Skip to main content

Islamic Nogai Neighbours

The indigenous Nogai—immediate neighbours to the Molotschna Mennonites—were the object of enforced government “civilizing” policies, forbidden to carry their traditional weapon after 1816, and thus "encouraged" to exchange their nomadic lifestyle for farming (note 1).

Mennonite leader Johann Cornies’ (d. 1848) economic investment in and personal engagement with the Islamic Nogai people over decades was significant and unique. While the Nogai taught the early Mennonite settlers much about local plants and herbal medicines and shared their expertise in horse-breeding and knowledge about the land (note 2), their economic condition, moral life and superstitions burdened Cornies.

Consistent with long-term government goals to “civilize” and settle the Nogai, Cornies entered into mutually profitable herding partnerships with the Nogai, and worked to improve the economic value of their sheep herds. To do so Cornies used the Koran. David G. Rempel tells this story:

“[H]is first effort to improve their source of income [was] through the improvement of their breed of sheep, one of the poorest native varieties. In this attempt he was at first stoutly resisted, chiefly by the Nogai priests who maintained that the merino sheep could not be used for sacrificial purpose. Cornies was undaunted. He resorted to the Koran and in the end succeeded in persuading them that the merino sheep, which the Moors had brought to Spain, was the Mohammedan sacrificial sheep par excellence. This broke the opposition to the introduction of a fine-fleeced sheep.” (Note 3)

Rempel called this a “Cornisian” (!) contribution to the improvement of the Nogai's lot. Cornies eventually wrote an extensive and learned report for the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Colonists on the Nogai. In the report he recommended schools for the children in which a "thorough knowledge of the Koran and its interpretations" is given "special emphasis" (note 4). Cornies’ lending library included at least one relevant book, Muhamads Religion aus dem Koran (Muhammad’s Religion from the Koran; note 5; pic 2).

Building upon these experiences and relationships, in 1835 Cornies founded the Nogai agricultural colony “Akkerman” outside the southern border of the Molotschna. Akkerman was a projection of Cornies’ ideal Mennonite village outlined in exacting detail, with uniformity of design and regulations informed by his Mennonite theology of community. This community flourished economically in comparison to other Nogai villages. While only a small fraction of the Nogai were directly impacted by Cornies’s mentorship and philanthropy, economic developments led the Nogai to offer cheap, long-term leases to landless colonists just before wheat prices sky-rocketed and market prices for sheep declined steeply (note 6).

Cornies’ efforts at “improving the moral condition” of the Nogai were undertaken “perhaps as an act of proselytization” (note 7), as John Staples has suggested. To his Swiss friend Daniel Schlatter, a missionary to the Nogai, Cornies wrote (November 6, 1826): “Through the grace of Jesus, we endeavour to preach with our hands and otherwise to keep silent, which is better than the opposite” (note 8).

The German missionary Ludwig Bezner noted that Cornies—one of the few Mennonites to learn the Nogai language—spoke winningly to his chief herdsman, a Nogai, convinced that God speaks through the conscience. For example, Cornies dissuaded the herdsman from using a horsewhip to “train” his wife, and made him promise to treat his wife with patience and love (note 9).

Another key criticism of the Nogai was their “lack of attachment to the state under whose protection they enjoy so many advantages and liberties,” in Cornies’ estimation; “not to recognize the emperor is insolent, audacious and ungrateful” (note 10).

A 1838 visitor’s report surmised that there was “still more affection and love between Tartars and Germans than between these two and the Russians” (note 11). 

Schlatter was not wholly impressed with the Mennonites, whom he also got to know well. They generally “lacked the gift of communication, or the sense and willingness to influence others for the good;” their “unfriendly” attitude and behaviour towards the Nogai did “not exactly evoke respect and love” (note 12).

Indeed, while the Mennonites seemed “to have reason enough to make fun of the Nogai, they never dreamt that they themselves are also uneducated, and in many respects just as far behind,” in Schlatter’s estimation (note 13).

Cornies was the exception, in Rempel's view. He “never drew any denominational or racial lines in his work. Whether it be a Mohammadan, Greek Orthodox or Sectarian, Hutterite or Pietist, Nogai, Russian or German," Rempel wrote, "Cornies always was ready to help, whatever the need might be.” Second only to the Mennonites, “none of these derived so many benefits from him as the Nogais” (note 14).

Unprepared to adapt their traditional culture to new market conditions and with very little land, virtually all 35,000 Nogai left Taurida Province for the Ottoman Empire after the Crimean War in the late 1850s, together with the Crimean Tatars.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Pics: Nogai / Tatar neighbours to Mennonites drawn in the mid-1820s: in Daniel Schlatter, Bruchstücke aus einigen Reisen nach dem südlichen Rußland in den Jahren 1822 bis 1828 (St. Gallen: Huber, 1830), 74, 174b, 186b, 240b, 242b, 246b, 274b, 278b, https://www.e-rara.ch/zuz/content/zoom/7881850. Schlatter was a Swiss missionary to the Nogai living adjacent to the Molotschna Mennonite colony, and good friend to Johann Cornies.

Further Nogai illustrations, cf. (forthcoming)

Note 1: Cf. Dmytro Myeshkov, Die Schawarzmeerdeutschen und ihre Welten: 1781–1871 (Essen: Klartext, 2008), 347; Georg von Reiswitz and Friedrich Wadzeck, Beiträge zur Kenntniß der Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Europa und Amerika, Part I (Berlin, 1821), 371f., https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.ah6s5u&view=1up&seq=387; also Heinrich Dirks, “Aufzeichnungen eines Alten,” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1906/7 4 (1907), 92–97, https://chortitza.org/Buch/MJ/MJ06-4.pdf. For the Nogai's history in the context of Ukraine's history, see Paul R. Magosci, A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples, 2nd edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 175ff., https://archive.org/details/historyofukraine00mago/page/174/mode/2up?q=nogay.

Note 2: Cf. James Urry, “None but Saints”: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia, 1789–1889 (Winnipeg, MB: Hyperion, 1989), 96.

Note 3: David G. Rempel, “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia. A study of their settlement and economic development from 1789–1914” (PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1933), 174f., https://archive.org/details/themennonitecoloniesinnewrussiaastudyoftheirsettlementandeconomicdevelopmentfrom1789to1914ocr/page/n193/mode/2up?q=koran.  Rempel should have also added "Jews" based on Cornies role to help the nearby Jewish colony (Judenplan).

Note 4: Johann Cornies, “The Nogai Tatars, 1825,” in Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies, vol. 1: 1812–1835, translated by Ingrid I. Epp; edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 457–493.

Note 5: “Johann Cornies—Catalogue of Books, 1841 [1845],” in Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive, file 797, reel 34. From Robarts Library, University of Toronto.

Note 6: This argument is made in detail by John R. Staples, “‘On Civilizing the Nogais’: Mennonite–Nogai Economic Relations, 1825–1860,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 74, no. 2 (April 2000), 232, https://www.goshen.edu/mqr/2000/06/april-2000-staples/.

Note 7: John R. Staples, Cross-Cultural Encounters on the Ukrainian Steppe: Settling the Molochna Basin, 1783–1861 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 114.

Note 8: No. 80, Johann Cornies to Daniel Schlatter, 6 November 1826,” in Transformation I, 97.

Note 9: Cf. Karl-Günther Jung and Heinold Fast, “Bericht Ludwig Bezner über seinen Besuch bei Johann Cornies, 1821,” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter (1988), 74f. 

Note 10: Cornies, “Nogai Tatars in Russia,” Transformation I, 486; 489.

Note 11: “Mennoniten an der Molotschna,” Der christliche Hausfreund, no. 25 (June 23, 1838), col. 393.

Note 12: See  Reiswitz and Wadzeck, Beiträge zur Kenntniß der Mennoniten-Gemeinden I, 371f.; Dirks, “Aus den Aufzeichnungen eines Alten,” 92–97, 

Note 13: Schlatter, Bruchstücke, 367.

Note 14: Rempel, “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia,” 174.












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...