A Personal Manifesto

The Germans had been initially attracted to Bessarabia by Czar Alexander I's manifesto with its attractive privileges. But later, word of mouth was also a good salesman. The letter writer makes his strongest sales pitch next: anyone with a desire to follow the Arzis settlers, he says, should sell all they had, except a wooden wagon, a steel plow and a good horse team and move to Bessarabia. His promise is that anyone who does so, "will soon have bread" in their new-found home. Of course, he couldn't predict the future cattle epidemics, grasshoppers, hailstorms, caterpillars and beetles that the 1848 chronicle shows severely hurt the farmers' livelihood.

Did the Pitch Work?

Did the writer's friends in Poland follow in his footsteps? 5 Some perhaps did, since this was the experience of many who relocated to Bessarabia. For example, as the 1848 chronicle for Katzbach, explained, "In Poland we received the report from our relatives and acquaintances from the colonies of Bessarabia that these same people had found prosperity under the high government of Russia and also . . . that we could still take up land in the province of Bessarabia." The situation in Poland was often even worse than the severities experienced in Bessarabia. The privileges offered to colonists were surely more than anyone back in Poland could dream about!

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The writer asks his friends in Poland to tell the letter deliverers how they were doing so they could report back. We will never know what these Germans in Poland said. Perhaps they announced their intention to immigrate too. Ten more mother colonies would be settled in Bessarabia up to 1842. There were still many good opportunities for this letter writer's "dearest friends" to move to the promised land—and maybe even send letters back to others they knew in Poland encouraging them to resettle too.