1871: "Mennonite Tough Luck"

In 1868, a delegation of Prussian Mennonite elders met with Prussian Crown Prince Frederick in Berlin. The topic was universal conscription--now also for Mennonites. They were informed that “what has happened here is coming soon to Russia as well” (note 1). In Berlin the secret was already out.

Three years later this political cartoon appeared in a satirical Berlin newspaper. It captures the predicament of Russian Mennonites (some enticed in recent decades from Prussia), with the announcement of a new policy of compulsory, universal military service.

“‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire—or: Mennonite tough luck.’ The Mennonites, who immigrated to Russia in order to avoid becoming soldiers in Prussia, are now subject to newly introduced compulsory military service.” (Note 2)

The man caught in between looks more like a Prussian than Russian Mennonite—but that’s beside the point.

With the “Great Reforms” of the 1860s (including emancipation of serfs) the fundamentals were changing for Russia’s minority religious and ethnic groups. The Russian imperial model of statehood had had many unique and unequal laws and charters for its diversity of minority religious and ethnic groups. Mennonites had their Privilegium, as did other groups, and each had a role within Russia’s larger sense of mission to serve and rule nobly over many people. All that was changing.

After the humiliation of the Crimean War, Nicholas I initiated a transition to a modern nation-state model, characterized by an increased assimilation, Russification and centralization of power.

On New Years 1871 a number of sweeping reforms, including the elimination of the legal status of “foreign colonists”—Mennonite, German, Bulgarian, and the like were announced. This meant the loss of the unique privileges and favourable tax conditions designed to enable them to rapidly develop and fully master their separated economic zones.

“Settler-landholders” were to become full Russian citizens, and be incorporated into the unified Russian county (uezd) and township (volost) administrative system. The protective Guardianship Committee structure was to be abolished, though Mennonites would be able to keep their insurance system, banks, medical services and (initially) school systems, which assured that future economic growth would not be hindered (note 3).

The classification of minorities like Mennonites also changed from a religious category—“those of other belief”—to one based on language and ethnicity, or “those of other origin” (note 4).

Advance notice of these changes put the Mennonite colonies on alert. Together these changes signaled an imminent end to the broad local autonomy that Mennonites enjoyed within the imperial state. A diary entry by minister Jacob D. Epp on November 18, 1870 has the following reflection: “Is the Charter of Privileges, exempting us from military service for all time, of no value? … God’s judgement is drawing near; and I fear our church faces a difficult future” (note 5).

The rumours of a new conscription policy that would include “all classes of the empire” were floating about for some time. Even before the new direction was reported in newspapers in November 1870 (note 6), Mennonite leaders were corresponding with their American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration (note 7).

As soon as the new direction was pronounced, elders from the Molotschna, Chortitza, and Bergthal Colonies organized multiple emergency meetings, the first hosted by the Molotschna District Chairman Peter Ewert in Rudnerweide on January 5, 1871. After a second meeting, a Mennonite delegation was sent to St. Petersburg to assure the government of their gratefulness and devotion to the crown, and to explain why the proposal was so “deeply distressing and worrisome” to the historically non-resistant community (note 8).

Delegates also composed a fresh and definitive confessional statement on Mennonites and non-resistance which would give guidance for decades (note 9).

While the delegation was well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the crown, a total exemption from individual service to the state was not an option for debate.

Military service as sin? One government minister offered his own quasi-theological argument, telling a Mennonite delegate and elder that it is surely a sin that he cannot speak Russian though Mennonites had been in Russia for seventy years—a line worthy of another of political cartoon (note 10)!

While the new policy did not result in the wholescale emigration of Mennonites, about one-third would leave for North America as a result. The first hundred Russian Mennonite agriculturalists arrived in the United States in September 1873.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Peter Bartel, “Beschreibung der persönlichen Bemühung der fünf Aeltesten bei den Hohen und Allerhöchsten Staatsmännern in Berlin um Wiederheraushelfung aus dem Reichsgesetz, worin der Reichstag uns Mennoniten am 9. November 1867 versetzt hat,” Christlicher Gemeinde-Kalender 29 (1920), 70–79; 78, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Christlicher%20Gemeinde-Kalender/1918-1932/DSCF6404.JPG. See also Josh Sanborn, “Military Reform, Moral Reform and the End of the Old Regime,” in The Military and Society in Russia: 1450–1917, edited by Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe, 507–524 (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 507f.

Note 2 /Pic: “Aus dem Regen in die Traufe, oder: Mennonitenpech,” Beiblatt zum Kladderadatsch (Berlin) 24, no. 24 & 25 (May 28, 1871), 1, https://books.google.ca/books?id=GkkOAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (thanks to Brent Wiebe for sharing a snipped version of this cartoon found in a Samara museum, https://goskatalog.ru/portal/?fbclid=IwAR1KR_Up-NaURSNIsBqHcDJb5XcMJr28_kO1YiPnHkn-FSav-v9_blbHvMk#/collections?id=31698664).

Note 3: Cf. Nataliya Ostasheva Venger, “Mennonite Privileges and Russian Modernization: Communities on a Path Leading to Legal and Social Integration (1789–1900), in European Mennonites and the Challenge of Modernity over Five Centuries. Contributors, Detractors, and Adaptors, edited by Mark Jantzen, Mary Sprunger, and John D. Thiesen (North Newton, KS: Bethel College, 2016), Kindle edition, oc. 2782. Also: Eric Lohr, Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 88.

Note 4: Paul Werth, “Changing Conceptions of Difference, Assimilation, and Faith in the Volga-Kama Region, 1740–1870,” in Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930, edited by A. V. Remnev, Mark Von Hagen, and Jane Burbank, 169–195 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 169.

Note 5: Jacob D. Epp, A Mennonite in Russia: The Diaries of Jacob D. Epp, 1851–1880, translated and edited by Harvey L. Dyck (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 304.

Note 6: Cf. Paul Toews, “Mennonites and the Search for Military Exemption: State Concessions and Conflicts in the 1870’s,” in Вопросы германской истории [Voprosii Germanskoi Istorii], 81–105 (Dnepropetrovsk: Porogi, 2007), 10.

Note 7: Cf. Cornelius Janzen, Sammlung von Notizen über Amerika (Danzig: Thieme, 1872), https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1872/.

Note 8: Franz Isaac, Die Molotschnaer Mennoniten. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte derselben (Halbstadt, Taurien: H. J. Braun, 1908), 295f., https://archive.org/details/die-molotschnaer-mennoniten-editablea.

Note 9: In Isaac, Molotschnaer Mennoniten, 304–306; reprinted in Mennonitische Rundschau 39, no. 20 (May 17, 1916) 3f., https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1916-05-17_39_20/page/n1/mode/2up.

Note 10: Isaac, Molotschnaer Mennoniten, 303n.

Comments

Swiss and Palatinate Connections

Sometime after 1850 Andreas Plennert and his family immigrated to South Russia from the Culm Region of West Prussia. Though there was at least one Mennonite “Plehnert” who had already immigrated to Russia in 1793, it is not a very common Prussian-Russian Mennonite name. As such, however, it is easier to trace than many and offers a minority narrative and identity within the longer and broader Russian Mennonite story. The account below is adapted largely from information in Horst Penner, Die ost- und westpreußischen Mennoniten , vol. 1, though I have expanded upon his work to offer a slightly different narrative. In 1724 there was a group of Mennonites forced out of the Memel region in East Prussia for political and religious reasons and were given assistance to resettle back to West Prussia in areas populated by Mennonites. Among the 23 households that went to the Stuhm region there is one Plenert listed, namely Christian Plenert. We know that Mennonites entered the Memel region ...

Catherine the Great’s 1763 Manifesto

“We must swarm our vast wastelands with people. I do not think that in order to achieve this it would be useful to compel our non-Christians to accept our faith--polygamy for example, is even more useful for the multiplication of the population. … "Russia does not have enough inhabitants, …but still possesses a large expanse of land, which is neither inhabited nor cultivated. … The fields that could nourish the whole nation, barely feeds one family..." – Catherine II (Note 1 ) “We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade, they are also most convenient for the development and growth of many kinds ...

Quiet in the Land: Peter Fast, 1932-2010

My father Peter Fast passed away in January 2010. The years have given me many opportunities to reflect on his life and impact. He was a gentle and good person--and could work like horse. He was born into poverty in 1932 in Paraguay. His parents were pioneers, first in Fernheim and then (1937) in Friesland. He liked to tell me that he ate manioc root for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was never sure if that was true, and it didn’t help to convince me to eat things I didn’t like. His mother died when he was fourteen; the basic medical aid she needed was out of reach. His new step-mother was a complex person who made life difficult for him and others. Dad only finished the 6th grade in Friesland. He was more than happy to get off the school bench and onto a horse. I don’t think I ever saw him write a complete sentence in my life, whether in English or in German. He had no interest in history, let alone reading—though over time he read the local city paper. Nothing I’ve written on...

Jews and Mennonites Together in Danzig's Suburbs

There has been very little reflection on the relationship of Jews and Mennonites in the suburb of Schottland (or Alt-Schottland or Stare Szkoty) where Mennonites first settled in the mid-1500s. Here Mennonites and Jews lived in the small community together for two centuries, quite literally on the margins outside the gates of the city of Danzig. Many historic maps that include Alt Schottland have become available in recent years ( note 1; pic ). H.G. Mannhardt’s book on the Danzig Mennonite church community plus some archival membership lists are our best sources for the Mennonite experience, while illustrations from the day bring many of those episodes of prosperity, repressions, war, plague, emigration, flooding etc. in an urban environment to life ( note 2 ). Peter J. Klassen’s writings on Mennonites in Poland and Prussia also present newer research on Mennonite life in and around Danzig in helpful ways ( note 3 ). There is one small sentence in Klassen’s larger volume that sugg...

Mennonite-Designed Mosque on the Molotschna

The “Peter J. Braun Archive" is a mammoth 78 reel microfilm collection of Russian Mennonite materials from 1803 to 1920 -- and largely still untapped by researchers ( note 1 ). In the files of Philipp Wiebe, son-in-law and heir to Johann Cornies, is a blueprint for a mosque ( pic ) as well as another file entitled “Akkerman Mosque Construction Accounts, 1850-1859” ( note 2 ). The Molotschna Mennonites were settlers on traditional Nogai lands; their Nogai neighbours were a nomadic, Muslim Tartar group. In 1825, Cornies wrote a significant anthropological report on the Nogai at the request of the Guardianship Committee, based largely on his engagements with these neighbours on Molotschna’s southern border ( note 3 ). Building upon these experiences and relationships, in 1835 Cornies founded the Nogai agricultural colony “Akkerman” outside the southern border of the Molotschna Colony. Akkerman was a projection of Cornies’ ideal Mennonite village outlined in exacting detail, with un...

Invitation to the Russian Consulate, Danzig, January 19, 1788

B elow is one of the most important original Mennonite artifacts I have seen. It concerns January 19. The two land scouts Jacob Höppner and Johann Bartsch had returned to Danzig from Russia on November 10, 1787 with the Russian Immigration Agent, Georg von Trappe. Soon thereafter, Trappe had copies of the royal decree and agreement (Gnadenbrief) printed for distribution in the Flemish and Frisian Mennonite congregations in Danzig and other locations, dated December 29, 1787 ( see pic ; note 1 ). After the flyer was handed out to congregants in Danzig after worship on January 13, 1788, city councilors made the most bitter accusations against church elders for allowing Trappe and the Russian Consulate to do this; something similar had happened before ( note 2 ). In the flyer Trappe boasted that land scouts Höppner and Bartsch met not only with Gregory Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s vice-regent and administrator of New Russia, but also with “the Most Gracious Russian Monarch” herse...

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...

"They are useful to the state." An almost forgotten Prussian view of Mennonites, ca. 1780s-90s

In 1787 Mennonite interest for emigration was extremely strong outside the quasi independent City of Danzig in the Prussian annexed Marienwerder and Elbing regions. Even before the land scouts Johann Bartsch and Jacob Höppner had returned from Russia later that year, so many Mennonite exit applications had flooded offices that officials wrote Berlin in August 1787 for direction ( note 1a ). Initially officials did not see a problem: because Mennonites do not provide soldiers, the cantons lose nothing by their departure, and in fact benefit from the ten-percent tax imposed on financial assets leaving the state. Ludwig von Baczko (1756-1823), Professor of History at the Artillery Academy in Königsberg, East Prussia, was the general editor of a series that included a travelogue through Prussia written by a certain Karl Ephraim Nanke. Nanke had no special love for Mennonites, but was generally balanced in his judgements and based his now almost forgotten account of Mennonites on perso...

The Politics of Map-Making: A "Mennonite Map"

Maps are political artifacts. Russia or Ukraine? A late nineteenth-century map of “German Settlements and Presence throughout History” offers a good example from the Mennonite settlements ( note 1 ). It was based on the German Colonial Atlas of Paul Langhans ( note 2 ). Langhans was the most important mapmaker and promoter of German settlements around the globe; he continued this work of “pan-Germanism” well into the Nazi era ( note 3 ). Already in the nineteenth century, more than one Russian journalist claimed that Russian Germans—including Mennonites in Russia—promoted pan-Germanism in their schools and spread hatred against Russia ( note 4 ). The consequences on the ground were harsh: Johannes H. Janzen—a geography instructor in the Mennonite high school in Ohrloff—who was known “to love the Russian people and Fatherland more than most of his contemporaries,” was placed under “serious suspicion of treason” for an instructional map ( note 5 ) he made of the Molotschna Mennoni...

Snapshots of Danzig Mennonites, late 1600s & early 1700s

A picture can be worth a thousand words. We do not have photographs, but we have a few colour paintings of life in and around Danzig in the late 1600s and early 1700s, as well as maps. We also have a limited number of "textual snapshots" of Mennonites at this time and place, which offer an instructive window into that foreign world. These snapshots of work, worship, health, education, community relationships, smaller repressions, and security can contribute to the creation of a larger collage of Mennonite life in Danzig and Polish Prussia. Snapshot 1 : In 1681 there were approximately 180 Mennonite families who lived in the “gardens” or villages outside Danzig, with 113 of those families within the jurisdiction of the city. At this time Mennonites were barred from owning houses within the walls of the city. Of these 113 family heads, we know: 43 were retailers of spirits, 24 merchants, 9 lacemakers, 7 dyers, 3 silk dyers, 3 pressers, 2 brokers, 2 treasurers, 2 waitresses, et...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog