page_title: Caucasus Germans
section_title: Early 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Caucasus Germans / History / Early 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: A 19th-century German house in Asureti (former Elisabethal), Georgia
context_page_description: Caucasus Germans 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 the region of Kars. In 1941, the majority of them were subject to deportation to Central Asia and Siberia during Joseph Stalin's population transfers in the Soviet Union. After Stalin's death in 1953 and the beginning of the Khrushchev Thaw, the Caucasus Germans were allowed to return, though few did. Many assimilated and, after 1991, emigrated to Germany. Although the community today is a fraction of what it once was, many German buildings and churches are still extant, with some turned into museums.
context_section_description: On September 21, 1818, the first German settlement in Transcaucasia, Marienfeld, was established by a group of Swabian Germans near the Georgian capital Tiflis (Tbilisi), along the Kakheti highway, now part of Sartichala. Two months later, another group of colonists founded another settlement in Georgia on the bank of the Asureti River and named it Elisabethtal, after the Emperor's wife Elizabeth Alexeievna (now Asureti in the Georgian province of Kvemo Kartli). Within the next year, five more colonies were established in eastern Georgia: New Tiflis (later Mikhailovsky Avenue, now part of David Agmashenebeli Avenue in Tbilisi), Alexandersdorf on the left bank of the Kura (now the vicinity of Akaki Tsereteli Avenue in Tbilisi), Petersdorf (near Marienfeld, now part of Sartichala) and Katharinenfeld (now Bolnisi). Three more colonies were founded in Abkhazia: Neudorf, Gnadenberg and Lindau.
  By the late 1840s, there were five German colonies in the North Caucasus. The migration waves (especially to the Don Host Oblast) 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. The majority of these Germans adhered to various branches of Protestantism, most commonly Lutheranism, Mennonitism and Baptism. Roman Catholics formed a minority and lived in six colonies.
  In the winter of 1818–1819, 194 Swabian families primarily from Reutlingen arrived in Elisabethpol (Ganja) in eastern Transcaucasia from Tiflis. They were granted land 6 kilometres to the west of the city and founded the town of Helenendorf (Goygol) 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.
  Germans became an active and well-integrated community in Russian Transcaucasia. Unlike the settlement of Russian religious minorities, German colonies were located in "places that were more economically advantageous, close to cities or important transportation routes." It became "typical for Caucasian administrative centers to have a satellite agrarian German colony." According to Charles King, "rows of trees lined the main streets" of the German colonies near Tiflis. "Schools and churches, conducting their business in German, offered education and spiritual edification. Beer gardens provided the main entertainment." In eastern Transcaucasia, German colonists were overwhelmingly bilingual in Azeri, while Russian was formally taught in schools starting in the late 19th century. Dolma, a traditional dish in the Caucasus popular among all Caucasus nationalities, became as common with the Caucasus Germans as traditional German dishes.
  The Baltic German naturalist and explorer Friedrich Parrot encountered Swabian settlers near Tiflis on his expedition to Mount Ararat in 1829. He listed their settlements and personally visited Katharinenfeld and Elisabethtal, describing them:
  These colonies may be known to be German at first sight from their style of building, their tillage, their carts and wagons, their furniture and utensils, mode of living, costume, and language. They contrast, therefore, strongly with the villages of the natives, and very much to their advantage, particularly in the eyes of one who has lived for some time, as was the case with us, wholly among the latter. [...] At last, after riding for five hours, I espied, high on the left bank of the river [i.e. the Khrami], symptoms not to be mistaken of the German colony: these were, regularly-built white houses, with good windows, doors, and ridge stone on the roof. I joyfully rode up, and found that this was Katharinenfeld.
  The colonies suffered during the Russo-Persian War of 1826–28. Many of the settlements had been raided by marauding Kurds in 1826 who, according to Parrot, killed 30 people of Katharinenfeld's 85 families and captured 130 more. Half of those had not yet returned at the time of the naturalist's vi
caption: Typical half-timbered German house in Asureti, Georgia (historic Elisabethtal)
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