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Caucasus Germans (German: Kaukasiendeutsche) are part of the German minority in Russia and the Soviet Union. They migrated to the Caucasus largely in the first half of the 19th century and settled in the North Caucasus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and in the Kars region (present-day Turkey). In 1941, the majority of them were subject to deportation to Central Asia and Siberia during the Stalinist population transfer in the Soviet Union.

History in the North Caucasus

The end of the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) ensured Russia's expansion into the Caucasus and created a need in populating these lands with Russian subjects in order to hasten its exploration. In the late 18th century the government permitted families of Volga Germans to settle in Kuban. However poor infrastructure, lack of organization of the officials responsible for the settlement, and the refusal of the military personnel to have these lands populated by non-Russians were an obstacle to steady and constant migration of the Germans. By the late 1840s there were 5 German colonies in the North Caucasus. The migration waves (especially to Don Voisko Province) grew beginning in the second half of the 19th century with the capitalist influence on farming in Russia. Germans would immigrate not only from the regions adjacent to the Volga River but also from the Black Sea region and Germany. By the time of the October Revolution, there were over 200 German colonies in the North Caucasus; of those over 100 were in Rostov Oblast, 60 in Stavropol Krai and around 20 in Krasnodar Krai. In 1942 more than 160,000 Germans were deported from these entities as well as from elsewhere in the North Caucasus and the Don region (Kabardino-Balkaria, Kalmykia, North Ossetia, Dagestan, and Checheno-Ingushetia).

The majority of the Germans of this region adhered to various branches of Protestantism, most commonly Lutheranism, Mennonitism and Baptism. Roman Catholics formed a minority and lived in 6 colonies.

History in Georgia

In 1815, while participating in the Congress of Vienna, Russian emperor Alexander I visited Stuttgart, a city in his mother's native Kingdom of Würtemberg. Upon witnessing the oppression that local peasants were undergoing either due to belonging to different Protestant sects or to their participation in separatist movements, he arranged for their settlement in Tiflis suburbs in order to form agricultural colonies. On September 21 1818 the first German settlement in the South Caucasus, Marienfeld, was established by a group of Swabian Germans. Two months later another group of colonists founded another settlement on the bank of the Asureti River and named it Elisabethtal, after the Emperor's wife Elisabeth Alexeievna. Within the next year 5 more colonies were established: New Tiflis (now part of Tbilisi), Alexandersdorf, Petersdorf and Katharinenfeld. Three more colonies were founded in Abkhazia: Neudorf, Gnadenberg and Lindau.

From 1906 to 1922 Kurt von Kutschenbach published the German-language newspaper Kaukasische Post, that called itself the "only German newspaper in the Caucasus". Editor-in-chief was the writer and journalist Arthur Leist.

In the later years the number of German colonies increased; by 1918 Germans lived in over 20 towns. Most of them had German names and were renamed between the 1920s and the 1940s. By the time of the deportation there were more than 24,000 Germans living in Georgia.

History in Azerbaijan

In the winter of 1818–1819 194 Swabian German families arrived to Elisabethpol (official name for Ganja in 1805–1918) from Tiflis. They were granted land 6 kilometres to the west of the city and founded the town of Helenendorf (present-day Khanlar) in the summer of 1819. Another German settlement, the town of Annenfeld (later merged with the city of Shamkir) was founded almost simultaneously 40 kilometres away from Helenendorf. Beginning in the 1880s seven more German colonies were established throughout Elisabethpol Governorate: Georgsfeld in 1888, Alexejewka in 1902, Grünfeld and Eichenfeld in 1906, Traubenfeld in 1912, Jelisawetinka in 1914, and Marxowka in the early years of the Soviet rule. They became populated mostly by the descendents of the Germans from the two older colonies. By 1918 according to the German consul in Constantinople, there were 6,000 Germans living in the colonies overall.

Germans in Elisabethpol Governorate were traditionally engaged in farming, however starting from 1860 viticulture was becoming more and more important in the life of the German agricultural communities. By the end of the 19th century 58% of the region's wine production was manufactured by the Forer Brothers and the Gummel Brothers of Helenendorf.

Helenendorf became the primary spiritual centre for the Germans of the 8 colonies. The oldest Lutheran church in Azerbaijan, St. John's Church was built in this town in 1857. Other Lutheran churches were built in Gadabay, Shamakhi, Baku and Annenfeld in 1868, 1869, 1897 and 1911 respectively. The ceremony of laying the first stone of Baku's German Church of the Saviour was attended by Emanuel Nobel, brother of Alfred Nobel, and other members of the city's elite.

Germans became an active and well-integrated community in Azerbaijan. Azeri was often spoken as a second or third language among them. During the brief of Azerbaijan's independence in 1918–1920 the centenary of Helenendorf was marked by public celebration within the community. With the Sovietization of Azerbaijan, the Communist government seated in Moscow gradually ordered to rename all German-sounding place-names. By the time of the deportation, there were over 23,000 Germans living in Azerbaijan.

History in Armenia

The history of the Germans in Armenia began with their immigration to the Transcaucasus. Settlement of Germans was encouraged by Russian authorities. Those who came from Württemberg were inspired by the concept of meeting the end of the world at the foot of Mount Ararat. Although Caucasus Germans did indeed move to Armenia and had a presence there, most settlements were scattered and no German colonies were firmly established in the region. Most maintained their own schools, churches and cultural institutions in Soviet Armenia. In 1926, the German community in Armenia numbered 104 persons. By 1939, this numbered increased to 433 (still low compared to its neighboring regions).

However, during World War II, Stalin deported 212 Germans to Kazakhstan on the pretext that their loyalties were with Germany, even though this was not the case. Thus, the 1959 census counted only 278 Germans living in the republic. In 1970, the German population increased to 408 though by 1979 it decreased to 333 and by 1989 to 265. This decrease was accelerated by Armenia's independence in 1991. Some Caucasus Germans, however, remained. Though heavily Russified, the community today has been working closely with the German Educational and Cultural Center of Armenia to help organize German language schools, cultural events, etc.

History in Kars

After Kars (part of present-day Turkey) became part of Russia in 1878, the government launched a campaign aimed at settling as many Christians in the newly-established Kars Oblast as possible. In 1891 a number of German families migrated here from around Tiflis and established the village of Petrowka. Its population remained relatively low and consisted of about 200 people by 1911. Another two colonies in the province, Wladikars and Estonka, were founded between 1911 and 1914. Their population was mostly engaged in milk production. These settlements were short-lived as with the Russian-Ottoman military confrontation in 1914 (as a result of World War I), German settlers from Kars Oblast were evacuated to Eichenfeld (see History in Azerbaijan).

Soviet history

After the 1917 formation of Transcaucasian Federation, the German colonists came together to form the Transcaucasian German National Council (Transkaukasischer Deutscher Nationalrat), with its seat in Tbilisi, Georgia. After the Sovietization of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia in 1920–1921, the Soviet government pursued the goal of eliminating the German cultural presence in the region by closing down German schools and changing German-souding names of virtually all the colonies. After the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, it was a matter of one week that almost 200,000 Caucasus Germans got deported to remote regions of Kazakhstan and Siberia. The only ones not subject to deportation were German women who were married to non-Germans. Even though soon after Joseph Stalin's death in 1953 the ban for the majority of the deported peoples to return to Europe was lifted, relatively few returned. In 1979 there were only 46,979 Germans living in both North and South Caucasus.

Present status

As of 2002, there are approximately 30 older women of German ancestry left in Bolnisi. The German town cemetery leveled under Stalin is marked today by a memorial honouring the memory of the German colonists. Recently, there has been increasing interest on the part of local youth to find out more about their German heritage. Often this desire is closely related to Protestant beliefs, so as a result the New Apostolic Church works intensively with these young people as part of its regular youth programs.

References

1. ^ Template:Ru icon Russian State Archive: РЦХИДНИ. ф. 644. оп. 1. д. 11. л. 195
2. Template:Ru icon The Arrival of Germans in the North Caucasus by Anzor Ostakhov. Previously available online at Eirpd.ru
3. Template:Ru icon Baku and Germans: Germans in Stalin's Family by Tamara Humbatova. Echo-az.com. 19 September 2006. #173(1413)
4. Template:Ru icon Pages of History: German Settlers in Azerbaijan by Jeyla Ibrahimova. Azerbaijan-IRS
5. ^ Template:Ru icon Caucasus Germans on the Armenian Plateau by Alexander Yaskorsky. Hayastan.eu
6. ^ Garnik Asatryan and Victoria Arakelova, The Ethnic Minorities of Armenia, Routledge, part of the OSCE, 2002
7. Template:Ru icon The All-Union Population Census of 1926. Demoscope.ru
8. Template:Ru icon The All-Union Population Census of 1939. Demoscope.ru
9. J. Otto Pohl, Stalin's Genocide Against the "Repressed Peoples", Routledge, part of the Taylor and Francis Group, February 19, 2004.
10. Template:Ru icon The All-Union Population Census of 1959. Demoscope.ru
11. Template:Ru icon The All-Union Population Census of 1970. Demoscope.ru
12. ^ Template:Ru icon The All-Union Population Census of 1979. Demoscope.ru
13. Template:Ru icon The All-Union Population Census of 1989. Demoscope.ru

Further reading

• M. Friedrich Schrenk: Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien. In: Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien in Transkaukasien. Tiflis 1869
• Paul Hoffmann: Die deutschen Kolonien in Transkaukasien. Berlin 1905
• Werner Krämer: Grünfeld, ein deutsches Dorf im Südkaukasus. o. O., o. J.
• Max Baumann, Peter Belart: Die Familie Horlacher von Umiken in Katharinenfeld (Georgien)
• Andreas Groß: Missionare und Kolonisten: Die Basler und die Hermannsburger Mission in Georgien am Beispiel der Kolonie Katharinenfeld; 1818 – 1870. Lit, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-8258-3728-9
• U. Hammel: Die Deutschen von Tiflis. In: Georgica. Bd. 20 (1997), pp 35-43
• Immanuel Walker: Fatma. Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Russland, Stuttgart, 1966 3. Edition
• Mammad Jafarli: Politischer Terror und Schicksale der aserbaidschanischen Deutschen. Baku 1999

See also

• History of Germans in Russia and the Soviet Union
• Ethnic German
• Volksdeutsche
• Baltic Germans
• Crimea Germans
• Carpathian Germans
• Volga Germans

• German diaspora
• Russian and Soviet Germans
• Ethnic groups in Georgia (country)
• Ethnic groups in Azerbaijan
• Ethnic groups in Armenia