Alexanderhöh

Alternate Names
Alexanderhöh,
Alexandrhöh,
Alexanderdorf,
Alexander-Hey,
Alexandrovka,
Uralsk,
Александерге
Gallery
Church

The Lutheran church in Alexanderhöh was built of wood in 1888 in the Kontor Style.  It reportedly seated 800 parishioners.

The congregation in Alexanderhöh is part of the Lutheran parish headquartered in Weizenfeld where there was a resident pastor.

Type of Settlement
History

Alexanderhöh was a daughter colony that originally consisted of two colonies--one named Alexanderdorf and the other named Höh.  The two colonies were located next to one another on opposite sides of the Nachoi River (Nachoistrom), a tributary that branched off the Greater Karaman River (Großer Karaman Fluß) east of Mariental.  Alexanderdorf was founded in 1848 by 19 families from the mother colonies of Schwed, Schäfer, Urbach, Stahl am Karaman, and others.

Alexanderhöh was founded later (evidently 1860) by colonists from the mother colonies of Schwed, Stahl am Karaman, Rosenheim, Fischer, Enders and others. About the same time (i.e., in the first half of 1860), the names of the two colonies were combined into Alexander-Höh, which from then on became the name of the combined daughter colony.

According to the 9th Revision for Stahl am Karaman, the following families moved to Alexanderdorf: Michael Stahl (b. 1794), Konrad Stahl (b. 1797), Johannes Zitzer (b. 1773), Friedrich Zitzer (b. 1801), Heinrich Seibel (b. 1793), Friedrich Elberg (Ölberg?, b. 1810), and Christian Elberg (Ölberg?, b. 1814).

In 1877-1878, 10 families departed for America.

Population
Population Table
Year
Households
Population
Total
Male
Female
1850*
19
147
72
75
1857*
20
204
101
103
1883
 
1,124
 
 
1889
 
1,130
 
 
1894
 
 
 
 
1897
 
1,140**
576
564
1905
 
1,742
 
 
1910
229
2,141
1,047
1,094
1912
 
2,000
 
 
1920
308***
1,750
 
 
1922
 
1,340
 
 
1923
 
1,418
 
 
1926****
282
1,408
681
727
1931
 
1,824*****
 
 

*Alexanderdorf only (before the merger with Höh).
**Of whom 1,137 were German.
***Of which 304 households were German.
****Of whom, 1,393 (675 male &718 female) were German living in 278 households.
*****Of whom 1,805 were German.

Religion

Lutheran

Sources

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.

Herdt, Karl. Die Namengebung zweier Woldadeutscher Dörfer, Alexanderdorf und Höh (Alexander-Höh): am Nachoistrom gelegen sowie Episoden aus dem damaligen Bauernleben und Skizzen aus der Steppentierwelt (Espelkamp: K. Herdt, 1983).

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.

Preliminary Results of the Soviet Census of 1926 on the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Pokrovsk, 1927): 28-83.

Schmidt, David F., Walnut Creek, California

Schnurr, Joseph, Die Kirchen und das Religiöse Leben der Russlanddeutschen - Evangelischer Teil (Stuttgart: Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Russland, 1972).

"Settlements in the 1897 Census." Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (Winter, 1990): 16.