"Anti-Menno" Communist: David J. Penner (1904-1993)

The most outspoken early “Mennonite communist”—or better, “Anti-Menno” communist—was David Johann Penner, b. 1904.

Penner was the son of a Chortitza teacher and had grown up Mennonite Brethren in Millerovo, with five religious services per week (note 1)! In 1930 with Stalin firmly in power, Penner pseudonymously penned the booklet entitled Anti-Menno (note 2). While his attack was bitter, his criticisms offer a well-informed, plausible window on Mennonite life—albeit biased and with no intention for reform. He is a ethnic Mennonite writing to other Mennonites.

Penner offers multiple examples of how the Mennonite clergy in particular—but also deacons, choir conductors, Sunday School teachers, leaders of youth or women’s circles—aligned themselves with the exploitative interests of industry and wealth.
Extreme prosperity for Mennonite industrialists and large landowners was achieved with low wages and the poverty of their Russian /Ukrainian workers, according to Penner.
Though they taught non-resistance, Mennonite industrialists employed Cossacks to keep order and put down strikes with whips and sable.
Landless or land-poor Mennonites were also exploited; they paid taxes, but had no vote in village affairs and the distribution of land.
In his experience Mennonite leadership did not speak against exploitation or give voice to the poor, and failed miserably to erect any safeguards to limit the influence of the wealthy upon the life of the church.
Years of Sunday School and religious instruction in the schools and home, enhanced by Christian music and singing groups, gave youth eyes for overseas mission and charity work, but no tools to address social inequality in their own backyard or for political activism, he argued.
In the villages all Mennonite thought and action was saturated by religion, which ultimately stifled critical intellectual and cultural life. Religion class dominated the schools at the expense of other academic subjects.
Ministers and teachers were restrictive cultural gatekeepers; literature in the bookstores was largely German and religious.
Contact with the larger world was controlled and limited through boards of clergy who spoke to government for Mennonites as a whole, and through elected administrators, industrialists and traders. Lower and middle-class Mennonites were wholly dependent: by and large they spoke little Russian, and the women almost none.
The Mennonite commonwealth was achieved and reinforced by an attitude that looked down on Russians and Ukrainians as a lower type of people.
Mennonite leadership displayed uncritical patriotism towards the Tsarist regime in church, school and the press, which served to uphold the system of privileges.
For both the clergy and the capitalists, the Mennonite state-within-a-state was a “Mennonite heaven” even as the wealthy profited from grain speculation and the production of munitions for the Tsarist regime throughout World War I.
In 1918 Mennonites aligned themselves with the German occupying force and instigated ten revenge executions, according to Penner.
Support for the Mennonite Selbstschutz (self-defence units) preceded the Makhno anarchy and was particularly strong amongst the faculty (e.g., Benjamin Unruh) of the advanced, elite schools in Halbstadt and Ohrloff and its well-to-do students (see note 3).

Penner’s hostile critique of Mennonite life and culture delivered 13 years after the Russian Revolution was from a particular vantage point and commitment to reading history from a Marxist historical-materialist worldview. Penner expected the community to collapse because of its own internal contradictions, like capitalist systems on a macro level.

Penner’s attack is vitriolic, but important to understand from beginning to end. He offers more than a little correction to the dominant portrayal of a Mennonite “golden age” in Russia pre-1914, and helps in part to explain how it was that members of an historic peace church—the wealthy as well as the village-poor—could take up arms, and why some Mennonites chose to become communists.

Penner published another volume on Mennonites together with ethnic Mennonite Heinrich Friesen in 1930, and in 1931, translated as: Under the Yoke of Religion: German Colonists of the USSR and their Religious Organizations. Penner and Friesen justified the anarchist Makhno atrocities, claiming that they were provoked by the national agitation of religious leaders, above all the Mennonites. The authors warn of “left-wing sects” and charge the Mennonite ministerial as a whole of counter-revolutionary activity, for organizing desertion and sabotage in the Red Army and agricultural labour crews, and for leading a “peaceful” battle against Soviet powers through their cooperatives (note 4).

As a one-time insider, Penner affirmed that religious faith was more firmly anchored amongst the Mennonite masses than the Orthodox faith was amongst average Russians. He understood that because Mennonite life was a cohesive whole, Mennonite leadership in 1920s instinctively--if wrongly--sought to dominate the economic, cultural, religious and political life of their districts. As such, however, they created “innumerable obstacles” for the work of the party and for the labourer or poor to organize politically in the work of the soviet reconstruction (note 5). And consequently, as more recent Soviet archival documents show, Mennonites as Mennonites were singled out for harsher treatment by government agencies.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Cf. Peter Letkemann, “David Johann Penner [A. Reinmarus]: A Mennonite Anti-Menno,” in Shepherds, Servants and Prophets: Leadership among the Russian Mennonites, 1880–1960, edited by Harry Loewen, 297–311 (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2003). See also Letkemann's German encyclopedia article: http://www.mennlex.de/doku.php?id=art:penner_david_johann.

Note 2: David J. Penner, Anti-Menno. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Mennoniten in Russland, by A. Reinmarus [pseud.] (Moscow: Zentral-Volker, 1930), https://chortitza.org/Buch/AMeno.pdf.

Note 3: Penner, Anti-Menno: Beiträge, 29, 39–41; 42, 45–48; 50–54, 56–57, 63, 65f., 69, 72, 73f., 91. He makes special note of Benjamin H. Unruh; see my published essay, “Benjamin Unruh, MCC [Mennonite Central Committee] and National Socialism,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 96, no. 2 (April 2022), 157–205, https://digitalcollections.tyndale.ca/handle/20.500.12730/1571.

Note 4: Cf. Sergej G. Nelipovič, “Die Deutschen Rußlands in der sowjetischen Historiographie in der 20er, 30er und 40er Jahre des 20. Jahrhunderts,” in Deutsche in Russland und in der Sowjetunion 1914–1941, edited by A. Eisfeld, V. Herdt, and B. Meissner, 12–19 (Berlin: LIT, 2007), 16.

Note 5: Penner, Anti-Menno, 84.

Comments

Warthegau, Nazism and two 15-year-old Mennonites, 1944

Katharina Esau offered me a home away from home when I was a student in Germany in the 1980s. The Soviet Union released her and her family in 1972. Käthe Heinrichs—her maiden name (b. Aug. 18, 1928)—and my Uncle Walter Bräul were classmates in Gnadenfeld during Nazi occupation of Ukraine, and experienced the Gnadenfeld group “trek” as 15-year-olds together. Before she passed, she wrote her story ( note 1 )—and I had opportunity to interview my uncle. Käthe and Walter both arrived in Warthegau—German annexed Poland—in March 1944 ( note 2 ), and the Reich had a plan for their lives. In February 1944, the Governor of Warthegau ordered the Hitler Youth (HJ) organization to “care for Black Sea German youth” ( note 3 ). Youth were examined for the Hitler Youth, but also for suitability for elite tracks like the one-year Landjahr (farm year and service) program. The highly politicized training of the Landjahr was available for young people in Hitler Youth and its counterpart the League of G...

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...

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 ...

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...

Stalin’s Purge (1937-38) and Mennonite Suffering: 8 theses

1. Millions died under Stalin One of the more recent studies on the Stalin-era estimates that more than 28.7 million people suffered in the northern prisons and slave camps of the Gulag and 2.75 million people died there during Stalin’s reign ( note 1 ). To this number must be added the “close to a million political executions, the millions who died in transit to the Gulag, and some six to seven million who died of starvation during the early 1930s” ( note 2 ). The mass deportation of workers and peasants provided millions of forced labourers in the Arctic and Siberia. George K. Epp calculated that approximately one-third of Mennonites in the Soviet Union—at least 30,000—died due to exposure, beatings, overwork, disease, starvation or shootings ( note 3 ). 2. Mennonites in Ukraine suffered together with their Ukrainian neighbours Moscow was fearful of “losing Ukraine” ( note 4 ) and specifically targeted it with a “lengthy schooling” designed to ruthlessly break the threat of U...

School Reports, 1890s

Mennonite memoirs typically paint a golden picture of schools in the so-called “golden era” of Mennonite life in Russia. The official “Reports on Molotschna Schools: 1895/96 and 1897/98,” however, give us a more lackluster and realistic picture ( note 1 ). What do we learn from these reports? Many schools had minor infractions—the furniture did not correspond to requirements, there were insufficient book cabinets, or the desks and benches were too old and in need of repair. The Mennonite schoolhouses in Halbstadt and Rudnerweide—once recognized as leading and exceptional—together with schools in Friedensruh, Fürstenwerder, Franzthal, and Blumstein were deemed to be “in an unsatisfactory state.” In other cases a new roof and new steps were needed, or the rooms too were too small, too dark, too cramped, or with moist walls. More seriously in some villages—Waldheim, Schönsee, Fabrikerwiese, and even Gnadenfeld, well-known for its educational past—inspectors recorded that pupils “do not ...

Queen Elizabeth II and Aunt Adina Neufeld Bräul

This month (April 2023) we celebrated my aunt’s 97th birthday—Adina Neufeld Bräul. Queen Elizabeth II and Aunt Adina were born within hours of each other, April 20-21, 1926. She once told me—in somewhat different words—that this makes her wonder about God’s providence … In 1944 in German-annexed Poland, my 16-year-old uncle Walter Bräul was required to report for military service. His first thought: no good soldier should be without a girlfriend! Before leaving for training, he asked one of the girls from "the trek" on a date to see a movie in Exin. Seven years later they would marry in Paraguay. Adina and her mother and sister were on the same trek or group (Gnadenfeld/ Molotschna) out of Ukraine as Walter and my mother (in the 2023 photo). Adina’s most terrible memory of the trek was when their wagon almost tipped over into a deep ravine. She was 17—a year older than Walter—and it was Walter’s 17-year-old brother Peter who literally jumped from his wagon to physically stop ...

1923 Mennonite immigrants "kept behind": Lechfeld (Bavaria) transit camp

An important part of the larger 1923 immigration story includes the chapter of the hundreds who were held back at Riga and Southampton and taken to the Lechfeld (Bavaria) transit camp for medical care. “Germany generously and magnanimously helped our organizations, on my intercession, to overcome the manifold difficulties connected with such a ( Volksbewegung ) movement of people in such critical times,” Benjamin H. Unruh wrote some years later ( note 1 ). Just as the first group of Russländer Mennonites set foot in Canada 100 years ago this month, the North American relief effort in the USSR was also winding down (August 1923). The famine relief work in 1921 and 1922 had found broad support in the North American Mennonite community. However excitement about a larger immigration of Russian Mennonites to North America was muted, and a new call to action could not forge the same level of cooperation across Mennonite groups. The plan required huge money guarantees. In USSR B.B. Janz h...

A Traveler's Impressions of the Molotschna, 1927

In November 1927, Susanna Toews of Ohrloff, Molotschna wrote to her brother Gerhard in Canada, "Father is sleeping and the sisters are reading, even though they have read the stuff ten times. . .. Twice a week we get Das Neue Dorf . We read the most important material the first evening and then father reads the rest of it the next day" ( note 1 ). A youth in Friedensruh, Molotschna reported to the communist youth paper Die Saat in 1928, that their village receives 13 copies of Das Neue Dorf , 6 copies of Die Saat , one of the Moscow-based Deutsche Zentral-Zeitung , 16 copies of Die Trompete, 2 copies of Neuland , and some Russian papers as well. On average, 2 papers per household--all communist papers. A Mennonite-based monthly agricultural journal, “The Practical Agriculturalist” ( Der praktische Landwirt ) had been approved for publication in Ukraine in 1924 but was shut down in December 1926. Government authorities in Ukraine were exasperated to see a “significant a...

The Shift from Dutch to German, 1700s

Already in 1671, Mennonite Flemish Elder Georg Hansen in Danzig published his German-language catechism ( Glaubens-Bericht für die Jugend ) as preparation for youth seeking baptism. Though educational competencies varied, Hansen’s Glaubens-Bericht assumed that youth preparing for baptism had a stronger ability to read complex German than Dutch ( note 1 ). Popular Mennonite preacher Jacob Denner (1659–1746), originally from the Hamburg-Altona Mennonite Church, lived in Danzig for four years in the early 1700s. A first volume of his Dutch sermons was published in 1706 in Danzig and Amsterdam, and then in 1730 and 1751 he published two German collections. Untrained preachers would often read Denner’s sermons: “Those who preached German—which all Prussian preachers around 1750 did, with the exception of the Danzig preachers—had no sermons books from their co-religionists other than this one by Jacob Denner” ( note 2 ). In Danzig and the Vistula Delta region there were some differences...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog