It was often the custom of the German colonists who settled along the Volga River to name their villages after the leader of their group. This appears to be the case with Kratzke. Hattie Plum Williams records that a beltmaker by the name of Kratzky was the Vorsteher (leader, similar to a mayor) of his colony. Lacking further documentation, it cannot be proved that this man is the same one after whom the colony of Kratzke was named, but it is probable. Dr. Williams later recounts an incident involving this same man named Kratzky. She makes note of a story told by Christian Gottlob Züge about when Tsarina Catherine II visited the colonists after they had arrived in the Russian port of Oranienbaum, not far from St. Petersburg, where they were awaiting transport to the Volga area. All of the colonists were evidently lined up and the Empress “stopped for a moment before Kratzky who stood at our head and asked about his fatherland, its business, and similar other things, but Kratzky answered only hesitatingly. When she started away, she held out her hand to him for a kiss, but Kratzky either did not understand this or he did not have courage enough to take advantage of this permission from the condescending Empress.” A family named Kratzke does not appear in any of the records thus far uncovered concerning the colony of Kratzke. However, on the 1798 Census for the colony of Katharinenstadt, there is an Adam Kratzke (age 75). He is identified by this same census as having been originally from the colony of Dietel. Since Dietel is the head of the parish to which the colony of Kratzke belongs, it is possible that this Adam Kratzke, who in 1767 would have been 44 years old, could have been the leader after whom the colony was named. Kratzke was the name by which the colonists themselves referred to their village. [When listening to a native German saying the name of the village, it sounds more like Gratzka.] As with most of the Volga German colonies, each one also had an official Russian name. Kratzke’s official Russian name transliterated into English was Pochinnaya. Transliterated into German, the name is spelled Potschinnaja. In North America, the spellings of these two names can be found in a variety of additional forms: Kratzka, Gratzka, Gratzke, Podtschinnaja, Pochinaja, etc.
Sources: Rye, Richard, trans. Description of the Saratov Colony of Katharinenstadt also known as Baronsk. Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1995. Williams, Hattie Plum. The Czar’s Germans: With Particular Reference to the Volga Germans. Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1975.
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Last Update 24 May 2000