Kessler-Fersman Castle

The official name, which is spelled out in the security regulations of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine , is “Fersman Castle and Kessler Manor”. Thus, the names of the founders of this estate were immortalized. In addition, additional names were also established among the people, by analogy with the Swallow's Nest : Hunting Castle, Haunted House and Forest Fairy Palace.

Near the highway 35K-002 , leading from Simferopol through the pass to Alushta , not far to the south from the capital of Crimea, in the foothill village of Eski Orda (now Lozovoe), there is a picturesque landmark of local architecture and urban planning - the Kessler manor. The founder of the building chose the place that was viewed from all sides of the Saligir Valley, because it was 300 meters away on a hill on the right bank of the Salgir River at the foot of a hill overgrown with forest (also called Kessler Forest).

The building and the manor are currently located on the territory of Lozovsky boarding school ^[1] .

In the Russian Empire it was accepted that the grandees, especially the kings, favored their subordinates with considerable land holdings, as a rule, with the people who lived there. The military was glad to be more pleased with such an award, because after each successful military campaign the empire acquired new lands. So landowners came to the Crimean lands: Russian counts, German settlers, Caucasian princes, merchants and priests.

The Kessler family, by origin, was from the German town of Damrau ( East Prussia ). At the beginning of the 19th century, Russian tsars and their officials were in the habit of inviting German officials and managers to their jobs. In this way, forester Karl-Friedrich Kessler entered the service in Russia, becoming the chief forester in the military settlements of the Novgorod gubernia . In 1822, with his family (his wife and children), he settled in the village of Gruzino near Novgorod , and, becoming a status volunteer, he could give his children a good education. One son went further into scientific activities and became famous, already a Russian, zoologist, and the second son was fond of architecture, but chose the military path, where he received considerable popularity and insignia. For loyalty to the Fatherland and success, the emperor bestowed Kessler many privileges and land plots.

Foundation of Kessler Manor

The country cottage of the Kessler family was built by Edward Kessler , a former Russian military engineer and army general, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, the conqueror of the Caucasus. After retirement, he settled next to his estates, not far from the Tatar village of Eski-Orda, and lived there with his children, Alexander and Maria. The exact date of the foundation of the manor and the construction of the castle has not been established, but the researchers suggest that this happened between 1860 and its end (1878), it is possible that some buildings and objects were set up by his children.

Long military campaigns in the Caucasus prompted a military engineer to choose a nearby area for recreation and interaction with children. Crimea has become such a cozy corner. In addition, the Kessler family was large and famous, and his son Alexander took a fancy to science, like his brother, the well-known Russian zoologist Karl Fedorovich Kessler . The interests of Mary and Alexander Kessler forced the father, the general, to arrange a science laboratory and a meteorological station in a country house ^[2] . Therefore, scientific research of the son became the basis of the first Kuchuk-Totaikoy meteorological station in the Crimea.

The heyday of the estate and its visitation by Fersman

After the death of General Edward Kessler, the estate was inherited by his son, a scientist and chemist Alexander Kessler, who lived here and worked at the University of Crimea , and also was a professor at St. Petersburg University . Alexander was often visited by his sister Maria (who also owned land in neighboring villages), along with her husband Yevgeny Alexandrovich Fersman, also a Russian military man, an architect and attache in Greece. Together with them came their nephew Alexander Evgenievich Fersman , who precisely here, among the Crimean nature, felt a craving for minerals ^[3] , because he was an academician of mineralogy ^[4] . In honor of him, and was equipped, years later, the museum and the geological exhibition.

The decline of the Soviet

In 1920 , after the Soviet power entrenched on the peninsula, the commissars nationalized the estate of the Crimean University (in which, by that time, Alexander Kessler was still working). In 1922, courses for Crimean Tatar teachers began in the estate, which soon ceased. After the death of the scientist, in 1927 , the building was handed over to local managers, who began to use it as an orphanage, and before the war military barracks were located here. During the Great Patriotic War , German barracks were quartered here.

After the war, the estate was assigned to the Ministry of Education and the children of the dead partisans settled here. In 1957 , on the basis of the manor and the staff of the orphanage in the village, Lozova boarding school was established. Later, Kessler’s castle itself was divided into apartments for boarding school workers (on the lower floors) and children's classes. An exhibition of minerals from the collection of Alexander Fersman (the scientist and grandson of Kessler) and the museum of the scientist, in a small room, were arranged in the corridor.

Modernity

At the time of independence of Ukraine, residents of the castle moved into separate houses, and the room became dilapidated. Soon the museum exhibition was moved to Simferopol. By decree of the Council of Ministers of the ARC of 06.27.2000 No. 202, the building was transferred to the Ministry of Construction Policy and Architecture of the ARC.

For the sake of preserving the architectural monument, it was decided to transfer it in concession, in private hands. On May 19, 2010 (from the fifth attempt, with a starting price lowered by 30% 2 50 000 UAH), at an auction Kessler-Fersman castle was bought by Moscow businessman Ilya Golenko (in the interests of Dmitry Dyuzhev family), investors promised to renovate the room and create a museum room, available for visits.

Having settled near Eski-Orda, General Edward Kessler built himself a country house, a granary, a mill, a dairy farm, dug a pond and started a trout farm, and planted around a lot of trees (laying a park and an orchard for 10 tithes). Most of the buildings are no longer preserved, only their remains indicate the scale of the Kessler manor and land tenure. The estate included plots located beyond a mountainous region in the valley of Maliy Salgir between three Tatar villages: Cankaya, Weirat and Sweini-Hadji (modern Strogonovka and Denisovka ). In general, the Kessler family owned considerable land around Simferopol, in the early twentieth century, Maria Fersman was considered a prosperous landowner.

House

The two-storey building of rectangular shape, with a basement and a mezzanine, with carved turrets, lancet windows and an outbuilding, with a total area of ​​349.3 square meters is located on the banks of the Salgir River. The architect Clausen Oscar Genrikhovich designed the neo-Gothic structure in whose architecture the castle theme dominates (similar to the medieval German) in combination with the Moorish elements. The slender line of mashakuli with decorative turrets, double and triple arched windows (lancet or napvlyuchkovye), smooth corner blades, contrasted with the hard surface of the walls. And the patterned under-carved denticles encircling the building are an architectural feature of the whole building.

In general, the second floor of the house and the corner tower were equipped with a weather station and a scientific laboratory. The same tower (similar in form and decoration) was built on the ground along the central axis of the facade with the main entrance. Both towers were connected by a decorative bridge (in the 30s of the XX century, the tower and the bridge were destroyed). The terrace on the northern facade of the house had its access to the rooms on the ground floor (it was also destroyed as a result of redevelopment). Moving between the floors took place along a wooden spiral staircase (on the second floor), and metal stairs led up to the upper rooms. All the rooms were heated with fireplaces decorated with different colors of marble. In the basement was also equipped with a wine cellar.

Park

When Edward Kessler arrived in Totai-Koy, at the end of the XIX century, the village was abandoned. Therefore, General Kessler bought some more land and laid the park and orchard (10 tenths of land). The park grew a lot of ornamental trees and shrub forms: chestnuts , plane trees , nuts , pines . Only contemporaries of chestnut avenue, a number of old pines and single plane trees and a walnut reached their contemporaries ^[5] .

1. ↑ About the mortgage organization ( Undefeated ) (inaccessible link) . The date of circulation is January 13, 2019. Archived January 13, 2019.
2. ↑ Meteorological Station for Sina (Neopr.) .
3. ↑ “Bagato rokv pospіl tsikavila us our Gorushka pіd Simferopol”, - having found out the property of A. Fersman. W vyachnistya vіn calling the Crimea his "first university". “Vin is good for me,” as he wrote his teachings, - be inspired by nature and love. Winnin is a pragmatist Okremikh drіbnits і details a picture of a minnow and fantasies about Maybutn ... " (Neopr.) .
4. ↑ Geokhіmіk, Mineralog, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union of Socialist Republic of Russia Oleksandr Yevgenovich Fersman (Neopr.) .
5. ↑ About the Kessler Park (Neopr.) .

• “Maybutn Sadibi Kessler: the romantic castle and the conniving Ruina?” Project “Chervona Kniga” ;
• Bogdanov M.N. "Karl F. Kessler (biography)" / M.N. Bogdanov.- St. Petersburg, 1882. - 64 p .;
• Kessler KF “Journey with an environmental goal to the northern coast of the Black Sea and to the Crimea in 1858” / KF Kessler // “University news”. - 1860. - pp. 1-248 .;
• Ruda S.P. The role of K.F. Kessler in the consolidaire of nature in Ukraine (another half of the 19th century) / S.P.Ruda // Velika Volin. - 1999. - T. 19. Berdychiv land in the context of the history of Ukraine. - p. 148-149

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