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 The Rev. Herbert Schaal is more than just a preacher from a little town in Colorado. He's a speech-maker, linguist, traveler, historian and, most importantly, a German-Russian.

Schaal was in Bismarck this weekend to speak at the 13th annual Germans from Russia Heritage Society Convention.

Schaal is a minister in Billings, Mont. of the United Church of Christ, but he hasn't always led such a normal life.

He and his wife, Doris, spent 12 years in South America serving as missionaries in Argentina, where he perfected one of the five languages he speaks fluently. It was there he became acquainted with the subject of his Bismarck speech, German-Russians living in South America.

But first, who are the German-Russians and are they Russians or Germans?
Definitely Germans, according to Schaal, who proceeded to rattle off more European and American history than many teachers might be able to.

There are two main groups of German-Russians, he said, the Volga Germans and the Black Sea Germans. Each group, and the smaller regional groups that make them up, came from different parts of Germany and each went to Russia at a different time.

The Volga Germans, also known as North Russians, left Germany about the year 1764 for Russia at the request of the Russian empress Catherine the Great, a German in the Russian aristocracy. Russia needed people to develop its large rural areas and Catherine promised her countrymen freedom from taxes and military service if they would come. The Volga Germans were made up in part of people from the Prussian and Hessian regions of Germany.

About 50 years later, the Black Sea Germans, also called the Odessa Germans or Southern Russians, came to Russia at the request of another Russian leader. They settled along the Black Sea, south of the Volga Germans. Their land in Germany had been destroyed by Napoleon's soldiers who were marching across Europe and the Germans were glad for the invitation. The Russians, however, did not keep their promises, Schaal said, and the Germans looked for new lands.

The new world beckoned to the disgruntled Germans, and some countries extended invitations similar to the Russians'. The first to go were the Odessa Germans, who began leaving for North and South America about 1870. The Volga Germans followed around 1900 with the "greatest single wave" of German-Russians to leave in one time span, Schaal said.

Some of the Germans who ended up in South America did so because they were rejected by U.S. officials at Ellis Island in New York. They had no means of returning to Russia or Germany so they traveled to Argentina and Brazil where the entrance requirements were less strict, Schaal said.

Life in the new lands was pretty much the same for the newcomers, Schaal said. After their arrival, they took to the land in the same manner they had done in Russia, forming their own towns, schools and churches. Schaal said the rural areas of South America are isolated because of lack of communication and transportation technology. He said the isolation from other ethnic groups and outside influences has kept things pretty much the same in Argentina for a long time.

"The more rural our people are the more homogenous the culture is," he said. German is still spoken and taught in the rural areas, but Schaal said the urban Germans, much like their relations in the United States, have become assimilated by the city and more involved with other peoples.

"As many as one-third to one-half of our younger people intermarry with other ethnic groups in Argentina," he said. "I foresee the time, by the year 2,000, when they will be as amalgamated as they are (in the United States)."

Schaal said he thinks the German-Russians in North America found what they were looking for, but those in the southern continent did not. As much as the Germans benefited from their travels, Schaal said the countries they ended up in benefited more.

"The real genius of the German-Russian people has always been their Christian faith, and next to that their love of the land," Schaal said. They are the predominant ethnic group in North Dakota, Schaal said, quickly adding, "What would North Dakota be without the German-Russians?"