History of the Russian Mennonites

The Russian Mennonite beginnings stretch back to the Reformation in the sixteenth century in the Low Countries, including Flanders and the beautiful and historic city of Bruges. Many regularly appearing Russian Mennonites names are represented in the Anabaptist group in Bruges, for example, and can also be used as a window onto the larger story. In a 1576 report on Bruges, Monk Alfonso of St. Emilian wrote to Philip II--the "most Catholic" of Emperors--that the “city is completely infected by said heretical pest more than any other city of the region. … it is a refuge and a storehouse of all heretics and miscreants. Of a thousand homes in that city, not one is pure" ( note 1 ). Most famously, a "Group of 12" Anabaptists were martyred in Bruges in 1561 ( note 2; pic ). A hymn was written to remember these “twelve friends killed in Bruges”; the entire story is sung in twelve verses and each martyr is individually named ( note 3; pic 3 ). The hymn entitled “Grace ...

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...