Earthen Huts (Semljanken): First—and for some last—Homes in Russia

The illustration below of the “earthen huts” constructed by the first “Black Sea” German settlers does not Mennonites, but likely neighbouring Molotschna German Lutherans, ca. 1804. I think poster by Willy Planck captures the earliest experiences of German settlers with some authenticity. It is entitled: “‘Difficult Beginnings! First field cultivation before house construction in the Black Sea region” (note 1).

I was first introduced to the earthen huts in the 1980s when I interviewed elderly siblings of my grandfather. When their parents left Molotschna in March 1891 for the new daughter colony “Neu Samara,” they first lived in earthen huts. They were made of clay, sod, logs and straw were built approximately one metre below and one metre above the ground. Their parents not only brought a few basic farming implements and enough money to purchase a cow from locals, but also a door and window that were incorporated into the structure. “Although the clay huts were far from ideal, the family could keep from freezing during the long six-month winter. The huts also provided an escape from the very hot and dry summers which central Russia experiences” (note 2).

Mennonites immigrating to the North American prairies in the 1870s did the same. Unlike American sod houses, the Mennonite or Volga German “Russian-German” sod dwelling or semljanka (alternately Semlin or Zemlianka) in Kansas “was set three feet in the ground. The walls were built of sod, projecting several feet above ground level. The interior walls were plastered with a combination of mud mixed with dried prairie grass. This mud-grass mixture was also pressed into molds and made into sun-dried bricks” (note 3).

The same style of huts were constructed on the Mennonite West Reserve in Manitoba. While wood was available to East Reserve settlers, many stubbornly insisted on the semljanka and suffered flooding in their homes with the spring thaw and rising ground water. As Mennonite recalled, “there was sufficient good timber to build good farm houses, but no!—They had to build like in Russia” (note 4).

The first year in the Molotschna Colony (1804) likely looked similar to the attached illustration. The 1848 Molotschna village histories give us these three snap shots. In the Mennonite village of Muntau: “For the first winter they set up earthen huts, and used the dwellings they had begun as cattle sheds.” In Lindenau: “Building was initially somewhat arduous; some had made earthen huts for the winter, and some who were better off or had more workers built a house for two and more families for the winter.” Altona: “The establishment of the village and the construction of houses was begun in 1804. However, because of the great distance from which the timber had to be retrieved, only 6 houses were completed that year. Most of the settlers stayed in earthen huts for the first winter” (note 5).

The 1804 correspondence between the newly appointed Governor General of New Russia, the Duke of Richelieu in Odesa and Samuel Contenius, Chief Judge of the Guardianship Commission for Foreign Settlers, in Ekaterinoslav (today Dnipro) shows the concern of the state for the new settlers on the Molotschna River. On October 14, 1804, Richelieu wrote:

“I am replying immediately to your letter of the 9th which I received this morning. I am greatly concerned about the Mennonites in Molotchnya, because of the extremely harsh season setting in and the state in which I know their houses to be in. If they have enough heating, they will survive the winter [well] in their Semmelche. Our people here have made small iron stoves that I recommend to you. They are 4 sheets of iron united, like a house of cards and well nailed, with a pipe also of iron. This gives a great heat and is heated with only a handful of 6ypsir [grass /reeds ?].” (Note 6)

In the same letter, Richelieu was much more concerned and frustrated with the nearby Lutheran and Catholic German settlers in their huts, who might not survive the winter.

“Diseases and deaths continue among the Germans. Because their houses [meant here are the earthen huts] are cold, they don't get out of bed, and as a result their condition becomes even worse. I have sent an order to Ekatarinoslav to buy sheep skins and I am having these iron stoves put into their huts, and when that is done I will stay there myself for a month. And if necessary I will make them work, clean, wash, I will have roll call, and I will establish a military regime with the help of two or three of my young men, and some low ranking officers. It is necessary to save them by force, otherwise they will perish. I believe that you will approve of my plan. If I have the misfortune to have to witness the loss of these people, at least I do not want to have to reproach myself later for having neglected to save them. … In the name of God, do not neglect the measures to be taken for the houses … The Bulgarians are doing well, while so many Germans are dying.” (Note 7)

Two years later a traveler to the region reported progress among the Mennonites, but not much among the Lutherans and Catholics.

“These Mennonites have not only brought many cows, horses and sheep from Prussia, but also oxen for breeding... It is a pity that there is a complete lack of wood here! Not even a single shrub grows along the Molotschna River. The most necessary timber they must bring from the Dniper River, which is 60 to 70 versts away [about 70 km or 43 miles]. … All of them said that they were very satisfied … After visiting the 18 Mennonite villages, we proceeded to the eight other villages beyond Prishib. The Germans who founded them … are a mix of Catholics, Reformed and Lutherans. ... When compared to the Mennonites … they are not only more lax, but also poorer, though they came into the country at the same time as the Mennonites. They were also far behind in building houses, which is why many still lived in earthen huts and had many sick people.” (Note 8)

Earthen huts are also a part of the Chortitza Mennonite settlement story in 1790. Promised government loans and supplies including timber for construction were slow to arrive with an exhausted state treasury. When logs did appear, they were of poor quality and were mostly sold for food. As a result, most settlers lived in earthen huts (Semljanken) in the first four years and many died of dysentery—normally caused by poverty and lack of good hygiene and clean water—“a pitiable report that I could not read without tears,” their one-time immigration agent Georg Trappe reported (note 9).

In the 1848 Chortitza Colony history, the then elderly teacher Heinrich Heese recalled that “earthen huts were their [first] homes … laborers and people in the service industry who came with extravagant expectations and the fixed idea of finding comfort and prosperity in Russia … had to be very discouraged” (note 10).

“The peaceful and industrious forefathers that set to work immediately lived in houses and enjoyed nutritious food from their own produce while the dissatisfied masses sat in their earthen huts sneering into their bowls of soup made of half-moldy storeroom flour. Ignorance led to discontentment, distrust, abuse and lethargy. The two deputies, Höppner and Bartsch, the most-able men of their time, eventually succumbed to this misery … The dissatisfaction … together with an unusually high rate of death, and lack of food and clothing, heightened the misery to such a degree which, like emaciation, could only be healed over many years, whereby some thirty died.” (Note 11)

More recently, my aunt Adina (by marriage) told me of how her father and his two brothers in Sparrau, Molotschna, were arrested in the 1930s (we now know they were eventually shot together in 1937). Her uncle Kornelius K. Neufeld had been an estate owner before the revolution, and with dekulakization and collectivization in early 1930s, he was dispossessed and “driven four kilometers out onto the steppe, where he lived for three years in an earthen hut dug into the ground,” according to one of the grandchildren. They were  “banned from entering the village and grandmother went mad (durcheinander)” (note 12). A similar story is reported in the Chortitiza district villages of Franzfeld (note 13).

And as a final example, many Mennonite deportees from Molotschna to Kazakhstan in Fall 1941 were forced to spend all of 1942 in earthen huts (note 14).

These “earthen hut” (semljanka) references together with this illustration helpfully allow us to enter into and tell significant chapters of the larger, longer Russian Mennonite story in Ukraine—from its difficult beginnings until its difficult end.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1/ picture: The attached picture is a corner of the full painting: “Deutsches Volkstum in aller Welt. Der harte Anfang!” Erste Feldbestellung vor dem Hausbau im Schwarzmeer-Gebiet. Nach einem Original von Willy Planck in Der praktische Schulmann, no. 273 (Stuttgart: Keller & Nehmann, 1940), https://www.vintage13.de/schulwandkarte-lehrtafel-deutsches-volkstum-in-aller-welt-schulmann-nr-273_183294_55394; https://www.abebooks.com/Deutsches-Volkstum-aller-Welt-harte-Anfang/14312042232/bd#&gid=1&pid=1. Accompanying text in Schulmann, Heft 7 (1940).

The artist Willy Planck (1870-1956) illustrated many books including children’s books over decades (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Planck). Notably this poster was created in the Nazi era (1940, WWII) and from an associated publication, and some care should be used in its interpretation. The depiction supports the Nazi-era myth of an inner drive and competency of “German blood” with many (blond) children, and the expansive needs for German living space: “Blut und Boden”.

Note 2: See my unpublished undergraduate "Mennonite History" paper written almost four decades ago at Canadian Mennonite University: “A History of the Fast Family,” Winnipeg, 1984, 15, 17, https://neu.chortitza.org/2022/03/a-history-of-the-fast-family/.

Note 3: See Albert J. Petersen, “The German-Russian House in Kansas: A Study in Persistence of Form,” Pioneer America 8, no. 1 (January 1976), 19.

Note 4: P. W. Toews, “Aus meinem Leben,” Steinbach Post, Sept. 20, 27, Oct. 4, 1944, cited in E. K. Francis, “Bibliographical and Research Notes: The Mennonite Farmhouse in Manitoba,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 28, no. 1 (1954), 56-59; 56.

Note 5: In Margarete Woltner, ed., Die Gemeindeberichte von 1848 der deutschen Siedlungen am Schwarzen Meer (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1941); Muntau, 94; Lindenau, 99; Altona, 113, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/kb/woltner.pdf.

Note 6: Duke of Richelieu to Samuel Contenius, October 14, 1804, in Lettres d’Odessa du duc de Richelieu, 1803–1814, edited by Elena Polevchtchikova and Dominique Triaire (Ferney-Voltaire: Center international du xviii e siècle, 2014), 93. See also earlier post on Richelieu: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/duke-of-richelieu-and-molotschna.html.

Note 7: Richelieu to Contenius, October 14, 1804, Lettres, 94.

Note 8: “Reise eines Kaufmannes aus dem Astrachanischen nach Taganrok, Odessa und den neugegründeten Kolonien an der Moloschna im Jahre 1806 (nebst einer Karte),” Journal für die neuesten Land- and Seereisen und das Interessanteste aus der Völker- und Länderkunde zur angenehmen Unterhaltung für gebildete Leser in allen Ständen, vol. 7 (Berlin: Friedrich Braunes, 1810), https://onb.digital/result/1034607D. Translation of pp. 23–28.

Note 9: Cited by Grigorii G. Pisarevskii, Izbrannye proizvedenija po istorii inostrannoj kolonizacii v Rossii [Selected works on the history of foreign colonization in Russia], edited by I. V. Cherkazyanova (Moscow: ICSU, 2011), 201, https://bibliothek.rusdeutsch.ru/catalog/860. See English selections: https://www.mharchives.ca/download/3422/. Cf. also George K. Epp, Geschichte der Mennoniten, vol. 1 (Lage: Logos, 1997), 93.

Note 10: Heinrich Heese, “Das Chortitzer Mennonitengebiet 1848. Kurzgefasste geschichtliche Übersicht der Gründung und des Bestehens der Kolonien des Chortitzer Mennonitenbezirkes,” https://chortitza.org/Ber1848.html#Eg ; also in Woltner, Gemeindeberichte.

Note 11: Heese, “Chortitzer Mennonitengebiet 1848.”
Note 12: Cf. “Sparrau,” in Peter Letkemann, “Molotschna Village Notes;” working copy in author’s possession.
Note 13: “Schulisches Leben: Bericht vom Lehrer K. Epp,” in “Franzfeld Dorfbericht,” 6-7 (388b-389; or slides 19f. of 54), from “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp,” prepared for the German Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Bundesarchiv (BA) R6/621, Mappe 84, April 1942, https://tsdea.archives.gov.ua/deutsch/gallery.php?tt=R_6_622+Gebiet%3A+Zwischen%0D%0ARayon%3A+Chortizza%0D%0AKreisgebiet%3A+Saporoshje%0D%0AGenerelbezirk%3A+Dnjepropertrowsk+Dorf%3A+Franzfeld%0D%0Arussisch+%E2%80%93+Warwarovka+&p=R_6_622%5C%D1%823_779-841%0D%0A#lg=1&slide=0. 

Note 14: In Alfred Eisfeld and Victor Herdt, Deportation, Sondersiedlung, Arbeitsarmee: Deutsche in der Sowjetunion 1941 bis 1956 (Köln: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1996), 247, doc.197 (Mamljutskij Rayon to the Kazakh People’s Commissariat of the Interior Executive, January 23, 1943).

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To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Earthen Huts (Semljanken): First—and for some last—Homes in Russia," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), August 30, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/08/earthen-huts-semljanken-firstand-for.html.