There is a place not far from the center of Zhytomyr, which is off limits to tourists. Actually, few residents bother to visit. It is a small street dead-ended by the stone wall of the Catholic Cemetery, bordering on a row of garages and impenetrable brush. A closer look, however, reveals large granite gravestones scattered throughout. That is all that is left of what was once an ancient and aristocratic Lutheran cemetery, one of the most beautiful architectural sites in Ukraine. At the same time, it is perhaps the only concrete reminder of “German Zhytomyr.”
The history of Volyn gubernia (with Zhytomyr as the center over a hundred years ago, from 1804 until the 1920s) is closely associated with German colonists who began settling there in the first half of the nineteenth century. Tens of thousands of rural colonists, mostly from Pomerania and Silesia, moved to the Ukrainian territory of Volyn during this period. The greatest influx was during the 1830s and 1860s. Among the reasons behind the eastward German immigration were the existence of large forested areas and pastures in Volyn, the abolition of serfdom in the Russian empire (1861), and the overpopulation of Poland’s central and eastern territories, which caused a shortage of arable land (plots in Volyn cost three times less than in Pomerania and Silesia).
German colonization of Volyn had rather tangible economic consequences, among them the creation of thousands of small and medium- sized businesses owned by German colonists. In addition, Volyn’s ethnic profile was considerably “softened,” as many towns in the territory were replenished by ethnic Germans. It should be noted that toward the end of the nineteenth century, Germans in Volyn (today’s Volyn, Rivne, and Zhytomyr oblasts) constituted a rather significant proportion of the population, numbering 100,000 people.
Zhytomyr, which was the center of the gubernia and quite advanced by local standards, was especially attractive to German settlers from old aristocratic families. For example, in 1873 there were 397 Lutherans registered in Zhytomyr, (Lutheranism almost automatically denoted German parentage), and the influence of the German ethnic community on the city’s social and cultural life could be hardly overestimated. Families with names, such as Richter (subsequently to beget the prominent Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter, who was born in Zhytomyr in 1915), Arndt, Stein, Enschiw, FЪster, Wilke, and Schadel were part of the gubernia center’s intellectual elite. The German ethnic community boasted musicians, bankers, architects, engineers, Lutheran pastors, businessmen, and publishers — even members of the Zhytomyr City Council (Oskar Ernst Trull was mayor of Zhytomyr in 1883-86). Most of them found their final resting place in the Lutheran Cemetery.
“Among the graves here you find those of distinguished citizens,” says local Zhytomyr history expert Heorhiy Mokrytsky, “specifically the graves of Sviatoslav Richter’s grandmother Elizabeth von Reinke, Zhytomyr Lutheran parish pastor Heinrich Wazem (1869-1907), Russian Army General Mikhail Duwe, Europe’s noted collector and philanthropist Baron Ivan Schoduar, the gifted physician Heinrich Nat (his home in Zhytomyr hosted the famous Russian author Alexander Kuprin), and State Counselor Matthaus Baumgarten.
According to Heorhiy Mokrytsky, the Lutheran Cemetery, which was founded in the first decades of the nineteenth century, was considerably smaller than the neighboring Catholic one (the two cemeteries were divided by a stone wall), but it was planned the same way. A chapel, splitting the area into two symmetrical parts accommodating graves and burial vaults, crowned the central alley. The whole area was kept tidy, in the typical German manner. Zhytomyr’s Lutheran Cemetery was rightly considered one of the most attractive sites in Volyn, at least until the early twentieth century.
The current state of the Lutheran Cemetery — or rather, what is left of it — is not for people with weak nerves. An impromptu sightseeing trip organized by Volodymyr Pinkovsky, Chairman of Zhytomyr’s Regional Society “Wiedergeburt,” proved to be a shocking, eye-opening experience: high, overhanging brush; toppled and smashed old granite gravestones, swastikas painted on surviving ones, and broken doors on the brick burial vaults. One of these had an open casket resting on a pile of garbage, with a granite base nearby, less the bust, on the grave of Infantry General Nicholas Otto Duwe. Inscribed in small characters at the bottom was the name of the monument’s sculptor: “H. Olyshkevych.” Olyshkevych was a self-educated sculptor whose most famous creation was Alexander Pushkin’s monument on the Old Boulevard, which has been admired by Zhytomyr residents for more than a hundred years. General Duwe’s gravestone had not survived the ravages of time.
“Several years ago the members of our society tidied up the cemetery,” says Volodymyr Pinkovsky, “but fresh heaps of garbage would shortly reappear (from a private construction project underway nearby), as well as garbage left by junkies, and oafish picnickers, etc.”
Naturally, the remaining members of Zhytomyr’s German ethnic community (the latest census indicates some 400 individuals, although there are considerably fewer Wiedergeburt activists: 40-50) cannot afford to restore the Lutheran Cemetery. Ideally, it is crucially important to clear the site of shrubs, restore dozens of burial sites, including underground vaults with complex engineering designs. However, initial attempts to preserve this unique historical and cultural site have already been made by local history devotees. Two years ago Nikolaus Arndt, a noted German researcher specializing in Volyn (born in Zhytomyr), initiated a topographical survey of the territory. Local history expert Heorhiy Mokrytsky drew up a detailed plan of all existing burial sites (currently totaling 92). This is all that the enthusiasts have been able to accomplish to date.
It is hard to find philanthropists willing to help tidy up an old cemetery. Which of today’s moneybags is prepared to invest in the restoration of old and dilapidated German graves? Meanwhile, those services that deal with cemeteries (Zhytomyr City Council’s Housing and Municipal Directorate, Municipal and Consumer Service Combine) appear to have no Lutheran cemetery in their records; the entry was deleted after WW II.
A noted personality once said that the way cemeteries are kept shows precisely how civilized a given society is. This author is loath to draw any parallels, but it is hard to imagine an Eastern Orthodox cemetery decaying in the center of a German city. As it is, a unique German cultural site (even on the Ukrainian national scale) in Zhytomyr may well find itself buried in the garbage heap of history, figuratively as well as literally.
