Germany had suffered many years of war, pestilence and drought, during which some left the fatherland to seek opportunities in foreign lands, such as the American colony of Pennsylvania. In 1763, following the ravages of the Seven Years War, Catherine the Great issued a Manifesto inviting discontent Europeans to settle in the Astrakhan region along the Volga river. This Manifesto guaranteed certain privileges to these colonists, including freedom from military service, freedom from taxation, freedom of worship, and freedom of self-administration within the Russian Empire, “for eternal time”. Various inducements were employed to entice emigrants to relocate on the Steppes of the Russian frontier. Stipends and loans were distributed to assist with relocation and establishment of colonies. Land was to be allotted for settlement as an inalienable and hereditary possession of the colony, though not the individual, for eternal time. Some personal ownership would also be allowed the colonists. Catherine’s timing could not have been better. Having experienced generations of discomfort, thousands of Germans quickly answered the call of Catherine’s recruiters, which included a moderately successful entrepreneurial team composed of Frenchmen, namely, Baron Jean de DeBoffe, Meusnier de Prescourt de Saint-Laurent and Quentin Benjamin Coulhette d‘Hauterive. With much effort, these mustered enough recruits -less than 500 families- to populate eleven colonies on the Bergseite (hilly side) west of the Volga river, below the ancient fortified settlement of Saratov.⁶ These DeBoffe colonies consisted of Bauer [Karamyshevka]; Degott [Kamey Owrag]; Dietel [Oleshna]; Franzosen [Rossoschi]; Kautz [Wershinka]; Kratzke [Potschennoje]; Merkel [Makarovka], Rothammel [Pomjatnoje]; Seewald [Werchnoje]; Schuck [Grasnowatka] and Vollmer [Kopjonka]. To the disappointment of Catherine and her recruiters, of all the Volga colonies, only Franzosen [Rossoschi] was composed entirely of recruits from France, and these French colonists proved unsuited to farming, eventually moving on to the cities along the Volga in pursuit of more fitting occupations, leaving their village to be re-inhabited by German settlers from neighboring colonies.⁷ As noted, these villages had Russian given names, but adopted identities preferred by the colonists, which, in most cases, reflected the names of the first or second vorsteher, or leader of the colony. Once recruited in Germany, the emigrants were gathered together at various predetermined recruiting centers and organized for their trek to ports of departure along the northern coasts of Germany, of which Lübeck proved the most amicable. These vorstehers, or mayors, were then chosen from the more educated classes for their honesty, integrity, and personal respect and trust acquired from their fellow travelers, and were given responsibility for their assigned group of colonists. Among of DeBoffe’s Vorstehers were Georg Jacob Kauz, a wine gardner from Ungstein in the Pfalz, Johann Georg Merkel, a farmer from Hamburg, Adam Friederich Kratzke, a master of music from Prussian Pommerania, and, possibly a beltmaker, Adam Rothammel, a tailor from Molsheim, Alsace, Jacob Schuch, a farmer from Mannheim, Kurpfalz, Karl Seewald, a farmer from Worms, Nikolaus Vollmer, salt worker from Dirkheim, Kurpfalz, and Gottfried Tittel from Saxony.⁸

From these northern ports the colonists sailed to their processing center at Fort Kronstadt located at the mouth of the Neva River, in the harbor of St. Petersburg. [Oranienbaum is alternatively given for the processing center, named for the local palace of Peter the Great.] Here the colonists were processed and required to take the “Solemn Oath” to the Russian crown. Arranged by Titular Counsellor Ivan Kuhlberg, processing was apt to take weeks or months, in which these colonists often stayed aboard ship for some of their sojourn.⁹ Christian Gottlobe Zuege, an original settler in Kratzke who later fled back to Germany, recorded an account of Vorsteher Kratzke meeting the great Catherine in the Gardens of the old Oranienbaum palace. Zuege mentioned that their managers had directed the formation of a great line for a personal review by the Empress.¹⁰ From inference, it might be deduced that this inspection included certain of the DeBoffe colonists. Supplies were purchase in Oranienbaum and the colonists continued their trek toward their final destination with assigned escorting officers. Of necessity, the colonists were wintered along the way, often put up in houses of the Russian peasantry.¹¹ Many among the elderly, infirm and youth died along this arduous journey to their colony’s location.

Arrival at the Volga sites proved disheartening for the weary colonists, as they had been promised finished dwellings in these newly established colonies. Instead, escorting officers halted these caravans at predetermined sites on the barren steppes and indicated the location for the yet to be built colony. As most colonists arrived late in the Summer months, little time was left to prepare dwellings, such that most of DeBoffe’s recruits spent the winter in dugouts, or semlyanka, patterned after winter dwellings of certain nearby tribesmen.¹² Such was the case with the colonists in Merkel, arriving at their site on August 28, 1766; though the colonists of Schuch and Bauer had arrived earlier, on July 18, and July 20, 1766. Kautz colonists arrived the following year, on May 20, 1767, and Dietel colonists arrived July 1, 1767. Kratzke colonists arrived on August 7, 1767, Seewald colonists arrived on August 20, 1767, and Rothammel colonists arrived August 21, 1767. Franzosen, the French colony, was among the first of DeBoffe’s attempts, having arrived on site on July 28, 1765, and these French colonists were personally escorted as far a Saratov by the Baron DeBoffe, himself.¹³