600 and he estimates that about 40% of that has a similar to his and Gretchen’s. Even so, Bert says he still sees a strong Germans from Russia Mennonite influence in the area, including in business dealings: “In our business dealings a handshake is as good as a contract. And the church services. And there are certain foods we brought over from Russia and Germany, like Verenika. If you eat here today you can try it. It’s a cottage cheese stuffed dumpling.”
Just a few doors along from the Corn Museum is the Corn Café and on the third Friday of each month, they offer a some Germans from Russia food specials. After we’d finished at the museum, I went over there with Gretchen, her sister Chris Loewen, and Corn’s Mayor, Barbara Nurnberg. Bert had headed home by that stage but as he’d said, verenika was on the menu. It’s offered boiled or fried and I had one of each. And because ethical journalists should always avoid showing bias, I won’t tell you which I preferred. But I will say that I pretty much licked my plate clean. Meanwhile I learnt still more about Corn: apparently the first US video of a tornado was shot in Corn in 1951. And it’s the only town in the US named Corn! So if you too would like to visit Corn, Oklahoma – you hopefully won’t get it confused with anywhere else.
Thank to Harriett Wahler for suggesting today’s topic, and all of the other contributors to this episode, plus Chris Loewen and Barbara Nurnberg.
Here is a link to American Historical Society of Germans from Russia Central Oklahoma Chapter - https://ahsgr.org/about/chapters/central-oklahoma-chapter/#
How Curious is a KGOU Public Radio production. The producer/host is Rachel Hopkin. The editor is Logan Layden. The theme music is composed by David Graey.
If you’ve got an idea or a question for How Curious, please send it to the team at curious@kgou.org.
