 When they were later permitted to return (in some cases not until 1799), it was often to find that their lands and homes had been confiscated.These conditions led to emigration by hundreds of families to newly vacant lands in the Russian Empire in 1803–4 and again in 1808.A poignant retelling of this event based on what Goethe had personally witnessed can be found in his long poem "Hermann and Dorothea".