Should the Baltic Germans be compensated by Russia?

[Border Reiver]

The early nobility (which included the clergy, who were entitled to a manor house) took possession originally - the land most likely was vacant anyway - and subsequently passed into the possession of the Crown (as in other parts of the Swedish empire).

This is the same argument used to justify the dispossession of the First Nations here in North America - it wasn't accurate here, and it wasn't accurate in the context of the Northern Crusades.

In both cases the colonizers came in and settled on lands that another group had claim to - the idea that they "took possession" of unoccupied lands is a fairytale that we tell ourselves so that we don't need to face the reality that our ancestors did not respect the title claim of others, took the land and quite often killed or drove them away. We tell ourselves that we brought the benefits of higher civilization to the area when in fact, we were only able to succeed at what we did because of an edge in military science or military organization, rather than the a vast technological difference.

The difference between the Balts and the Baltic Crusaders was military organization, rather than a vastly technologically, culturally and organizationally superior force meeting an inferior one, akin to the Romans going after the Gauls. The Baltic Germans got to write the histories afterwards to make it look like they were bringing the light of civilization to the benighted Balts, which justified their rule over the lesser people for centuries.

 

[Rincewind]

Rincewind, AIUI the Baltic area is/was covered in dense woodland/forest and probably didn't have concepts of legal ownership?

The early nobility (which included the clergy, who were entitled to a manor house) took possession originally - the land most likely was vacant anyway - and subsequently passed into the possession of the Crown (as in other parts of the Swedish empire).

Anyway I have to back my illustrious great-great (x24) grandparent:

"Eric the Holy, King of Sweden is your 24th great grandfather." (geni . com)

Aka St Eric patron saint of Stockholm. Who brought Christianity to the pagan masses.

The early nobility of Estonia and Livonia were home-grown. For example:

Lembitu – king of the ancient Estonian county of Sakala county; managed to form an army of 6,000 to oppose the crusaders.
Vyachko of Koknese – ruler of the principality of Koknese [in present day Latvia]
Caupo of Turaida – Livonian leader, sometimes called the King of Livonia

All around before and during the crusader's invasion. Also - much of the land had been held tributary to the local Russians, also before the arrival of the Baltic Germans on crusade. Not forgetting the Swedes and Danes also invaded. Oh, and so did the Rus, and the Norsemen from Novgorod.

Civilization had also preceded the German invasion - Archaeological evidence of the first permanent settlement on the site of modern Tartu dates to as early as the 5th century AD. Oh - if you prefer, this was known as Dorpat by the German invaders. Also, the name of Rävala became Reval, replacing the name of an Estonian town Lindanisse, later Tallinn.

Ancient Estonia had been divided into some 15 counties since the early centuries AD. Each country was divided into parishes, and each parish into several villages. Nearly all parishes had at least one fortress. The defense of the local area was directed by the highest official, the parish elder.

They had the Bronze age from around 1800 BC, and the Iron Age from circa 500 BC.

The appearance of square Celtic fields surrounded by enclosures in Estonia date from the Pre-Roman Iron Age. They also traded with their neighbors, and finds of Roman coins, jewellery and other artifacts had been discovered.

I accept that they weren't as advanced as the Germans, but the evidence shows that they were religious, organized, civilized, with towns, agriculture and trade - and an existing nobility before the Germans arrived.

 

[ddt]

There is this one for a start:

Why anyone would think their plight 'irrelevant' is beyond me.

Also: Before The Storm: Memories of My Youth in Old Prussia Hardcover – November 21, 1990
by Marion Graf Donhoff (Author)

The book you cite and quote is about East Prussia, while we had been discussing the fate of the Baltic Germans who lived in Latvia and Estonia. Why do you change the subject?

I think it's especially gross that you mention Die Gräfin. She was the founder, editor and journalist of the liberal weekly Die Zeit and one of the great intellectual voices in post-war (West) Germany. She did come to terms and accepted the loss of East Prussia, both on a personal and on a collective level, and used her journalistic voice to argue for that.

 

[ddt]

EU membership is all very recent in the grand scheme of things and it is also only relatively recently that foreigners were allowed to buy property in Finland without special permission.

That's neither here nor there, as you used the present tense.

I don't see why the German & Russian governments can't club together and arrange adequate compensation for those Baltic Germans turfed off their land, such as the Donhoff lady referred to recently, or their direct descendants as heirs.

Why should they? We've shown in this thread that most of the expropriation was done by the Latvian and Estonian governments. They were fully justified in taking back the land that the Baltic-German ancestors had stolen from the Latvian and Estonian people back in the 12-14th Century.

Based on a sample size of one, Finns lack basic reading and comprehension skills, as well as basic arithmetic. You could say they're living like beasts in the field. That makes it right and proper to steal their land, by your own reasoning.

ETA: and you misspelled Marion von Dönhoff's name.

 

[Garrison]

Why anyone would think their plight 'irrelevant' is beyond me.

It's irrelevant because it has no bearing on Russia, which again is not the USSR, compensating the Baltic Germans for loss of political rights and land that were taken by the independent Baltic states, not the USSR.

 

[ddt]

The Baltic Germans were there from C14, so are original settlers.

Original settlers? Really? The land was empty when the German crusaders turned up ca. 1200 in nowadays Estonia and Latvia? That's taking the cake. I thought you previously said there were people there "living like beasts in the field" (your words)?

They are not like the Brits turning up in places like India, Nigeria and Kenya, et al., or the Spanish, French, Dutch, Brits and Portuguese turning up in South America and North America (which includes the Caribbean).

What about the Dutch in South Africa?

When, in 1652, Jan van Riebeeck founded Cape Town as a way station for ships of the VOC, the Dutch East India Company, the people he and his men encountered there were Hottentots and Bushmen. They were the indigenous people of South Africa, and they still lived like in the stone age, as pastoralists and hunterer-gatherers, without farming, and without concept of private property or of territories. You can truly say, per your words, that they lived like beasts in the field. Therefore, it was only right and proper that Van Riebeeck and his successors took property of the land, started farming crops - for themselves and for providing the passing ships with fresh food - and enslaved those Hottentots and Bushmen that didn't flee into the Kalahari desert, to work for them.

From 1834 onward, the Boers embarked on the Great Trek, away from the Cape Colony with its British oppressive rule, into the inland of South Africa. There, they encountered Bantu peoples like the Xhosa, the Zulu and the Ndebele. These Bantus were not indigenous to South Africa: like the Boers, they had only settled the land in modern times, and so they had no more right to the land than the Boers. Some of the Boers, like Piet Retief and his party, went East into Natal. The Zulu king Dingane invited Retief for a social party and then treacherously killed Retief and 70 of his men. It was only right and proper that Andries Pretorius and his party avenged this breach of Christian hospitality rules, massacred Dingane's men at the Battle of Blood River.

Meanwhile, king Mzilikazi had also led his Ndebele tribe northwards into the Transvaal and ultimately into nowadays Rhodesia. During this migration, he carried out marauding raids all over the Transvaal, with the result that it got totally depopulated. So, when other Boer parties that went North, like that of Hendrik Potgieter, crossed the Vaal river into the Highveld, they truly found a deserted land where no-one lived. It was theirs for the taking.

It were the Boers who settled and developed the land, it were the Boers who set up the institutions of state and held up law and order. It were also the Boers who brought the Word of God to the unwashed black masses. It's only right and proper that they possessed the land and held political privilege under the Apartheid system.

In the above, I've only used the very same arguments you've been using in your defence of the position of the Baltic Germans. The great difference is, though, that I didn't have to falsify history in order to do so.

and now I feel dirty and in need of a shower...

 

[Rincewind]

Hi ddt,

Just a quick comment to mention that I reckon I covered the situation in Estonia/Livonia in post 182!

 

[theprestige]

Vixen, what information - if it existed - would convince you that Baltic Germans should not be compensated by Russia?

 

[ddt]

Hi ddt,

Just a quick comment to mention that I reckon I covered the situation in Estonia/Livonia in post 182!

Oh yes, and that should have been clear to Vixen from just reading the wiki article she cited herself in the OP. But she will ignore your post or flat-out deny it and call you a liar for it. Here's what she wrote in the "Russian monarchy" thread about it:

Think about it. It was the early crusaders who brought civilisation to the heathen Nordic and Slavic masses, who might still be worshipping Odin, Perkele and Baba wotsit, and living like beasts in the field, were it not for the early pioneers.

 

[dudalb]

There's a family photo of my 2x-great-grandmother with a glass eye and scars on her face, courtesy of the Tsar's pogroms.

The execution probably wasn't the most just thing (especially the kids), but I'm not too upset about it.

For the Tsar, I agree.
The cold blooded murder of his whole family, though...is another story. I think that is where a lot of people..including me..condemn the Bolsheviks.

 

[Vixen]

The early nobility of Estonia and Livonia were home-grown. For example:

Lembitu – king of the ancient Estonian county of Sakala county; managed to form an army of 6,000 to oppose the crusaders.
Vyachko of Koknese – ruler of the principality of Koknese [in present day Latvia]
Caupo of Turaida – Livonian leader, sometimes called the King of Livonia

All around before and during the crusader's invasion. Also - much of the land had been held tributary to the local Russians, also before the arrival of the Baltic Germans on crusade. Not forgetting the Swedes and Danes also invaded. Oh, and so did the Rus, and the Norsemen from Novgorod.

Civilization had also preceded the German invasion - Archaeological evidence of the first permanent settlement on the site of modern Tartu dates to as early as the 5th century AD. Oh - if you prefer, this was known as Dorpat by the German invaders. Also, the name of Rävala became Reval, replacing the name of an Estonian town Lindanisse, later Tallinn.

Ancient Estonia had been divided into some 15 counties since the early centuries AD. Each country was divided into parishes, and each parish into several villages. Nearly all parishes had at least one fortress. The defense of the local area was directed by the highest official, the parish elder.

They had the Bronze age from around 1800 BC, and the Iron Age from circa 500 BC.

The appearance of square Celtic fields surrounded by enclosures in Estonia date from the Pre-Roman Iron Age. They also traded with their neighbors, and finds of Roman coins, jewellery and other artifacts had been discovered.

I accept that they weren't as advanced as the Germans, but the evidence shows that they were religious, organized, civilized, with towns, agriculture and trade - and an existing nobility before the Germans arrived.

Being able to get together an army of 6,000 in those days didn't mean they had a large population (and one reason Peter the Great abolished serfdom, apart from a fear of a peasants' revolt, was that he had his eye on the Baltic lands, then under the domain of Sweden , and he wanted the serfs as a ready supply of soldiers instead). In fact, most armies then were made up of a rag tag of mercenaries. Sweden had 20K Scottish mercenaries, which is why you see remnants of a Scottish presence in Finland today (e.g., the Finlayson textile company). This is because these Scots soldiers were well-rewarded for their part in Sweden's victories. One used to own my grandparents' estate, Sir Hans Ramsay. Came from the Douglas clan, crest a black raven.

Generals used to pay each other to buy each other's armies wholesale. For example, Tilly, De Gardie and the Vasily Russian chap. If they could not afford an army, then they were not able to build a naval port and a navy. So having a large army, being rich enough to sustain it and having naval power was key.

Secondly, you do realise that 'parish' refers to a local church, so I expect you mean something like 'province' or 'region', not 'parish' (the church which took tithes from the locals).

Of course there have been people in the Baltic lands since the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. You can't assume the population has remained constant, as people migrate all the time.

In the dark ages, Europe was a mass of different tribes. Finland has/had at least three. A tribe is not the same as a country or a kingdom.

Yes, man's propensity to lay claim to land which should be free for everybody and not property - an old Native American concept, and even a Saami one - is a shame. But having established land rights, then people should be compensated if unfairly and forcibly deprived of them.

 

[Vixen]

Vixen, what information - if it existed - would convince you that Baltic Germans should not be compensated by Russia?

That they did anything to deserve such treatment.

 

[ddt]

Why anyone would think their plight 'irrelevant' is beyond me.

Here's another guy whose fate you can lament: Prince Waldemar of Prussia, nephew of the last Kaiser and great-grandson of Queen Victoria, from whom he inherited the genetic defect causing haemophilia B. So the poor chap had to be careful 24 hours a day that he didn't even prick his finger.

Then came the German Revolution, and those evil socialists took away his titles and other privileges of nobility. At least the family got to keep their properties, and in 1940 he moved to live in the Kamieniec Ząbkowicki palace in Silesia, a palace that during the war was also used by the Nazis as transit station for looted art.

In 1945 the evil commies of the Red Army approached, just at a moment when he had a bleeding episode. He managed to flee to the west and arrived in Tutzing, a small town 40 km south of Munich. Tutzing also housed a Dornier factory and a satellite camp of Dachau that provided the forced labor for the factory. The next day, the Americans liberated the town. And those evil Yanks diverted all the medical resources, including the blood supply, to the treatment of the KZ inmates, with the result that he bled to death. The Yanks were, in fact, so evil that they wouldn't even let his widow bury him until all the KZ victims had been processed. Boohoo.

Pray tell us, who should compensate his family for his wrongful death? Russia or America? Or both?

 

[Border Reiver]

Yes, man's propensity to lay claim to land which should be free for everybody and not property - an old Native American concept, and even a Saami one - is a shame. But having established land rights, then people should be compensated if unfairly and forcibly deprived of them.

First, First Nations did have the concept of property rights - generally village or tribal lands rather than individual rights.

Second, if we agree that people deprived of their lands should be compensated we should accept that the confiscation of the Baltic German estates was a reclamation of the territories of their ancestors by the Latvians and Estonians.

 

[ddt]

For the Tsar, I agree.
The cold blooded murder of his whole family, though...is another story. I think that is where a lot of people..including me..condemn the Bolsheviks.

It was wrong to kill the family, but I won't lose sleep over it. There was a brutal civil war going on, with foreign interventions from Britain, France and Japan. A family member, in particular a child, of the deposed monarch can easily become a rallying point for opposing forces, so I understand why they did it.

 

[theprestige]

That they did anything to deserve such treatment.

Would you accept evidence that they did not receive such treatment from Russia in the first place?

 

[Vixen]

Considering the influence Prussia had on the course of politics in Germany up to and including nazi Germany, don't you think people from other countries had some kind of point that they didn't want to live next to a 'von' anymore?

The idea of a Germania as in a poem by a Prussian dreaming of a 'greater Germany' may have been seized on by Hitler, but doesn't mean you can blame the person who wrote the poem, any more than you can blame Karl Marx for the Bolshevik uprising, Adam Smith capitalism, or the Beatles for the Manson murders.

Ideas are powerful (hence the presence of thought police and the banning of free-thinking in totalitarian states). In fact, the NSPD (Nazi Party) of Hitler, like the Bolsheviks, took pride in having a core working-class base. The bourgoise Weimar juncker class was despised by Hitler, so it is no surprise that the people leading the assassination attempts and sabotaging his Germania dreams, were the 'Vons'. (For example, 'Valkyrie, Von Stauffenberg, and the the Von Dönhoff lady, so ddt shoots himself in the foot when he proclaims her to have been an anti-Nazi, whilst at the same time making out they were all a bunch of racist nazis.)

 

[Vixen]

This is the same argument used to justify the dispossession of the First Nations here in North America - it wasn't accurate here, and it wasn't accurate in the context of the Northern Crusades.

In both cases the colonizers came in and settled on lands that another group had claim to - the idea that they "took possession" of unoccupied lands is a fairytale that we tell ourselves so that we don't need to face the reality that our ancestors did not respect the title claim of others, took the land and quite often killed or drove them away. We tell ourselves that we brought the benefits of higher civilization to the area when in fact, we were only able to succeed at what we did because of an edge in military science or military organization, rather than the a vast technological difference.

The difference between the Balts and the Baltic Crusaders was military organization, rather than a vastly technologically, culturally and organizationally superior force meeting an inferior one, akin to the Romans going after the Gauls. The Baltic Germans got to write the histories afterwards to make it look like they were bringing the light of civilization to the benighted Balts, which justified their rule over the lesser people for centuries.

It is rather strange that history doesn't seem to go back much beyond 7K-8K years ago (the ancient Egyptians and Chinese) and yet humans have roamed the earth for at least 250m years, according to the archaeologists (from carbon dating). So I do often wonder, what happened to all these ancient peoples. They obviously can't all have been completely illiterate, and when you consider how tiny the earth's population used to be even 1,000 years ago, one has to wonder, what happened to all these people. What happened to the Neanderthals. Well, we know in their case, they either became extinct or they were genocided.

The other day another poster said we have no idea who the people populating Ireland and Scotland were as we have no records and the 'picts' are a fanciful myth. Isn't that odd? No records beyond circa AD900, and for most people, the Vikings represent something ancient an exotic, yet, hello? they only go back to AD900 for pete's sake.

So what was happening on earth 1,500 years ago? Was it all destroyed? Or did it never exist, anyway?

We are taught that Columbus and Cook discovered various parts of the world, and Scott the Antarctic, and Hilary was first to achieve Mt Everest, and we swallow all this obvious ********.

AFAIK the Native Americans lived as nomadic tribes. From Ancient DNA studies, we know they crossed from Asia over the Bering Strait and into North America. They share the same DNA as Asian people today.

When the early settlers arrived in the USA circa 1600's (and the Spanish in the south in the 1400's) they were either religious dissidents who were forced to leave Britain or they were political dissidents, such as the Levellers or supporters of Catholic King Charles II after he was deposed and beheaded. Others were convicts transported to the New World as punishment.

The main group, however, were Venturers, who set up companies in Virginia, with James Town being one of the earliest established 'towns'.

The early settler suffered regular raids by the Native Americans and they fought back with guns. It all got very bloody. However, apart from the tribes of Native Americans, North America wasn't 'settled' per se. I admit it is rather odd that US history only seems to start in 1624.

The comment about crusaders bring civilisation or otherwise the Nordic masses would still be worshipping Odin, Perkele or Baba Yaga, and living like beasts was - hello? - tongue-in cheek.

 

[Vixen]

First, First Nations did have the concept of property rights - generally village or tribal lands rather than individual rights.

Second, if we agree that people deprived of their lands should be compensated we should accept that the confiscation of the Baltic German estates was a reclamation of the territories of their ancestors by the Latvians and Estonians.

But they were not. They were re-peopled by ethnic Russians. Many ethnic Estonians and Latvians were taken to the concentration camps as dissidents.

(Stettin.)

 

[Vixen]

It was wrong to kill the family, but I won't lose sleep over it. There was a brutal civil war going on, with foreign interventions from Britain, France and Japan. A family member, in particular a child, of the deposed monarch can easily become a rallying point for opposing forces, so I understand why they did it.

Stalin's motto, wasn't it, "the end justifies the means".

Is that your motto, too?