Bees in a mine and granite in limestone: unexpected discoveries in the steppe region of Worms

Seven years ago, fate presented me with an amazing opportunity—together with the Trautman family, we set out on a journey through the Berezivshchyna region, where the former German colonies still exude a sense of history. Our main discovery was the picturesque village of Vynohradne, founded by German settlers at the dawn of the 19th century.

But soon an epidemic broke out, followed by intensive care units, numerous hospitals… And later—a full-scale invasion. All of this forced me to set aside my extremely interesting field notes in a “back burner” folder on my computer. But the time has come. Today I’m finally opening these archives to share with you the most interesting discoveries and little-known facts about this unique corner of the Odesa region.

Worms: A German Colony Amid the Black Sea Steppes

It all began way back in 1809. The Worms colony was established during the second wave of German migration. Duke de Richelieu, who was anticipating a new massive influx of settlers, was concerned by the mistakes of previous years, when the administration of the Kherson Governorate had simply been unprepared for such a massive influx of people. Richelieu acted decisively: he ordered a search for new lands for the colonies farther away from Odessa. A special expedition of government officials set out for the steppes between the Southern Bug and the Tiligul rivers and soon, near the Berezan River, they came across an exceptional tract of land covering 59,000 dessiatines, which the locals poetically (though, as it turned out later, not entirely accurately) called “Twelve Wells.”

Thus, in 1809, the first three colonies of the Berezan Colonial District—Landau, Speyer, and Rorbach—appeared on the map of the Black Sea region. And the very next year, in 1810, the district was expanded with five more settlements, among which the colony of Worms held a place of honor.

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The village of Vynohradne today. PHOTO: Dmytro Zhdanov

 The settlers named their new homeland after the famous ancient German city of Worms. The first settlers here were nearly 65 families—a diverse but close-knit mix of people from Baden, Württemberg, Alsace, the Palatinate, Westphalia, Saxony, Mecklenburg, Vogtland, and German settlers from Poland.

The true heart and architectural centerpiece of the village became the stone Lutheran church, built in 1830. Worms instantly became one of the most important spiritual and cultural centers of the entire Berezan District. The majestic church building, though it underwent later renovations, has fortunately survived to the present day, its stone walls bearing witness to the turbulent twists and turns of history. It suffered its first devastating blow in 1935—at the height of the Soviet regime’s fierce anti-religious campaign—when the bells were thrown down from the tower. During the bloody years of World War II, the church was briefly revived and opened its doors to the faithful, only to fall silent again for decades after the war. Today, however, prayer resounds anew within these ancient walls—an Orthodox church now operates here.

 In the first third of the 19th century, a powerful spiritual impulse stirred the quiet life of Worms. The first prayer groups—known as “Stunden” (“hours” for communal reading and in-depth interpretation of the Bible)—began to gather in the homes of Pietist colonists, emerging independently of the official Lutheran parish. It was from these intimate but sincere prayer meetings that the Stundist movement—a unique Pietist movement within Protestantism—sparked in the colony.

The Shundism movement in the Worms colony occupies an exceptional—and, without exaggeration, pivotal—place in the history of Protestantism in our lands. After all, it was this small German colony in the very heart of the Berezan District that was destined to become one of the first centers for the spread of Shundism in southern Ukraine.

It was from here, from the quiet Worms colony, that the seeds of a new religious history took root through daily labor and neighborly interaction. In the 1850s and 1860s, through the close contacts between German colonists and the peasants of the surrounding Ukrainian villages, the ideas of Stundism began to spread among the Ukrainian population of southern Ukraine.

As early as the beginning of the 19th century, the southern steppes attracted German settlers like the Promised Land: the empire had created for them an unprecedented and extremely attractive system of economic privileges and benefits. However, this comfortable way of life came to an abrupt end in 1871, when Alexander II abolished all colonial rights with a single decree. Moreover, German colonists were now subject to universal military conscription. For people whose faith and way of life rejected violence, this was a catastrophic blow.

The revocation of privileges immediately triggered a wave of emigration: as early as 1872–1873, the first mass caravans of settlers set out from Worms, seeking a new life in the distant lands of North Dakota and Nebraska. This transatlantic migration left behind a rich archive of documents that even today allow us to assess the impressive level of wealth among the local landowners. For example, blacksmith Karl Schindler of Worms described the preparations for the grand move in stark figures: he received a large sum for that time—4,000 rubles—for his house, smithy, and all his possessions!

However, the colony thrived not only on material wealth but also on a deep sense of humanism. In 1887, thanks to the sincere enthusiasm of the community and on the initiative of Pastor Steinwand, a unique charitable boarding school for deaf children opened its doors in Worms. It was a true beacon of light and compassion, for under its roof, children of all nationalities and faiths from across the region received an education, care, and a chance at a fulfilling life.

True calamity befell Worms with the arrival of the 20th century and the bloody events of the revolutions, the war of 1917–21, and the Soviet occupation. The village endured a devastating raid by Ataman Grigoriev’s gangs, a harsh occupation by the invaders, and the brutally suppressed anti-Bolshevik uprising of 1920. The immediate imposition of the “food requisition” system sparked a wave of desperate resistance among local farmers, to which the Soviet regime responded with mass arrests and repression. The Soviet occupation dealt a catastrophic blow to the colonists’ thriving economy: according to official reports from 1921, due to extreme poverty and famine, the children of Worms were simply unable to attend school.

In 1925, the village became part of the Karl-Liebknecht German National District of the Mykolaiv Region, and with the formation of the Odesa Oblast in 1932, it fell within its borders. The final chapter in the community’s tragedy came in March 1944, when the village’s German population was forcibly evacuated to the Warthegau (the Nazi-occupied territory of Poland), and the multiracial community itself was permanently scattered across the globe. By February 1945, the ancient name “Worms” had disappeared from maps for good—the village was renamed Vynohradne. Today, it is a cozy village in the Novokalchivska rural community of the Berezivsky District in the Odesa Region, which carefully preserves the memory of its unique past.

What Remains of Old Worms

But let’s return to our journey through the countryside. In Vinogradne, the authentic colonists’ houses are still remarkably well-preserved. Their architecture is a classic example of the so-called “Saxon” style of housing, where two parts—residential and utility—were harmoniously combined under one roof. In the non-residential half, diligent owners kept livestock and poultry and stored farm equipment. The pride and joy of every such house was a spacious, high attic that served as a reliable grain storage area.

And, of course, what German farmstead would be complete without a traditional deep cellar? During our expedition, we came across several such ancient underground structures, and we were even lucky enough to go down into one of them! In a time when refrigerators were unheard of, preserving food was a true art. And in these cellars, built of sturdy shell rock, the temperature remained quite low even during the fiercest steppe heat.

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An abandoned cellar. PHOTO: Dmytro Zhdanov

An interesting find—an antique ceramic roof tile bearing a clear maker’s mark—has become a genuine material artifact of the multifaceted history of the village of Vynohradne (Worms). The creator of this piece was Georg Köhler—a well-known local entrepreneur and colonist who owned a brick and tile factory in the German colony of Sulz, located in the Berezan colonist district.

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The discovered roof tile. PHOTO: Dmytro Zhdanov

The discovered specimen was manufactured using the stamped interlocking tile technology with a characteristic top interlock. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, similar workshops in the German districts of the Black Sea region mass-produced this durable roofing material, cladding houses—both in the colonies themselves and in the surrounding Ukrainian villages—with sturdy red-bronze tiles.

There is another remnant of the German past in Vynohradne—the remains of an old cemetery. Time has been unforgiving to the gravestones, and very few slabs with legible inscriptions have survived. However, one of the gravestones caught our attention. We were able to make out the name (Karl) as well as the dates of this settler’s life: 1830–1888.

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A gravestone in the village of Vynohradne. PHOTO: Dmytro Zhdanov

Wells and the Underground Secrets of Vynohradne

Water problems have plagued this region from the very beginning. Describing the lands of the newly established colonial district on July 24, 1809, the Duke de Richelieu, in a letter to Prince Kurakin, lamented the acute shortage of drinking water in this part of the steppe. During our journey, we found one of the classic wells (or rainwater cisterns, which were also common in our lands) from that era in the village.

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The well in the village of Vynohradne. PHOTO: Dmytro Zhdanov

However, a real mystery awaited us just beyond the village. There we stumbled upon a structure that is radically different from ordinary wells. It is a gigantic structure several meters in diameter! Local legends trace its origins back to the Turkish era.

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“Turkish Well.” PHOTO: Dmytro Zhdanov

Interestingly, despite the large number of beam-and-post structures in this area, we didn’t hear from the villagers the legend—common in the Black Sea region—about “a once-mighty river where Turkish galleys laden with gold sailed and sank.” It seems Richelieu was right—water has long been a major challenge in these steppes.

 Of course, when talking about Vynohradne, it’s impossible to overlook its underground secrets. The village even has its own quarries, which the locals habitually call “catacombs” (though they have little in common with the classical necropolises of Rome or Paris). As in most German colonies along the Black Sea coast, these underground workings were created as a result of the quarrying of durable Pontic shell limestone. It was precisely this local stone that was used to build residential houses, sturdy farm buildings, high fences, and the majestic church. Typically, such quarries were established directly on the slopes of the numerous ravines that are a distinctive feature of this steppe landscape.

In Search of Underground Worms

However, today the village is known to have three mines from a later period (the 20th century). During our expedition, we managed to locate and survey the entrances to two of them. Admittedly, getting inside the first one turned out to be a real challenge—its entrance was securely blocked and “monopolized” by a colony of wild bees! They carve their own nesting tunnels directly into the soft layers of the steppe rock, transforming the ancient mine into an impregnable underground beehive.

As for the second quarry, we easily made our way inside through a fairly wide and open entrance. And immediately we stumbled upon a truly amazing geological mystery—a wandering visitor from the ancient Ice Age. Millions of years ago, when mollusk shells were deposited en masse in the ancient Pontic Sea (which later turned into dense shell rock), ancient glaciers and powerful water currents carried a large number of granite boulders from the Ukrainian Shield here, depositing them directly into the thickness of the limestone strata.

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A mine from the mid-20th century. PHOTO: Dmytro Zhdanov

For local stonemasons, these unexpected granite inclusions were a real nightmare: they severely hindered stone extraction, caused accidents in the mines, and instantly broke the iron saws. One such granite “intruder”—a silent witness to the grand cataclysms of the past—is precisely what became lodged in the ceiling of the stone workshop. In science, such massive boulders—torn from their native cliffs and carried hundreds of kilometers—are called “erratic” (from the Latin erraticus, meaning “wandering”).

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A granite boulder in the ceiling of the mine. PHOTO: Dmytro Zhdanov

We left Vynohradne as evening was falling, when the golden steppe sun gently illuminated the roof of the ancient church and the rugged slopes of the surrounding ravines. Left in our backpacks were notes, photographs, and Georg Köhler’s stamped roof tiles—small material pieces of the great history of Worms. Despite all the epidemics, trials, and war, our heritage remains close to us. It awaits in the steppe wells, on old gravestones, and in the coolness of the stone quarries. All you have to do is stop and take a closer look—and the Black Sea region will reveal its amazing secrets.

And finally, I simply can’t resist sharing one enchanting shot that I managed to capture on the way back from Berezivshchyna to Odesa. We had to improvise and adjust our planned route on the fly, because suddenly, right in our path, there was… a freshly plowed field like this one.

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PHOTO: Dmytro Zhdanov
 
 

Дмитро Жданов