Hymnbook, 1912
Mellita Klein, née Kehrer, was born in 1928 in Marienfeld, a village in present-day Moldova. Her parents ran a farm, like many other Germans in the area. In 1940, the then Soviet Union issued an ultimatum to Romania, demanding the cession of Bessarabia. Mellita’s family decided to participate in the NS resettlement program “Home to the Reich”. They spent a year in the resettlement camp Eschelbach in Austria. After passing through the transit camp Litzmannstadt, the Kehrers moved at the end of 1941 to a previously expropriated farm in Tinwalde, in present-day Poland. In 1945, as the front line drew closer, Mellita fled from her boarding school near Danzig to the Hela Peninsula. From there, she continued to Copenhagen in Denmark. It wasn’t until late 1946 that she learned about her family’s fate and moved a year later to her mother in Schwülper, Niedersachsen. There, she married Helmut Klein in 1951 and had a daughter in the same year. Mellita Klein still lives in Schwülper today. On November 29, 1813, the Russian Emperor Tsar Alexander I issued a manifesto promising privileges to the German settlers in Bessarabia. The area, which today largely belongs to the Republic of Moldova, changed ownership after the Russo-Turkish War from 1806 to 1812. The colonists were promised land grants, interest-free loans, tax exemption for ten years, self-governance, freedom of religion, and exemption from military service. After the fall of the Russian Empire, Bessarabia became part of the Kingdom of Romania. In 1940, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum to Romania, after which Bessarabia was surrendered without a fight. Before that, nearly the entire Bessarabian German population – about 93,000 people – emigrated as so-called “contract resettlers”. The church hymn book “Spiritual Song Collection for the Glory of God” was written by Pastor Philipp Friedrich Hiller (1699-1769), a representative of Württemberg Pietism, in 1762.
