After the death of Tsar Alexander I in 1825 and subsequent coronation of his heir Nicholas I, Johann Cornies wrote to his friend in St. Petersburg: “Praise be to God that Russia’s throne is again filled by a father. As good and loyal subjects, our wishes and prayers should try to support him” (note 1).
Cornies was the leading Mennonite of his era; he had hosted the emperor in his home for tea only a month before his death (note 2). Cornies’ letters—official and personal over two decades—consistently demonstrate filial piety towards the “blessed Monarch” (note 3) and his “wise, generous and benevolent government.” Some years later Cornies summarized five decades of Mennonite experience under the Imperial House of Russia:
“Since its first settlement, the entire Mennonite brotherhood … has lived in peaceful and blessed tranquility under the wise, generous and benevolent government of their Most Serene Highnesses, Emperors and rulers of the land. It cannot sufficiently honour and praise the all-bountiful God, the supreme ruler of all human fate, who has elected His anointed to rule over all of Russia’s people. With each succeeding day, the great value of this happiness renews joyful and deep feelings of faithful devotion, homage and dutiful thankfulness, in the hearts of these brethren in faith.” (Note 4)
In 1825 there were 1,222 families in the Molotschna Mennonite Colony and 731 families in original Mennonite Colony of Chortitza, or 10,191 loyal Mennonite subjects of the Russian crown (note 5). Cornies’ understanding of the Mennonite community’s mission in Russia is buttressed by the conviction that the acts and decrees of the “Most Gracious Monarch” are at the behest and leading of an all-benevolent God. When a pandemic broke out across Russia in 1830, Cornies for example was confident that the Tsar’s response and example was divinely led and a force of good.
“[T]he Lord has power over all human hearts and directs them as He wishes, guiding them like water in a brook [cf. Proverbs 21:1]. In this way He also directed the loving father of our country … to take measures that would ease the suffering. Many others followed his lead with significant acts of benevolence and support for the poor. We give God a thousand thanks.” (Note 6)
In times both good and trying, reason, prayer and hope in the emperor were three strands of one cord for Cornies.
As with the accession proclamations of loyalty expressed these days in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth recognizing the new King Charles III as sovereign, when Alexander II became Tsar in 1856 Mennonites elders and district chairmen sent an official letter addressed to the “passionately” and “faithfully loved Father of the Nation," and with “deep and heartfelt wishes” from “the entire Mennonite Brotherhood in South Russia.” As subjects of the new sovereign, they promise to be “most willing to sacrifice,” and to “preserve the faithful love and reverence for our dear Father of the Nation in our hearts and to reproduce this in our descendants,” who together “pray with all inwardness and … for the entire, passionately loved Royal House, so that the reign of Your Imperial Majesty may be long and blessed,” etc.
The greetings “express reverently and in childlike manner” that, “next to God’s all-wise providence, we owe our thanks for this noble peace to the most gracious and fatherly sentiments of Your Imperial Majesty” (note 7).
Their goal, for which they recommit themselves to be a model community as per the Mennonite Privilegium, was that “we and our children may live a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and respectability under the most gracious protection of Your Imperial Majesty.”
--Arnold Neufeldt-Fast
---Notes---
Note 1: Johann Cornies, “No. 49, To Traugott Blueher, 15 February 1826,” Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies, vol. 1: 1812–1835, translated by Ingrid I. Epp; edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 56.
Note 2: Cornies, “No. 49, To Traugott Blueher, 15 February 1826,” Transformation I, 56.
Note 3: Cornies, “No. 66, To Klaas Dyck, 14 August 1826,” Transformation I, 81.
Note 4: Cornies, “No. 88, To Governor Muromtsev, 9 September 1837,” Transformation, vol. II (2020), 140.
Note 5: Cf. Hans Rempel, ed., Deutsche Bauernleistung am Schwarzen Meer. Bevölkerung und Wirtschaft 1825, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1942), 2f., https://chortitza.org/Pis/Rem1825.pdf.
Note 6: Cornies, “No. 200, To Blueher, 10 December 1830,” Transformation I, 205. Cornies also uses this Proverb in correspondence to Wilhelm Frank, March 10, 1826 (no. 51; I, 59) as does Elder Bernhard Fast to Cornies, February 16, 1827 (no. 97; I, 115).
Note 7: “Abschrift der eingereichten Dankschrift der Mennoniten im südlichen Rußland an Ee. Majestät den Kaiser Alexander II. vor der Krönung im August 1856,” Mennonitische Blätter 4, no. 1 (1857) 5, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennonitische%20Blaetter/1854-1900/1857/DSCF0069.JPG.
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