Eduard Wüst: A “Second Menno”?

Arguably the most significant outside religious influence on Mennonites in the 19th century was the revivalist preaching of Eduard Wüst, a university-trained Württemberg Pietist minister installed by the separatist Evangelical Brethren Church in New Russia in 1843 (note 1).

With the end-time prophesies of a previous generation of Pietists (and many Mennonites) coming to naught, Wüst introduced Germans in this area of New Russia to the “New Pietism” and its more individualistic, emotional conversion experience and sermons on the free grace of God centred on the cross of Christ (note 2).

Wüst’s 1851 Christmas sermon series give a good picture of what was changing (note 3).

His core agenda was to dispel gloom (which maybe could describe more traditional Mennonites) and induce Christian joy. This is the root impulse of the Mennonite Brethren beginnings years later in 1860. “Satan is not entitled to present his own as the most joyful.” His people “sing, jump, leap (hüpfen) and dance,” while the Christian appears “cheerless and stooped over.” With “sorrow-laden and gloomy” appearances, we “help Satan in his lies,” Wüst told his listeners.

The problem extends in particular to the emphases in worship services: “Why, when one opens a song book, are hymns about the cross and affliction chosen almost instinctively instead of songs of praise and thanksgiving? Isn’t the devil also having his fun in all of this?”

This fresh new "messaging"—which included a shift in focus away from the older Moravian (Zinzendorf) emphasis on wound imagery and subjective empathy with Christ’s crucifixion—was welcomed by some next-generation Mennonites eager to redefine the spirit of their community.

In his Christmas sermons, Wüst is eloquent, colourful and powerful in his preaching. Most of the words of the Mennonite-loved Friedensfürst (Prince of Peace; Isaiah 9) Christmas chorale appear in that sermon (note 4).

The influence of Wüst on some Mennonites in the 1850s was “boundless,” according to State Councillor E. H. Busch (note 5). For others, as Wüst's Christmas series shows, he offered no doctrine or mission of church or an account of faith or discipleship; each sermon is devoid of context—the social and political challenges of his time are not mentioned even as he speaks of Christian discipleship.

This was not a Mennonite "spirit". Or was he just what the Mennonites needed to be better Mennonites? For Wüst opposition was expected; it was evidence of the inevitable divide between those “born to a new life,” and those who are not.

Wüst was a welcome guest in the Gnadenfeld and Rudnerweide Molotschna Mennonite congregations, which were considered to be more "Prussian," German, modernist(?), Frisian congregations. But he was less trusted in the more traditional, Flemish congregations.

Wüst’s larger-than-life personality would fill the vacuum in the Mennonite psyche left by the early death of Johann Cornies—so much so that the next generation would debate which of the two ranked as the community’s “second Menno," according to Mennonite Brethren historian Peter M. Friesen (note 6).

For a variety of reasons, the Mennonite community was ripe for renewal or division or a rediscovery of something old. For better or for worse, the Mennonite congregations in Russia--and many family relations--changed for good or for worse because of Eduard Wüst. Pietism's influence--the good and bad--are measurable even today among Mennonites with roots in Russia, and perhaps the way we do Christmas as well.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: See Abraham Kröker, Pfarrer Eduard Wüst: Der große Erweckungsprediger in den deutschen Kolonien Südrußlands (Spat, Crimea: Self-published, ca. 1903), https://chortitza.org/Pis/Kroeker.pdf (also source for Wüst pic).

Note 2: On pietism, see Pietism - GAMEO; MennLexV, http://www.mennlex.de/doku.php?id=top%3Apietismus.

Note 3: Eduard Wüst, Drei Weihnachts-Predigten gehalten in der Berdianischen Brüder-Gemeinde am Asowischen Meer in der Weihnachts-Zeit [1851] (Reval: Lindfors, 1853), https://mla.bethelks.edu/books/252_61_W967d/ --worth reading; rarely quoted; not translated.

Note 4: See very thorough article by Peter Letkemann, “‘Horch, die Engelchöre singen!’--Friedensfürst,” Saskatchewan Mennonite Historian no. 3 (2017), 21-23, https://mhss.sk.ca/SMH/SMH-2017-3.pdf.

Note 5: E. H. Busch, Ergänzungen der Materialien zur Geschichte und Statistik des Kirchen- und Schulwesens der Ev.-Luth. Gemeinden in Russland, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg: Gustav Haessel, 1867), 261, https://chortitza.org/pdf/nfast3.pdf. See also Jakob Prinz, Die Kolonien der Brüdergemeinde. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien Südrußlands (Pjatigorsk, 1898), 80, http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id369529960. Prinz’s work offers a sober assessment from within Wüst's own community some decades after Wüst's death.

Note 6: Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), 199; 211f., https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/.

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...

1929 Flight of Mennonites to Moscow and Reception in Germany

At the core of the attached video are some thirty photos of Mennonite refugees arriving from Moscow in 1929 which are new archival finds. While some 13,000 had gathered in outskirts of Moscow, with many more attempting the same journey, the Soviet Union only released 3,885 Mennonite "German farmers," together with 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists, and 7 Adventists. Some of new photographs are from the first group of 323 refugees who left Moscow on October 29, arriving in Kiel on November 3, 1929. A second group of photos are from the so-called “Swinemünde group,” which left Moscow only a day later. This group however could not be accommodated in the first transport and departed from a different station on October 31. They were however held up in Leningrad for one month as intense diplomatic negotiations between the Soviet Union, Germany and also Canada took place. This second group arrived at the Prussian sea port of Swinemünde on December 2. In the next ten ...

The Tinkelstein Family of Chortitza-Rosenthal (Ukraine)

Chortitza was the first Mennonite settlement in "New Russia" (later Ukraine), est. 1789. The last Mennonites left in 1943 ( note 1 ). During the Stalin years in Ukraine (after 1928), marriage with Jewish neighbours—especially among better educated Mennonites in cities—had become somewhat more common. When the Germans arrived mid-August 1941, however, it meant certain death for the Jewish partner and usually for the children of those marriages. A family friend, Peter Harder, died in 2022 at age 96. Peter was born in Osterwick to a teacher and grew up in Chortitza. As a 16-year-old in 1942, Peter was compelled by occupying German forces to participate in the war effort. Ukrainians and Russians (prisoners of war?) were used by the Germans to rebuild the massive dam at Einlage near Zaporizhzhia, and Peter was engaged as a translator. In the next year he changed focus and started teachers college, which included significant Nazi indoctrination. In 2017 I interviewed Peter Ha...

Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (Holodomor), 1932-1933

In 2008 the Canadian Parliament passed an act declaring the fourth Saturday in November as “Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (‘Holodomor’) Memorial Day” ( note 1 ). Southern Ukraine was arguably the worst affected region of the famine of 1932–33, where 30,000 to 40,000 Mennonites lived ( note 2 ). The number of famine-related deaths in Ukraine during this period are conservatively estimated at 3.5 million ( note 3 ). In the early 1930s Stalin feared growing “Ukrainian nationalism” and the possibility of “losing Ukraine” ( note 4 ). He was also suspicious of ethnic Poles and Germans—like Mennonites—in Ukraine, convinced of the “existence of an organized counter-revolutionary insurgent underground” in support of Ukrainian national independence ( note 5 ). Ukraine was targeted with a “lengthy schooling” designed to ruthlessly break the threat of Ukrainian nationalism and resistance, and this included Ukraine’s Mennonites (viewed simply as “Germans”). Various causes combined to bring on w...

Why study and write about Russian Mennonite history?

David G. Rempel’s credentials as an historian of the Russian Mennonite story are impeccable—he was a mentor to James Urry in the 1980s, for example, which says it all. In 1974 Rempel wrote an article on Mennonite historical work for an issue of the Mennonite Quarterly Review commemorating the arrival of Russian Mennonites to North America 100 years earlier ( note 1). In one section of the essay Rempel reflected on Mennonites’ general “lack of interest in their history,” and why they were so “exceedingly slow” in reflecting on their historic development in Russia with so little scholarly rigour. Rempel noted that he was not alone in this observation; some prominent Mennonites of his generation who had noted the same pointed an “extreme spirit of individualism” among Mennonites in Russia; the absence of Mennonite “authoritative voices,” both in and outside the church; the “relative indifference” of Mennonites to the past; “intellectual laziness” among many who do not wish to be distu...

Becoming German: Ludendorff Festivals in Molotschna, 1918

During the friendly German military occupation of Ukraine at the end of WWI, patriotic “Ludendorff Festivals” were encouraged by German forces to raise funds to support injured German soldiers. A first such festival in the Molotschna was held on June 25, 1918 in Ohrloff, and was attended by “a great many German officers, soldiers and colonists with music, [patriotic] speeches and social interaction” From the perspective of the German army press, the event was “extremely enjoyable;” it was accompanied with music by a 30-piece regiment orchestra, and beer, sausage, sandwiches, ice-cream, raspberries and cherries were sold. It closed with a “small dance,” raising 7,387 rubles or 9,850 German marks in donations ( note 1 ). Later that summer, a Ludendorff Festival in Halbstadt began with Sunday worship, followed by an early concert, games and performances by the Selbstschutz , as well as “entertainment and merriment of every kind,” with short plays and dancing into the morning ( note ...

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 ...

Four-Part Singing in Mennonite Schools and Church in Russia

The significance of singing instruction may seem trite, but it became a key vehicle in the Mennonite school curriculum for fostering a basic appreciation of the arts and for faith formation. In Johann Cornies’ circulated guidelines for teachers, singing was recommended as a means “to stimulate and enliven pious feelings” in the children—a guideline he copied directly from a German Catholic pedagogue and circulated freely under his own name ( note 1 ). On January 26, 1846 Cornies distributed a curriculum regulation to all schools that mandated “singing by numbers ( Zahlen ) from the church hymnal” ( note 2 ). Attention to singing instruction in the schools precipitated significant and controversial changes in Mennonite liturgy. An 1854 visiting observer to the Bergthal Colony—a Chortitza daughter colony outside of Cornies’ purview—wrote: “Endlessly long hymns from the Gesangbuch (hymnal) were begun by the Vorsänger (song leader) of the congregation, and sung with so many flo...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 3 (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 Mennonite endorsement Trump the man No one denies the moral flaws of Donald Trump, least of all Trump himself. In these next months Mennonite pastors who supported Trump will have many opportunities to restate to their congregation and their children why someone like Trump won their support. It may be obvious, but the words can be difficult to find. To help, I offer examples from Mennonite history with statements from one our strongest leaders of the past century, Prof. Benjamin H. Unruh (see the nice Mennonite Encyclopedia article on him, GAMEO ). I have substituted only a few words, indicated by square brackets to help with the adaptation. The [MAGA] movement is like the early Anabaptist movement! In the change of government in 1933, Unruh saw in the [MAGA] movement “things breaking forth which our forefathe...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog