The largest and earliest Mennonite village in Kunevskoy, Karolswalde, was established
sometime in the late 18th Century. The
village can also be spelled as its German name as Karolswalde (literally in
German, “Karls Forest”), Carlswalde or even Karls Waljd (Russian, Ukrainian:
Карсвальд). Its Polish name was Holendry
Slobodzkie or in Ukrainian, Sloboda Galendry (Слобідські-Галендрі; Слобідські-Галендри
in Russian). This name may stem from the
village ¾ of a mile to the north, Slobodka, which is named after a term meaning
a sort of suburb (in this case, a suburb of Ostrog). Holendry being a mutation of the term Olendry or Hollander, Holendry Slobodka may mean the Dutch (or in this case,
Prussian) suburb (of Ostrog). In the
1920s, after the Polish-Soviet War, it came to be known as Prikordonnoe
(Russian: Прикордонное; Ukrainian: Prykordonne, Прикордо́нне) since the village
sat right on the Polish-Soviet border (prikordonnoe
being a Russian term for boundary).
Karolswalde traditionally takes its name from a certain
Karol Dirks, the head of a Mennonite family travelling with a caravan through
Volhynia on its way from Prussia to the Michalin Colony or South Russia in the
late 18th or very early 19th Century (the Michalin Colony [Russian: Mikhailin,
Михайлин; Ukr: Mykhailyn, Миха́йлин; Polish: Michalin; German: Michalin] was
located about 24 miles south of Berdichev at 49°, 35“ North; 28°, 55”
East. The majority of the Michaliners
transferred to the Karolswalde community in the very early years of the 19th
Century). One of the sons of Karol Dirks
, Benjamin, became sick when the caravan reached Ostrog. Polish troops in the area volunteered to keep
the sick boy as he could travel no longer and the caravan was hard-pressed to
continue its journey. The Dirks family,
travelling with the caravan several miles south of Ostrog, could not endure the
thought of leaving their son, so turned back to retrieve him, and settled there
on the edges of the forest. Further
details are unknown, but the village of Karolswalde is said to have been named
after this Karol Dirks. Benjamin Dirks,
the son who fell sick, in 1817 became the first elder of the Karolswalde community. Subsequently, an agreement with a local
nobleman, the Russian Crown Prince Karl Jablonovsky, regarding a land-lease
arrangement was reached and other Mennonites soon settled in the village. Inside the front cover of the Karolswalde
Churchbook was the following inscription:
Mennonites
who previously lived in the Kingdom of Prussia, near Driesen and Swetz, who
migrated and settled in the Wolhynien government, near the city of Ostrog, in
the year 1802 and later, with the permission and a written agreement of his
sovereign Majesty, the Russian Crown Prince, Karl Jablonovsky.
The lease arrangement with Jablonovsky permitted that the
Mennonite tenants paid something on the order of $.50 on the dollar in
rent. The land remained the property of
the Jablonovsky family while any buildings built by the Mennonites became their
property. The Jablonovskys probably
included stipulations such as mill rights, meaning that the Mennonite tenants
were obligated to take any harvested grain to a Jablonovsky-controlled mill for
processing. This mill would have given a
lower price to the Mennonites ensuring more profit for Jablonovsky in the
subsequent sale of the milled grain.
(The Jablonovsky Family, also spelled Yablonovsky, owned large portions
of land in the area including a large estate and palace centered at the village
of Krivin, several miles to the northeast of Karolswalde)
Karolswalde stood (and still stands today) about 2.5 miles
south of the Ostrog Castle. The castle
and accompanying church stand on a hill on the northern banks of the Vilia
River. The golden domes of the Church of
the Epiphany in the Ostrog Castle complex were in ruins for most of the 19th
Century, but may have still been visible from Karolswalde which was situated in
a north-south orientation on the east bank of the Vilia and its tributary,
known to the Germans as the Ritschke River (which is only a tiny stream). Situated on the banks of the river,
Karolswalde sat at a very low elevation of only 195 meters or so above sea level
(about 640 feet), on marshy land barely higher than the river.
A road passing south out of Ostrog Nowy Miasto (the New City of Ostrog, the portion of town south of
the Vilia River; Russian: Новый город; Ukrainian: нове місто) ran through the
village of Slobodka along the river and then entered Karolswalde from the north. The houses in Karolswalde were all built (and
still stand today) on the west side of the road. The Mennonites, in typical Hollander fashion,
laid Karolswalde out with the village between the main road and the river. Houses were spaced along the road and fields
were marked off as long strips between each house and the river. This gave each farmer access to water. Different nationalities also had different
ways of setting up their yards.
Ukrainians and Poles always used separate buildings for their animals. Frisians set up the single building they used
for animals and people with these two compartments at a 90 degree angle. Germans also had one building for animals and
people, but the building was straight instead of at an angle. Germans also typically built their houses with dovetail corners while Ukrainians usually simply used a method more similar to today's post-and-beam or corner-post systems. Russians may have allowed animals to live in
the same compartment as people but introduced the “Russian Oven” upon which the
family slept in the winter. Remnants of
these variations can be seen on satellite views of the area today.
 |
| German-style dovetail corner |
The road continued south through the village, leaning
slightly toward the west. At a bridge
crossing the Ritschke, the road turns more sharply to the west towards the
village of Kamenka (2 miles away) at a fairly level elevation, or east into the
forest and uphill toward the village of Jadwinin (1.5 miles away). The portion of land between the village and
the Vilia (to the west) was used as hay pasture, while the Ostrog Forest
bordered the village to the east. On the
west side of the road, within the northern edges of the village, stood the cemetery. Somewhat farther south, just north of the
bridge, stood the church. Across the
road from the church stood the school.
South of the bridge on the west side stood a small pond. A map from the early 1930s indicates an inn
stood south of the bridge to the west and 2 gamekeeper’s lodges stood across
the bridge to the east; just inside the borders of the woods.
This village was the seat of the German (more specifically,
West Prussian) Mennonite settlements in the larger Ostrog area. In the Karolswalde Parish were the villages
of Jadwinin, Karolsberge, Fuerstenthal and Gruenthal. A German map of the area from 1897 lists
Karolswalde as a Kirchdorf, which was
a medieval German term for the seat of a priest or a parish village. Most of the Mennonites left the village in
1874, after which time the village came to be populated by German
Lutherans. The Lutheran Church in
Karolswalde fell under the authority of the Parish of Rivne. By 1905, 75 families lived in the village and
in 1907 a new Lutheran church was built.
The population in 1906 was 70 households with 521 people. In 1915, Russian Cossack soldiers were
quartered there for service in World War I.
After the Polish –Soviet War of 1921, the village fell right on the new
border; to the west was Poland and to the east was the Soviet Union. Many Poles and Germans from the Soviet side
tried to escape into Poland through the village. In the late 1920s, the village was collectivized
and by 1935 all the German villagers had been evicted. After the collectivization process, the
village appears to have been initially placed in the same collective as the
other German villages of Leeleva and
Michailowka. Later it may have
been moved to a collective including the villages of Mezhirich and
Slobodka. The church was destroyed in
1956, and the cemetery was destroyed in either 1954 or 1984.
The portion of the village that stood south of the bridge
may have been known as Karolsberge (in German, literally “Karls Mountain”).
Extinct today, the village of Karolsberge was founded around 1828, as the
German Mennonite population expanded.
Also known as Karlsberg, Karls Berge or Carlsberg (Russian, Ukrainian:
Карсберг), the village appears in Mennonite records as well as maps from the
late 19th Century. On maps from the
early 20th Century, the village is not marked and appears to have been merged
with Karolswalde.
Today, Karolswalde (or Prykordonne) lies in the Ukrainian
Rivne Oblast or Province (Рівненська
область), Ostrog Raion or District
(Острозького району), Mezhiritsky Village Rada
or Council (Межиріцька сільська рада).
The population in 2001 was 84 people.
