“Praise be to God: The Throne is Again Filled by a Father”

“Praise be to God: The Throne is Again Filled by a Father” –Johann Cornies, 1826.

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.

Comments

Mennonites in Danzig's Suburbs: Maps and Illustrations

Mennonites first settled in the Danzig suburb of Schottland (lit: "Scotland"; “Stare-Szkoty”; also “Alt-Schottland”) in the mid-1500s. “Danzig” is the oldest and most important Mennonite congregation in Prussia. Menno Simons visited Schottland and Dirk Phillips was its first elder and lived here for a time. Two centuries later the number of families from the suburbs of Danzig that immigrated to Russia was not large: Stolzenberg 5, Schidlitz 3, Alt-Schottland 2, Ohra 1, Langfuhr 1, Emaus 1, Nobel 1, and Krampetz 2 ( map 1 ). However most Russian Mennonites had at least some connection to the Danzig church—whether Frisian or Flemish—if not in the 1700s, then in 1600s. Map 2 is from 1615; a larger number of Mennonites had been in Schottland at this point for more than four decades. Its buildings are not rural but look very Dutch urban/suburban in style. These were weavers, merchants and craftsmen, and since the 17th century they lived side-by-side with a larger number of Jews a...

Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp, 1942: List and Links

Each of the "Commando Dr. Stumpp" village reports written during German occupation of Ukraine 1942 contains a mountain of demographic data, names, dates, occupations, numbers of untimely deaths (revolution, famines, abductions), narratives of life in the 1930s, of repression and liberation, maps, and much more. The reports are critical for telling the story of Mennonites in the Soviet Union before 1942, albeit written with the dynamics of Nazi German rule at play. Reports for some 56 (predominantly) Mennonite villages from the historic Mennonite settlement areas of Chortitza, Sagradovka, Baratow, Schlachtin, Milorodovka, and Borosenko have survived. Unfortunately no village reports from the Molotschna area (known under occupation as “Halbstadt”) have been found. Dr. Karl Stumpp, a prolific chronicler of “Germans abroad,” became well-known to German Mennonites (Prof. Benjamin Unruh/ Dr. Walter Quiring) before the war as the director of the Research Center for Russian Germans...

Ideas for Educational Reform, 1832

After four decades in Russia, the president of the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Colonists, Andrei Fadeev, considered only eight of 116 Mennonite teachers in the two larger regions of Katerynoslav and Tauria—which included the Molotschna—fit to teach ( note 1 ). Jakob Bräul’s Rudnerweide schoolhouse was given the same status as Heinrich Heese’s Ohrloff Agricultural Society School with regard to policies and “especially for the teaching of Russian” ( note 2 ). Fadeev triggered great angst when by “imperial decree” he distributed a book to church elders written by German Mennonite Abraham Hunzinger on the modernization of Mennonite schools and church. It was a friendly gesture and poke. The Molotschna was already a tinderbox, and this spark introduced by a state official to strengthen the community ignited a fire in the colony. Fadeev wrote to Johann Cornies on January 12, 1832: “Most valued Cornies ... I advise you to acquire and read a booklet sent to your church leaders f...

Life in Exin, 1944: German-Occupied Poland

After the 1943-44 portion of the Great Trek ended with settlement of some 35,000 Mennonites in German-annexed Poland, the Gnadenfeld area trek members were scattered in resettler camps ( Umsiedler-Lager ) around Exin ( Kcynia ) and the Altburgund District administrative centre of Dietfurt ( Żnin ), including the hamlets of Kiefernrode ( Słupowiec ), Schwarzerde ( Malice ), Schmiedebach, etc. ( note 1) . Until World War I, the area was part of the German-Prussian Province of Posen, about 170 kilometres south-west of Danzig ( Gdańsk ) and about 400 kilometres east of Berlin. Almost all ethnic German resettlers from Ukraine arrived through Litzmannstadt (Łódź), one of two entrance points from the east into new German province of “Warthegau” ( note 2) . Here thousands were cleansed, deloused and processed daily. Some Gnadenfeld group members were brought to Janowitz (Janowiec) , near Hermannsbad in the District of Hohensalza for quarantine. Here fresh straw was laid out on the floor for ...

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...

More Royal News! Mennonites give gifts of “Oxen, Butter, Ducks, Hens & Cheese” to new King (1772)

What do Mennonites offer a new king? The ritual ceremonies of homage to a new European king—as we see on TV these days--are ancient. Exactly 250 years yesterday, Frederick the Great became king over Mennonites in the Vistula River Delta where most of our ancestors lived. Here is how that played out. On May 31, 1772, Heinrich Donner was elected elder of the Orlofferfelde Mennonite Church, 25 km north of Marienburg Castle in Polish-Prussia; thankfully he kept a diary ( note 1 ). Only a few months later the weak Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth collapsed and was partitioned by powerful, land-hungry neighbours: Austria, Prussia and Catherine the Great’s empire. In the preceding decades Mennonites had lived with significant autonomy, felt secure under the Polish crown and could appeal to the king for protection . Now some 2,638 Mennonite families were under Prussian rule. Frederick II took possession of his new lands on September 13, and then invited four persons of nobility plus clergy from ...

Non-Resistant Service: Forestry Camps

The 1902 photos are of the Mennonite Crimean Forestry ( Forstei ) “Commando” in the vineyards and orchards of southern Crimea on route to Yalta (" Gut [estate] Forroß"; note 1). The tasks for the units or commandos were to plant forests, lay out nurseries, and raise model orchards—work not directly or meaningfully connected to non-resistance, but deemed by the state as an acceptable alternative to state or military service. This non-combatant, alternative service program was the largest, most expensive and most formative, faith-based undertaking by Mennonites during the Mennonite "golden era" in Russia ( note 2 ). The first cohort of young men were chosen and sent for their term of alternative service in 1880: “On November 15 [1880] in Tokmak the first German youth were chosen [by lot] in the presence of the [Mennonite] district mayor and also of Elder A. Goerz. There, with singing and prayer, they beseeched the Lord for His mercy, which interested the Russian ...

Russo-Japanese War and the Mennonite Response, 1904-05

In February 1904, Russia declared war on Japan and Mennonite congregations sent the Tsar messages of loyalty, love and prayers. The large Lichtenau-Petershagen-Schönsee congregation in the Mennonite Molotschna Colony in today’s Ukraine led by 80-year-old Elder (Bishop) Jakob Töws expressed its “deep loyalty and love for the throne and the Fatherland” ( note 1 ). Similarly, the Mennonite Chortitza congregation declared that Mennonites bow “humbly before the Imperial Majesty with most faithful love and devotion,” and “together with all faithful subjects send their most passionate prayers and supplications to the Most High, that He may extend his mighty hand over the beloved Tsar and the Russian people, and that peace may soon be returned” ( note 2 ). The Einlage Mennonite Brethren congregation offered a similar statement, “inspired by feelings of boundless dedication to the Sovereign Fatherland,” with “passionate prayers” for the Tsar and Fatherland, based on 1 Timothy 2:1–4 ( note 3 ...

Canadian Mennonites and Paraguay: 1922

The first attached photo vividly depicts a meeting of conservative Mennonite elders in Saskatchewan and Manitoba in 1922 who intended to lead their communities to Paraguay. This was happening as hundreds of “Old Colony” Mennonites were leaving for Mexico. The “Old Colonists” from Manitoba’s West Reserve were in fact the first conservative Canadian Mennonites to scout out Paraguay for settlement land. In 1920 they were assisted in their search by New York financier and lawyer, General Samuel McRoberts, who had extensive holdings as well as political and business connections in Paraguay. The delegation travelled 90 km into the Chaco interior, west of the Paraguay River. They were however unimpressed with the land and ultimately recommended Mexico to their community ( note 1 ). Other conservative groups in Manitoba and Saskatchewan were however interested in sending their own scouts to assess the Chaco and the political climate in Paraguay vis-à-vis the list of privileges they were seek...

1843: London Bible Society, revival and School reform

In 1843 the Russian Mennonite colonies received a visitation from the London Bible Society. It was the same year that Charles Dickens published "A Christmas Carol" about the miser Ebenezer Scrooge and his conversion after the visitation of three Christmas ghosts! Dickens was not happy that the Church’s overseas mission budget was so large, while in his view they neglected the poor on their own doorsteps in London. Ebenezer was in fact a common British name of the era. A few years earlier the Molotschna was visited by a delegation from the British and Foreign Bible Society. The British agent, Reverend Ebeneezer Henderson, convinced Molotschna elders and Johann Cornies to establish their own Bible Society. "As they live on habits of friendship and intimacy with their Tatar neighbours, and one of their principal men [Cornies] speaks the Tatar with fluency, we furnished him with a good supply of New Testaments, and other portions of Scripture, in that language, that they m...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog