Skip to main content

“Leave for Kansas? If the Pankratzes go we'll probably go too!” Letters 1874-78

The factors weighed by families leaving (or thinking of leaving) Russia in the 1870s for “America” were many. The presenting issue was the requirement of some form of obligatory state service.

But other factors were also at play and are well expressed in a series of letters from a Görtzen family in Franzthal, Molotschna to relatives already in Kansas.

  • What will the neighbours do?
  • What do our children and their friends want to do?
  • What can we get for our farm? Will we have enough money?
  • How cold is the weather there? Will we go hungry?
  • Is there enough land for our children here in Russia?
  • What will our son think of us when he's called up for state service?
  • Is there more freedom there than here? Is it safe? What about Canada?
  • Does anyone really know the future? What is God's will?
  • Are the church fights (sheep stealing) worse there than here?
  • The congregations here are all divided whether to stay or not.

Here are some excerpts:

“My wife and I are not able to do much work anymore. Here we are still able to make a living, but will we be able to survive over there?”

“We have heard it is so cold in America that the potatoes freeze right in the house.” “How much tax do you pay?”

Some say “things are just ‘so-so’ in America.” Here it is “a time for tears,” for “so many of us are forced to part with loved ones due to the emigrations” (note 1).

“If it is in God’s plans we will be coming to America. If Pankratzes want to and if our children want to go with their friends then we will probably go too, if we could all live close to one another. …"

“[Pankratz] actually is very scared of the future. If the oldest son should be taken away [to the forestry] he would tell the father it his fault. Many a father fears this. Others say there is no need; in three years it [alternative service time] will be over. On account of that we will not abandon our farms, go to America and go hungry. Those who don’t have much money can really get into a poverty situation." (1877; note 2)

“[Pankratz] keeps thinking about how much it will cost and whether things will really be safer in America than here. No one has written us that there is absolute freedom in America because nobody knows for sure. From Canada they wrote to [come] … because things in Canada are good. … Here in Russia there are disagreements about land. … What is causing trouble today is the disagreement in belief. There is practically no congregation that has unity in that. It buzzes most of the time." (1878; note 3)

“It has been said that some of the older grey-haired fathers and mothers who moved to Nebraska a year ago have been [re-]baptized. Ask Tessmann … from Schardau who knows them well. Then write and tell us the truth.” (Note 4)

In the end Anna and Franz Görtzen chose not to emigrate; Anna framed these matters with her own understanding of the Last Days:

“I think punishment and rods from the Lord will strike us anywhere, here as well as in America. The way I read Holy Scripture … there will be no fleeing. So I have resigned myself completely” (note 5).

The letters give insight into the agonizing questions that every family wrestled with—and in the end some left, and others chose to stay.

One-third of Russian Mennonites did immigrate to North America in this period. The new railways in Russia/Europe and also in North America made immigration a plausible option. Most including Bergthal colonists travelled via Odessa and Hamburg. In 1865-66 the first leg of the railway from Odessa to the Ukrainian city of Balta was completed (180 km;). By the late-1870s this rail line was connected with the line to Lviv (then Austrian “Lemberg”), and further west to the North Sea port city of Hamburg, Germany (note 6; map).

Johann E. Peters from Kronsthal, Chortitza recalled his trip down the Dnieper River by boat and then a stormy sail on the Black Sea to Odessa in 1876. "Everyone thought we were lost but everyone on the ship prayed very hard to God and promised to be true to him forever. And God was merciful and saved us all, so we arrived in Odessa where I saw a train for the first time in my life. Then we took the train to Hamburg, Germany" (note 7).

The flow of extra trains arriving in Hamburg from Odessa throughout 1875 with migrating Mennonites was followed with some astonishment by the German press. “From now [June 1875] until the end of September, there will regularly be one or two extra trains arriving in Hamburg from Russia with emigrating Mennonites." Later in August a German newspaper item surmised that “the emigration of Mennonites from Russia continues on such a large scale, that there might soon no longer be any Mennonites remaining in that country” (note 8).

A German newspaper piece from February 1874 reported that 21 Mennonite heads-of-family applied in Mariupol (Bergthal area) for permission to “return” from Russia to the German Reich as naturalized citizens—with the understanding that their children would have to do military service (note 9).

This “complexifies” the familiar—or denominationally sanitized—Mennonite accounts of emigration even more.

James Urry has argued that “it was not just the Russian state that Mennonites were turning their back on, but also other Mennonites and a Mennonite way of life which was being consciously rejected” (note 10).

And even more, David G. Rempel one of the first university-trained historians of Russian Mennonite life—has argued:

1. The familiar Mennonite claim that the state’s new policies were “anti-German” is false. The changes in law, education, military service, etc., came in part as a response to “economic and social conditions” for Russia’s “42,000,000 land-hungry” emancipated serfs and state peasants; “Could any ruler have dared to ignore that tragic fact?”

2. Prior to 1874, Russian men (normally limited to serfs) had to serve 25 years in the military and as reservists, “in addition to being subject to billeting of troops in his home and village, feeding and transporting of troops, etc.” In comparison, “all foreign colonists [e.g., Mennonites] were exempted from all these inequities.” While many Mennonites perceived the change in their status as a betrayal, the state was driven “by a sense of elementary justice,” Rempel argued.

3. With the Crimean War (1853-56) many Mennonites saw first-hand “Russian inefficiency, indescribable corruption, [and] the brutal treatment of the common soldier by his superiors.” Consequently not a few Mennonites began to fear the possibility of a future peasant revolution, according to Rempel (Note 11).

A report by the Tsar's adjutant General Eduard Totleben to the Minister of the Interior noted the same, according to Rempel, that “fear of eventual revolution,” i.e., fear that some might “demand to have the same privileges and receive the same benevolent treatment which these outsiders [Mennonites] had received for so long” was real according to Rempel. This fear—together with russification policies and economic factors (land availability)—“played a much greater role than the alleged religious motives and opposition to make any compromise in respect to an alternative form of service” (note 12).

Congregational conflicts, denominational divides, the emancipation of serfs and fears of revolution, new concerns around landlessness, shifts in farming and markets from sheep to grain, a change to Russian as the colonial administration language, conflict over educational developments initiated by progressives as well as by the state, business prospects for Mennonite merchants, etc., all played a role in emigration—and some were even willing to accept the conscription of their sons into Prussia military rather than to stay in Russia.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Pic: Görtzen correspondence, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_283/03_1875_translated/20121115190352982_0023.jpg.

Note 1: From Görtzen correspondence from Franzthal, Molotschna to Kansas, including: Franz Görtzen to Heinrich Görtzen, December 11, 1874; May 28, 1878; Anna Görtzen to Heinrich Görtzen, April 22, 1875. Bethel College, Mennonite Library and Archives, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_283/.

Note 2: Franz Görtzen to Heinrich Görtzen, February 20, 1877, 1f. https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_283/04_1877_translated.

Note 3: Anna Görtzen to Heinrich Görtzen, May 28, 1878, 2. https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_283/05_1878_translated/.

Note 4: Franz Görtzen to Heinrich Görtzen, May 28, 1878, 3. https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_283/05_1878_translated/.

Note 5:Franz Görtzen to Heinrich Görtzen, February 20, 1877, 2. https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_283/04_1877_translated/.

Note 6: Map from Igor Zhaloba, "Chernivtsi-Odessa Railway Project: Idea and Reality of the 1860s" (Institute of International Relations of the National Aviation University, Ukraine), https://www.docutren.com/HistoriaFerroviaria/Vitoria2012/pdf/4011.pdf; the map is based on Louis Perl, Die Russischen Eisenbahnen im Jahre 1870/71 (St. Petersburg: Schmitzdorf, 1872), https://books.google.ca/books?id=9m5_wAEACAAJ&pg=PT2#v=onepage&q&f=true. Based on Nettie Kroeker's translation: "Grandfather Wiens’ Diary en route Russia to Canada: Diary of Jakob Wiens," Preservings 17 (2000): 41-44, https://www.plettfoundation.org/files/preservings/Preservings17.pdf. Original in Mennonite Heritage Centre Archives, Wiens Family Fonds, Vol. 22522253, 4580: 1-2, https://www.mharchives.ca/holdings/papers/Wiens%20family%20fonds.htm.

Note 7: John E. Peters (1865-1955), "Account of immigration trip of 1876," written in 1942/43, Mennonite Historical Society of Alberta, https://mennonitehistory.org/johann-e-peters/. Slightly edited.

Note 8: Hallesches Tageblatt 76, no. 140 (June 19, 1875), 708, https://digitale.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/zd/periodical/pageview/8861934; also no. 177 (August 1, 1875), 881, https://digitale.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/zd/periodical/pageview/8862121. 

Note 9: Hallesches Tageblatt 75, no. 42 (February 19, 1874), 182, http://digitale.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/zd/periodical/pageview/8859862.

Note 10: James Urry, “The Russian State, the Mennonite World and the Migration from Russia to North America in the 1870s,” Mennonite Life 46, no. 1 (March 1991), 11–16; 15, https://mla.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/pre2000/1991mar.pdf.

Note 11: Letter, David G. Rempel to Lawrence Klippenstein, February 25, 1975, 2, in David G. Rempel Papers. Box 7, File 2. From Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.

Note 12: Letter, David G. Rempel to Lawrence Klippenstein, April 30, 1982; and D. Rempel, “‘Memorandum of General Adjutant Todleben Concerning the Mennonites,” 9, in David G. Rempel Papers. Box 7, File 12. From Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. See also previous posts: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2022/09/turning-weapons-into-waffle-irons.html, and https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/1871-mennonite-tough-luck.html.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "'Leave for Kansas? If the Pankratzes go we'll probably go too!' Letters 1874/78," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), June 10, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/leave-for-kansas-if-pankratzes-go-well.html.

Print Friendly and PDF

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vaccinations in Chortitza and Molotschna, beginning in 1804

Vaccination lists for Chortitza Mennonite children in 1809 and 1814 were published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic with little curiosity ( note 1 ). However during the 2020-22 pandemic and in a context in which some refused to vaccinate for religious belief, the historic data took on new significance. Ancestors of some of the more conservative Russian Mennonite groups—like the Reinländer or the Bergthalers or the adult children of land delegate Jacob Höppner—were in fact vaccinating their infants and toddlers against small pox over two hundred years ago ( note 2 ). Also before the current pandemic Ukrainian historian Dmytro Myeshkov brought to light other archival materials on Mennonites and vaccination. The material below is my summary and translation of the relevant pages of Myeshkov’s massive 2008 volume on Black Sea German and their Worlds, 1781 to 1871 (German only; note 3 ). Myeshkov confirms that Chortitza was already immunizing its children in 1804 when their District Offic...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

"A Small Town near Auschwitz” – Chortitza Mennonite Refugee/ Resettlement Camps

Simple proximity to a place of horrors does not equal knowledge or complicity. Many Gnadenfeld-area Mennonite refugees were, for example, temporarily housed 20 km. away from the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where 15-year-old Anne Frank died ultimately of typhus ( note 1 ). The day after liberation by British troops on April 15, 1945, camp survivors began to flow through neighbouring villages. “What a sight they were! They had been tortured and starved, and were swollen from lack of food. … We could hardly believe that the glorious country of Germany could commit such crimes against people,” Susanna Toews wrote ( note 2 ). My mother was only seven, but she remembers overhearing shocking descriptions given by their host family’s teenaged girls forced by the British to clean some of the camp buses. What about the much larger death camp at Auschwitz? There is a book entitled: A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust. It is about an administrator living near the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Widows, refugees, the unchurched, orphans and decommissioned soldiers: Building Church in Neuland, Paraguay

They were in unchartered waters when the Neuland (Colony) Mennonite Church in Paraguay was organized on November 12, 1947 under the innovative leadership of Hans Rempel (1908-2001). Rempel was ordained during German occupation of Ukraine, when “simple, untrained men and women called the believers together, read the Word, sang, and prayed” ( note 1 ). And for the others? In resettlement camps in Warthegau (annexed Poland) Rempel was encouraged by Heinrich Winter, the "last elder of Chortitza" to “make a new beginning ... like a farmer breaking up hard unplowed ground” (Jeremiah 4:3). After the refugees arrived in Paraguay in 1947, the church issues were many and the need for innovation was urgent. First , what should be the role of women in church leadership ? The tradition was very restrictive. The men however were largely missing and many of the women had experience of leadership in the re-establishment of church services during the German occupation of Russia. Innov...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more