It means more than one thing; the way Ron Vossler says it in the title of his new book, Dakota Kraut. There is the old semi-pejorative meaning, as in Sauerkraut Triangle, in reference to the German-Russian quarter of North Dakota. And there is that other meaning, coming from his grandmother, “kraut” signifying the healing herbs to be found growing among the weeds in Wishek, Ron’s old hometown. Come to think of it, a lot of things in Dakota Kraut have more than one meaning.

What a fine book this is! Yet I fear its readership will be more limited than it should be. Ron is a proud and self-conscious German from Russia, and the book is published by the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, North Dakota State University. Some people are going to think the work is an insider story for Germans from Russia.

Well, it is, but it’s way more, too. We of the Great Plains are specialists in the art of memory. When we write novels, they are memoirs in masquerade. When we write songs, we sing of our experience. Our public discourse, be it political or religious or whatever, continually hearkens to remembrance. In this book Ron faces the regional preoccupation squarely, confesses to his obsession with memory, and in writing about his home country around Wishek, gives us a clinic (read that two ways, if you want) in the art of memory on the plains.

In my area of study, history, memory is a hot topic. It has two branches, the personal and the collective.

The personal has to do with individual remembrance and identity. There’s plenty of that in Ron’s book, some that is poignant, some that is hilarious. I have to think that anyone, German-Russian or not, is going to collapse laughing along with me when he reads about the local rock group breaking into a chorus of “Wildes Ding.” (Think about it.) All that stuff about playing basketball in the WPA Wishek auditorium has the universal experience of Class B veterans in it, along with local ethnic twists.

Hard work, too, figures in the personal remembrance, especially the hard work of hauling and stacking bales. I have to tell you, I’ve thrown some bales pretty high in some pretty hot lofts, but somehow Ron’s memories match and exceed even my own, which is saying a lot. Memory works that way.

This business of hard work crosses over from personal remembrance to collective memory as it touches on central values of a cultural group whose motto is, “Arbeit macht das Leben suess.” Ron wrestles with the collective memory of Germans from Russia, including the loss of language. The distinctive dialects of German-Russians are going to the graveyards. Heirs of tradition such as Ron, and so many others of us in our own groups across the plains, can try to codify the old languages and even use them in ritual, but we cannot make them live again.

The search for remembrance and identity, personal and collective, takes the author on a pilgrimage to the old country, exploring the rich heritage and horrific tragedy of the Black Sea German colonies. He returns to Dakota with an understanding of historical silence, of the art of not remembering.

Humble and precious gems lie all over the ground near the end of the book. You may never have heard of a Baschtan, but after reading the book, the word will be full of meanings. You probably never heard of a Hollwek either, but, one way or another, you have traveled one. It’s a good thing and a bad thing. Bad, because you can get in the ruts of one of these prairie trails and get high-centered. Good, because it always leads you home, or to somebody’s home.

As does the book. See, you knew what a Hollwek was all along

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2942, isern@plainsfolk.com
Editor: Rich Mattern, (701) 231-6136, richard.mattern@ndsu.nodak.edu