Mennonite Literacy in Polish-Prussia

At a Mennonite wedding in Deutsch Kazun in 1833 (pic), neither groom nor bride nor the witnesses could sign the wedding register. A Görtz, a Janzen, a Schröder—born a Görtzen – illiterate. “This act was read to the married couple and witnesses, but not signed because they were unable to write.”

Similarly, with the certification of a Mennonite death in Culm (Chelmo), West Prussia, 1813-14: “This document was read and it was signed by us because the witnesses were illiterate.” Spouse and children were unable to read or write. Names like Gerz, Plenert, Kliewer, Kasper, Buller and others. 14 families of the 25 Mennonite deaths registered --or 56%--could not sign the paperwork (note 1; pic).

This appears to be an anomaly. We know some pioneers to Russia were well educated. The letters of the land-scout to Russia, Johann Bartsch to his wife back home (1786-87) are eloquent, beautifully written and indicate a high level of literacy (note 2). Even Klaas Reimer (b. 1770), the founder the Kleine Gemeinde born in Petershagen, near Danzig, wrote that he had not attended school, but did learn enough to read the Martyrs Mirror regularly in his youth (note 3).

And a century earlier, the broadly used 1671 catechism for youth (Glaubens-Bericht für die Jugend) by Danzig Flemish Elder Georg Hansen suggests an above average literacy level and rate among Mennonite young people, with complex German sentences and ideas (note 4).

For their Anabaptist forbears, reading was widely understood as a means towards “unlocking the gates of heaven,” discovering “the Biblical way of salvation,” and “growing in faith,” as summarized by Cornelius Krahn (note 5). 16th century interrogator in Bruges, Brother Cornelis, complained that before the followers of Menno were baptized, they had simple “weavers at the loom,” “cobblers on their bench,” bellows-menders, lantern-tinkers, scissor-grinders, broom-makers, thatchers, and all sorts of riff-raff, and poor filthy, and lousy beggars … [who could not] tell A from B.” However, he said to one imprisoned Mennonite, suddenly when “you are baptized you can read and write. If the devil and his mother have not a hand in this, I do not understand any thing about you people” (note 6).

Mennonites in Prussia too were defined by adult or believers’ baptism and lay ministry leadership. Both identity markers required that every child—male or female—should minimally be able to read scripture, read the confession of faith and hopefully a few other classics like the Martyrs Mirror or Menno’s Writings.

Education and literacy among Mennonites in Polish-Prussia however is under-researched. Peter J. Klassen’s work has been helpful, but it scratches the surface (note 7).

What happened in Culm, in villages like Klein Lunau, Gross Lunau, Nieder Ausmaas, Podwitz, Grentz, Jamerau, Schönsee, Klammer, and Dorposch—villages with such high illiteracy in 1813. And what happened in Deutsch Kazun?

One study on Mennonites in West Prussia speaks of Mennonite Winkelschulen (schools in the shed/ workshop/ house) with teachers who were typically artisans who taught from their farmhouse only in the winter. They were paid with a little cash and natural produce-in-kind to teach children to read, write, do arithmetic, and memorize scriptures and songs. Where Mennonites were smaller in number, they shared the costs of a teacher with their Lutheran neighbours (note 8).

Winkelschulen were the “educational underground of early modern Central Europe,” Van Horn Melton writes. Some were “shadowy and elusive”—for example, hidden away on the estates of nobles or in the city in a back ally —“usually quite small and often amounted to little more than a tutor collectively employed by four or five families” (note 9). In the city they were “backstreet schools.” The model was widespread in Jewish communities in Prussia as well (note 10).

The goal of a Winkelschule could be simply to impart literacy “in the shortest time possible,” which offered poorer families “a more cost-effective means of acquiring literacy” with a narrow curricular focus—“an important advantage for households that depended heavily on the labor of their children” (note 11). Sometimes this could be a better option than the cantonal church or municipal-run school of the era. This was especially the case for Mennonites in Catholic regions of Polish-Prussia for example—which will help to explain in part the collapse of education among Mennonites in Culm and Deutsch-Kazun, for example.

The Winkelschule was not formal education, but a model found throughout Central Europe and adapted by some Mennonite communities to meet their own purposes. As with Lutheran students, in the Mennonite Winkelschule the basics were learnt, including Bible reading, singing, a knowledge of the Mennonite catechism and basic arithmetic. This model was imported to the Chortitza settlement in Russia.

But the Winkelschule is not the only model or memory of education brought by immigrants to Russia. In Polish-Prussia as early as the 1590s--in village clusters where they formed a majority--Mennonites were occasionally permitted to establish their own schools (note 12). This was the case in Gross Lubin in the rural Schwetz region, for example (across the Vistula River from Culm; see map; note 13).

In 1694, Mennonites were permitted to establish a school in Gruppe, also near Culm (note 14), and over the next seven decades Mennonite schools are noted in Dagraß (1745; see pic) and in the Catholic Schwetz district villages of Kossovo, Wilhelmsmark (1766), and Jeziorki (1747). Mennonites were still responsible for the costs of the local Catholic parish school building and teacher in addition to funding their own schools (note 15).

In some years Mennonites could keep their school but a Catholic schoolmaster was required, as in Groß Lubin in 1745 (note 16).

In most cases Mennonite children in the 1600s and 1700s were not in Mennonite schools or Winkelschulen but attended the local Protestant or Catholic schools.

As early as 1601 in some Protestant districts, school attendance was required for both boys and girls starting at age seven and lasting until they were able to write and to read Luther’s catechism. Children were only allowed to miss school in August to help with the harvest, and all parents were required to pay the teacher a set quarterly sum (note 17).

The foster parents of David Mandtler (b. 1557) in Tiegenhof acquired a spelling book (Fibel) and taught the child the alphabet before attending school--which he started at age 5. In Tiegenhagen (Neuteich) in 1787, villagers were responsible for the upkeep of the Catholic Church, the priest and the teacher. At different points of the year, the teacher (Schulmeister) received from each villager eggs, half a pig’s head--or pig’s feet--, bratwurst sausage (an extra requirement of Petershagen), and some money payments—7 Groschen and 1 Schilling twice a year per family (note 18).

By the mid-1600s, education in the Danzig rural delta territories became more formalized under direction of the city with recorded “visitations” by both Protestant clergy and village mayors. Village pastors tested students regularly and monitored the teacher’s work and lifestyle (note 19).

A 1664 directive for these villages prescribed that children “be taught in spelling, reading, writing, prayer, proverbs, and the [Lutheran] catechism.” School was held from 7 AM to 5 PM, for ages seven to fourteen. By 1705, serious financial penalties were imposed on families who kept their children home from school (note 20). The influence of Luther’s Catechism combined with prayers and singing gave Mennonite children a greater familiarity with German Protestant faith expression.

The educational standards in the Polish-Prussian Catholic territories—even in its Protestant schools—were significantly lower than in the Protestant territories of Elbing-Ellerwald, Danzig, Marienburg and Thorn.

In 1745 in Catholic Schwetz there were five Protestant schools in the villages of Lubin, Montau, Sanskau, Dragaß and Groß Sanskau with primarily Mennonite farmsteads (85 Protestant, 94 Mennonite and 9 Catholic; note 21).

In the village of Osieck (Kommerau) in the Catholic parish of Sebsau, Protestant schools taught 308 Catholic, 203 Protestant and 236 Mennonite pupils who attended the Muntau-Gruppe Mennonite Church. In both cases, schools were under the largely repressive oversight of the local Catholic bishop (note 22).

In Catholic regions only villages with a parish church had a school. Bishop and priests often came down against non-Catholic schools with “all their strength,” according to a report by the Bishop of Leslau (Włocławek) in 1728 (note 23). Similar examples can be found in other Catholic regions as well—e.g., documented in a 1630 report in the district of Berent some 50 km. south-west of Danzig in predominantly Protestant villages (note 24).

Repression included the closing schools or removal of “heretical” teachers. James Van Horn Melton’s study of schools at this time concludes that in the “corporately sanctioned primary schools … literacy was a frequent but not always essential goal of 'official' popular schooling. Parish schools primarily sought to train good Christians, not necessarily literate ones” (note 25). The Catholic landholding nobility occasionally intervened against the suppression of Protestant and Mennonite schools and churches, however, because of the economic benefit they represented (note 26).

Yet even after the 1772 partition of Poland and the begin of Prussian rule under Friedrich the Great--with Friedrich’s focused attention on universal education through village schools—change took decades in many corners.

For example, some forty years later in the example above 50 km outside Danzig—a predominantly Protestant village with an historically repressed Protestant school (Catholic District of Berent)—schools reforms had either not yet been implemented or they had failed altogether (note 27).

These varied accounts and experience explain in part the wide range of Mennonite educational experience in Polish Prussia.

Later in Russia, early schooling was weak and uneven, but was minimally a requirement by the community for both girls and boys—for the sake of faith and identity. The Winkelschule was not the only model or memory of education brought by immigrants to Russia. Ad hoc schooling in a workshop, shed or village home in German or dialect, more formal training in Protestant districts with trained teachers and overseen by Protestant pastors, some Mennonite schools (for which we have no descriptions) as well as experiences in Catholic regions with largely much poorer outcomes according to the accounts available—were all part of the mix of Mennonite experience in Polish-Prussia.

        -Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Maps: http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/prussia/maps/kulm.gif; and http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/prussia/maps/westprus.gif.

Note 1: German: „Dieser Akt ist den Eheleuten und den Zeugen vorgelesen worden, aber nicht unterschrieben weil sie des Schreibens nicht fähig waren.“ In Wilhelm Friesen and Glenn H. Penner, eds., “Civil Records for the Mennonite Congregation of Deutsch Kazun, Poland,” http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/poland/Deutsch_Kazun_Civil_Records_1868-1913.pdf. Original file: Kazun Niemiecki menonici, http://metryki.genbaza.com/genbaza,detail,159701,2. See further samples of birth registrations here: https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/cong_322/DtKazunCivilRecordsGerman/Births1833/. For more on Deutsch-Kazun, see GAMEO, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Deutsch-Kazun_(Masovian_Voivodeship,_Poland).

Note 2: Lawrence Klippenstein, “Four letters to Susanna from Johann Bartsch, a Danzig Mennonite Land Scout, 1786–1787,” Polish Review 54, no. 1 (2009), 31–59, http://mmhs.org/sites/default/files/0354iKlippensteinFINISHED.docx.

Note 3: “Ein kleines [sic] Aufsatz or A Short Exposition: The Autobiography of Aeltester Klaas E. Reimer (1770-1837),” in: Leaders of the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde in Russia, 1812 to 1874, edited by D. Plett, 121–156 (Steinbach, MB: Crossway, 1993), 122. https://www.mharchives.ca/download/1261/.

Note 4: Georg Hansen, Ein Glaubens-Bericht für die Jugend durch einen Liebhaber der Wahrheit gestellt und ans Licht gebracht im Jahre Christi 1671 (Elkhart, IN: Mennonite Publishing, 1892).

Note 5: Cornelius Krahn, “Mennonites and Education,” Mennonite Life 3, no. 4 (October 1948), 3. https://mla.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/pre2000/1948oct.pdf.

Note 6: Thieleman J. Van Braght, The Martyrs’ Mirror: The Story of Fifteen Centuries of Martyrdom (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2001), 775, https://archive.org/details/TheBloodyTheaterOrMartyrsMirrorOfTheDefenselessChristians.

Note 7: Cf. Peter J. Klassen, Mennonites in Early Modern Poland and Prussia (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 153-156.

Note 8: Herbert Wiebe, Das Siedlungswerk niederländischer Mennoniten im Weichseltal zwischen Fordon und Weissenberg bis zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts (Marburg a.d. Lahn: Herder-Institut, 1952), 11-13; 56, http://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/title/BV005090375/ft/bsb00096789?page=1.

Note 9: Cf. James Van Horn Melton, Absolutism and the Eighteenth-Century Origins of Compulsory Schooling in Prussia and Austria, rev’d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 12, https://books.google.ca/books?id=2f69mKhTDNQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA12. Cf. also Wolfgang Neugebauer, Absolutistischer Staat und Schulwirklichkeit in Brandenburg-Preussen (New York: de Gruyter, 1985), ch. 8, https://books.google.ca/books?id=c8phWEMSJEsC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA591#v=onepage&q=winkelschule&f=false; also Emil Waschinski, Das kirchliche Bildungswesen in Ermland, Westpreussen und Posen vom Zeitalter der Reformation bis zum Beginn der preussischen Herrschaft 1793 (Breslau: F. Hirt, 1928), 477, http://pbc.gda.pl/dlibra/docmetadata?id=77886&.

Note 10: Stefi Jersch-Wenzel, “Ländliche Siedlungsformen und Wirtschaftstätigkeiten der Juden östlich der Elbe,” in Jüdisches Leben auf dem Lande: Studien zur deutsch-jüdischen Geschichte, edited by Monika Richarz and Reinhard Rürup, 79-90 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 85, https://books.google.ca/books?id=p7gw6Ez1hlIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA85.

Note 11: Van Horn Melton, Absolutism and the Eighteenth-Century Origins of Compulsory Schooling in Prussia, 11, 12.

Note 12: Cf.  Waschinski, Das kirchliche Bildungswesen, 90.

Note 13: Waschinski, Das kirchliche Bildungswesen, Table 7, 422f.

Note 14: Waschinski, Das kirchliche Bildungswesen, Table 7, 420.

Note 15: Waschinski, Das kirchliche Bildungswesen, 426f.; 92n.; 379; 390.

Note 16: Waschinski, Das kirchliche Bildungswesen, Table 7, 422f.

Note 17: Waschinski, Das kirchliche Bildungswesen, 482.

Note 18: See "Eine Lebensbeschreibung von David Mandtler, Fürstenwerder, 1757-1837," in Horst Penner, Ansiedlung mennonitischer Niederländer im Weichselmündungsgebiet von der Mitte des 16. Jh. bis zum Beginn der Preußischen Zeit (Weierhof: Mennonitischer Geschichtsverein, 1940), 134; 135, https://dlibra.bibliotekaelblaska.pl/dlibra/publication/33879/edition/33883/content. For Tiegenhagen, cf. Waschinski, Das kirchliche Bildungswesen, 460.

Note 19: Waschinski, Das kirchliche Bildungswesen, 483.

Note 20: Waschinski, Das kirchliche Bildungswesen, 477; 483.

Note 21: P. Bidder, “Beiträge zu einer Geschichte des westpreußischen Schulwesens in polnischer Zeit ca. 1572–1772,” Zeitschrift des Westpreussischen Geschichtsverein 49 (1907), 273–350; 346, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hnihrj&view=1up&seq=5.

Note 22: Bidder, “Beiträge zu einer Geschichte des westpreußischen Schulwesens,” 346f.

Note 23: Waschinski, Das kirchliche Bildungswesen, 89f.

Note 24: H. Schuch, “Eine westpreußische Schule im Anfang unseres Jahrhunderts,” Zeitschrift des Westpreussischen Geschichtsvereins 14 (1885), 55f., https://dlibra.bibliotekaelblaska.pl/Content/49702/Heft14.pdf.

Note 25: Van Horn Melton, Absolutism and the Eighteenth-Century Origins of Compulsory Schooling, 13.

Note 26: Waschinski, Das kirchliche Bildungswesen, 90.

Note 27: Schuch, “Eine westpreußische Schule,” 45-57.