Asureti is an interesting village situated on the road Koda - Tetriskaro, some 45 km from Tbilisi in Georgia.
Discovered by accident, while doing (trying to do) a trip to Ninotsminda (in the region of Samtskhe-Javakheti) in January 2019.
I had heard before about former German settlements here in Georgia from German expats in Tbilisi, and in fact a couple of weeks ago we visited one such settlement area (Katharinenfeld) in Bolnisi (see Day trip to Bolnisi and nearby vicinity)
German style dwelling house in Asureti, Georgia
You can find many such style buildings in the region of Hesse in Germany, actually some time ago I had a chance to book an apartment in one such building in Gudensberg/ Germany, see Apartment Alte Pfarre in Gudensberg, Germany or Postcards from Germany
Now here is what I was able to find out about German history in Asureti:
The village was founded on 19 November 1818 by Caucasian Germans under the name Elisabethtal or Elisabeththal by 72 German immigrant families. The then civil governor chose this name because the foundation of the village fell on the day of St. Elizabeth.
Street in Asureti
There are not many streets in Asureti, as the village is really tiny (just a couple of houses, from which most looked abandoned in 2019) and an Evangelical Lutheran Church at the of the street.
Evangelical Lutheran church in Asureti
The church is missing a bell tower, but some renovation/ reconstruction works were done in January 2019. It's said the church has been built in 1871.
You can find really interesting historical photos from here on the Facebook page: Asureti / Elisabethtal
In 1857, 38 families left Elisabethtal after religious disputes and founded the village Alexanderhilf near Tsalka . Other German families from Elisabethtal settled in the village of Kotishi near Marabda.
Street in Asureti
In 2019 there were many abandoned / empty houses in Asureti village
After the annexation of the Democratic Republic of Georgia by Soviet Russia in 1921 Elisabethtal got the Georgian name Asureti. From 1932 to 1938 there was a collective farm ( collective farm ) Concordia in Asureti , which was very successful in viticulture and research into pest control. After the attack of the Wehrmacht on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the German inhabitants were deported in October 1941 to Siberia and Kazakhstan.
From Elisabethtal come the German ancestors of Nadezhda Alliluyeva , the wife of Josef Stalin.
