Explore Your University

I had been on campus at NDSU for a year before I noticed the subheading on the sign outside the Main Campus Library which informed passersby of the “Germans from Russia Historical Collection” (GRHC). Since I am neither an ethnic German nor Russian, I subconsciously assumed that this department was not for me; my assumptions were regrettably ignorant.

The designation “Germans from Russia” is a term coined by former NDSU scholar Father William Sherman to describe the Black Sea Germans who migrated from the Russian Empire in large numbers to the Dakotas. Approximately 35% of our North Dakota population is descended from this unique ethnic group. Understanding these people is vital to our appreciation of our place in the Northern Plains.

The purpose of a university was never merely to impart vocational skills to aspiring professionals. The intellectual foundation of the modern university was the (originally Christian) conviction that humans need wisdom implanted and cultivated through the exercise of disciplines (mathematics, music, biology, astronomy, rhetoric, grammar, logic, etc.). The goal of university education has never been to inculcate facts; this can be done at home or online. Rather, a proper university seeks to foster a community of scholars and students among whom the disciplines are practiced, which collectively provide access to universal knowledge. This means, of course, that the teaching of radical relativism undermines the existence of a university, as such. Articulated positively, all the departments and resources at NDSU should serve a common goal: the formation of wise human beings grounded in the objectively good, established in universal truths and oriented to the timelessly beautiful. The GRHC is one such resource.

Even though I claim no German-Russian heritage and I grew up in Wisconsin, the GRHC has allowed me to discover much about my own place in the universe. Let me explain. In northern Wisconsin, my childhood next-door neighbor was a retired Lutheran Pastor, Reverend Emil Dockter. Emil was raised in Streeter, North Dakota. Through the resources at our GRHC, I had determined that Reverend Dockter was a second-generation German from Russia. His eighteenth-century ancestors emigrated from the Alsace region to the Neudorf colony near Odesa (or present-day Ukraine).

Combing through the GRHC’s vast resources, I learned how centuries of travail experienced by the German-Russians informed their distinctive lifeways, including their religious practices. Emil was an exceedingly distinctive man, scholar and pastor. His demeanor and poise were different from that of the strictly ethnic German or Norwegian pastors I knew. His well-researched, engaging and often-humorous pedagogy inspired me. I have come to believe his concerns, methodology and anthropological insights were due, at least in part, to his own culture’s shared experience.

In August of 1939, Reverend Solomon Joachim of Beulah, North Dakota, published a paper through Concordia College Moorhead. He titled it “Toward an Understanding of the Russian German.” In his essay, Joachim observed how the “Russian German has a mind and psychology all his own. His "gemuet" is different. Gemuet (or gemüt) is a German word for the inner disposition and emotional makeup of an individual or collective spirit. Pastor Joachim — himself an ethnic German from Russia — was famous for exhorting his broad community to not look upon these seemingly peculiar neighbors suspiciously. Rather, he concluded, “These people deserve close and more sympathetic study. They are anxious to know us as we should be eager to know them. They are patient individuals, and if we are patient with them, we shall succeed in exploring their souls.” These words, written nearly a century ago, were ahead of their time. This task is not only ongoing, but I would suggest it is incumbent to direct our exploration in the other direction. I contend that if we give a closer and more sympathetic study to the story of the Germans from Russia, we shall succeed in discovering our own souls.

Emil Dockter made this task his life’s work. Consider his book titles “Soul Talk” (1999), “Whispers of the Soul” (2005) and “A Bridge to the Soul” (2014). Emil’s conversations and writings provided me with this very thing. Remarkably, I’ve had similar experiences repeatedly when working with other clergy of German-Russian descent. Without a doubt, I have unconsciously — and now consciously! — sought to incorporate the demeanor of this gemüt into my own pastoral ministry.

Have you toured the “Germans from Russia Historical Collection” at NDSU? If not, I suggest you make the effort. The GRHC is in the southeast corner of the first level of the Main Library. Even if you don’t care to read deeply, there is a new interactive exhibit in the entrance area. Again, explore campus. This is your university, your education designed to help you discover your soul.