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

The End of Schardau (and other Molotschna villages), 1941

My grandmother was four-years old when her parents moved from Petershagen, Molotschna to Schardau in 1908. This story is larger than that of Schardau, but tells how this village and many others in Molotschna were evacuated by Stalin days before the arrival of German troops in 1941. -ANF The bridge across the Dnieper at Chortitza was destroyed by retreating Soviet troops on August 18, 1941 and the hydroelectric dam completed near Einlage in 1932 was also dynamited by NKVD personnel—killing at least 20,000 locals downstream, and forcing the Germans to cross further south at Nikopol. For the next six-and-a-half weeks, the old Mennonite settlement area of Chortitza was continuously shelled by Soviet troops from Zaporozhje on the east side of the river ( note 1 ). The majority of Russian Germans in Crimea and Ukraine paid dearly for Germany’s Blitzkrieg and plans for racially-based population resettlements. As early as August 3, 1941, the Supreme Command of the Soviet Forces received noti...
Post a Comment
Read more

Russia: A Refuge for all True Christians Living in the Last Days

If only it were so. It was not only a fringe group of Russian Mennonites who believed that they were living the Last Days. This view was widely shared--though rejected by the minority conservative Kleine Gemeinde. In 1820 upon the recommendation of Rudnerweide (Frisian) Elder Franz Görz, the progressive and influential Mennonite leader Johann Cornies asked the Mennonite Tobias Voth (b. 1791) of Graudenz, Prussia to come and lead his Agricultural Association’s private high school in Ohrloff, in the Russian Mennonite colony of Molotschna. Voth understood this as nothing less than a divine call upon his life ( note 1; pic 3 ). In Ohrloff Voth grew not only a secondary school, but also a community lending library, book clubs, as well as mission prayer meetings, and Bible study evenings. Voth was the son of a Mennonite minister and his wife was raised Lutheran ( note 2 ). For some years, Voth had been strongly influenced by the warm, Pietist devotional fiction writings of Johann Heinrich Ju...
Post a 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

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

A Mennonite Pandemic Spirituality, 1830-1831

Asiatic Cholera broke out across Russia in 1829 and ‘30, and further into Europe in 1831. It began with an infected battalion in Orenburg ( note 1 ), and by early Fall 1830 the disease had reached Moscow and the capital. Russia imposed drastic quarantine measures. Much like today, infected regions were cut off and domestic trade was restricted. The disease reached the Molotschna River district in Fall 1830, and by mid-December hundreds of Nogai deaths were recorded in the villages adjacent to the Mennonite colony, leading state authorities to impose a strict quarantine. When the Mennonite Johann Cornies—a state-appointed agricultural supervisor and civic leader—first became aware of the nearby cholera-related deaths, he recommended to the Mennonite District Office on December 6, 1830 to stop traffic and prevent random contacts with Nogai. For Cornies it was important that the Mennonite community do all it can keep from carrying the disease into the community, though “only God knows...
Post a Comment
Read more

What were Molotschna Mennonites reading in the early 1840s?

Johann Cornies expanded his Agricultural Society School library in Ohrloff to become a lending library “for the instruction and better enlightenment of every adult resident.” The library was overseen by the Agricultural Society; in 1845, patrons across the colony paid 1 ruble annually to access its growing collection of 355 volumes (see note 1 ). The great majority of the volumes were in German, but the library included Russian and some French volumes, with a large selection of handbooks and periodicals on agronomy and agriculture—even a medical handbook ( note 2 ). Philosophical texts included a German translation of George Combe’s The Constitution of Man ( note 3 ) and its controversial theory of phrenology, and the political economist Johann H. G. Justi’s Ergetzungen der vernünftigen Seele —which give example of the high level of reading and reflection amongst some colonists. The library’s teaching and reference resources included a history of science and technology with an accomp...
Post a Comment
Read more

1920s: Those who left and those who stayed behind

The picture below is my grandmother's family in 1928. Some could leave but most stayed behind. In 1928 a small group of some 511 Soviet Mennonites were unexpectedly approved for emigration ( note 1 ). None of the circa 21,000 Mennonites who emigrated from Russia in the 1920s “simply” left. And for everyone who left, at least three more hoped to leave but couldn’t. It is a complex story. Canada only wanted a certain type—young healthy farmers—and not all were transparent about their skills and intentions The Soviet Union wanted to rid itself of a specifically-defined “excess,” and Mennonite leadership knew how to leverage that Estate owners, and Selbstschutz /White Army militia were the first to be helped to leave, because they were deemed as most threatened community members; What role did money play? Thousands paid cash for their tickets; Who made the final decision on group lists, and for which regions? This was not transparent. Exit visa applications were also regularly reje...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mennonite-Designed Mosque on the Molotschna

The “Peter J. Braun Archive" is a mammoth 78 reel microfilm collection of Russian Mennonite materials from 1803 to 1920 -- and largely still untapped by researchers ( note 1 ). In the files of Philipp Wiebe, son-in-law and heir to Johann Cornies, is a blueprint for a mosque ( pic ) as well as another file entitled “Akkerman Mosque Construction Accounts, 1850-1859” ( note 2 ). The Molotschna Mennonites were settlers on traditional Nogai lands; their Nogai neighbours were a nomadic, Muslim Tartar group. In 1825, Cornies wrote a significant anthropological report on the Nogai at the request of the Guardianship Committee, based largely on his engagements with these neighbours on Molotschna’s southern border ( note 3 ). Building upon these experiences and relationships, in 1835 Cornies founded the Nogai agricultural colony “Akkerman” outside the southern border of the Molotschna Colony. Akkerman was a projection of Cornies’ ideal Mennonite village outlined in exacting detail, with un...
Post a Comment
Read more

Volendam and the Arrival in South America, 1947

The Volendam arrived at the port in Buenos Aires, Argentina on February 22, 1947, at 5 PM, exactly three weeks after leaving from Bremerhaven. They would be followed by three more refugee ships in 1948. The harassing experiences of refugee life were now truly far behind them. Curiously a few months later the American Embassy in Moscow received a formal note of protest claiming that Mennonites, who were Soviet citizens, had been cleared by the American military in Germany for emigration to Paraguay even though the Soviet occupation forces “did not (repeat not) give any sanction whatever for the dispatch of Soviet citizens to Paraguay” ( note 1 ). But the refugees knew that they were beyond even Stalin’s reach and, despite many misgivings about the Chaco, believed they were the hands of good people and a sovereign God. In Buenos Aires the Volendam was anticipated by North American Mennonite Central Committee workers responsible for the next leg of the resettlement journey. Elisabeth ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Penmanship: School Exercise Samples, 1869 and 1883

Johann Cornies recommended “penmanship as the pedagogical means for [developing] a sense of beauty” ( note 1 ). Schönschreiben --calligraphy or penmanship--appears in the handwritten school plans and manuals of Tobias Voth (Ohrloff, 1820), Jakob Bräul (Rudnerweide, 1830), and Heinrich Heese (Ohrloff, 1842). Heese had a list of related supplies required for each pupil, including “a Bible, slate, slate pencil, paper, straight edge, lead pencil, quill pen, quill knife, ink bottle, three candlesticks, three snuffers, and a container to keep supplies; the teacher will provide water color ( Tusche ) and ink” ( note 2 ). The standard school schedule at this time included ten subject areas: Bible; reading; writing; recitation and composition; arithmetic; geography; singing; recitation and memory work; and preparation of the scripture for the following Sunday worship—and penmanship ( note 3 ). Below are penmanship samples first from the Molotschna village school of Tiege, 1869. This student...
Post a Comment
Read more