According to Sergey Tereshin the Walter church was (I think she meant to say "is") about 19 meters high. It is known that the construction plan for it was made by local craftsmen Jakob Maar and Jakob Schessler, and that the technical side of the project and its control was by the architect company of Heinrich Devendrus from Riga, Latvia.

The tower used to have 5 bells. One of the peculiarities of the church was the fact that inside the building sitting benches were installed, what was somehow unusual for a typical Volga German church.

Last fall Oksana was on the site in Walter and Rothammel as a member of a field research team from her school. On her trip to the Volga villages she was joined by her grandfather Erik. For him it was the first time since the time of the Deportation that he visited Walter.

Regards,

Tanja

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Dear Mary,

There are some new photos of Walter and Walter families on that Russian website on the history of the Volga Germans.
Oksana Dorn of Russia have given permission for these old pictures to appear on the site.
There are photos of individuals:
i) Schessler (or Schoessler?) family in Walter in 1912
On the photo Johannes Schessler with wife and children. The girl in the middle is Lidia, Johannes´s youngest daughter and Oksana´s greatgrandmother.
Johannes is said to have owned a shop and a corn storage house (=a granary?) in Walter. He was defranchised by the Soviets in 1920 (?) and sent to Siberia where he died soon afterwards.

ii) Christian Wendelev (=Wendelin?) Dorn and Maria Katharina Dorn, Walter, 1910/1915
These are the parents of Eduard Dorn,b.1904, greatgrandfather of Oksana Dorn

Christian had owned a carpenter´s shop in Walter, was defranchised by the Soviets and sent off to Siberia. Due to his advanced age, he died on the way there.

iii) pictures of houses in Walter in the 1930s

and a photo of the church in Walter in the late 1920s:

Do you have any questions you would like to ask Oksana? I have her email address.

Tanja

(i)

(ii)

(iii)

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Additional Photos - Names Unknown