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/.

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