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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.

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