Caucasus Germans - Present Status

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.

The German community of Armenia, though heavily Russified and numbering less than 100 families, has been working closely with the German Educational and Cultural Center of Armenia to help organize German language schools, cultural events, etc.

In Azerbaijan, the remaining Germans are concentrated in the capital city of Baku, and many belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Community restored and officially registered in the early 1990s. The last German resident of Goygol (Helenendorf), Viktor Klein, died in 2007. In 2009, the non-functioning Lutheran church in Shamkir (which Annenfeld was absorbed into) used as a community centre in the Soviet times was renovated and turned into a museum. Gadabay's German population left by 1922 after the exhaustion of the copper business. The Lutheran church of the town was raized by Bolsheviks in the 1920s.

The last German resident of the Estonka colony (present-day village of Karacaören, Kars Province), Frederik Albuk, died in 1999 in his native village, survived by his wife Olga Albuk of Russian-Estonian ancestry, who died there in August 2011. The 150-grave Lutheran cemetery where they were buried is the remnant of the German community's presence in Eastern Anatolia.