"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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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 ...

“German Days” on the Prairie, 1930s

Recently an acquaintance shared a photo from a Saskatchewan picnic, likely from the late 1930s. Twenty-seven individuals, children, parents and grandparents, are dressed in festive but comfortable clothing. The group includes her grandparents—both children of Mennonites who came to the US from Russia in the 1870s—and other relatives and friends. In the middle of the photograph, spread out like a picnic blanket, is a large swastika flag with the iron cross—the symbol of the German veterans’ association ( Deutscher Reichskriegerbund ; note 1 ); a young boy holds one corner of the flag. There are good reasons to think that this photo was taken at “German Day” ( Deutscher Tag ) celebrations, which were held annually in the 1930s in each prairie province. Saskatchewan German Day rallies rotated annually between Regina and Saskatoon, between seeding and harvest time. Its first gathering was in 1930 which drew some 4,000 attendees ( note 2 ). In 1932, six months before Hitler’s seizure of pow...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog