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 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.
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.