Alexander Aberg (above) and Georg Lurich were Baltic Germans who were well known in pre-World War I wrestling circles, touring the world together. Caught up in the chaos of the Russian Revolution, they died of disease within weeks of each other in Southern Russia while trying to get to the West.
The townspeople buried them together in the same grave in a German cemetery.
Wrong! They were native Estonians not Germans.
ReplyDeleteYou are correct. Lurich's family changed his name to a Germanized version to get him into a better school. Aberg is a Swedish name, but most biographers describe our guy as Estonian.
DeleteThe Baltic States were under various influences and foreign rule in their histories. At one time Tallinn and Riga were part of the Hanseatic League of cities, another time Sweden ruled over Estonia and a part of Latvia (1563-1721), and later the Baltic States were part of Imperial Russia (1721-1918).German immigrants were brought in to improve agriculture and expand commerce and industry by the tsars. Both Swedes and Germans intermarried with Estonians.
ReplyDeleteEuropean nations are not as homogenized as we think, many of them were melting pots long before America came along….:)