By SARAH MATTHEWS

A history book featuring Wimmera families hailing from an ancient European ethnic group is now available in Horsham.

Ruth Walter and Karen Geurts spent four years researching, writing and producing, ‘The Rentsch Family in Australia – 1851-2020’.

They are direct descendants of Johann Rentsch and his wife Maria, who emigrated to Australia from Saxony, Germany, in 1851.

Mrs Walter, nee Rentsch, and Mrs Geurts, nee Herrmann, hail from Hamilton and live in Adelaide.

They visited the Wimmera last week while launching their labour of love.

Mrs Walter, who edited the book, said she, Mrs Geurts and a committee of family descendants collated the information, which included family trees, newspaper articles, anecdotes, photographs and stories. 

“Two grand-daughters of the original settlers married two Mibus brothers in the 1880s and they started purchasing land around Katyil,” she said.

“They became quite well-known in the district. 

“There are many other descendants, some around Natimuk and Horsham – there are many descendants still living in the Wimmera.”

Mrs Geurts said several members of Hamilton’s Lutheran community had written family history books, but the Rentsch book was the first featuring Wendish people. 

“The Rentch family is from a small ethnic group called the Wends, so it’s not your Prussian-German descent like a lot of your other German families,” she said.

The Wends are a Slavic race who hail from Lusatia, an area in the western part of Germany, now mostly located in the modern-day land of Saxony. 

“When I was young, we thought a lot of these people who we now know come from Wendish ancestry were from German-Prussian ancestry – they were just integrated into the German-Lutheran community,” Mrs Geurts said.

“There was a pastor who did research and printed an article in the 1970s, he discovered half the people I grew up with in the Lutheran community come from Wendish background.

“Nobody in my generation realised it.”

Mrs Walter, on the other hand, grew up listening to her father speak of their family heritage.

“My father was very proud of the fact we were from a Wendish background,” she said. 

“In the social structure in Saxony in the time in Europe, the Wends were considered peasants because they couldn’t own land, but they were tenant farmers for the Germanic people.

“They became very successful, because when they came to Australia, they actually had capital to buy land.

“Although they were classed as peasants, they were well educated. 

“They weren’t poverty stricken, they were people of means, but because of the social order in Europe at the time, that was their classification.

“Because they had capital they could buy land and they were able to establish themselves quite quickly.” 

Mrs Walter said she enjoyed learning more about her family’s heritage. 

“There is a Wendish society in Melbourne, so people have become more aware of this ethnic group, which had its own language and its own customs,” she said.

“When doing the research, I connected with a museum in Saxony in Germany, because nobody in Australia speaks the language anymore, or understands the written word.

“It’s an interesting ethnic group that still exists in south-east Germany and it’s been very researched now, because people are aware if people lose their language, they lose the history and the culture. There are chapters in the beginning of our book explaining Wendish ancestry – who they were and what was different about them from German people.”

The Rentsch Family in Australia, 1851-2020 is available from Jacob’s Well Book Shop in Horsham.

People need to order the book via a form available at the shop. 

Mrs Walter said people could call Monica Rentsch on 0438 735 239 for more information about the family. 

The entire May 5, 2021 edition of The Weekly Advertiser is available online. READ IT HERE!