Myrne. The Mennonite water tower. Historical and cultural heritage without status or use

You can see it from the H-32 road, and it is impossible not to notice when driving the Novoekonomichne-Malynivka stretch. The only surviving water tower built by the German Mennonites on the territory of the present-day Pokrovsk district of the Donetsk region rises like a watchtower outpost on the western side of the small village of Myrne, in the Malynivka village council.

 

The water tower in the village of Myrne, Pokrovsk district, Donetsk region

Beheaded and abandoned, the former workhorse gapes with the black emptiness of a broken window, while the spreading crowns of poplars and maples come right up close and cover the torn wounds of this unique red-brick building. 

Despite a history of more than a century, it has not lost its European pedigree and elegance, for its creators were famed for their mastery and built for centuries.

Driven out for their religious convictions, these settlers from Europe were innovators in industry and agriculture. The Mennonites commanded many crafts, were jacks of all trades, built factories, churches, mills and oil presses, bred cattle and designed machines, raised harvests and fired bricks for their own needs. Mennonite families were traditionally large and deeply religious. Humanists and enlighteners, these devoted people opened schools and hospitals, shelters and bookshops. For running their farms and watering their fields, water towers of unusual architectural design appeared, because water is the most valuable natural resource, and the foreigners took the most careful and proper approach to water supply. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries the landowners of the plots along Zaiacha Balka were German colonists. The tower is all that remains of the Mennonites' economic activity on the territory of the Malynivka village council.

 

Local historians of Myrnohrad, who studied the historical and cultural heritage of Eastern Ukraine, established the date of the structure - approximately 1910-1912. As part of the "Yellow Line" project, an information board with a short history of the discovered monument was put up in 2018.

The building, square in plan and measuring 4 metres by 4 metres, is put up in locally made red brick. The small entrance on the western side, and also the windows on the first tier on the eastern side and on the second tier on the southern and northern sides, have arched surrounds, which is characteristic of Mennonite buildings.

On the western and eastern sides the windows on the second tier are bricked up. On the inner side the brick is chipped in places.

 

There is no roof and no stairs; at the level of the second tier, on a metal floor slab, the remains of the storage tank are still holding on for now. Part of the flooring has been torn out by the roots.

 

On the western side a little wooden shed was built onto the tower, which does not suit the refined beauty at all.

 

It proved impossible to learn almost anything about the monument from the local residents, apart from the fact that in Soviet times the village's water supply was provided by means of the tower. Teenagers returning with bags of memorial sweets from the cemetery nearby could not even point out the way to the object "old water tower" and had heard nothing about it. Apparently, at the local Malynivka school nothing about the cultural heritage of the region was told to the pupils in the history and folk studies lessons. The brick lady has no protected status, and her fate, like that of other architectural pearls, is predetermined by indifference and mismanagement. 

The tower stands 600 metres from an interregional road in a densely populated region, and could be a tourist centre in a picturesque area with landscapes and ponds, with the Prytorskyi reserve with its outcrops of geological rock (1.5 km) andHalyna Hirka (2.7 km), and with the green massifs of the shelterbelts. This sturdy, beautiful structure is waiting for enterprising and skilful owners, such as those who designed and built it.

Coordinates: 48.3394853, 37.3686755