Just who are the German Russians? Where did they come from? Where are they now? And how have they impacted our lives? What follows is a brief summary of who the German Russians are, and how they came to influence American culture.

Germanic tribes have resided throughout what is now Europe for many centuries. The Middle Ages -- which entailed about a thousand years (from the Sixth Century to the Sixteenth Century) -- saw mankind striving to find ways to harness nature and conquer his enemies. From the reign of Charlamagne to the looming power of the Holy Roman Empire, people were trying to find order in a chaotic world. The Magna Carta resulted in a movement for greater liberties among common men, and with the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in 1450, the world entered a new age of information.

While the coming of the "modern" world -- roughly those years between 1500-1800 -- were to find many achievements by mankind, there was not much respite from man's propensity for violence. Wars permeated not just Europe, but much of the known world. By the 1700s, European powers were clamoring for resources in other parts of the world and battling one another vigorously at home.

Violence throughout what is now Germany and adjacent countries became so common, and the struggle for survival among commoners so difficult, that many people looked to pursue their lives elsewhere. Those were the conditions that existed throughout the Germanic regions of Europe in much of the 18th Century.

When Catherine the Great delivered her manifestos to lure foreigners to Russia, it became a powerful enticement for many to leave their homes for new opportunities. After Catherine's second manifesto in 1763, thousands of people gave up their lives in Germany and made the trek to Russia. Stipends were extended for their migration; exemption from military conscription was extended to them; loans and grants sweetned the pot; thus were born the many colonies of Germans who settled along the Volga, near the Black Sea, and in other locations in Russia. They and their descendants eked out new lives on the Russian Steppes. A century later, conditions deteriorated, and the German colonists again examined their options and began migrating elsewhere. At the top of the list was America, and many of these "German Russians" sailed the seas to Argentina, Brazil, and the United States.