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 (present-day northeastern Turkey). In 1941, the majority of them were subject to deportation to Central Asia and Siberia during Joseph Stalin's population transfer 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 only 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.
History
Origins
The victory of the Russian Empire under Catherine the Great in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 ensured its expansion into the Caucasus. It also created a need in populating these lands with Russian subjects in order to hasten their exploration. In the late 18th century, the government permitted families of Volga Germans to settle in the 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 the steady and constant migration of the Germans. In 1815, while participating in the Congress of Vienna, Russian Tsar Alexander I visited Stuttgart, a city in his mother's native Kingdom of Württemberg. Upon witnessing the oppression that local peasants were undergoing either due to belonging to different non-Lutheran Protestant sects or to their participation in separatist movements, he arranged for their settlement in Russian Transcaucasia in order to form agricultural colonies.
Early 19th century
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 were Lutherans, Mennonites, or Baptists. 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 and the Middle East popular among all Caucasus nationalities, became as common with the Caucasus Germans as traditional German dishes.