This is the third part of an essay on the Schulz Clock by Liza Kroeger that we are publishing in instalments. Read the introduction here, the first instalment here, and the second instalment here.

Peter Schulz was not yet twenty-two when he married Anna Zacharias. By then, he was already being groomed to one day take over the helm of the family business, D.B. Schulz & Heirs. Anna and Peter’s bond did not come as a surprise. Despite the forty-five-kilometre distance between Zachariasfeld and Osterwick––not a negligible distance in nineteenth-century Russia––the Zacharias and the Schulz families were close, as evidenced by another wedding just a few months earlier between Anna’s brother, Isaak Zacharias, and Peter’s sister, Katharina Schulz. Though not quite a double wedding Anna and Peter’s marriage on June 10, 1893 served to further entwine these two prosperous families. Both weddings were grand affairs, it’s said, going on for days. Typically, the night before the wedding the younger generation of guests would organise a Polterabend, a fun-loving, noisy event as the German word poltern––literally meaning, to make a great racket––aptly describes. Some worthless china would ceremoniously be smashed for, as the German saying goes ––Scherben bringen Glück––‘shards bring luck’. It was on these evenings that the wedding gifts were presented to the bride and groom. And that would have been the day the Schulz clock entered the lives of my great-grandmother and great-grandfather––a symbol of a bond so strong that through all life’s vicissitudes Anna would never again part with it.

“And so, a love story began, not only between Anna and Peter, but the story of a bond between two families, which would go on for generations well after coming to Canada. And it would be the boy, Peter Schulz, Jr., at the front right, who decades later would pass on the Schulz clock to my father in a country I’m sure Peter knew little, if anything, about then.”

And the arc of time between then and that dusty Albertan summer day on which the clock was placed in the trunk of our family car would span everything humans could possibly fathom––and even the unfathomable––from the prosperity and happiness I see in the photos of my ancestors in those early days to the horrors and deprivations I know they suffered in the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Ukrainian Civil War, the epidemics and famine, Stalinism, the Great Purge, and ultimately Europe’s darkest tragedy, the Second World War. Little did they know it, but the place my ancestors called home was at the very heart of what Yale historian Timothy Snyder would come to call the ‘Bloodlands.’

In all the twists and turns inherent to family histories, my own has its share. The Schulz clock can attest to that. Commissioned in 1893, it could have been made by any one of the three Kroeger brothers you see in the upper part of this group portrait, (below), taken on the occasion of my great-aunt Sara’s birthday in 1903. At the time of the clock’s making, all three Kroegers would have been trained and working with their father, the clockmaker David Abraham Kroeger (1829–1909) in his clockmaking business in Rosenthal, Chortitza Colony. Possibly David, Sr. himself laid hands on what would come to be known as the Schulz clock. It wasn’t until much later that the three brothers went their separate ways in their business endeavours.

Top row: Johann Kroeger, far left, (1863–194?), David Kroeger, Jr., second from left, (1860–1920), Abram Kroeger, fourth from left, (1862–1920). Photo taken 1903.

Sadly, both David, Jr. and Abram, along with nine others in the extended Kroeger family would perish in the typhus epidemic that struck in 1919–1920. So, would Helene Koop Kroeger (1895–1920), my grandfather Peter Kroeger’s first wife. Helene had been best friends with another ancestor of mine, Anna Schulz, the eldest daughter of Anna Zacharias and Peter Schulz, and the one you see second to left in the back row of the cousins’ shot. And so, it came to pass that the young widower Peter took my grandmother as his second wife and the stories of the Zachariases and the Schulzes now became entwined with that of the Kroegers.

Life was good to Anna and Peter Schulz––at first. The newlyweds moved into Peter’s family home built in the late 1800s by his father, Dietrich B. Schulz, and the family grew and prospered. Of nine children, seven would grow to become adults.

I found this account by Anna Schulz Kroeger, my grandmother (the oldest in the photo of Anna and Peter’s children), among my father’s notes: “We had wonderful celebrations at Christmas as well as in summertime. With the farming at Zachariasfeld came a lot of fruit and delicacies such as fish and crayfish from their cultured pond. And, in Osterwick, when I was growing up, my brother Isaak and I were each given a pony with a smaller-scaled carriage. Everything was just like a carriage for adults only smaller. Anton, the coachman, took care of the ponies along with the other horses, but Isaak and I were allowed to take the pony-and-carriages into town. My cousins at Zachariasfeld had pony-drawn carriages much like ours.”

Life for the well-off in the Mennonite settlements before the First World War was golden. Travel in Russia and foreign lands was unrestricted. Many young men studied abroad, including Peter’s younger brother Jakob as well as the Koop brothers who partnered with Peter in the management of D. B. Schulz & Heirs. They brought back with them not only new and more sophisticated technical and scientific knowledge but also an extroverted lifestyle with much socialising, mobility and communication. Motorcars and telephones were changing things. In 1913, the Schulz enterprise would acquire a ‘Model-T’ Ford.

In fact, life was so good, Anna and Peter found time to holiday with friends in the Crimea––much like going to the Hamptons, if you live in New York today. And plans were soon laid to build a larger residence. Construction on Anna and Peter’s second home began in 1912.

Residence of Peter and Anna Schulz, Osterwick, 1914. This residence was built between 1912 and 1914 by Peter D. Schulz, then head of the Schulz factory known as D. B. Schulz & Erben (D. B. Schulz & Heirs). …The house had hot water heating, r… — Residence of Peter and Anna Schulz, Osterwick, 1914. This residence was built between 1912 and 1914 by Peter D. Schulz, then head of the Schulz factory known as D. B. Schulz & Erben (D. B. Schulz & Heirs). …The house had hot water heating, running water and water closets. It also had electric lights powered by the factory’s steam-powered generator. The main floor included a kitchen, laundry and servants’ quarters.
A large veranda faced the yard. The second floor contained a large hall, with a balcony facing the front. The exterior walls, constructed of locally produced brick, show elaborate detailing, including alternating peaked and flat arched treatments over the window that parapet above the second floor has an arched section at the centre, similar to the municipal building (volost) in Chortitza. At the rear is a small carriage house, also with fine brick detailing.
– From “Building on the Past”, 2004, p. 171, Rudy Friesen

Life was only going to get better, wasn’t it? Certainly, the Schulzes had all the riches to show for it. The blood, sweat and tears of their fathers––and their mothers––were the foundations of each family’s prosperity. And now this generation was working just as hard, just as diligently and just as relentlessly to keep it and grow it. They had earned this.

Or had they earned their wealth and comfort? Not all of their Mennonite brethren may have thought so. Not everyone considered affluence a sign of God’s blessing. And most certainly none of the followers of the lurking Russian Revolution would see it that way.

Part Three – A Love Story Begins

Or had they earned their wealth and comfort? Not all of their Mennonite brethren may have thought so. Not everyone considered affluence a sign of God’s blessing. And most certainly none of the followers of the lurking Russian Revolution would see it that way.