An older contemporary of the present writer’s who was a scion of one of the families of the ci-devant Baltic German landed aristocracy had heard, as a child, his father tell a story that is historically significant just by reason of its triviality. Some time about three-quarters of the way through the nineteenth century of the Christian Era, this Baltic Baron was travelling out of an Orthodox Christian Great Russia into the Protestant Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire in the company of one or two native Russian nobles. At the provincial boundary they changed carriages (they were travelling by road), and, as they were climbing into the Baltic carriage that had been awaiting them, the coachman happened to take out his handkerchief and blow his nose. The boyars, who were visiting the Baltic provinces for the first time, had been expecting surprises, but at this first exhibition of Baltic “politeness” they were overwhelmed. “Well,” they exclaimed to their Baltic host, “What a country! Even a coachman here has a handkerchief! Why, this is Europe!”
Baltic Germans of Estonia and Latvia, Russian provinces in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
A Study of History, Vol IX, OUP, 1954 (footnote)
July 27 2008 at 9:49 pm
From Wikipedia: “. . . many Baltic Germans felt obliged to depart for Germany, which was as foreign to them as any other country, bar the language they spoke.”
I used to know some of them while a child in Germany, and they spoke German with a distinct regional accent, different even from adjoining East Prussia.
July 27 2008 at 10:19 pm
Thanks. I was wondering whether they were similar to the East Prussians. I have a post based on one of yours in mind, which I keep postponing. Called Rosso pompeiano.