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My personal research interest for Karlswalde

by Guido Schulz

 

My name is Guido Schulz. I was born in Germany in 1961 the year the Berlin wall was built which divided my country into two parts. My occupation is TV & Radio journalist. I am living in Berlin, the capital city of Germany. I will describe the reason for my interest in an almost forgotten location, the former village of Karlswalde, Volhynia.

In the course of doing my job as a reporter in the conflict-region of South-East Europe, I had heard of and worked on a lot of personal stories. Back home it occured to me that I had told so many people about the history of others, and I knew very little of my own family history. That was the beginning of the research for my ancestors. I quickly learned that progress would be slow, because of the absence of churchbooks, difficulties with archives, especially in Ukraine and Russia. I thought, it might be a good idea to create a forum for researchers with similiar interests, and to make it available to everyone. The result is the Karlswalde web pages located at http://www.karlswalde.de.tf

According to a handwritten notice of my grandmother, my great-grandparents came from the Ostrog area. My great-grandfather Efraim Schulz was born 28 January 1858 in Karlswald, my great-grandmother Hulda Pahl (Pael?) came from Fuerstendorf. She was born 2 August 1861. As far as we know, this Schulz-family lived most of the time in Pulin, about 40 km west of Shitomir. An oral legend is, that they owned a lot of forest and especially meadow and a little lake or pond. They had many horses and there was a groom employed by them, who was jewish. The family was very musical, owned a piano, a harp, a bandoneon, also guitars, balalaikas and other string instruments. (A bandoneon is a kind of square or hexagon button-keyed accordion and a balalaika is a typical Russian three-stringed instrument resembling a guitar)

My grandfather Oskar Walter Schulz was born 26 October, 1887 or 1889 in Pulin. During World War I he became a soldier in the Russian Army and was possibly in the battle of Tannenberg. He was then captured by German troops. He later moved to Germany and married. The names of my grandfather´s brothers and sisters from Pulin are remembered as Arthur, Viktor and Olga. There was up to 8 children in the family. Also possible names are Hermann or Nikolaus. At least one of them emigrated to America and married. Names, time and location are not known. Another oral legend is that the woman he had married was a factory owners daughter who had surgery and some kind of an artificial nose.

The very last letter written by family members or neighbours, reached my grandfather at his new home in Germany in the 1930s. The information within this letter was, that the Russian authorities had deported his parents Efraim and Hulda Schulz (and maybe other family members) to Orenburg, in the Ural region in Siberia. His parents had died there shortly after their arrival. In this letter, my grandfather Oskar Schulz was requested to write back no more, because of the repressions against Germans. Until today it is not known what really happend to them and other family members, if some did survive or not.

Today the Schulz-family is of Lutheran religion, but it seems also to be possible, that my great-grandparents were baptists. I would be happy to hear of any possible information any of you may have on them.

Wishing you succes in your family research.

Guido Schulz

Berlin / Germany

(...additionally here are some pics of my actually most important personal family news...)
My son Oskar was born September, 7. >>> - pic1 - pic2 - pic3 - pic4 - pic5
My wedding with Judith took place August, 17. >>>- pic6

 

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