Skip to main content

Eradicating the Communist Spirit in the Young People of Fernheim


In Fall 1929 some 10,000 Mennonites attempted to flea the Soviet countryside for Moscow in a last ditch attempt to leave. Ultimately Germany's intervention was salvation for 3,885 of that group, and Mennonite leader Benjamin Unruh—stationed in Germany--was their shepherd, with American aid through Mennonite Central Committee.


Ultimately it was because of Unruh that the German government had put economic and diplomatic pressure on Stalin to open the gates out of Moscow to the west, if only for a short period.


Germany in turn could only be a transit country, and Canada refused to take more than 1,000 (in the end it was 1,344). The remainder were assisted to migrate to Paraguay (1,572) or Brazil. Not surprisingly family clans were split.

Some of the young people who had arrived in the Paraguayan Chaco “had attended communist schools in Russia,” leading to “undesirable” dynamics and “unpleasant occurrences” in some of the villages, in the estimation of the younger and charismatic teacher Fritz Kliewer. Others had been in Germany seven months, and were strongly impacted by what they heard and seen. Street fights between communists and Nazis was reported almost daily in the German newspapers of 1929 and 1930 (note 1).


Teacher Kliewer, an early supporter of National Socialism and its themes, reported on his work in the Paraguayan Fernheim Colony with youth had been infected with Bolshevik ideology and behaviour. The occurrences included “public brawls on the roads,” as he observed, “disturbances in the Sunday services,” as well as other acts of “disrespect” and “disobedience” (note 2).


The Mennonite village system from Russia had its traditional means to bring individuals implicated in improper behaviour to account. In this case however the villages and families came from diverse regions of Russia—and experiences in Germany--and there was no unity in the settlement on discipline.


In 1932 about 20 young men were employed on an agricultural /experimental farm about 90 kilometers east of the Mennonite Fernheim Colony—some of whom had “come under bad influences in Russia," according to Kliewer. At the station they were without supervision, and apparently had committed unnamed “intolerable excesses.”


When news returned to the colony, leaders immediately had the young adults involved dismissed. However once in the colony, their troubling behaviour took root there as well. “Finally some very extreme misbehavior in connection with a social gathering at Rosenort at Easter time 1933 led to energetic [disciplinary] action.” As a consequence, villages and the colony “laid very severe penalties on the young rioters” at the Chacofest (note 3).


There is mystery around these events. I am especially interested because my grandparents lived in Rosenort at this time. My father was one year old in 1933, but his oldest brother Jakob was 15.


What complicates this whole story is the response, and the introduction of a new ideology as antidote to reshape these youth transplanted from the USSR. “It was clear to all that a thoroughgoing training and education of the young people was necessary because it was the young people in Russia who were most influenced by communism” (note 4). The events in Rosenort were recalled in the next years as the deciding impulse for new urgency, leadership and direction in youth work in Fernheim.


Church-based presentations and Bible studies--largely from the Mennonite Brethren-- were not proving effective to eradicate the “communist spirit,” as Teacher Kliewer wrote in a 1937 academic publication. It had required something more—and that “more” was the ethno-nationalist (völkisch) racial vision and "arising" in the new Germany led by Adolf Hitler.


“The völkisch (ethno-nationalist German) awakening was particularly strong among the younger generation [in Fernheim]. The idea of uniting the youth on both a denominational and an ethno-national basis was proposed by some young people soon after 1933. … While including the cultivation of Germanness in the program of youth work met with some resistance from the churches, the recurring youth riots in the villages and at the Palo Santo agricultural experiment station … led many to acknowledge the need for purposeful, broad-based youth work … and to appreciate that young people will not be satisfied in the long run with religious lectures and events alone. … The youth association that was founded represented something quite new in the history of the Mennonite faith and ethnic community. ... For the first time we consciously put the cultivation of ethno-national peoplehood on its program.” (Note 5)


Kliewer shared the desired outcomes of their youth and cultural work, as well as their strategies:


"...we are endeavoring to arouse and strengthen the ethno-national forces in our midst, so that we shall be strong to resist the forces of degeneration … After all we as German-speaking Mennonites belong to the great national and cultural group, and we wish to affirm our participation in ‘Germandom.’” (Note 6)


“The third monthly young people’s meeting is usually devoted to address on the history and development of German in the past and present. … Fernheim follows the development of affairs in the new Germany under Adolf Hitler with great interest.” (Note 7).


Throughout these years Unruh remained the Paraguayan group's most important mentor; even before Hitler came to power in January 1933, Unruh had been a financial contributor to the Nazi Party (note 8). Already in a December 1934 letter to Fernheim, Unruh offered Mennonites there a Christian recommendation for the “Heil Hitler” greeting (note 9).  And “just as we have held ourselves pure from foreign influences in Russia,” Unruh wrote to the Paraguayan settlers, “so also we want to confess faithfully and openly ... the Germanness of the Third Reich, with words and deeds” (note 10). Moreover Unruh boasted to Nazi officials that the experience of Mennonites in Germany before leaving for Paraguay was not only “profound,” but that many there “captured impressions of the National Socialist struggle which they took overseas” (note 11).


If my uncle had been infused with a communist spirit as a child in Russia, and if he had been involved in the youth riots in Rosenort in 1933 as a young lad, or if he had been infused by the spirit of what he saw in Germany over seven months--by 1935 the new youth work in Fernheim driven by Kliewer was a full success (note 12). On January 8, 1935, two months shy of his 17th birthday this uncle wrote to “Großmama” (my great-grandmother) in Canada of how “Germanness is cherished and cultivated among the youth here" in Fernheim.


“It is a terrible shame that the students there [in Canada] do not learn German. If it goes on like this, in the course of time German will be dropped altogether there. How sad, isn't it? In this respect, we are greatly favored here. Here, Germanness is cherished and cultivated among the youth. Germany itself supports this by sending us newspapers and books. I have also received a book and several postcards of the city of Nuremberg from a boy from Germany with whom I am in correspondence. The book bears the following title: Young Germany Wants Work and Peace / Das junge Deutschland will Arbeit und Frieden.” (Note 13; see pic).


The book, not surprisingly, is a collection of Hitler speeches (note 14; pic). Jacob had not seen his grandmother since she left Germany for Canada five years earlier with her other sons. Over this time, their worlds began to diverge. The 16-year-old was sure Grossmama would affirm his views of Germany and of German language and culture. He proudly tells her of the Hitler speeches he was reading in the forty-degree (celsius) heat of the Chaco, and of the postcards from Nuremburg, the city of the annual Nazi Party Reichstag gatherings (see pic).


Excitement about Hitler was not completely foreign to Canadian Russländer Mennonites. The Winnipeg literary publication Mennonitische (Volks-) Warte in 1938 used a sketch of Menno Simons’ “hiding place” and the famous Menno linden tree to frame a Hitler quote aimed at youth:


“You are the coming Germany, you have to learn what we one day hope from her. You must not allow self-conceit, arrogance, class views, differences between rich and poor to enter your young hearts. You must practice the virtues today that nations need if they want to become great. You must be faithful. You must be courageous. You must be brave and you must embody one glorious comradeship among yourselves.” (Note 14; see pic)


An earlier issue included a photo of a 1935 Fernheim Mennonite school outing, with children with raised arm giving the Heil Hitler greeting (pic). The children are the ages of my aunts.


The 1933 Easter brawl in Rosenort was a kind of tipping or turning point for the colony's youth work. One troublesome spirit and ideology was successfully eradicated, but only with an equally powerful and troublesome antidote.I have so many questions I wish I could have asked older family members who were there.

   

--Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Cf. for example the January 2, 1930 evening edition of Berlin’s Vossische Zeitung, p. 3, which also includes a small piece on the Mennonite refugees from Moscow; https://zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/list/title/zdb/27112366/. 

Note 2: Fritz (Friedrich) Kliewer, “Mennonite Young People’s Work in the Paraguayan Chaco,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 11, no. 2 (April 1937), 121.

Note 3: Kliewer, “Mennonite Young People’s Work in the Paraguayan Chaco,” 121.

Note 4: Kliewer, “Mennonite Young People’s Work in the Paraguayan Chaco,” 121f.

Note 5: Friedrich (Fritz) Kliewer, Die Deutsche Volksgruppe in Paraguay. Eine siedlungsgeschichtliche, volkskundliche, volkspolitische Untersuchung (Hamburg: Hans Christians, 1941), 153, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1941,%20Kliewer,%20Die%20deutsche%20Volksgruppe%20in%20Paraguay/Book/DSCF2627.JPG.

Note 6: Kliewer, “Mennonite Young People’s Work in the Paraguayan Chaco,” 126.

Note 7: Kliewer, “Mennonite Young People’s Work in the Paraguayan Chaco,” 127.
Note 8: Cf. Benjamin H. Unruh, “Fragebogen zur Bearbeitung des Aufnahmeantrages für die Reichsschriftumskammer,” October 7, 1937, from MLA-B, MS 416, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_416/unruh_harder_quiring_berlin_docs/SKMBT_C35108031809530_0001.jpg.

Note 9: B. H. Unruh, December 8, 1934, extracted in B. H. Unruh to Major Reitzenstein, 29 January 1937, 6f., letter, from BArch-Potsdam, copy in MS 416, from Mennonite Library and Archives Bethel College, North Newton, KS, https://mla.bethelks.edu/.../potsdam.../69558-142.jpg.

Note 10: Cited in Jakob Warkentin, “Wilhelmy, Herbert,” Lexikon der Mennoniten in Paraguay, online https://www.menonitica.org/lexikon/. 

Note 11: Unruh to Reitzenstein, 5.

Note 12: Jacob Fast Jr. left Paraguay for Germany in 1939 and died as a German soldier (other post to come).

Note 13: Jacob Fast, Jr. (Fernheim) to "Großmama“ Justina Riediger Fast (Manitoba), letter, January 8, 1935.

Note 14: Adolf Hitler, "Das junge Deutschland will Arbeit und Frieden“: Die Reden Hitlers als Kanzler (München: Eher, 1934), https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-047/mode/2up.

.










Print Friendly and PDF
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fraktur (or Gothic) font and Kurrent- (or Sütterlin) handwriting: Nazi ban, 1941

In the middle of the war on January 1, 1942, the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Rundschau published a new issue without the familiar Fraktur script masthead ( note 1 ). One might speculate on the reasons, but a year earlier Hitler banned the use of the font in the Reich . The Rundschau did not exactly follow all orders from Berlin—the rest of the paper was in Fraktur (sometimes referred to as "Gothic"); when the war ended in 1945, the Rundschau reintroduced the Fraktur font for its masthead. It wasn’t until the 1960s that an issue might have a page or title here or there with the “normal” or Latin font, even though post-war Germany was no longer using Fraktur . By 1973 only the Rundschau masthead is left in Fraktur , and that is only removed in December 1992. Attached is a copy of Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann's official letter dated January 3, 1941, which prohibited the use of Fraktur fonts "by order of the Führer. " Why? It was a Jewish invention, apparent...
1 comment
Read more

1929 Flight of Mennonites to Moscow and Reception in Germany

At the core of the attached video are some thirty photos of Mennonite refugees arriving from Moscow in 1929 which are new archival finds. While some 13,000 had gathered in outskirts of Moscow, with many more attempting the same journey, the Soviet Union only released 3,885 Mennonite "German farmers," together with 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists, and 7 Adventists. Some of new photographs are from the first group of 323 refugees who left Moscow on October 29, arriving in Kiel on November 3, 1929. A second group of photos are from the so-called “Swinemünde group,” which left Moscow only a day later. This group however could not be accommodated in the first transport and departed from a different station on October 31. They were however held up in Leningrad for one month as intense diplomatic negotiations between the Soviet Union, Germany and also Canada took place. This second group arrived at the Prussian sea port of Swinemünde on December 2. In the next ten ...
1 comment
Read more

Shaky Beginings as a Faith Community

With basic physical needs addressed, in 1805 Chortitza pioneers were ready to recover their religious roots and to pass on a faith identity. They requested a copy of Menno Simons’ writings from the Danzig mother-church especially for the young adults, “who know only what they hear,” and because “occasionally we are asked about the founder whose name our religion bears” ( note 1 ). The Anabaptist identity of this generation—despite the strong Mennonite publications in Prussia in the late eighteenth century—was uninformed and very thin. Settlers first arrived in Russia 1788-89 without ministers or elders. Settlers had to be content with sharing Bible reflections in Low German dialect or a “service that consisted of singing one song and a sermon that was read from a book of sermons” written by the recently deceased East Prussian Mennonite elder Isaac Kroeker ( note 2 ). In the first months of settlement, Chortitza Mennonites wrote church leaders in Prussia:  “We cordially plead ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Beginnings: Some Basics

The sixteenth-century ancestors of Russian Mennonites were largely Anabaptists from the Low Countries. Because their new vision of church called for voluntary membership marked by adult baptism upon confession of faith, they became one of the most persecuted groups of the Protestant Reformation ( note 1 ). For a millennium re-baptism ( a na -baptism) had been considered a heresy punishable by death ( note 2 ), and again in 1529 the Imperial Diet of Speyer called for the “brutal” punishment for those who did not recognize infant baptism. Many of the earliest Anabaptist cells were found in Belgium and The Netherlands--part of the larger Habsburg Empire ruled after 1555 by “the Most Catholic of Kings,” Philip II of Spain. The North Sea port cities of the Low Countries had some limited freedoms and were places for both commercial and cultural exchange; ships arrived daily not only from other Hanseatic League like Danzig, but also from Florence, Venice and Genoa, the Americas and the Far Ea...
Post a Comment
Read more

“We have no poor among us”: From "Blue Bag" to e-Transfer

Through not unique or original to Menno Simons, the idea of watching and caring for fellow travellers on the journey of faith “where no one is allowed to beg” ( note 1 ) was a pillar of his teaching, and forms one of the most consistent threads in the Anabaptist–Mennonite story. In the decades before Mennonites settled in Russia they used the “Blue-Bag” to collect for the poor in Prussia. In 1723 Abraham Hartwich—an otherwise unsympathetic observer of Mennonites—noted that Mennonites in Prussia “do not allow their co-religionists to suffer want, but rather help them in their poverty from the so-called blue-bag, their fund for the poor” ( note 2 ). It is unclear when the “blue-bag tradition” changed? Similarly, in the early 1800s, two Lutheran observers—Georg Reiswitz and Friedrich Wadzeck—noted that the Mennonite care for their poor through annual free-will contributions was “exemplary” ( note 3 ). Moreover Reiswitz and Wadzeck describe a community stubbornly committed to each ot...
Post a Comment
Read more

Formidable Fräulein Marga Bräul (1919–2011)

Fräulein Bräul left an indelible mark on two generations of high school students in the Mennonite Colony of Fernheim, Paraguay. Former students and acquaintances recall that Marga Bräul demanded the highest effort and achievements of her students, colleagues and of herself—the kind of teacher you either love or hate but will never forget! In March 1947, Marga was offered a position at the Fernheim Secondary School ( Zentralschule ). A recent refugee to Paraguay from war-torn Europe, she taught mathematics, physics, and chemistry. In 1952, she was the only female faculty member ( note 1 ). Marga wedded a strong commitment to academics with a passion for quality arts and crafts. She provided extensive extra-curricular instruction to students in handiwork and was especially renowned for her artwork—which included painting and woodworking— end of year art exhibits with students, theatre sets, and festival decorations. Marga’s pedagogical philosophy was holistic; she told Mennonite ed...
Post a Comment
Read more

Catherine the Great’s 1763 Manifesto

“We must swarm our vast wastelands with people. I do not think that in order to achieve this it would be useful to compel our non-Christians to accept our faith--polygamy for example, is even more useful for the multiplication of the population. … "Russia does not have enough inhabitants, …but still possesses a large expanse of land, which is neither inhabited nor cultivated. … The fields that could nourish the whole nation, barely feeds one family..." – Catherine II (Note 1 ) “We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade, they are also most convenient for the development and growth of many kinds ...
Post a Comment
Read more

“The way is finally open”—Russian Mennonite Immigration, 1922-23

In a highly secretive meeting in Ohrloff, Molotschna on February 7, 1922, leaders took a decision to work to remove the entire Mennonite population of some 100,000 people out of the USSR—if at all possible ( note 1 ). B.B. Janz (Ohrloff) and Bishop David Toews (Rosthern, SK) are remembered as the immigration leaders who made it possible to bring some 20,000 Mennonites from the Soviet Union to Canada in the 1920s ( note 2 ). But behind those final numbers were multiple problems. In August 1922, an appeal was made by leaders to churches in Canada and the USA: “The way is finally open, for at least 3,000 persons who have received permission to leave Russia … Two ships of the Canadian Pacific Railway are ready to sail from England to Odessa as soon as the cholera quarantine is lifted. These Russian [Mennonite] refugees are practically without clothing … .” ( Note 3 ) Notably at this point B. B. Janz was also writing Toews, saying that he was utterly exhausted and was preparing to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ukraine Independence--Russian Aggression--German Interests (1918)

The semi-autonomous Ukrainian People's Republic was established shortly after Russia's February Revolution in 1917. Much was still fluid, however. After the October Bolshevik Revolution the Central Rada of Ukraine in Kyiv declared full state independence from the Russian Republic on January 22, 1918. The Ukrainian People's Republic negotiated an end to its participation in Great War, and on February 9, 1918 signed a protectorate treaty in Brest-Litovsk. On February 17, Ukraine appealed to Germany and Austria-Hungary for assistance to repel Russian Bolshevik “invaders,” to detach Ukraine from Russia, and to establish conditions of stability. The World War had not yet ended. Imperialist Germany was desperate for grain and natural resources from Ukraine, eager to end the war in the east while containing Russia, and determined to establish post-war markets for German goods, technologies and influence ( note 1 ). For its part the Russian Bolshevik regime was eager to save ...
Post a Comment
Read more

"In the Case of Extreme Danger" - Menno Pass and Refugee crisis, 1945-46

"In the Case of Extreme Danger 1. We are Russian-Mennonite refugees who are returning to Holland, the place of origin. The language is Low German. 2. The Dutch Mennonites there, Doopsgezinde , will take in all fellow-believing Mennonites from Russia who are in danger of compulsory repatriation. 3. The first stage of the journey is to Gronau in Westphalia. 4. As a precaution, purchase a ticket to an intermediate stop first. The last connecting station is Rheine. 5. Opposite Gronau is the Dutch city of Enschede, where you will cross the border. 6. On the border ask for Peter Dyck (Piter Daik), Mennonite Central Committee, Amsterdam, Singel 452. Peter Dyck (or his people) will distribute the relevant papers—“Menno Passes”--and provide further information. 7. Any other border points may also be crossed, with the necessary explanations (who, where to, Mennonites from Russia, Peter Dyck, M.C.C., etc.). The Dutch border Patrol is informed. 8. Here the whole matter must be h...
Post a Comment
Read more