Ute Schmidt, author of “Bessarabia: German Colonists on the Black Sea,” will visit North Dakota in July. She is a scheduled keynote speaker and workshop presenter at the 42nd Germans from Russia Heritage Society International Convention at the Ramkota Hotel in Bismarck, N.D., July 18-22.

Schmidt also will autograph the book, which was translated from German to English by Mercer, N.D., native James T. Gessele and published in 2011 by the NDSU Libraries’ Germans from Russia Heritage Collection. Schmidt is a university lecturer at the Institute for Political and Social Sciences at the Free University of Berlin and is project manager at the institute’s research coalition.

While in North Dakota, Schmidt also will visit the NDSU Libraries’ Germans from Russia Heritage Collection and the Emily P. Reynolds Historic Costume Collection July 16. Schmidt and her husband, Ulrich Baehr, an artist in Berlin, also will travel with Michael Miller, director of the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, July 17 to visit German-Russian communities in south central North Dakota, including Kulm, Wishek and Strasburg.

Schmidt has made many research trips to visit the former Bessarabian German villages in Ukraine and Moldova.

To learn more or purchase a copy of “Bessarabia: German Colonists on the Black Sea,” visit http://library.ndsu.edu/grhc/order/general/bessarabia.html.

For further information about Schmidt’s visit, contact Miller at 1-8416 or michael.miller@ndsu.edu. For further information about the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, go to www.ndsu.edu/grhc.

NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.