Gerhart's Mill (Volgograd)

Gerhart's Mill (Volgograd)

 

Description of the Gerhart's Mill

Gerhart's Mill was constructed in 1904 for Alexander Gerhart, Russian- German businessmen. He was born on 23rd of January 1864 in a German Straub colony. He joined his grandfather in a family business "A.D. Gerhardt und Neffen" that later was transformed into "Gebruder Gerhard". After Russian Revolution of 1917 he lost all his possessions including his Volgograd buildings. Alexander Gerhart was arrested on 1st January, 1933 by GPU, Soviet Secret Police. He died after tortures on April 21st the same year.

 

Gerhart's Mill Volgograd StalingradGerhart's Mill was simple industrial building that didn't stand out from the rest of Stalingrad- Volgograd. It became famous during World War II. At the conclusion of military actions in the city Most of the city was left in ruins. Soviet government order massive reconstruction project that rebuilt the whole city. However Gerhart's Mill became the only part of the city that was preserved after the conclusion of the war. Some people mistakenly call it Pavlov's House although it was re- constructed after the war. Owner's name "Gerhart" is still visible at the top of the abandoned building.

 

History of creation
The history of the mill begins in 1899, when the Gerhardt family of entrepreneurs received permission to build a flour-grinding complex in the "Balkans" (the unofficial name of the northern outskirts of Tsaritsyn, approximately from the modern House of Officers to the Volga named Balkan Square). The allocated area at number 346 was bounded from the north by Tambovskaya street (modern Naumova), from the Volga, the east side by Arkhangelskaya street (now Chuikova), from the south by Kazanskaya street (before the war Solnechnaya, now named after the 13th Guards division), from the west by Penzenskaya street (modern Soviet). Transport logistics was very convenient: from the west of the Gryaze-Tsaritsyn railway (now the existing tracks of the Volgograd branch of the Volga railway), a railway track led to the mill (dismantled after the Great Patriotic War), from the east a few tens of meters to the Volga pier and the South-Eastern railway roads (tracks along the Volga coast were dismantled in the 1930s). Before construction, there was an illegal squatter construction on this site. Construction began in June 1899. On July 20, 1900, the mill was put into operation and flour sales began on August 1, 1900. The mill worked until the fire on August 8, 1907, when only a stone frame remained from it.

A new building was built on the same site by May 1908. Despite the name "mill", a food processing complex was built, where, in addition to the flour mill, there were also fish-smoking, oil-processing, bakery shops, warehouses for finished products. The technical equipment used the most advanced technologies of its time: its own electric generator, which gave independence from the city power grid, its own boiler house, from which a brick pipe was preserved, internal mechanical conveyors (broken remains were preserved). In 1911, the Gerhardt and Heirs enterprise employed 78 workers with 165 working days with a working day of 10.5 hours. The paid wages for the year amounted to 10342 rubles, the annual turnover of the enterprise was 1 270 000 rubles.

The mill building is one of the first in Tsaritsyno, built using the technology of a load-bearing reinforced concrete frame and an outer shell of brick walls. Although such a construction was a novelty for the city - it was a typical project for a steam mill of the early 20th century, similar buildings were built during this period throughout the Russian Empire. The building is divided into two unequal parts by a firewall. In the greater northern part there were production shops, in the lesser southern part there were warehouses for finished products. On both end walls at the level of the roof, there is a brick inscription “Gergardt” - the name of the owner, Volga German Alexander Gergardt. The same inscription is lined with bricks of a different shade on the Volga side of the building, on the 5th floor, one letter each between the window openings. All 3 inscriptions have survived. The building was whitewashed; the remains of the whitewash were preserved on the Volga side of the building. In addition to the building on plot 346, 2 wooden grain warehouses were built along Kazanskaya Street, a one-story office building and garage boxes along Penza Street (they were not restored after the war).

In Soviet times, the mill was nationalized, it received number 4 among the Stalingrad mills. In 1929 it was named after Konstantin Grudinin.

 

Stalingrad battle

The mill operated until September 14, 1942, when the building was hit by high-explosive bombs, which caused a fire and a work stoppage. On that day, General Batrakov's 42nd Rifle Brigade, which was defending the central part of Stalingrad, retreated and fought in a small area near the River Station. In the Department store, the building of the railway station, the building of the drama theater, the prison on Golubinskaya Street, there are still surrounded Soviet centers of resistance from the scattered rear units of the 62nd Army and the people's militia from Stalingrad police officers, firefighters, and workers. On the night of September 14-15, General Rodimtsev's 13th Guards Rifle Division crossed the Volga to correct the catastrophic situation. A unit of Lieutenant Chervyakov occupied the building, left it in the rear and continued the offensive to help the 10th NKVD division, surrounded near the station. However, after fierce battles from September 15 to 20, it was not possible to gain a foothold at the railway station line, the surviving Soviet soldiers retreated to the mill.

 

The specificity of the battles in the residential area of ​​Stalingrad was the capture of defense centers - buildings or a group of buildings with powerful walls and basements that could withstand direct hits from bombs and shells. Such a defense center served as a shelter for the garrison, organizing an assault group to attack the enemy. There was no continuous front line, wooden, one-story buildings, buildings with adobe walls were ignored and served as a neutral zone. On this strip, reconnaissance was conducted, snipers were hiding, sappers planted mines, but there was no permanent garrison.

By September 20, the line of defense was established, the 3rd battalion of the 42nd rifle regiment of the 13th Guards rifle division took up defense in the mill. The square on January 9 became a neutral zone, from the west of the mill the Germans captured the "dairy" house, from the north the L-shaped house, from the south the State Bank and the NKVD complex, they all became German defense centers and surrounded the buildings held by Soviet soldiers on three sides ... The mill, the house of Pavlov and Zabolotny became the "Penza" defense center (after the name of Penza street), and the mill building remained the only multi-storey building in the area of ​​the central embankment, held by Soviet troops and, as very massive and strong, became the citadel of the Penza defense center. The last remaining supply route - the salt pier of the central embankment near the Volga - was used only at night, with great risk to floating crafts. Under the current conditions, this pier has become a very important strategic site - one of the few gentle slopes to the Volga. From this area it is convenient to take a bridgehead on the western bank of the Volga (which was done by the 13th Guards Rifle Division), and to control the place of a possible crossing to the eastern bank.

The front began to move in January 1943, the 13th division launched an offensive in the Mamayev Kurgan area, the 9th January area ceased to be a no-man's-land. Only then was it possible to collect the bodies of those killed in the square, lying also from the September battles, and those killed in the winter. They were buried in a mass grave on the square; after the war, a granite monument was made over it. At the moment there are no names on this mass grave, although it is possible to establish some of them, the victims of the attack on the "dairy house" on 10/22/1942, for example, II Naumov, NE Zabolotny, are buried in it.

The building was semi-encircled for 58 days, and during these days it withstood numerous hits from aerial bombs and shells. This damage is visible even now - literally every square meter of the outer walls is cut by shells, bullets and shrapnel, on the roof, reinforced concrete beams are broken by direct hits from aerial bombs. The explosions knocked out hundreds of cubic meters of very high-quality brickwork and reinforced concrete from the building. The sides of the building testify to the different intensity of mortar and artillery fire - minimal from the Volga, from the other three sides you can see traces of shooting from all types of artillery, as well as loopholes in the window openings made by the defenders of the house. The increased strength and vibration resistance of the reinforced concrete frame, which was necessary for the operation of the industrial equipment of the mill, helped the building survive and not be destroyed to the ground.

Interesting Facts
The building had a "twin" - Gergardt's second mill in the floodplain of the Tsaritsa River. It also withstood the Battle of Stalingrad, having received significant damage, it also did not recover after the war, and in the 1960s it was covered with soil during the construction of the Chekistov Square station of the Volgograd Metro Tram. This building shared the fate of several more mills of Tsaritsyn entrepreneurs Miller and Turkin, who were buried on the slopes of the Tsaritsa River in the 1950s-1960s, despite the preservation of the “boxes” of buildings. Nevertheless, two buildings of Tsaritsyn mills have survived in Volgograd: the operating enterprise "Sareptskaya Mill" - the former steam mill of the Bauer brothers - and rebuilt after the war into an administrative building at 6 Kirsanovskaya Street.
The mill building is one of three buildings specially left unrepaired after the Battle of Stalingrad. The other two are the command post building of the 138th division on Lyudnikov Island and the building of the factory laboratory of the Krasny Oktyabr plant.
In 1943 and several subsequent years, due to the catastrophic shortage of premises in the destroyed city, some rooms of the mill building were minimally repaired and occupied. After the decision to create a memorial museum was made, all traces of post-war repairs were dismantled.
Until the 1980s, excursion access was allowed inside the building.
Tourists and residents of the city often confuse the Gerhardt Mill with the Pavlov House, located on the opposite side of the street.