Immanuel Winkler

Adolf Immanuel Mathäus Winkler (June 3, 1886 in Sarata – June 18, 1932 in Winnipeg) was a pastor in Hoffnungstal (now Tsebrykove, Ukraine) and author. During World War I, Winkler worked for the rights of Germans in Russia. Life Immanuel Winkler was the first of thirteen children born to Matthaeus Winkler and his wife Elisabethe Katharina née Schwarzmann. His great-grandparents were followers of the Roman Catholic priest Ignaz Lindl. In 1822 they emigrated to Bessarabia for religious reasons. Pastor Winkler attended the school in Sarata from 1899 to 1902 and transferred for Novgorod to complete his secondary (high) school education in 1904. From 1904 to 1909 he studied theology at the Imperial University Yuriev in Dorpat. He was ordained on November 6, 1911, in the Evangelical Lutheran Church and was named pastor of the Hoffnungstal Parish and vicar in Kassel (today, Velykokomarivka) until 1918. Both parishes were in the Glückstal district near Odessa. In 1915, during World War I, young Pastor Winkler was conscripted as a military chaplain. He was sent back home after six months due to his expressed pro-German feelings. Approximately one year later, as a result of his continued German spirit and convictions, he received an order to leave Hoffnungstal and move 100 km (62 miles) to the east. This order was revoked through the intersession of a high official in Odessa. However, after a few months, shortly after his marriage to Felicia Henriette von Holmbald (daughter of real council of state (Wirklicher Staatsrat) Franz-Julius von Holmblad), he received another order to leave Hoffnungstal. This order required him to move 1500 km to the east to the city of Saratov. Here he stayed with other pastors, mostly Baltic pastors. In 1917 he was allowed to move to Kharkov where his oldest son, Bernhard, was born.