Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons!

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons: Heart-Shaped Waffles and a smooth talking General

In 1874 with Mennonite immigration to North America in full swing, the Tsar sent General Eduard von Totleben to the colonies to talk the remaining Mennonites out of leaving (note 1). He came with the now legendary offer of alternative service. Totleben made presentations in Mennonite churches and had many conversations in Mennonite homes.

Decades later the women still recalled how fond Totleben was of Mennonite heart-shaped waffles. He complemented the women saying, “How beautiful are the hearts of Mennonites!,” and he joked about how “much Mennonites love waffles (Waffeln), but not weapons (Waffen)” (note 2)!

His visit resulted in an extensive reversal of opinion and the offer was welcomed officially by the Molotschna and Chortitza Colony ministerials. And upon leaving, the general was gifted with a poem by Bernhard Harder (note 3) and a waffle iron (note 4).

Harder was an influential Neu-Halbstadt minister and itinerant evangelist, and years earlier he had composed a hymn dedicated “in deepest reverence to General Totleben," “the revered hero of and benefactor of the Mennonites”— for use in congregations for royal birthdays and anniversaries (note 5). The different kind heart-felt hymn praises Totleben for his role in the Crimean War (1853-56):

“Though confusion and fearful ferment reigned, he [Totleben] called out to us: ‘Children, stay home! The Tsar, rich in grace and wisdom, wishes that you stay put. His care is over you.’”

Totleben not only knew Mennonites from the Crimean War [trivia: his troops slaughtered 1500 British troops in one battle!] but was trusted by them too. This was both good and bad. The problem: Totleben was all-too familiar with the less than peaceful disagreements between Mennonites in dealing with the landless issue in the 1860s. After his 1874 visit he suggested cynically to the Minister of the Interior that not-merely religious reasons are at play with emigration:

“[T]here are three parties among the Mennonites: those fanatics who have already decided to move at all costs, the more enlightened who want to stay in Russia but are afraid to speak out[,] and those who intend to remain but are inciting others to leave so as to be able to buy their farms cheaply!” (Note 6).

Totleben visited many of the central villages like Rudnerweide (note 7) and was invited to “deliver actual sermons from the pulpit” to “clarify the true state of affairs,” according to his biographer. Totleben’s many explanations and demonstrations of the Tsar’s favour were repeatedly met “with quotes from the gospel and the dogmas of their confession” (note 8).

Despite his kind words about Mennonites and their heart-shaped waffles, Rudnerweide Elder Benjamin Ratzlaff (retired) found the final offer for alternative service unacceptable, and he left for America with his adult children a month later. Two weeks later he was followed by two Pordenau ministers (note 9).

Pordenau Elder Isaak Peters and others were convinced that the Tsar’s offer of alternative service was “an unevangelical association with the ‘Beast,’ the state, hostile to God”--and he was exiled from Russia and settled in Nebraska (note 10).

The Kleine Gemeinde Elder Peter Töws had been summoned three times to meet Totleben, and was finally blessed by the latter: “Go in the name of God!” (note 11).

Military exemption, the approval to establish a Mennonite-run forestry service, and the availability of exit visas to those wishing to emigrate were, according to James Urry, “remarkable acts of tolerance on the part of the Russian government” that “reflected how important the state saw the Mennonites” (note 12). The new accommodations or privileges for Mennonites “on account of their exemplary industriousness” were ratified later in the year (note 13); and for his efforts Totleben was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, First Class, with the rights of hereditary nobility, August 1874 (note 14).

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: "Totleben, Eduard Ivanovich von (1818-1884)," GAMEO, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Totleben,_Eduard_Ivanovich_von_(1818-1884).

Note 2: Karl Lindemann, Von den deutschen Kolonisten in Rußland. Ergebnisse einer Studienreise 1919–1921 (Stuttgart: Ausland und Heimat, 1924), 33 n1, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/?file=Buch/Lind.pdf.

Note 3: See letters in Franz Isaac, Die Molotschnaer Mennoniten. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte derselben (Halbstadt, Taurien: H. J. Braun, 1908), 323-327, https://mla.bethelks.edu/books/Molotschnaer%20Mennoniten/.

Note 4: Gerhard Lohrenz, ed., Damit es nicht vergessen werde. Ein Bildband zur Geschichte der Mennoniten Preussens und Russlands (Winnipeg, MB: Canadian Mennonite Bible College Press, 1974), 59.

Note 5: Geistliche Lieder und Gelegenheitsgedichte von Bernhard Harder, edited by Heinrich Franz, vol. 1 (Hamburg: A-G, 1888), I, no. 532, 580f., https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/?file=Pis/Hard1.pdf. See General Totleben's History of the Defence of Sebastopol, 1854-55 (English), pp. 201, 203, 274. https://archive.org/details/generaltodlebens00russuoft/page/n5.

Note 6: In P. Albert Koop, “Some Economic Aspects of Mennonite Migration. With special Emphasis on the 1870s Migration from Russia to North America,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 55, no. 2 [1981], 151; cf. also James Urry, “None but Saints”: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia, 1789–1889 (Winnipeg, MB: Hyperion, 1989), 215.

Note 7: John B. Toews, “A Russian Mennonite: The Diary of Diedrich Gaeddert (1860–1876),” Mennonite Life 33, no. 4 (December 1978), 13, https://mla.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/pre2000/1978dec.pdf; cf. Dietrich Gaeddert, Diary: 1860–1871, from Mennonite Library and Archives-Bethel College, MS. 7, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_7.

Note 8: Cf. Nikolai Schilder, Ego zhizn’ i’ deyatelnost’ [Count Eduard Ivanovich Totleben: Life and Works], volume 2 (St. Petersburg: Tikhanov, 1886), 709, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/?file=Dok/Totleben.pdf; and https://books.google.ca/books?id=UkdDAAAAYAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Shilder%2C%20Graf%20Eduard%20Ivanovich%20Totleben&pg=PA709#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Note 9: Cf. Dietrich Gaeddert, Diary: 1860–1871, from Mennonite Library and Archives-Bethel College, MS. 7, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_7; J. Toews, “A Russian Mennonite Diary, 13.

Note 10: Cf. Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/.

Note 11: Mennonitische Rundschau 41, no. 12 (March 20, 1918), 4, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1918-03-20_41_12/page/n3/mode/2up?q=totleben.

Note 12: James Urry, “The Russian State, the Mennonite World and the Migration from Russia to North America in the 1870s,” Mennonite Life 46, no. 1 (March 1991), 14, https://mla.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/pre2000/1991mar.pdf.

Note 13: Hallesches Tageblatt 75, no. 281 (December 2, 1874), 1614, https://digitale.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/zd/periodical/pageview/8861006.

Note 14: Cf. Schilder, Graf Eduard Ivanovich Totleben, 710. See also the following informative online article on Totleben from the British National Army Museum: https://web.archive.org/web/20160311004111/; https://www.nam.ac.uk/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/enemy-commanders-britains-greatest-foes/eduard-totleben. I also looked at: “Memorandum of General Adjutant Todleben Concerning the Mennonites.” David G. Rempel Papers. Box 7, File 12. From Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. Toronto, ON.

Comments

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...

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...

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...

"A Small Town near Auschwitz” – Chortitza Mennonite Refugee/ Resettlement Camps

Simple proximity to a place of horrors does not equal knowledge or complicity. Many Gnadenfeld-area Mennonite refugees were, for example, temporarily housed 20 km. away from the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where 15-year-old Anne Frank died ultimately of typhus ( note 1 ). The day after liberation by British troops on April 15, 1945, camp survivors began to flow through neighbouring villages. “What a sight they were! They had been tortured and starved, and were swollen from lack of food. … We could hardly believe that the glorious country of Germany could commit such crimes against people,” Susanna Toews wrote ( note 2 ). My mother was only seven, but she remembers overhearing shocking descriptions given by their host family’s teenaged girls forced by the British to clean some of the camp buses. What about the much larger death camp at Auschwitz? There is a book entitled: A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust. It is about an administrator living near the ...

1921: Formation of the “Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage in Ukraine”

Famine was imminent; unprecedented drought; taxes and requisitions exceeded what was harvested; some villages had no horses; extortion and arrests were widespread; many men were disenfranchised and barred from village affairs (see note 1 ). Lenin responded with the 1921 “New Economic Policy” (NEP), which allowed for a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism to ward off complete economic collapse. A fixed-tax was imposed, grain quotas were eased, farmers were allowed a small amount of land and could sell excess produce at free-market prices after taxes had been paid. Much was in the air. In secret talks, Soviet Trade Commissar Leonid Krasin told the head of the Eastern Section in the German Foreign Office, Gustav Behrendt, that the USSR was “prepared—just like Catherine the Great of old—to call hundreds of thousands of German colonists into the land and transfer them to large, closed complexes for settlement,” especially in Turkestan and the North Caucasus, be...

Mennonites and the Crimean War (1853-56)

Martin Klaassen was traveling through the Molotschna Mennonite Colony when the Crimean War broke out in 1853 ( note 1 ). His diary notes that the following hymn was sung before the sermon: December 1853 . With regards to the war which broke out between Russia and Turkey, the song, No: 723 “O Lord, the clouds of war are threatening now, above our heads we see them roll” was sung before the sermon” ( note 2 ). As the war effort grew, thousands of troops came through Molotschna: January 14, 1854 . Today our colony has received billets: in Halbstadt about 1,000 soldiers. It is said that Joh. Neufelds have offered liquor ( Branntwein ), naturally without charge. The soldiers are supposed to have marched in with jubilant singing and much hilarity. They had been very happy for the wonderful reception they got, and promised to accomplish great things. In March, England and France also declared war on Russia. March 26, 1854 . At noon today there was suddenly a military transport at ...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 4 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accurate and carefully considered. ~ANF Preparing for your next AGM: Mennonite Congregations and Deportations Many U.S. Mennonite pastors voted for Donald Trump, whose signature promise was an immediate start to “the largest deportation operation in American history.” Confirmed this week, President Trump will declare a national emergency and deploy military assets to carry this out. The timing is ideal; in January many Mennonite congregations have their Annual General Meeting (AGM) with opportunity to review and update the bylaws of their constitution. Need help? We have related examples from our tradition, which I offer as a template, together with a few red flags. First, your congregational by-laws. It is unlikely you have undocumented immigrants in your congregation, but you should flag this. Model: Gustav Reimer, a deacon and notary public from the ...

Mobile Immigration Central Office (EWZ) Trains and Naturalization, 1943-44

They walked in one end as Soviet citizens, proceeded through a few wagons, and emerged out the other end as naturalized citizens of the German Reich . Below is a newspaper article marking the completion of the registration and naturalization of some 35,000 Mennonite resettlers—plus other Black Sea Germans. By July 1944 all the treks or transports had arrived from the Black Sea region into Greater Germany [most in Warthegau], and almost all were now registered for a more permanent settlement situation in German-annexed Poland—or so they thought. The translation is important because it offers a clear account of the process of naturalization, application and assessment. While not all Mennonites evacuated from Ukraine 1943-44 were naturalized in one of the visiting mobile Immigration Central Office trains, most were. The article and photos fill a gap in our knowledge of that experience in Nazi Germany and how naturalization was approached and experienced by some 30,000-plus Mennonites....

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...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog