Germans first appeared in the Nizhny Novgorod region in the 16th century. On 4 September 1505, during the reign of Ivan III (Ivan Vasilyevich), Makhmet-Amin brought his army — numbering, according to some sources, up to 40,000 Tatars and 20,000 Nogais — to Nizhny Novgorod. According to legend, one of the Russians conceived the idea that captive "fiery Lithuanian riflemen, called zholnyryane," could be offered the chance to defend Nizhny Novgorod using their own cannons and shells, which only these military prisoners knew how to handle. They had already languished in captivity for five years, buried alive in pits. About three hundred of them remained, twelve of them commanders. The valiant governor Khabar Simsky promised them all freedom and the chance to return home if they helped repel Akhmed-Amin.
...Cannons were wheeled onto the walls of the Tver citadel and aimed at the enemy camp. Shots rang out, red-hot cannonballs flew, "they rose up like flocks of birds," in the chronicler's words; the Nogais and Kazan forces retreated. Thus "the zholnyryane, with their fiery shooting, saved the city from capture and delivered the people from the sword and from captivity."
Legend has it that the Lithuanians were freed and richly rewarded: Governor Simsky kept his promise. Some of the Lithuanians returned home, while others remained in Nizhny Novgorod of their own free will forever, settling on the bank of the Volga, on streets collectively known as the Panskie (Lord's) streets. Livonians, resettled from Dorpat by Ivan IV, later settled there as well: Germans, Swedes, and Dutch, who had their own Lutheran church. The Panskie streets connected to the Pechersky settlement, and to the upper embankment via Korovy Syezd. According to tradition, not far from the Lutheran church in the Pechersky settlement there was an Orthodox church of St. Paraskeva. The "Cadastral Book" attests that "beyond the old stockade, from the church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, beneath the Otkos, along the bank of the Volga River toward the Pechersky Monastery, there is a settlement of Nizhny Novgorod Germans and Lithuanians."
Later, in the 19th century, architects P. Gotman and I. Yefimov designed a street in the upper part of the city named German Street, which was renamed Slavyanskaya Street in 1914.
There was never a large influx of German population into the Nizhny Novgorod region. And although the Nizhny Novgorod Germans did have territorial ("a settlement of Nizhny Novgorod Germans and Lithuanians"), confessional (the freedom to practice their own worship), and economic (the Germans were engaged chiefly in distilling spirits and brewing beer, and served in the military) distinctness, the Nizhny Novgorod German community nonetheless never gained the status of a colony.
In the Nizhny Novgorod land, on the contrary, much favored the cultural assimilation of the Germans. Their life passed in close proximity to other ethnic groups, who showed sufficient tolerance and an absence of cruelty in their attitude toward foreigners. Moreover, the later changes in the position of colonists elsewhere did not affect the Nizhny Novgorod German community, whose members' lives remained relatively peaceful right up until the early 20th century.
From the book: "Germans in the History and Culture of the Nizhny Novgorod Region," — Nizhny Novgorod, 2008