Tom Marsden

In April 2019 the small city of Goygol in Azerbaijan marked the 200th anniversary of its founding as Helenendorf, a colony of Swabian Germans, over a dozen of which were established in eastern Georgia and western Azerbaijan in the 19th century. They flourished, thanks largely to their expertise in wine making, until tragedy struck in autumn 1941, when, following the Nazis' attack on the Soviet Union, almost all the Caucasus Germans (some 46,000 according to the German cultural organisation EuroKaukAsia) were deported to Central Asia. 

Intrigued by their fascinating story and still-visible traces in Azerbaijan and Georgia, I travelled between the South Caucasus, Kazakhstan and southwest Germany to meet survivors and make pictures along the way.