The geographical co-ordinates of Krasna are roughly N 46 degrees 7 minutes, E 29 degrees 14 minutes
(See 3.8, Krasna and its Surroundings)

A Russian document of 1827 ¹⁾ says of the location of the colony of Krasna: The colony is located on a meadow of the Kogälnik River on the right shore. The community report of 1848 states: The Kugelnik River flows east to south. The village is centrally located in the valley and has two rows of houses. Krasna is 100 werst distant from the government city of Kischinev, 90 from Akkerman and 90 Werst from Ismail.
According to an old military map the village is 50 to 60 meters above sea level. The hills to the right and left of the Kogälnik reach an altitude of about 140 meters.

The Kogälnik (See 3.3. The Kogälnik) shaped the Krasna area through the broad valley. It established, together with the gentle hills it created, an undulating steppe landscape. The Kogälnik Valley at Krasna was about 3 kilometers wide. The land of the colony of Krasna looked like a slightly askance square and was situated left and right of the Kogälnik. The village was in the middle of the district.
See 3.4, The Perimeters of the Colony of Krasna

Above the village, the creek Antschiokrak flows into the Kogälnik. (Tarutino is located on that creek.) The creek has several ponds. Together with the ponds, the river bed of the Kogälnik and the creek bed of the Antschiokrak together cover 68 desjatines of the Krasna district. The ponds were often created artificially by creating dams with cow dung, rubble, straw and such. They served as water reservoirs for the cattle during times of drought. Without these dams, the water would have run off relatively quickly and there would have been no water in the summer. Such a dam also existed on the Kogälnik near Krasna.
Note: About dam construction also, See 3.3, The Kogälnik

The existence of water played a major role in choosing a village site. The Krasna district had no wells, so the ground water had to get used. For this purpose, the village had many individual wells and several community wells. Running water was a luxury people could not afford.
See 3.7, The Water Supply of Krasna

The village name of Krasna ²⁾) (Russian: Krasninskaja, Rumanian: Crasna) commemorates a place of a victorious battle against Napoleon.
See 3.2, The Naming of the Colony of Krasna

Krasna was located on the route Tarutino-Sarata-Akkerman, one of the most important routes of Bessarabia. Krasna was somewhat of a traffic hub, and from there routes went into every direction into the neighboring villages and beyond.

The railroad was begun in 1914 and as of 1936; Krasna had a train station, as well.
See 4.5, Traffic Infrastructure, Postal Service and Telephone

Krasna was surrounded by German colonies: Tarutino, Alt Posttal, Katzbach, Alt-Elft, Paris, Friedenstal, Neu Paris, Beresina, Klöstitz. The Bulgarian village of Ciuleni/Tschemlek was to the west and in the east was the tiny settlement of Hoffmannsfeld/Luxenburg.
See 3.8, Krasna and Surroundings

The village format of the Bessarabian colonist villages had to be stated officially in the government office at the time of its foundation. All over the country, the villages were mostly identical in terms of farm order and streets. According to dictates, Krasna was a street village, with one long street, parallel to the Kogälnik Valley.

Land was not scarce at the time of foundation and people were generous in building. The unpaved main street was straight as an arrow and 40-50 meters wide. It was typical for the village streets to end abruptly after the last house of the village and turn into open steppe land.
The German colonists were asked to plant trees and there the road and walkways were separated by acacia trees. It made the village street look like an alley. Many photographs of Bessarabia show trees ten years of age. Their predecessors had frozen and died in the extreme winter of 1928/1929.

A farm usually had a ground area of 1 desjatine, was roughly 250 meters long and 40 meters wide. The total surface area of a farm back then including the structures measured about 60 or 65 hectares.

The concept of Krasna was based on 114 farms ³⁾, which were all branching off a single village road, placed opposite each other and in equal distances. Therefore, we have to envision a road with 57 farms to the left of the street and 57 farms to the right of the street. Each farm had a 40-meter width, so this makes a length of 2.5 kilometers, and figuring the breadth of 40-50 meters, the village breadth came to 500-600 meters. This rough concept still was evident at the time of resettlement in 1940.
The village had evolved from a one street affair to a village with intersecting crossroads, as well. (See village plan below) Farms on the new streets were much smaller than the original ones, since they had been split lengthwise to accommodate the growth in population. Except for very few of them, in 1940 there were only half sized farms or smaller ones. Officially, Krasna still had 114 farms, 60 in the Upper Village and 54 in the Lower Village, although the splitting of the estates made this number actually higher.

Individual farms were numbered and these numbers were registered with the community administration. They were not house numbers, but based on the census of 1850: the ones of 1940 are mentioned in the “list of souls” of Krasna. ⁴⁾

The farms of the Krasna farmers were separated from the street by a wall, as was common in all the German villages of Bessarabia. This wall was whitewashed and painted white, giving the farm a clean appearance. Mostly, colonist homes were single-family dwellings constructed after an identical blueprint and their gables mostly always faced the street.
See 3.5, Farm and Home of the Colonists

Image 7: Women Painting the Street Wall

At the planning of a colony a large parcel of land for school and church was always earmarked in the village center. The farms were of identical sizes, therefore the village maps and plans looked orderly, giving the appearance of a chessboard. The farmhouses were always one-storied and the church and its tower dominated the village appearance.

The difference between the clean and cultivated German settlements and the ones of the Russians, Rumanians, Gypsies and Jews existed well until 1940. An essay by Wilhelm Hornung : Another world, from the lives of the Germans in Bessarabia ⁵⁾ mostly holds true for the village of Krasna.

We do not know specifically what the village looked like at the beginning. One can assume, though, that it looked fairly poor: primitive huts, dispersed widely and with the large and treeless farms just covering a fraction of the area with no walls or fences at the streets. Trees came soon, though, as they were stipulated by the Welfare Committee. The tiny crown’s huts certainly did not improve the appearance. One has to take the development to the final appearance as a progressive development. Houses were built larger and farms looked more orderly as prosperity increased and the walls were built at street level. ⁶⁾

We have a note from 1827, showing that Krasna had the following structures : ⁷⁾

• Wooden house of prayer 1
• Houses of stone 2
• Houses of woven materials 68
• Houses of unfired tile 37
• Windmills 1
• Water mills on the Kogälnik 1
• Ground mills 1

The following partial description is dated 1848. The official buildings (church, village chancery and school) were located in the center of the village.

• 1818 a prayer house of stone and thatched with reeds
• 1818 the rectory constructed of clay, 8 faden (17 meters) from the church
• 1836 a new schoolhouse built in the village center
• 1844 a storage silo built close to the school and thatched with reeds
• 1839 chancellery built in the village center

We have clues pertaining to changes in the village starting in 1860 and lasting to 1885. It was the time public buildings established, then functioned until 1940 and formed the appearance of the village decidedly.

• 1866 the community completed a parish church, replacing the old house of prayer
• 1870 a new chancellery built
• 1881 followed the building of a new rectory

⇒ For description of these buildings in detail, see below

1911 the last house from the founding era of Krasna was demolished. According to E. Ruscheinsky, it was located on the Josef Johannes Kuss property.

Step by step the village grew in pace with the expansion of the population. It is not clear exactly when each part was added.

Soon after the settlement, quarters for the land-less population had to be established. These people earned their living through a trade or in day labor at the existing farms. In the 20th century such day labor locations existed at Kilianseck on the road to Antschiokrak (in the direction Tarutino) and on the south end of the village (Hinterdorf). This part of the village was also called “Sampasui” or “City of Moscow” and was looked down upon. There, the first five houses already existed at the time of World War I. In 1924, more land was distributed among the landless and these people erected small houses, thatched with clay. Part of the community grazing lands were provided free of charge, giving the settlers the usage rights but not ownership of the land.

The existing documents give a fairly accurate image of the village approximately 15 years before the resettlement:

• Description of the village, 1929 by Josef Braun, several editions (of the newspaper) “Dakota Rundschau,” Bismarck, North Dakota, USA
• Village plan drawn by Melchior Koch, with the names of farm and home owners as of 1940 ⁸⁾) (See 7.13 Farm inhabitants of Krasna 1940)
• A list of souls, (at the time of the resettlement) by A. Leinz, combined with a village map by Herbert Ruscheinsky ⁹⁾

The village was a generous 4 kilometers long. There were several cross and parallel roads. In the words of E. Ruscheinsky: Today (1940) Krasna has six rows of houses. It means that we have added two new village streets since the settlement. Street names and the individual parts of the village are evident from the village plan below:

Image 8: Krasna, village plan

Image 9: Krasna, Middle 1930's

Image 10: Krasna Main Street Prior to World War I

Image 11: View of Krasna Main Street 1940

A few years after the foundation of Krasna, a prayer house was established there under the leadership of Father Paschkowski (1818). The community report mentions a stone building, whereas the statistical description of the Budschak of 1818 mentions a wooden structure. Regardless of this, it is generally accepted that Krasna was the first colony with its own house of worship. We do not know the details of what it looked like, but we can assume that it resembled a house, just larger and with bigger windows. The belfry made of wood was probably located a bit distant from the building. The prayer house was most likely located in what then was the village center at the spot where Markus Ternes lives now. ¹⁰⁾)
This building served the community for almost 50 years. In order to commemorate this first religious center of the community, a cross was later placed on the street wall where the altar had once been.
Back then, the farm of Markus Ternes was the center of the Catholic portion of Krasna. Part of the upper village was home to the Evangelical settlers, who left Krasna in 1825 and settled in Katzbach.

Over the years, the house of prayer had become too small and did not meet the community needs anymore. We have a cost estimate from the community of Krasna for 1858 with a petition to the Welfare Committee to permit the church repair and an addition to it. ¹¹⁾ This plan was not realized, however.

Under the leadership of Father Adam Kümowitsch, a new church was built in 1866 and located north of Main Street on the corner of Kanzleigasse/Totengasse. The community had to finance the building entirely by itself. The style was a combination of neoclassical and historical styles from the homeland of the 18th and 19th century. Fired tile and mussel chalk stone were the building materials used. (See 3.6, Building and Heating Materials)

The community also had to provide physical labor aside from the financing of the building, such as hauling freight, excavating the foundation, etc. Krasna had no quarry itself.

Bessarabia also had no notable forest, so roof beams for the new church had to come from elsewhere, as well. According to reports from the time of the construction, the most difficult task was transporting the massive center beam designated to carry the cross above the belfry, more than 140 kilometers to Krasna. ¹²⁾

The new church was a pretty and spacious building with a well-lighted church chamber and a tall tower rising well above the farmhouses of Krasna. The church was dedicated by Bishop Vinzenz Lipski on October 6, 1874, and named after the patron saint St. Joseph.

Image 12: The Church of Krasna

Image 13: Interior of the Church, Facing the Main Altar

One entered the church by the portal under the tower from the street. It was a one-room church, not a hall type church with main and side rooms. Over the main entrance was the support structure with a space for an organ.
Opposite was the main altar, to the left of it a Virgin Mary altar and a St. Joseph altar to the right.
The ceiling held large crystal chandeliers.

Image 14: View of the Balcony and Main Entrance

Image 15: On the main altar of the Krasna church was this silver altar cross

This cross was displayed on the main altar of the Krasna church. It has its own story, as Max Riehl relates: Reports from our Krasna ancestors and the inscription on the cross itself point to the fact that the altar cross of the St. Josef Church of Krasna came from Poland. It accompanied the people of Krasna for many generations and survived the move from the initial house of God to subsequent churches. The people of Krasna revered it for 125 years. It had no value as an artifact and no use as building material of any kind.
When the resettlement of the Germans from Bessarabia began in autumn of 1940, the final church service in the church of Krasna was held on September 20, 1940. In order to prevent the sacred items from being discarded, the pastor back then, Professor Schumacher, gave them to families willing to take them along on the journey out of country. My father, Eduard Riehl, took the cross. It went with us on the trek to Galatz, on the Danube ship, in the resettlement camps, at the settlement in West Prussia and in flight. During this 10-year odyssey, the cross was damaged.
When the Riehl family found a home again in Kobern on the Moselle River, Eduard Riehl gave the cross to the Saint Laurentius church there, where it found a permanent home. The Cultural Circle of the Germans from Bessarabia had it restored and documented its origin in an inscription at its foot.
See also Ernst Schäfer, Das Altarkreuz aus der St. Josefs-Kirche in Krasna, in Memories of Bessarabia, 60 years after the resettlement, 2001, page 239.

A harmonium originally provided church music. An organ was purchased and dedicated in 1906. It is not clear where it came from. Usually, Bessarabian colonies got their organs from Germany and mostly from Ludwigsburg (near Stuttgart), as in Alt Elft and Katzbach.

The church of Krasna had three church bells. The biggest one had become useless; it “sprung” at the end of the 1920’s. In 1930, the community decided to replace it and the new bell was mounted in the belfry in December of 1930. It weighed 320 kilograms. The “Dakota Rundschau” reported the following on February 13, 1931: Our new bell was brought to the church tower on December 21, 1930 and replaced the old bell there. It cost 55,000 lei. The entire population came and watched. The bell has the same sound as the old one, but a bit more refined.

The bells were also rung for call to prayer (morning and evening), fire in the village, accidents and deaths. The number of the bells ringing and their sequences were set for each situation. The house of prayer was renovated in 1930. (It was painted inside and out and decorated.) The roof was replaced in 1938 at the cost of 120,000 lei.

The church garden and the church wall were always well cared for. In 1938 Father Schumacher had 35 poplars and shrubs planted around the church, according to his own report.

The first rectory was built next to the first church in 1818. According to a letter from the Department of the Interior of December 5, 1822, it was built by the first pastor and at his own expense. This official document gives us a detailed description of the structure and the materials used to build it. It had four rooms, stood on its own foundation and had a tiled roof. The house was purchased by the community in 1821. ¹³⁾) The purchase followed a quarrel between the heirs of Father Paschkowski, who had demanded that the community pay them for the house they had inherited from the estate of the pastor.
The building was located on the property of Markus Ternes, on the same property as the first church, just further back, on the garden ditch and almost at the clay dig there. At the time of resettlement, the farm and the old rectory belonged to farmer Haag in 1940.

In 1881 a new rectory was erected and remained the spiritual center until the resettlement of the Krasna people in 1940.
The building was located left of the church (from Oberdorf) on Main Street. The church fields and the pastor’s fruit orchard were located behind the rectory. The “Dakota Rundschau” of April 17. 1931 reports from Krasna:
The storm of March 2 and 3 caused much damage. Our rectory lost half of its roof and it will cost much money to purchase new tin to replace it. It was a storm the likes of which I have never experienced before.

Image 16: Pastor Szell in Front of the Rectory, Krasna 1934

The cemetery was located on Kirchhof-Weg and Neue Strasse (also called Friedhof Strasse). There was a chapel. The cemetery was fenced in and had an iron gate at the entrance. According to Father Schumacher, the cemetery left much to be desired. He writes in his report of 1938: The only item of discontent is the cemetery. I envision it more like a park and not as the piece of unkempt property it is now. The people do not see it my way. I had hoped to raise money for a new cemetery gate when the graves were blessed, but many folks did not even come to the blessing of the graves.

The situation was similar in all or at least many of the Bessarabian villages. One can read in the chronicles of Katzbach, for instance: Our cemetery is certainly not a show case. There is no order. Graves are not located in a straight line. The dead are not buried in any kind of sequence as each person digs a grave at will.

Krasna had no cemetery gardener or such. The graves had to be dug by the relatives of the deceased.

In 1930, Father Leibham was soliciting for the creation of a memorial for the fallen of World War I, as a note in the “Dakota Rundschau” of July 4, 1930 shows: On the Ascension of Christ Day, on Thursday May 29, a procession went to the cemetery, where Father Leibham held a moving speech. He talked about the fallen of World War I and petitioned for a collection to erect a monument as many of the other villages were already doing. During this service 2,500 lei were collected. Our mayor also picked the men to go from house to house to continue the collection. This plan was never realized. Instead of it, a memorial plaque existed in the cemetery chapel, mentioning the fallen of the Russo-Japanese war of 1905.

Image 17: The Cemetery of Krasna

A school was built in the village center in 1836 (from the north to the right of the church on Main Street). It was 22 meters long and 8 meters wide. Aside from the classrooms, there were also the teachers’ quarters. During the Rumanian time it served as a girl school and had three classrooms.

Image 18: The old school, built in 1836, later the girls' school.

Beginning in 1914, Krasna had a second school. It was built by the Semstwo in 1914 and cost 20,000 rubels, of which the community of Krasna paid 8,000. The village also did all the carrying of loads. This school office functioned as a boys’ school and had four classrooms. The building also had teachers’ quarters. Called a “Semstwo School,” it was located behind the church and could be accessed from Totengasse, Häfnersweg and Tschagurgasse.

Image 19: Boys’ School in Krasna

Village administration during the first few decades had happened mostly in the form of community assemblies held in a barn on the Rochus Fähnrich farm, next to the Tschagurgasse. A community chancellery was built in the village center in 1839. It was located on what later became the farm of the Melchior Ruscheinsky family. The chancery then was located next to the parish rectory, still on Markus Ternes property back then. Compared to the usual homes, the first chancery was truly a stately building.

At the beginning of the 1860s the building no longer met the community requirements, as a community decree of 1863 shows:

• Requesting permission to build a new chancellery
• Requesting permission to finance part of the building

The new chancellery was built at the beginning of the 1870’s. The new building was diagonally located from the rectory at the corner of Hauptstrasse/Kanzleigasse. It was a spacious building with quarters for a district secretary. The building was both district and village chancellery. (See 4.8, The Administration) The building served its purpose for seventy years, until the Resettlement. During the Rumanian Era, it was called Primaria.

A complete renovation happened in 1929. The “Dakota Rundschau” announced in its December 6, 1929, issue: The renovation of our chancery will exceed the initial projections of cost at a total of 80,000 lei. It will provide a tiled roof, new windows and doors, as well as an anteroom. Thus it will look beautiful.

The yard of the chancellery also housed the fire fighting equipment, a large hose and a small hose with hand pumps and a field wagon with full water barrels.

Image 20: The Chancellery of Krasna

Father Schumacher realized right after his induction as a pastor in the spring of 1936, that it was an utmost necessity to have a cultural place for the community. He wrote: …His Excellency, the Bishop, expressly asked me to develop youth activities. These required a structure, since it was not possible to assemble in the rectory with its limited space. His Excellency agreed that I should procure a community hall, a rectory home of sorts, to have space for assemblies…

He began at once to plan such a structure, but faced many hurdles and obstacles in the process of working with the government agencies as well as convincing his congregation of the need for such a building.

Image 21: Krasna Citizens Digging the Foundation for Unsere Heim (Our Home)

The Krasna citizens built the cultural center themselves within the year and it became the pride of the community. Here, the youths and music groups would assemble, discussions were held and theater and music events presented. The building was located in the Totengasse behind the church.

Eduard Ruscheinsky reports about the reasons for the building and the difficulties to overcome: ¹⁴⁾ As the concern about preserving our native tongue in the old home land became acute, what with the Romanization efforts of the Rumanian government of Bessarabia, especially through cultural minister Angelseku, the suggestions of professor Schumacher, a German citizen, were taken seriously and the building of a German Cultural Center was initiated.
It was called “Unser Heim” (Our Home). The Rumanians made it very difficult. Initially, they refused to renew Father Wilhelm Schumacher’s permit to remain in country. It still was completed and remained of great cultural importance for Krasna. It was a place to cultivate the German colonist culture. Here, the young adults gathered and occasionally presented German theater, much to the enthusiastic observation of the community. Here, German song was also cultivated.

Image 22: Bertus Riehl, Nicknamed “Scheck” Opens the Keg to Celebrate the Laying of the Cornerstone for the New “Home” in 1936.

The German newspaper of Bessarabia reports on December 20, 1936 about the progress on the home, its purpose and the appearance ….we have roofed our grand and beautiful home now – our Catholic home…and are working on the interior of it. By spring it will get painted and the flooring installed. Let me outline the purpose and extent of this home. The Catholic home of Krasna is scheduled as an educational center for our youth and a cultural preservation center for us all. It is 32 meters long, 12 meters wide and has a gable height of 10 meters. The Christ symbol is walled into the gable as admonishment to us people, to put God above all and as a battle sign against Communism. There is a reception area behind the balconied entryway and a secretariat next to it. Then there are the exercise room, a gallery, a hall and a stage. Above the stage is an apartment for visiting guests…

The house was dedicated on December 26, 1938. The actual ceremony took place in the morning right after the church service with many women, men and especially all of the helpers.

The official dedication of the home happened at the same evening on a large and festive scale with many out of town guests attending.
See 10.2, Reports about Life in Krasna

Image 23: Association Home of Krasna (Unsere Heim)

In order to prepare for the frequent drought periods, the colonists were obligated to establish supply warehouses for grain. Krasna built such a facility in 1844, built of stone and thatches with reeds. It was located close to the school house (later the girls’ school). It is unclear when it was either demolished or put to other uses.
See 6.4, Community Tasks/Self Help Organizations

According to a report by Father Keller, there was a windmill in Krasna in 1912 and it still existed in 1940 (at the end of the village in the Beresina direction on the Kogälnik side). It probably looked similar to this mill in the photo, the mill of Katzbach.

Gottlieb Leinz and Hieronymus Ternes built a steam mill in 1895. It was located in the Mühlengasse (See village plan)
See 4.4, The Guilds, Trades and Bank Management of Krasna

Image 25: The Krasna Mill 1930, the Flat Annex Housed the Oil Mill

The Association Store (Community Store) was located at the corner of Hauptstrassse and Ladengassee. It was built just before World War I. See 4.4, Guilds/Trade/Bank Management (Commerce) in Krasna

Image 26: The Community Store (Lafke)

There was a community well in the Unterdorf; a new one was built in 1936 in front of the chancellery.
See 3.7, The Water Supply of Krasna

There were eight standing crosses like the one depicted below. They were located all around the village on roads and paths. They were the destinations of processions on the so-called Pleading (Rogation) Days. Eduard Ruscheinsky ¹⁵⁾ explains: On the feast day of Saint Markus, April 25, and on the other three pleading (rogation) days, pleading processions were organized with these village and field crosses as their destinations. There, the priest would conduct the church rituals. After visiting several crosses, the procession returned to the church in the same order in which it had departed. The crosses in the village center and at the other end of the village were visited on the other pleading days.

Image 27: Stand cross on the spot

The depicted standing cross (on a small hill facing Tarutino, located a few 100 meters outside of the village) according to word of mouth is standing at the location where the first settlers in 1814/1815 built their sod houses. The groundwater level there would have been reached only by very deep wells; the village was moved closer to the river.

The villages of Bessarabia had no electrical power, although in the final years there had been talk of it. Until the Resettlement, power installations had not happened. Tarutino had power produced by local generating plants and similar plants were planned for Krasna, for instance for the parish.
Petroleum lamps and candlelight were the only light sources. Any electricity generated locally was generated by steam engines heated with straw and later diesel generating plants.
Krasna had no street lighting. At night the village was completely dark, since petroleum lamps only sparsely lighted the houses inside.

One of the relatively few stone bridges across the Kogälnik was located in Krasna. It was built in 1876. When plans were made for a road expansion from Krasna to Tarutino (1930), it was found that the bridge could remain in use barring some minor repairs.
The other bridge in Krasna, toward Beresina, was of wood.

All the photos up to now show Krasna in the summer. As in 1.1, Bessarabian winters, including Krasna, were often harsh. There was much snow. The following photographs show a typical winter day where snow removal was the most urgent task for the villagers. There were no snowplows or similar equipment.

Image 28:

Image 29:

One can conclude that Krasna was a well laid-out village with most of the buildings clean and solid. The greenery of the alley trees and from the fruit orchards made a nice contrast to the surrounding steppe land. Krasna was recognizable as a German village from afar.