A wooden church building was constructed in 1871. The congregation in Oberdorf was part of the Lutheran parish headquartered in Rosenberg where the pastor also resides.
In 1828, a colonist named Becker from Kamenka established a khutor at the place where earlier, a Russian named Kuptsov had also had a khutor. As additional colonists began settling there the place became known as Beckers Chutor. The colony of Oberdorf was officially founded in 1852 (1847 per Dietz) as a Lutheran colony by colonists resettling from Norka, Grimm, Kutter, Dönhof, Stephan, Shcherbakovka, Galka, Holstein, Dobrinka, Müller and Schwab. It was located 180 versts from Saratov, 40 versts from Kamyshin, and 25 versts from Rosenberg.
A school was established in the colony in 1852. As of 1890, it had 269 students (126 boys and 143 girls).
As of 1886, there were in the colony 24 cobblers, 8 millers, 4 wheelrights, 4 carpenters, and 4 weavers. By 1890, there were 1 wind- and 4 water-powered flour mills. In 1866, 4 individuals relocated to the colony of Kanova in the Caucasus. In 1886, 36 colonists (18 male & 18 female making up nine families and two single men who were avoiding service in the Russian Army) immigrated to Kansas.
|
Year
|
Households
|
Population
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Total
|
Male
|
Female
|
||
| 1857 |
73
|
524
|
272
|
252
|
| 1859 |
51
|
549
|
283
|
266
|
| 1886 |
128
|
1,249
|
618
|
631
|
| 1891 |
|
1,526
|
772
|
754
|
| 1894 |
155
|
1,697
|
844
|
853
|
| 1897 |
|
1,643*
|
838
|
805
|
| 1904 |
|
1,508
|
|
|
| 1911 |
|
1,777
|
|
|
| 1912 |
|
2,400
|
|
|
| 1920 |
262**
|
1,860
|
|
|
| 1922 |
|
1,741
|
|
|
| 1923 |
|
1,793
|
|
|
| 1926 |
284
|
1,930
|
921
|
1,009
|
| 1931 |
|
2,050***
|
|
|
| 1939 |
|
2,294
|
|
|
*Of whom 1,615 were German.
**Of which 235 households were German.
***Of whom 2,048 were German.
Lutheran
Diesendorf, V.F. Die Deutschen Russlands : Siedlungen und Siedlungsgebiete : Lexicon. Moscow, 2006.
Dietz, Jacob E. History of the Volga German Colonists (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2005): 215.
Klaus, A.A. Our Colonies . Saint Petersburg, Russia, 1869.
Koch, Fred C. The Volga Germans: In Russia and the Americas, from 1763 to the Present (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977): 311.
Minkh, A.N. Historical-Geographical Dictionary of the Saratov Province (Saratov, 1898-1903): 696-700.
Preliminary Results of the Soviet Census of 1926 on the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Pokrovsk, 1927): 28-83.
Sallet, Richard. Russian-German Settlement in the United States (Fargo, ND: North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 1974): 156.
"Settlements in the 1897 Census." Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (Winter, 1990): 18.
The Jauk's of Oberdorf Russia
Oberdorf (wolgadeutsche.net) - in Russian