Creating a Spiritual Tradition: Nine Core Texts

Just before Mennonite immigration to Russia, Prussian leaders were feverishly translating the tradition from Dutch to German. In addition to the translations, a few other key pieces were also written and together these texts shaped the Russian Mennonite tradition.

1. In 1765 certain core writings of Menno Simons were selected, edited for brevity and focus, and translated into a first German edition by Johannes Deknatel (note 1).

2. Hymnals: In 1780, Danzig Flemish Elder Hans van Steen with supporting ministers published (translated): A Spiritual Hymnal for General Edification, in which, besides David’s Psalms, a collection of specially selected old and new songs can be found. The Flemish had “always” worshiped in Dutch and as late as 1752 they had ordered 3,000 Dutch hymnals from Amsterdam. Two-thirds of the hymns in the Danzig hymnal were adopted from the Lutheran and Reformed tradition This was the second unique Mennonite hymnal in “the language of the land”; in 1767 Elbing and West Prussian congregations introduced a German hymnal with hymns that would remain in the Mennonite repertoire for more than two centuries (note 2).

3. In 1782, a condensed German version of the Martyrs Mirror was published in 1782, entitled The History of the Martyrs, or Short Historical Account of the Persecution of the Mennonites. Its editor Isaac van Dühren (1725–1800) was a Danzig clothmaker, dyer, and Frisian minister, whose original translation from Dutch sought to reclaim, renew, and preserve Mennonitism proper. The martyr stories were highly cherished by the previous Dutch-reading generations (note 3).

4. In 1790, a very popular Dutch Mennonite religious book (“approved” by Prussian Mennonite elders for reading since first published) was also translated into German: Pieter Pietersz’s Way to the City of Peace (note 4; original 1625)

5. Two decades earlier in 1770 another popular Dutch Mennonite religious booklet was translated and published in Basel: Jan P. Schabalie’s The Wandering Soul (note 5; original: 1635). This volume and Pieter Pietersz’s text were also brought to Russia later, read devotionally, and used in debate around what it means to be Mennonite.

Three other highly influential pieces were published during this time:

6. In 1779 Flemish Elder Gerhard Wiebe together with his Frisian colleague Elder Heinrich Donner published a common “small catechism” for both Mennonite bodies to replace the century-old Hansen catechism for youth. This catechism was reprinted frequently into the second half of the twentieth century, uniting Mennonite groups and shaping their thought and spirituality over many generations (note 6).

7. In 1792, a new confession of faith (German) was published by Elbing Mennonite Elder Gerhard Wiebe. Its twenty articles are a theological summary of the tradition developed over the Polish and early Prussian period. This confession was taken to Russia and reprinted in 1870 and 1874 (note 7).

8. Frisian Elder Heinrich Donner also published a type of Ministers Manual (German) for communion services. The service suggestions, prayers, and songs are beautifully written and theologically rich (note 8).

Also ...

9. When the first Mennonites arrived in Russia 1788/9 without an elder or ministers, untrained and inexperienced lay-persons were elected to organize worship. There is a note that settlers had to be content with sharing Bible reflections in Low German with each other, or a “service that consisted of singing one song and a sermon that was read from a book of sermons.” That volume was a collection of sermons by the East Prussian Mennonite Elder Isaac Kröker (note 9).

There was likely no German preaching in either the Flemish or Frisian Mennonite churches in Danzig and Prussia until the 1760s (note 10).

These Mennonite cultural artifacts shaped the worldview and spirituality of Mennonites in Russia. Mennonites came to Russia from Prussia with these books; they continued to order or reprint them, and they also took most of these books with them again when they emigrated at different points for different places. Nothing of their caliber or lasting influence was written by Mennonites during the 19th century in Russia, with exception perhaps of P. M. Friesen's Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789–1910, published in 1911 (note 11).

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Note---

Note 1: Johannes Deknatel, Auszug aus den merkwürdigsten Abhandlungen aus den Werken Menno Simons (Königsberg: Stöhr, 1765), https://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/werkansicht?PPN=PPN657064149&PHYSID=PHYS_0005. [English of Menno Simons here: http://www.mennosimons.net/fulltext.html].

Note 2: Geistreiches Gesangbuch, zur öffentlichen und besondern Erbauung der Mennonitischen Gemeine in und vor der Stadt Danzig (Marienwerder, West Preußen, 1780), http://pbc.gda.pl/dlibra/doccontent?id=8000; also Geistreiches Gesangbuch, worin nebst denen Psalmen Davids eine Samlung auserlesener alter und neuer Lieder zu finden ist, zur allgemenen Erbauung herausgegeben, edited by Gerhard Wiebe (Königsberg: Kanter, 1767/1775), https://mla.bethelks.edu/books/783_952_G279_1775_c3/. See Hans-Jürgen Goertz, Pieter Post and Peter Letkemann, “Gemeindegesang und Gesangbücher der Mennoniten (Europa),” in Mennonitisches Lexikon (MennLex), volume V, http://mennlex.de/doku.php?id=top:gemeindegesang.

Note 3: Geschichte der Märtyrer, oder kurze historische Nachricht von den Verfolgungen der Mennonisten (Königsberg: Hartung 1782 / 1788]), https://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/id/PPN660141337.

Note 4: Pieter Pietersz, Ausgewählte Schriften von Peter Peters (Elkhart, IN: Mennonitische Verlagshandlung, 1901), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100436203. ENGLISH: “Way to the City of Peace,” in Spiritual Life in Anabaptism, edited by C. J. Dyck, 231–283 (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1996).

Note 5: Schabalie, The Wandering Soul: Or, Dialogues between the Wandering Soul and Adam, Noah, and Simon Cleophas, translated and edited by C. J. Dyck, 231–283 (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1996), http://www.archive.org/stream/wanderingsoulord00scha#page/n8/mode/2up.

Note 6: Katechismus, oder kurze und einfältige Unterweisung aus der heiligen Schrift, in Frage und Antwort, fur die Kinder zum Gebrauch in den Schulen. Ausgegeben durch die christliche taufgesinnte Gemeine in Rußland, welche Mennoniten genennet werden (including the 1837 foreword of the eighth Prussian edition) (Berdjansk: Kylius, 1874; reprint), https://books.google.ca/books?id=zMY8AAAAcAAJm.

Note 7: Glaubensbekenntniß der Mennoniten in Preußen und Rußland (Berdjansk, 1874), https://chortitza.org/kb/bekent74.pdf.

Note 8: Abendmahls-Andachten: Gebete, und Liedern, vor, und nach dem heiligen Abendmahl, zum Gebrauch der Taufgesinnten Gemeine in Preußen (Marienwerder: Kanter, ca. 1788), https://mla.bethelks.edu/books/donner/.

Note 9: Isaac Kröker, Zwanzig Predigten über verschiedene Texte der heiligen Schrift (Königsberg, 1788).

Note 10: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-shift-from-dutch-to-german-1700s.html.

Note 11: Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/. German, 1911, vol. 1: https://books.google.ca/books?id=e5RQAQAAMAAJ&lpg=; OR vol. 1a: https://chortitza.org/pdf/pmfries1.pdf; vol. 1b: https://chortitza.org/pdf/pmfries2.pdf, vol. 2: https://chortitza.org/pdf/pmfries3.pdf.

Comments

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 inf...

Soviet “Farmer Giesbrecht” and the German Communist Press, 1930

The 1930 booklet Bauer Giesbrecht was published by the Communist Party press in Germany —some months after most of the 3,885 Mennonite refugees at Moscow had been transported from Germany to Canada, Paraguay and Brazil ( note 1 ). In Fall 1929 Germany set aside an astonishingly large sum of money and flexed its full diplomatic muscle to extract these “German Farmers” (mostly Mennonites) who had fled the Soviet countryside for Moscow in a last ditch attempt to flee the "Soviet Paradise". About 9,000 however were forcibly turned back. Communists in Germany saw their country’s aid operation—which their crushed economy could ill afford—as a blatant propaganda attempt to embarrass Stalin with formerly wealthy ethnic German farmers and preachers willing to tell the world’s press the worst "lies." With Heinrich Kornelius Giesbrecht from the former Mennonite Barnaul Colony in Western Siberia they finally had a poster-boy to make their point: in Germany he had seen an...

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 ...

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...

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...

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 ...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 1 (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 accuarte and carefully considered. ~ANF American Mennonite leaders who supported Trump will be responding to the election results in the near future. Sometimes a template or sample conference address helps to formulate one’s own text. To that end I offer the following. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mennonites in Germany sent official greetings by telegram: “The Conference of the East and West Prussian Mennonites meeting today at Tiegenhagen in the Free City of Danzig are deeply grateful for the tremendous uprising ( Erhebung ) that God has given our people ( Volk ) through the vigor and action of [unclear], and promise our cooperation in the construction of our Fatherland, true to the Gospel motto of [our founder Menno Simons], ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.’” ( Note 1 ) Hitler responded in a letter...

Easter and Molotschna's First Ethnic German Cavalry Regiment of the Waffen-SS, 1942

For the two years of German occupation, 1941-43, the Molotschna Settlement area—renamed “Halbstadt” after its largest village—was under S.S. ( Schutzstaffel ) control. During this time, new National Socialist ceremonies and liturgies were introduced to the Mennonites in Ukraine, including Easter. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler named Halbstadt with its surrounding 144 villages a district commando. SS-Storm Unit Leader ( Sturmbannführer ) Hermann Roßner was appointed the Special Command R[ussia] leader for Halbstadt. Halbstadt had Waffen-SS doctors, a Waffen-SS pharmacist team and pharmacy, hospital equipment from the medical offices of the Waffen-SS and soon a Waffen-SS cavalry self-defense regiment of some 500-plus Mennonite young men ( note 1 ). Two of my uncles became members of the cavalry unit; a later, long-time lay minister in my home congregation was in the regiment as well. SS-celebrations for “Easter” were deliberately non-religious and anti-Christian, though careful ...

Molotschna's 50th Anniversary Celebration Plans, 1854

There is no mention of this celebrative event in Hildebrand’s Chronologischer Zeittafel, no report in the newly launched Prussian church paper Mennonitische Blätter , or in the Unterhaltungsblatt for German colonists in South Russia. But plans to celebrate five decades of Mennonite settlement on the Molotschna River were well underway in 1853; detailed draft notes for the event are found in the Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive ( note 1 ). Perhaps most importantly the file includes the list of names of the first settlers in each of the first nine Molotschna villages (est. 1804). While each village had been mandated a few years earlier to write its own village history ( note 2; pics ), eight of these nine did not list their first settler families by name. The lists with the male family heads are attached below. By 1854 Molotoschna’s population had increased to about 17,000; more than half of those living in the original nine villages were landless Anwohner ( note 3 ). Celeb...

Landless Crisis: Molotschna, 1840s to 1860s

The landless crisis in the mid-1800s in the Molotschna Colony is the context for most other matters of importance to its Mennonites, 1840s to 1860s. When discussing landlessness, historian David G. Rempel has claimed that the “seemingly endemic wranglings and splits” of the Mennonite church in South Russia were only seldom or superficially related to doctrine, and “almost invariably and intimately bound up with some of the most serious social and economic issues” that afflicted one or more of the congregations in the settlement ( note 1 ). It is important from the start to recognize that these Mennonites were not citizens, but foreign colonists with obligations and privileges that governed their sojourn in New Russia. For Mennonites the privileges, e.g. of land and freedom from military conscription, were connected to the obligation of model farming. Mennonites were given one, and then later two districts of land for this purpose. Within their districts or colonies , villages w...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog