Johannes Dettling from Salzstetten seeked his luck in Mannheim (near to Odessa, Ucraine) in 1808
On 24th of June 1770 Johannes Dettling was born in Salzstetten. It was not an easy start, as he was born an illegitimate child from Nikolaus Dettling and Brigitta Maier. As an adult he left Salzstetten and married Maria Anna Maier on the 18th November 1799 in Waldprechtsweier. In the year 1808 he decided to leave his homeland together with his wife and four children and emigrated to the Russian Black Sea Coast.
He followed the inviting offer of the Russian Tsar to settle together with many other Germans in the region of today's Ukraine. The descendants of this Johannes Dettling lived mainly in the town Mannheim near Odessa. When the political situation changed in Russia during the revolution end of the 19th century, the situation of the Germans deteriorated continuously. Many people took the opportunity to emigrate to the USA. The Germans who stayed in Odessa, lost all their possessions and were driven off their land, some of them as far as to Siberia.
Despite all the pain, they had to go through, some of them did never give up their German identity and tried year by year to get the permission for the departure abroad. Only under president Gorbatschow the possibilities for departure were relieved. That was the reason why some of the descendants of our Johannes Dettlings from Salzstetten found the way back to the country of their forefathers as "Spaetaussiedler" (German resettlers from Eastern and Southern Europe).
Wie der Zufall so spielte, meldeten sich im März 2008 innerhalb einer Woche unabhängig voneinander drei Dettling-Nachfahren aus Stuttgart, aus der Nähe von München und den USA über unsere Website bei uns, die alle drei von dem gleichen Johannes Dettling aus Salzstetten abstammten und somit Verwandte 10.-12. Grades waren.
In March 2008 as luck would have it, three Dettling-descendants got independantly in touch with our family community. This was, believe it or not, via our website within the same week. All three, one from Munich, one from Stuttgart and one from Arizona, USA, descended from the same Johannes Dettling were 4th cousins.
All of them met in person during our big family get-together in Salzstetten. Even the Americans did not hesitate to take the long journey and came spontaneously for a great week to the south of Germany. So we got two additional special guests from USA, who joined our big family get-together in Salzstetten on the 12h October 2008 and enjoyed a great week together in the land of our common ancestors.
New Research Discoveries on the „Odessa“-Dettling Line
In April, member Eugen sent me a document had been sent to him from Ukraine, namely, a character witness letter written on behalf of Johannes Dettling (originally from Salzstetten), which eventually allowed him to settle in Mannheim near Odessa. Before this discovery we had tried unsuccessfully to trace the total path Johannes took from Salzstetten. Presumably the approaching troops of Napoleon had convinced him and his wife to leave Waldprechtsweiler [where he had moved to when he got married – Tr.]. Although we had indications that later on there was a Johann Dettling in Hilsbach, oddly enough the church records there carried no entries for that family. In what might be considered a minor sensation, the seal affixed to the letter by the character witness revealed the location as being „Colonie Hilsbach [The Hilsbach Colony].“ This made it clear that we had heretofore been looking in the wrong place [Germany] for a trace of Johann Dettling, and a brief Internet search showed that the „Colonie Hilsbach“ was indeed a German colony in Poland founded in 1804 [the year Dettling left on his emigration trek]. Its name today is Czarny Las (meaning Black Forest!).
Entering the picture next was Ed Bischoff of Arizona, a member of our world-wide research team, who soon acquired microfilm of church records for Czarn Las and there discovered the formerly missing birth records of two Dettling children. We were thus able finally to shed more light into the life story of our emigrant from Salzstetten, of whose descendants we now know at least three hundred world-wide. The following is an image of a Travel Permit, a kind to a Passport, for Johann to travel from Poland to Mannheim:
Quelle: Dettling-Magazin 2012
Are your Dettling-ancestors also descended from Russia? May be we can find a connection!
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