"Between Monarchs" a lot can happen (like revolt). A Mennonite "Accession" Prayer for the Monarch

It is surprising for many to learn that Russian Mennonites sang the Russian national anthem "God save the Tsar" in special worship services ... frequently! 

We have a "Mennonite prayer" and sermon sample for the accession of the monarch (Thronbesteigung) or its anniversary, with closing prayer-- and another Mennonite sampler of a coronation (Krönung) prayer, sermon and closing prayer (note 1). After 70 years with one monarch, the manual is made for a time like this--try sharing it with your Canadian Mennonite pastor ;) 

Technically there is no “between” monarchs: “The Queen is Dead. Long live the King!” But there is much that happens or can happen before the coronation of the new monarch. Including revolt.

Mennonites in Molotschna had hosted Tsar Alexander I shortly before his death in 1825. Upon his death in December, Alexander's brother and heir Constantine declined succession, and prior to the coronation of the next brother Nicholas, some 3,000 rebel (mostly aristocratic) officers and soldiers refused to swear the oath to Nicholas. They had tasted western European freedoms in the Napoleonic War and were dissatisfied with the autocratic Russian system and demanded an end to serfdom and a modernized constitutional monarchy. These “Decembrists,” as they were called, were defeated by early January 1826 and survivors were arrested.

Mennonite Johann Cornies, who had hosted the old Tsar twice, wrote his brother-in-law travelling in Prussia:

“According to published reports, five of the conspirators against the life of our blessed Monarch were sentenced to quartering. His Majesty remitted their punishment to hanging and this sentence has already been carried out. Several were condemned to twenty years of Crown labour in Siberia, and to settlement there once their terms end.” (Note 2)

With the accession of a new monarch, amnesties might also be declared. 

This was the case in 1801-2 with accession of Alexander I, who promised in his first manifesto to rule “in the spirit and according to the heart of his grandmother,” Catharine the Great. In his first months as Tsar (and prior to coronation), minor transgressors were released from prison (note 3). This was excellent news for Mennonite land scout and immigration leader Jacob Höppner and his brother Peter. Both had been expelled from their Chortitza Flemish Mennonite community and as a result of jealousies and mistrust, they had been charged and imprisoned. The timing of the amnesty could not have been better, and the Höppners were spared the consequences of their community’s wrath and of Siberian exile (note 4).

Fast forward to the 1917 “February Revolution” in Russia (not the later October or Bolshevik Revolution). Tsar Nicholas II abdicated and a weak provisional government was appointed. In the transition period, all minority faith or language restrictions were repealed and following tradition, a general amnesty for all political prisoners was declared in advance of planned democratic elections. Mennonites organized to participate in this new electoral process. Benjamin Unruh, for example, was sympathetic to a more conservative constitutional monarchy; his younger students who had served in the war as medics were more inclined to support the Constitutional Democrats (or “Kadets”). And as in the day of Jakob Höppner, now some 80,000 prisoners in Russia were granted amnesty--and in this mix was the anarchist Nestor Makhno.

In very short order Russia transitioned from a “mon-archy” (mónos = only, and arché=power, authority) to “an-archy” (i.e., without arché, order or rule).

The end of monarchy and the beginning of anarchy was not the last word in Russia /Soviet Union, but authority shifted so radically that it was the start of the end of organized Russian Mennonite life. 

                                                                        --Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Handbuch zum Gebrauch bei gottesdienstlichen Handlungen zunächst für die Aeltesten und Prediger der Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Rußland, edited by the Allgemeiner Konferenz der Mennoniten in Rußland (Berdjansk: Ediger, 1911), https://mla.bethelks.edu/books/264.097%20Al34h/. The national anthem was included in Liederperlen, used predominantly in Mennonite Brethren choirs. https://www.facebook.com/groups/MennoniteGenealogyHistory/permalink/4154357901264882. 

Note 2: “No. 66. Johann Cornies to Klaas Dyck, 14 August 1826,” in Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe, vol. I, 81.

Note 3: See the amnesty text in German translation in Heinrich Storch, ed., Rußland unter Alexander dem Ersten: Eine historische Zeitschrift (St. Petersburg/Leipzig: Hartknoch, 1804), vol. 1, 111-115; https://archive.org/details/russlandunteral02unkngoog/page/n118/mode/2up.

Note 4: Henry Schapansky, “Old Colony Pioneers and the Höppner Affair,” Preservings 20 (2002), 27, https://www.plettfoundation.org/files/preservings/Preservings20.pdf. Cf. also David H. Epp, Die Chortitzer Mennoniten. Versuch einer Darstellung des Entwicklungsganges derselben (Odessa, 1889), 95, https://chortitza.org/Dok/Epp.pdf.

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