Adım Adım Amasya

Stories of the city

The Alaman Farm

In the 19th century, Germans and Swiss came to Amasya. They founded a silk factory, bought a farm and set out to open a school. In the end, this is what happened: they became Amasyans.

19th century Silk production Colonisation and missionary work
A caravan of laden camels in ornate harness with a cameleer; farm buildings on the ridge behind
A camel caravan carrying loads taken on at the Alaman Farm. Behind, on the ridge, the farm buildings can be seen. Hüseyin Menç Archive.

📜 What do the documents say?

In the second half of the 19th century, German and Swiss colonists — above all George Krug and Metz — had a major influence on Amasya's economy. By founding modern, steam-powered silk-cocoon factories equipped with European techniques, a match factory and flour mills, these entrepreneurs raised the city's agriculture and industry to European standards.1

In the Amasya silk factory of a trading firm based in Freiburg, in the German state of Baden, hundreds of girls and boys of different faiths worked at opening silkworm cocoons — because children's delicate hands were well suited to the task.2

The German geographer Heinrich Barth, who came to the city in 1858, saw Krug's office in the Taşhan: producers and villagers were queuing to sell their silk. Krug had formerly been the Amasya agent of the Freiburg-based silk house of the Meez family; by now he had opened businesses in his own name. His house was built in the Swiss architectural style, on a high spur where a small river meets the Yeşilırmak.3

1865: the governor visits the factory

In 1865 Ziya Paşa, the governor (mutasarrıf) of Amasya, inspected Mez's silk factory together with the city's notables and the ulema.2

Portrait of Ziya Paşa, governor of Amasya
Ziya Paşa, governor of Amasya.
Hüseyin Menç Archive.

Two things caught his attention as he toured the factory. The first was that the silkworms inside the cocoons were killed with steam; he objected to this strongly.

The second was graver: the boys and girls he watched were made to sing according to Christian traditions while they worked. On the grounds that this innocent-looking practice would in time cause irreparable corruption among Muslim families, he ordered the Turkish girls to leave work at once. What is more, he banned the employment of Muslim children among the factory's workers.2

Some foreigners interpreted this as follows: “as a Turk with a strict sense of morality, he could not tolerate it”. According to Menç, these measures of Ziya Bey checked the influence of Evangelical Christian propaganda.2

Inside the silk factory: women and children working along two rows of troughs, two overseers walking between them
Inside the silk factory in Amasya. Women and children work along two rows of troughs; two overseers walk down the aisle between them. Hüseyin Menç Archive — red-toned in the book's printing, converted to greyscale here.

The farm: who, how much, for what price?

The figures below come from Ottoman archival documents.4 (A dönüm is an Ottoman unit of land; a kuruş, a unit of currency.)

1,600 dönümFrom the land of the Atabey Farm, in the name of the preacher Brokse, for 65,000 kuruş.
480 dönümAgain from the same farm, from Tatyos of the Armenian community, for 22,000 kuruş.
540 dönümAt Tuzsuz, in the name of Monsieur Haksher, for 28,000 kuruş.
2,620 dönümTotal land sold — 115,000 kuruş. The title deeds were issued.

Finally, 460 dönüm held by Circassian immigrants in the village of Kutu were bargained over for 62,000 kuruş — but the sale was never completed, and no deed was issued.4

According to the document, the land was state-owned (miri) land; lying close to the stream, it flooded in the seasons when the water rose, and part of it was used as meadow and mown for hay. On the rest, barley, wheat and maize were grown with European tools and implements.4

Apart from the German owners and stewards and the blacksmiths, carpenters, butter- and cheese-makers, the farm had no foreign servants. Everyone working as a labourer was an Ottoman subject, employed for wages: Muslim people from the surrounding villages, some Greeks from Sivas, and Armenians and Greeks from Amasya.4

After buying the farm, the Germans added to the existing buildings two straw barns, three hay barns, a large building containing a bakehouse and a kitchen, and two farmers' quarters.4

A Swiss-style farmhouse with wide eaves and a balcony on a bare hillside; children in hats sitting in front
The farmhouse: wide eaves, a balcony, shuttered windows — it fits the description “Swiss architectural style” that Barth used for Krug's house.3 Old Amasya archive. The archive label gives 1840; since the documents date the Germans' activities in Amasya to later decades, that date is not used here.
General view of the farm: a long tiled building, with vineyards and a pavilion among trees behind
A general view of the farm. A long building in front; behind it, terraced vineyards and a pavilion among the trees. Hüseyin Menç Archive.

The school on the farm and the state's reaction

To give agricultural training based on scientific methods, the Germans gathered orphaned Armenian children on the farm and began teaching them. But the farm's poor climate made the children ill. Moreover, opening a school or a church without a licence was forbidden by law; on a warning from the province of Sivas the teaching was ended and the children were sent back to their families.4

The state's concern is set out plainly in the documents: foreign immigrants were being settled at random on land bought by foreigners, and the population structure of the region was changing. It was essential that important places — castles, fortifications, borders and military positions — should remain in the hands of Ottoman subjects. While no objection was seen to the Germans buying a farm for agriculture, their teaching in breach of the education regulations and their founding of unlicensed schools were not accepted.4

The outcome: it was decided not to permit unlicensed schools or buildings; it was requested that the sale in Kutu village should not go ahead and that, if necessary, the land should be bought by the Government by paying its price. And the chief clerk of the Defter-i Hakanî (the land registry) of Amasya, held negligent in letting the Germans acquire so much land in Amasya, was put on trial.4

Two names: Alaman or Atabey?

The name used by the people and the archive

The pictures in the photographic archive and Hüseyin Menç's book call this place “Alaman Çiftliği” (the Alaman — German — Farm). Menç writes that the farm was run under Krug's management.2

The name in the documents

In the Ottoman archival documents and academic studies, the land is called the Atabey Farm (Atabey Çiftliği).4 The title of the article that studies it is: “Alman Kolonyal Politikaları ve Protestan Misyonerliği İçin Bir Örnek: Amasya Atabey Çiftliği (1879-1919)” [An Example of German Colonial Policies and Protestant Missionary Activity: The Atabey Farm in Amasya].5

The sources we have do not state outright that these two names refer to the same place — so this page does not say so. But one thing is certain: Kültürel Miras Boyutuyla Amasya cites this very study of the Atabey Farm as the source of its sentence about the German and Swiss colonists.1, 5

The story ends quite differently

The fate of those who came to bring Christianity to Amasya was recorded by the German traveller Ernst von der Nahmer, who came to the city in 1898:

“Apart from Krug, all who came forgot their German origins, their German consciousness, their religion and their culture. They married Armenian and Turkish Muslim girls. Some turned to Protestantism, some to Islam. They became the sons-in-law of Armenians and Turks. Little by little they lost their Germanness, until nothing German was left to them but their surnames. Their children, too, forgot German. They came to resemble the Levantines of Turkey. In short, they became Amasyans.”

Ernst von der Nahmer, 1898 — as quoted by Menç; our English translation of the Turkish rendering (the original is in German).2

Nahmer nonetheless thought well of the Germans who had become Amasyans: “They all became honest, hard-working, dignified people who respected Amasya and its surroundings and were loved by the people here.” He wrote that they had founded modern businesses in blacksmithing, milling and the production of modern silk thread, and had raised the region's standard of living. But he added: “Yet their forgetting their national identity, their language and their religion is not a forgivable fault.”2

Who bought the factory?

Portrait of the bearded Osmanzade Akif Bey wearing a fez
Osmanzade Akif Bey (Tohumcu).
The caption written beneath the picture reads: “Osmanzade Akif Bey, who bought the silk factory the Germans had founded in Amasya.”
Hüseyin Menç Archive.

He was the child of a family of the Kabatay clan, which had been forced to migrate from the Caucasus to Anatolia. With what wealth it could save, the family came to Amasya and settled there.2

He first worked as a labourer in the factory the Germans had founded. There he learned the finer points of the trade — and he became an important actor in the passing of Amasya's silk industry from the Germans to Muslims.2

When the Germans' presence and strength declined and they could no longer keep the wheels of their great investments turning, Akif Bey bought, at public auction, the silk works the Germans had founded in Amasya.2

Then he did the harder thing. To end the poor quality of the produce of Amasya's traditional sericulture, he set out for China, the home of silkworm breeding: from Samsun to Istanbul, and from there by a sea voyage lasting months to China. He came back with silkworm eggs of the highest quality.2

For years to come, the “Amasya Silk” brand, of matchless quality, was sold to merchants from home and abroad at the “Böcekhane” (the silkworm house). The income from these sales was paid to the Amasya governorate under the name “Harir Tohumu Rusumu” (the silkworm-egg duty). For producing silk with scientific, modern techniques, he was awarded a gold decoration by Abdülhamid II.2

Women and girls in white aprons lined up at the head of a long table
Silk workers in Amasya. Hüseyin Menç Archive.

After Akif Bey, the Tohumcu family founded a flour mill and leather and tanning businesses. His sons Kemal, Nahit, Ali and Besim took the surname Tohumcu (“seed-maker”) from their father's trade. Kemal Tohumcu was educated at the French Jesuit College in Amasya.2

And the part that will interest teachers: because silkworm-egg production and sericulture had advanced so far in Amasya, sericulture lessons were taught in the middle school in 1944.2

In order

This stop has no coordinates. Because the farm's present location and the state of its remains have not been verified by fieldwork, no coordinates are given on this page.

Sources

Every factual statement on this page rests on one of the sources below. Titles are given in their original Turkish so that they can be found; quotations from them are our translations.

  1. Kültürel Miras Boyutuyla Amasya (Amasya: Amasya Üniversitesi, BAP Projesi SEB-BAP25-0233, 2026), 21-24. — The “Osmanlı Dönemi Amasya” chapter; the German and Swiss colonists (George Krug and Metz) appear here.
  2. Hüseyin Menç, Tarih İçinde Amasya (Amasya: Amasya Belediyesi, 2014), 243, 249. — Two sections: p. 243 “İpekçilikte Türk Ekolünü Başlatan Osmanzade Akif Bey (Tohumcu)”; p. 249 “1865'te Amasya Mutasarrıfı Ziya Paşa'nın tedbirleri, misyonerlik çemberindeki genç kızlarımızı kurtarmıştı” (Menç bases this section on pp. 305-308 of source no. 3).
  3. Ali Tuzcu, Seyahatnâmelerde Amasya (Amasya: Amasya Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 2007), 196-198. — The “Amasya'nın Alamanları: Dr. Heinrich Barth” section.
  4. Edip Uzundal, Sultan II. Abdülhamid Dönemi'nde Amasya Sancağı (Sosyal, Ekonomik, İdarî ve Demografik Yapı) (Tokat: Gaziosmanpaşa Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Doktora Tezi, 2017), 225-226. — Based on documents in the Ottoman Archives of the Prime Ministry (BOA. BEO. 1892/141887; BOA. BEO. 2256/169155; BOA. Y.A.RES. 121/78).
  5. Hadi Belge, “Alman Kolonyal Politikaları ve Protestan Misyonerliği İçin Bir Örnek: Amasya Atabey Çiftliği (1879-1919)”, History Studies 10/8 (Kasım 2018), 49-75.