Tom Marsden

April 2019 saw the 200th anniversary of a little-known but fascinating historical episode in the South Caucasus: the founding of Helenendorf, one of the main colonies of Swabian Germans, over a dozen which were established in the region between between Tbilisi (Georgia) and Ganja (Azerbaijan) in the 19th century. They flourished and necame well known in particular for wine making. But tragically, in the autumn of 1941 their story came to an abrupt end, for almost all the Caucasus Germans (some 46,000 according to the German cultural organisation EuroKaukAsia) were deported during WWII by the Soviet authorities to Central Asia. Intrigued by the story of the Caucasus Germans and their still-visible traces in parts of Azerbaijan and Georgia, this project documents my travels in the South Caucasus, Kazakhstan and southwest Germany in search of survivors. I was keen to hear their stories and find out what, if anything, the Caucasus still meant to them.