This collection of documents is the result of a project that was planned almost ten years ago in 1992. My goal was to aid future students of the Wends in their research by collecting letters sent home to Europe by overseas Wends. Gertrud Mahling of Bautzen graciously agreed to pursue the matter in Germany and placed notices in newspapers and searched archives on her own. The letters from Australia were written by a number of different persons, while the letters from Texas came largely from Pastor Johann Kilian. Because the contents of the letters were also quite different, making it difficult to focus on a single theme, I separated the Australian letters and sent them to interested individuals in Australia. (This separation and the addition of letters helps explain the seemingly illogical numbering system). I kept the Texas letters and expanded the scope to include all Kilian letters, even those written to people in the United States. While most of the letters listed here were written by Kilian, there are some by different authors, as well as miscellaneous newspaper articles relating to the Wends.

I am indebted to Prof. Dr. Dietrich Scholze of the Serbski institut in Bautzen and to the Texas Wendish Heritage Society in Serbin for support of the project.

In 2012 Weldon Mersiovsky acquired digital images of all of the letters and documents, including letters received, from Concordia Historical Institute in St Louis, MO and systematically went about getting them translated by an international team that he assembled. As his research and the research of others uncovered more letters and documents relating to the Wendish Experience he has either inserted or added them to the mix.

I am especially grateful for the work supplied by the people listed below who transcribed and translated the letters.

Because Kilian’s composition reflects his sound education every attempt was made to reproduce his letters as he wrote them. Some of the other correspondents, on the other hand, were not as educated, so changes were made with such things as spelling and punctuation to simplify the task of reading without changing the meaning. The salutations and closings are intentionally simplified except in those occasions when some significance is inherent.

BILL E. BIAR was born on July 7, 1919 in Thorndale, Texas. His parents were Otto Biar and Lydia, nee Moerbe. In 1945 to 1947 he was a member of several U. S. Army Intelligence Units in Germany, where he interrogated German prisoners of war for discharge and investigated matters of interest to the U. S. Army. While in Germany he met and married Stefana Todt, a native of Silesia. After returning to the U. S. he worked for Atlantic Richfield Company for 36 years before retiring in 1983. He now resides in Carrollton, Texas. Even though he knew that he was of Wendish ancestry his interest in the Wends remained marginal until 1970, when a distant cousin in Australia requested information about the Biar family in Texas and Germany. Since that time he has corresponded with numerous people with Wendish backgrounds in the U. S., as well as, overseas. He has transcribed and/or translated numerous old German handwritten letters and documents which originated in the U. S., Germany and Australia, some for Concordia Historical Institute, St. Louis. He has written short biographical histories of all 8 of his Wendish great grandparents.



GERTRUDE GRAF MAHLING (Trudla Malinkowa) was born on February 21, 1955 at Bautzen, Germany. After attending the Sorbian high school in Kleinwelka, she was trained in the production and selling of books at the Domowina-Verlag in Bautzen. She then studied dentistry at Leipzig for five years and practiced dentistry from 1975 to 1980. Following her marriage to an Evangelical Lutheran pastor she gave up her profession and became a housewife and mother of five children. Sorb history and culture rather than dentistry interested her and in 1992 she began working on projects in affiliation with the Sorb Institute in Bautzen. She has written several articles and books, the most prominent was on Sorb migration and which appeared in both Sorbian and German: K brjoham nadije / Ufer der Hoffnung. At the present time she is working on a project to preserve Sorb artifacts and serves as editor of the Evangelical Lutheran publication for Sorbs, Ponjah, Boh.


SIEGMUND MUSIAT was born on March 5, 1930 at Kamenz, Germany. He earned his doctorate at the University of Leipzig where he specialized in Slavic and Sorbic cultural history. From 1957 to 1983 he served as an associate at the Institut für Sorbische Volksforschung in Bautzen; from 1983 to 1997 as an associate of the Bistums [Diocese] of Dresden and Meissen; and from 1993 to 1995 at the Sorbischen Insittut e.V. in Bautzen. He retired in 1995 but continues his research and writing. Included in his publications is Volksleben, Volksfrömmigkeit und Volksbrauche in der Lausitz. (1990), Das Jahresbrauchtum im Gebeit der katholischen Sorben and Sorbische/wendische Vereine 1716 - 1937.


GEORGE NIELSEN was born on May 29, 1932 in Aleman, Texas. His father, a teacher at the Lutheran school was of Danish and German descent and his mother, Emma Moerbe was of Wendish and German parentage. After he completed his elementary education at Thorndale, he attended Concordia high school in Austin and Concordia Seward, Nebraska. He earned his doctorate at the University of Iowa and taught history at Concordia, River Forest, Illinois. His interest in the Wends began as a teenager when his aunt gave him a copy of George Engerrand’s The So-called Wends of Texas. In graduate school he wrote a paper that was published as “The Folklore of the German-Wends in Texas.” Later, after nine months of study in Australia supported by a Fulbright grant, he wrote In Search of a Home.


WILLIAM H. NIELSEN was born on November 12, 1901 on a farm near Daykin, Nebraska. After attending Zion Lutheran School he received his high school education and two years of college at Concordia, Seward, Nebraska. In 1920 received his first placement at St. Paul Lutheran School in Aleman, Texas. He taught seventy pupils from grades 1 to 8, including Emma Moerbe who became his wife in 1926. From 1939 to 1952 he was the teacher, organist, and principal at St. Paul’s Lutheran School in Thorndale, Texas and from 1952 until his retirement in 1971 he served the congregation at Vernon, Texas. Through attendance at summer schools and correspondence courses he eventually received his Bachelor’s degree. He served on the Board of Control of Concordia, Austin, Texas and was recognized for his service by both Concordia, Austin and his Alma Mater. Because of his training in the old script he transcribed many German documents for Concordia Historical Institute in St. Louis and documents related to Wendish history. His death occurred early in January, 2001, during his 99th year of life.




EDWARD H. BERNTHAL was born in Frankenmuth, Michigan on April 3, 1923. He attended St. Lorenz Lutheran Elementary School, and graduated from Arthur Hill High School in Saginaw, Michigan in 1941. He attended Concordia Teachers College, River Forest, Illinois, graduating with a Bachelors Degree in Education in 1946. He served St. John’s Lutheran Church in Galveston, Texas as Teacher, Principal and Director of Music from 1946 – 1956, Trinity Lutheran Church in Racine, Wisconsin as Teacher and Director of Music from 1956 – 1972. During this time, he received a Masters of Arts in Education degree from Concordia Teachers’ College, River Forest, Illinois in 1963. He was called to Pella Lutheran Church as a Director of Christian Education and Music in 1972, and served there till his retirement in 1988. He now serves in a volunteer capacity, emeritus status. His community activities include: Chairman of the Dodge County Salvation Army Service Extension Unit, “Non-clergy” member of the Waupun Area Christian Ministers Association, Coordinator of the annual CROP Hunger Walk, active in the Waupun SHARE food program and food pantry, and the Waupun Kiwanis Club. On December 28, 1947, he married Bernice Michalk (his Wendish connection) in Galveston, Texas. They have 4 sons and 1 daughter.


DAVID GOEKE has served as a consultant for Dr. Sylvia Grider’s The Wendish Texans as well as the 75th and 100th anniversary convention celebrations of the Texas District, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LC-MS). He began his interpretive presentations of Rev Jan Kilian in 2004, on the occasion of the Sesquicentennial Celebration the Texas Wends voyage to Texas, and since that time has made similar appearances on no less than ten occasions. He has written several family history books and has an extensive collection of many Wendish books and artifacts. Dave may be the first Wendish licensed deacon in the LC-MS. He currently serves St. John Lutheran Church, Uhland, Texas and lives in San Antonio.


MARGOT HENDRICKS nee Striening was born in Wehlau, East Prussia to Margot and Herbert Striening in 1940. She was raised in several cities in Germany and graduated from high school in Kassel. Margot aspired to become a language teacher of English and French, however did not finish her university education, instead received a translator’s certification for German/English in Heidelberg. She worked for an American Oil Company in Frankfurt/Main, where she met her husband to be, Glen. Margot came to America in May 1965, where she married Glen and reared a family of two children, Marc and Glenda. After Glen's retirement from military service in 1984, they settled in the San Antonio area, where both of them worked for many more years. As they retired Margot developed a strong interest in translations of old German documents at the Sophienburg Museum in New Braunfels, TX. It is a treasure chest of 19th century German immigration history. She was introduced to the Texas Wendish Heritage Society of Serbin near Austin TX, and has been working with Weldon Mersiovsky learning about the lives of the Wendish immigrants to Texas through translations.

JOEL MEADOR was born June 16,1943 in Corpus Christi. He and his wife, Nancy, have been living on a ranch in the Sand Hills north of Harwood, Texas for the last eleven years. His connection to the Texas Wends is through his mother's side of the family. His mom, Sidonia Meta Pampell Meador, is still functioning pretty well at the age of ninety-three and living in Buda, Texas with brother Brent and his family. Brother Brent and he enjoy speaking German with Mom when they are all together. Mom still enjoys playing dominoes and she is very capable of beating you if you are not on your toes. Her father's name was Joe Peter Pampell and her mother was Clara Pietsch Pampell.

Joel is a retired High School German teacher and has retained hs love of the language. He is a Life Member of the Society and first became involved in volunteer work for it through the request of his late first cousin, Barbara Pampell Hielscher. Somewhere along the way Weldon Mersiovsky, a very patient man, touched bases with him on translating materials from German to English, which he has been doing for a number of years. Joel's wife, Nancy, has greatly assisted the processing of the translations from his handwriting to typing, formatting and then transmitting them on her computer to Weldon in a usable format.


BARBARA GARYLE SCHNEIDER was born in 1949 in San Angelo, Texas, to Herbert and Thelma Schneider. She was raised in Iraan, Texas, and received a B.S. in Biology from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, in 1971. She studied German at Baylor and spent the summer of 1969 in Germany. In 1975, she earned from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Texas, an M.A. in Human Biological Chemistry and Genetics, and pursued research in retinal biology in the Pathology Department of Yale Medical School in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1977, she spent 9 months as a visiting scientist at the Institut de Biochimie in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 1986, she returned to Texas, and pursued doctoral studies at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. In 1989, she received a Ph.D. in Cellular and Structural Biology, and switched fields to study the etiology of gastric cancer. In 1995, she was appointed to the faculty of the Department of Pathology at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center at New Orleans and progressed in faculty rank to professor. Following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in August, 2005, she moved to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she serves as Research Professor in the Division of Gastroenterology. From childhood, she had an interest in genealogy, which prompted her to seek the location of origin of her Schneider ancestors in Saxony, in the towns of Klitten and Tauer. She first visited in 1980 (before the fall of the Berlin Wall), then again in 1990 and 2000. Work with family documents provided opportunity to develop experience in translation of handwritten German texts.

MARTIN STRAUCH - I was born in 1947 and grew up in a Sorbian Protestant family. My father was a baker and my mother helped in the business. I had 4 sisters and a brother, one sister still alive. There were some fields and a couple of goats and 2 pigs which provided an average standard of living for the time after the war. My memories of Sorbian people in America (Texas) go back to my time at school when I was about 16. In our Sorbian lessons our teacher had a tape once and on it there were Americans articulating some Sorbian words and counting from 1 to 10 in their American-English accent. Funny.

Later I became a teacher of Russian and English and working in my profession at my former school (Sorbian Extended Secondary School) I had to teach English predominantly. It helped me very much to become better in English, and learn more about the English and American-English people(s), their history, way of life and so on. When teaching English at school it had always been my aim to do it in the mother tongue of my students - in Sorbian. Because of the lack of dictionaries that might help me to combine the languages in my lessons I decided to prepare one as a source of help for my students. At my time at school it was frequently used by some Sorbian-speaking colleagues and me. Step by step the students accepted it and used it. Later I realized it being insufficient in the higher classes and I began work on an extended dictionary (English-Sorbian). It took a very long time to find someone to correct the Sorbian part in particular. I didn´t study Sorabistics. I knew that this part needed correction and completion. Finally it was published 3 or 4 years ago. One copy went to Texas with the last visitors recently.

Up to now I didn´t have any personal contact with Texans. It all began when Amy and Mark Wendland had contacted me for help here in some parishes. As far as I remember my address had been given to them by ´Domowina,´ Mr Wuschansky, I think. Later I was invited to join the folks who toured Lusatia and other European countries. Somehow I got involved into the activities of descendants of Sorbian emigrants which is all very interesting for me. And above all - those ones I got to know a little more personally turned out to be really friendly and grateful.

When receiving the first obits from Weldon Mersiovsky I couldn´t put them away although I didn´t understand many words and the context. I asked some relatives and friends but to my astonishment I was the one who had found better access to Kilian’s notes and their context than others. After reading about 10 of them I realized that there was an algorithm I could follow. But the handwritten records still provided a number of obstacles which were really hard to overcome. A great challenge, indeed. Now my Texan partners should evaluate and judge if it is acceptable. I don´t want to forget to thank you for the money you spent on the project.

Looking at the Sorbian language used by both Kilians we shouldn´t forget that it was completely different from the present way of writing. You can see that when you compare my Sorbian texts with the originals: ´sch´ has become ´š´, ´psch´ has become ´př´ and so on. In spite of that, the semantical differences to present-day Sorbian are comparatively small. I was not familiar with the speech in churches in general, consequently I had to do research to understand it. In addition, I realized that the Sorbian language I grew up with in Drehsa (Gröditz-parish) contained a number of words and phrases I met in the obits. A particular problem were (mostly German) words the Kilians used for the diseases the people died of. There are still some gaps! All in all I judge that the formal language has changed a lot but not the lexical and semantical structures. A smaller number of the records are nearly perfect and the majority contains spelling mistakes and sometimes one or two missing words. From my point of view their language shows they were both ´up to date´ in their use of Sorbian. Besides - we are confronted with the same problems as they were: the big impact of the language of the majority around: German. They had taken a number of the ´Germanisms´ to the new world where they continued to exist up to the time the Sorbian language died as a form of living communication. By the way - my two children, a daughter and a son (40 and 35), learned it and still speak it when we meet. Their mother was German and tolerant. She was a language teacher too.

It is simply joy and fun on one side and challenging on the other to give assistance and help in case I can to my ´relatives´ in America. So turn to me, I will help you.

CHRISTIAN SYMMANK was born on July 6, 1971 in Wittingen, Germany. As a child he wanted to become a paleontologist, since he saw some fossilized dinosaur's footsteps near Barkhausen near Bad Essen, Germany. Later his interests changed to astronomy and cosmology. So he studied physics in
Münster, Germany. Things often turn out different and now is working as software tester and software testing manager in Braunschweig (Brunswick), Germany, but his interest in physics is unabated.

Though his grandfather Walter Symmank was born near Bautzen, Germany and was of Sorbian descent, Christian only knew little about this part of the family and the Sorbian history and culture. He only knew two brothers and some cousins of his grandfather and began to learn more about it when visiting Bautzen and some relatives in the vicinity for the first time in 1992 after the German reunification. Then in 1997 he was found through the internet by some family researchers descending from the Texan Wends who emigrated in the 19th century. At this time he began to do some family research by himself and collected as much information as possible from American descendants about their Symank families.

In 2002 he spent some days near Austin, Texas visiting some of his e-mail contacts and the Texas Wendish Heritage Museum in Serbin.

When the Wendish Research Exchange started he as a native German speaker offered his help regarding deciphering and translating of old German letters and other documents respectively reviewing existing transliterations and translations. He hopes to be able not only to preserve the simple content of the texts, but also a little bit of the way of thinking and living in those days.

DAVID ZERSEN is President Emeritus of Concordia University Texas. He has served as a member of the LCMS clergy for 50 years. Zersen publishes frequently in areas dealing with spirituality, higher education, faith and art and has completed 20 articles/texts/translations dealing with Sorbian/Wendish matters in the U.S. Zersen counts it an honor to have been made an Honorary Wend by the TWHS. He has doctorates from Bethany Theological Seminary and Teachers College-Columbia University. He and his wife, Julie, have two children, four grandchildren, and split the year living in Austin and in Milwaukee.