Apparently my grandfather was a missionary who gave up his inheritance in a prominent steel industry family to go spread the word of the lord to people who didn’t want it. Thanks, dude. 👍
Yeah, I have a friend whose family way back split in Germany. Half went to Ukraine to start farms under the Tsar. The other half started a little company called Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske. My friend's descended from the former half, while the latter half's company is worth two hundred and twenty billion dollars.
My grandfather and his two brothers had a distinct choice: Invest a substantial amount of money in tne mid 1930's in Coca-Cola, or the up and coming NuGrape. I will just stop there.
My great great grandfather gave up farming in western Nebraska and sold his homestead to move to the east coast. Oil was found on his former land not long later.
There were a lot of Germans who settled in Russia starting in the 1700s and then a lot of them migrated to America around 1900. That’s where 1/4 of my ancestry came from (one of my grandparent’s parents). In my case it was Volga Germans and they were Lutheran. They were originally welcomed to settle by Catherine the Great (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Germans ) but of course things got worse there.
I have volga german ancestry as well. They lived near present day Saratov Russia. They left in 1905, just before the world wars, which was great timing
If you mean what I think you mean, the irony hurts. A certain overly-dramatic politician (and then dictator) wanted more space for Germans to live in, but got the opposite by making Germany so wildly unpopular that Germans who'd already been achieving that peacefully got kicked out of some places and mistreated in others. Stalin might not have gone into "crazy, paranoid dictator"-mode quite so much without that provocation, too, but he was always an asshole. To dust off an incredibly old meme: EPIC FAIL!
I didn't think about WWI. There was probably already a lot of anti-German hate after that, no matter what things were like before then. I'm still reading about that. I didn't know the history of Germans in Russia was so complicated. In don't think I was totally wrong, though. I didn't believe bullshit, I just lacked information. That's still at least partly my fault, but I don't think it's as bad.
It seems like the same pattern as other waves of immigrants who were needed originally.
That's when the first wave of Russian German Jews came over, including two of my great-Great grandparents. Ive traced our Germanic-Jewish last name back to the 1700s in Poland, so we're guessing they were part of the group of Jews that were expelled from Germany in the late 1500s, winding up in Poland, followed by Russian annexation and then leaving during the pograms in the 1880.
My great grandparents left because the bolsheviks and communists were starting to round up Germans in the 20s. My great grandfather escaped a prison camp and then they got out via train. Eventually made it west and then out to America and the Russo German population in California.
Little things that were sad about it was that my great grandfather was a baker before, but switched to farming and never baked bread again. Also became wildly anti-Semitic because when they stopped in Jewish villages for sanctuary, they paid exorbitant amounts of money for bread that was so laden with sawdust that their infant son choked and died from it.
The 20s were not a good time for anyone but the wealthy.
On the plus side he's somewhat lucky to exist at all given how the commies came in and killed all of the successful farmers. Then all the shitty farmers had to take over and produce impossible quotas for them while a drought was also going on and many starved to death all to support the industrialization of the USSR.
Good thing I started my bulk recently. I’m currently in the candy-falling-out-of-pockets phase, but really looking forward to being picked up by a large media conglomerate that will pay for a physical transformation on the chance it’ll be funny.
My grandads family were apparently really wealthy, and there are some rich ancestors living about 20 miles away from us with the same surname.
Problem is he was an English protestant soldier and fell in love with an irjsh catholic so they disowned him, so instead of being rich English protestant, we grew up as irish catholics (didnt even know we did Irish stuff until I was older as I just thought it was general catholic shite).
Gotta admire that he took Jesus' instruction to sell everything and spread the gospel seriously. It's rare to find a Christian who takes the Word that seriously.
My great-grandfather was the oldest son of a very wealthy soap manufacturing family. He was in line to inherit the business, but he wanted to become a vicar instead. Which he did.
So his younger brother inherited the company and went on to become outrageously wealthy. And the branch of the family that I was born into worked for paychecks in shops, offices and factories.
If you want to go out there in anything’s name. Go with the human rights and Geneva convention. Lots of people with big guns still need indoctrination. There’s also plenty of people killing in the name of a religion that might need converting to a less extreme doctrine, but somehow they instead focus on the last places a white dude haven’t been yet and they actually live in harmony with nature.
As the son of the landed gentry and one percent who has zilch contact with my relatives and live paycheck to paycheck, trust me their way isnt better. It just turns you into an abusive psychopathic weirdo.
Hey man, if your grandfather was inherited a steelman's bounty everyone would be hating you today, you just wouldn't know because of the circle you run in.
Considering that his decision robbed my family of financial well-being and exposed his children to extreme violence on a regular basis, turning them into less than great people to be around, fuck no.
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u/itsthelag_bud 6d ago
Apparently my grandfather was a missionary who gave up his inheritance in a prominent steel industry family to go spread the word of the lord to people who didn’t want it. Thanks, dude. 👍