Skip to main content

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.










Print Friendly and PDF

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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...