Skip to main content

Molotschna Elder Heinrich Dirks and tensions with Mennonite Brethren

Russian Mennonites were not always kind to each other—and nowhere is this seen better than in the tensions between “old” Mennonites and the “separatist” Mennonite Brethren, who had their beginnings in Gnadenfeld, Molotschna in 1860.

Heinrich Dirks (1842-1915) was the first Russian Mennonite overseas missionary and later long-time Gnadenfeld, Molotschna (note 1). Everything about Dirks’ life suggests that he would have joined the Brethren in 1860. He too was influenced by the "powerful and gripping” conversionist ministry of Eduard Wüst in his youth. Dirks was a young adult in the Gnadenfeld congregation in South Russia where the Mennonite Brethren /separatist movement began. Shortly thereafter, he was trained in the German pietist Barmen Mission School (1863-67), and famously travelled to Sumatra (Indonesia) where he started a mission outpost and school. The Mennonite Brethren too would later connect the global mission imperative with the impending return of Christ as did Dirks. Dirks was a passionate and evangelistic preacher of conversion. He remained a missionary at heart and tireless fundraiser for overseas missions until his death in 1915.

However Heinrich Dirks was genuinely disturbed or even spooked by the “generally unhealthy, sick symptoms” (his terms) that accompanied the early Mennonite Brethren movement which he witnessed first-hand (note 2). According to Dirks,

"… their gatherings degenerated quickly after this, for they would hear nothing about growth in grace and holiness, [or] the struggle against the lusts and desires of the heart … but instead claimed that they had become perfected children of God with their conversion, and could only rejoice and thank God for their blessed condition. They went so far as to arrange competitions in their gatherings to determine who could shout the loudest for joy and jump the highest in delight (Freudensprünge)—on account of which they were given the names “leapers” (Hüpfer) and “cheerful brethren” (lustige Brüder). And more: they fell so deep into their fanatacism, that in three locations—Rudnerweide, Liebenau and Einlage—they collected and burned edifying Christian literature that they had used up until their conversion." (Note 3)

Heinrich Dirks was in this regard a classic Russian Mennonite—it was important to keep a sober and balanced perspective in all things, including faith.

Already by 1866 when the young historian P. M. Friesen joined the secessionist brethren, the new church was institutionalized—“more like the Kleine Gemeinde (more puritanical in attitude, somewhat melancholic, and formalistically-ascetically pious) rather than like the “Hüpfer” [Leapers] … Mennonite to the core, in temperament,” according to Friesen (note 4). But for those very reasons the new church was positioned not to fade after emotions settled, but to have a lasting place within and impact on Russian Mennonite life. In the end the Brethren movement was not simply an extreme Pietistic withdrawal into the inner life of the soul, nor “such a radical break with the social or religious world which had existed before 1860” (note 5).

The Mennonite Brethren were not the only ones to receive sharp rebukes from Dirks. From Sumatra (Indonesia) where he was converting, baptizing and teaching in the 1870s, Dirks wrote a strongly worded letter counselling his fellow Russian Mennonites against a mass migration to the United States and Canada (this was over alternative service): Mennonites who wish to be separate from the world will soon discover that even in the most distant places—and he should know—the fallen world will one day find them out (note 6)! Also from Sumatra Dirks wrote in 1878:

“Our friends in Europe should not think that a missionary in a heathen country can establish a congregation without spot or wrinkle right away; influenced by the Gospel, only during the next generations will the Spirit and meaning of Christ become apparent in a purer form.” We are not yet at that point; therefore, “the merit and blood of Christ will have to cover up much in this respect. Anyway, where in the world does one find an absolutely pure congregation?” (Note 7)

Much later in 1910 when the state was imposing significant restrictions upon Mennonites and other Protestants, Elder Dirks was convinced that the “zealous but ignorant” proselytization by the Mennonite Brethren “where the Lord had not yet opened the door” (namely to nominally Orthodox Russians) was the cause of government harassment (note 8). Mission yes, but only where God opens a door.

In the 1890s, some thirty years after their beginnings, the Mennonite Brethren were experiencing strong growth in colonies. Heinrich Dirks’ 1892 book on Jesus’ parables of the Sower (Matthew 13) and of the Growing Seed (Mark 4:26-29) was written to give an account of the nature of the church and ultimately to address the “spiritual muddled-ness” of his context. Wholly representative of the bitter feelings Dirks used the book to deliver a stinging judgement of the Mennonite Brethren movement and the type of “morbid epidemic” they represent in the colonies!

"Whoever is not satisfied with the mixed- and external form of the Christian Church, whoever wants to have a church made up only of true believers and of those born again, a congregation in which everything is the best and most perfect, and therefore separates---he thereby gives evidence that he is animated by an over-the-top, pathological zeal, and that he rejects what the Lord Jesus calls the Kingdom of Heaven. Separation is not permitted where the Christian church still has the shape and structure provided for in the parables of the Lord, as is still the case, for example, with that part of the Christian church that is made up of our Mennonite congregations. This separation melee among our people, this obsession to separate yourself from the congregation which you first joined, this Christian sentimentalism, this silly playing with baptism and its external form, this propaganda-making for a certain type of congregation, this one-size-fits-all view of conversion, this judging-the-speck-in-your-brother's-eye, and so on: it is something very unhealthy and pathological and is the result of an incorrect understanding of what the Lord Jesus wanted to tell us in the parables. And in the long run, every congregation that has been so created--illegitimately through separation will not--at least in the long run--remain a completely pure community. It will also take on a mixed form and thus suffer shipwreck with its overly high expectations. Oh, that the right understanding of what the Lord Jesus wants to tell us in these parables, and the true knowledge of the Kingdom of God among our people would spread more! Because only then could the morbid desire for separation, which is spreading like an epidemic, be brought to a standstill." (Note 9)

Of course there is another side to this story as well (note 10). But this is enough to help us understand a key debate with which these Anabaptist-Mennonites were obsessed with for decades.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Heinrich Dirks, Das Reich Gottes im Lichte der Gleichnisse in Ev. Matth. Kap. 13. und Ev. Marci Kap. 4, V. 26–29 (Gnadenfeld bei Halbstadt: P. Janzen, 1892), 102, https://books.google.ca/books?id=v3UTAAAAYAAJ&dq. On Dirks, cf. the newer biography by Hermann Heidebrecht, Unmögliches wagen! Heinrich Dirks, 1842–1915 (Bielefeld: Christlicher Missions-Verlag, 2019).

Note 2: Heinrich Dirks, “Ein Abschnitt aus der Gnadenfelder Gemeindechronik mit Nekrologie des ‘alten Cornies,’” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1907 5 (1908), 52–65; 52, https://chortitza.org/kb/mj1907.pdf. On the Wüst movement after he death, cf. Jakob Prinz, Die Kolonien der Brüdergemeinde. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien Südrußlands (Pjatigorsk, 1898) 84f., 90. http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id369529960. Cf. also Jacob P. Bekker, Origin of the Mennonite Brethren Church (Hillsboro, KS: Mennonite Brethren Historical Society of the Midwest, 1973), 29f., https://archive.org/details/origin-of-the-mennonite-brethren-church-ocr.

Note 3: Heinrich Dirks, “Abschnitt aus der Gnadenfelder Gemeindechronik,” 53; also E. H. Busch, ed. Ergänzungen der Materialien zur Geschichte und Statistik des Kirchen- und Schulwesens der Ev.-Luth. Gemeinden in Russland, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg: Gustav Haessel, 1867), 258, https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_V9IMAQAAMAAJ. Books burned included Johann Starck’s Tägliches Handbuch, Halle Pietist Johann Arndt’s Wahres Christentum, and Ludwig Hofacker’s Predigten für alle Sonn-, Fest- u. Feier-Tage—and other Christian books other than the Bible with pictures. Cf. Heinrich Epp, Notizen aus dem Leben und Wirken des verstorbenen Ältesten Abraham Unger, dem Gründer der “Einlager-Mennoniten-Brüdergemeinde (Halbstadt, South Russia: Self-published, 1907), 4, https://chortitza.org/Buch/MJ/AU-01.htm. ET: “Historical Notes” (part 1), Direction (Fall 1990) 127–139; https://directionjournal.org/19/2/historical-endnotes.html. Dirks’ account is consistent with Elder A. Lenzmann’s 1862/1863 telling of these events: August Lenzmann, “An den Herausgeber: Die Separatistischen Bewegungen an der Molotschna betreffend,” March 16, 1863 [July 21, 1862], Mennonitische Blätter 10, no. 3 (May 1863), 31–35. https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennonitische%20Blaetter/1854-1900/1863/DSCF0293.JPG.

Note 4:´Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), 438, https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/.

Note 5: James Urry, “The Social Background to the Emergence of the Mennonite Brethren Church in Nineteenth Century Russia.” Journal of Mennonite Studies 6 (1988), 32, https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/292.

Note 6: Cf. George K. Epp, Geschichte der Mennoniten in Rußland, vol. II (Lage: Logos, 1997), 232.

Note 7: In Alle Hoekema, ed., Dutch Mennonite Mission in Indonesia: Historical Essays (Elkhart, IN: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 2001), 88, https://archive.org/details/dutchmennonitemi22alle/.

Note 8: Cf. H. Dirks, “Fortsetzung der Geschichte des Mennonitenvölkleins in Rußland im Jahre 1910,” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1910 8 (1911), 7–17; 9, https://chortitza.org/kb/mj1910.pdf. The phrase “open doors” is language used by the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 16:18), but may also be a play on the name of a new missions periodical Offene Türen (1909–1913) from Barmen.

Note 9: Dirks, Das Reich Gottes im Lichte der Gleichnisse, 101f.

Note 10: See previous post (forthcoming).





Print Friendly and PDF



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life in Exin, 1944: German-Occupied Poland

After the 1943-44 portion of the Great Trek ended with settlement of some 35,000 Mennonites in German-annexed Poland, the Gnadenfeld area trek members were scattered in resettler camps ( Umsiedler-Lager ) around Exin ( Kcynia ) and the Altburgund District administrative centre of Dietfurt ( Żnin ), including the hamlets of Kiefernrode ( Słupowiec ), Schwarzerde ( Malice ), Schmiedebach, etc. ( note 1) . Until World War I, the area was part of the German-Prussian Province of Posen, about 170 kilometres south-west of Danzig ( Gdańsk ) and about 400 kilometres east of Berlin. Almost all ethnic German resettlers from Ukraine arrived through Litzmannstadt (Łódź), one of two entrance points from the east into new German province of “Warthegau” ( note 2) . Here thousands were cleansed, deloused and processed daily. Some Gnadenfeld group members were brought to Janowitz (Janowiec) , near Hermannsbad in the District of Hohensalza for quarantine. Here fresh straw was laid out on the floor for ...
Post a Comment
Read more

More Royal News! Mennonites give gifts of “Oxen, Butter, Ducks, Hens & Cheese” to new King (1772)

What do Mennonites offer a new king? The ritual ceremonies of homage to a new European king—as we see on TV these days--are ancient. Exactly 250 years yesterday, Frederick the Great became king over Mennonites in the Vistula River Delta where most of our ancestors lived. Here is how that played out. On May 31, 1772, Heinrich Donner was elected elder of the Orlofferfelde Mennonite Church, 25 km north of Marienburg Castle in Polish-Prussia; thankfully he kept a diary ( note 1 ). Only a few months later the weak Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth collapsed and was partitioned by powerful, land-hungry neighbours: Austria, Prussia and Catherine the Great’s empire. In the preceding decades Mennonites had lived with significant autonomy, felt secure under the Polish crown and could appeal to the king for protection . Now some 2,638 Mennonite families were under Prussian rule. Frederick II took possession of his new lands on September 13, and then invited four persons of nobility plus clergy from ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mennonites in Danzig's Suburbs: Maps and Illustrations

Mennonites first settled in the Danzig suburb of Schottland (lit: "Scotland"; “Stare-Szkoty”; also “Alt-Schottland”) in the mid-1500s. “Danzig” is the oldest and most important Mennonite congregation in Prussia. Menno Simons visited Schottland and Dirk Phillips was its first elder and lived here for a time. Two centuries later the number of families from the suburbs of Danzig that immigrated to Russia was not large: Stolzenberg 5, Schidlitz 3, Alt-Schottland 2, Ohra 1, Langfuhr 1, Emaus 1, Nobel 1, and Krampetz 2 ( map 1 ). However most Russian Mennonites had at least some connection to the Danzig church—whether Frisian or Flemish—if not in the 1700s, then in 1600s. Map 2  is from 1615; a larger number of Mennonites had been in Schottland at this point for more than four decades. Its buildings are not rural but look very Dutch urban/suburban in style. These were weavers, merchants and craftsmen, and since the 17th century they lived side-by-side with a larger number of Jews a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fraktur (or Gothic) font and Kurrent- (or Sütterlin) handwriting: Nazi ban, 1941

In the middle of the war on January 1, 1942, the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Rundschau published a new issue without the familiar Fraktur script masthead ( note 1 ). One might speculate on the reasons, but a year earlier Hitler banned the use of the font in the Reich . The Rundschau did not exactly follow all orders from Berlin—the rest of the paper was in Fraktur (sometimes referred to as "Gothic"); when the war ended in 1945, the Rundschau reintroduced the Fraktur font for its masthead. It wasn’t until the 1960s that an issue might have a page or title here or there with the “normal” or Latin font, even though post-war Germany was no longer using Fraktur . By 1973 only the Rundschau masthead is left in Fraktur , and that is only removed in December 1992. Attached is a copy of Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann's official letter dated January 3, 1941, which prohibited the use of Fraktur fonts "by order of the Führer. " Why? It was a Jewish invention, apparent...
1 comment
Read more

From USSR to Cherrywood Station: Mennonites winter in Markham-Stouffville, 1924

On September 26, 1924, 126 Russian Mennonite passengers disembarked the S. S. Melita at Quebec City ( note 1 ). They were among some 20,000 Mennonites who could immigrate to Canada from the Soviet Union in the 1920s. A number of these families received train cards to Cherrywood (Pickering) and Locust Hill (Markham) stations, where they were received by Markham area Mennonites. The Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization (CMBC) registration forms record each family's travel dates as well as their "first place of arrival" in Canada. The attached artifacts—a few pages from the financial records booklet kept by Markham-Stouffville treasurer J. L. Grove, plus some correspondence—profile concretely the level of support of this community north-east of Toronto for co-religionists fleeing the Soviet Union. Mennonites in Ontario had been well informed of the relief needs in Russia since 1921 and plans for mass immigration ( note 2 ). In April 1924 the local Stouffville Tribune ...
Post a Comment
Read more

“The way is finally open”—Russian Mennonite Immigration, 1922-23

In a highly secretive meeting in Ohrloff, Molotschna on February 7, 1922, leaders took a decision to work to remove the entire Mennonite population of some 100,000 people out of the USSR—if at all possible ( note 1 ). B.B. Janz (Ohrloff) and Bishop David Toews (Rosthern, SK) are remembered as the immigration leaders who made it possible to bring some 20,000 Mennonites from the Soviet Union to Canada in the 1920s ( note 2 ). But behind those final numbers were multiple problems. In August 1922, an appeal was made by leaders to churches in Canada and the USA: “The way is finally open, for at least 3,000 persons who have received permission to leave Russia … Two ships of the Canadian Pacific Railway are ready to sail from England to Odessa as soon as the cholera quarantine is lifted. These Russian [Mennonite] refugees are practically without clothing … .” ( Note 3 ) Notably at this point B. B. Janz was also writing Toews, saying that he was utterly exhausted and was preparing to ...
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

A-Cases and O-Cases. After the Trek, 1944

Some 35,000 Mennonites evacuated from Ukraine by the retreating Reich German military in 1943-44 applied for naturalization /citizenship once in German-annexed Poland (mostly Warthegau). The applications made through the “EWZ” ( Einwandererzentralstelle ) are easy to attain today ( note 1 ). Much information may be new and useful for families; however just as much is disturbing, including the racial assessments, categorization, and separation of so-called “A-cases” from “O-cases.” What are they?  The EWZ files contain the application for naturalization made by the head of a family unit, the certificate of naturalization, and sometimes correspondence/ claims regarding property and possessions left behind in Ukraine. Each form contains information about the applicant’s spouse and children, as well as a genealogy listing parents and grandparents, and those of their spouse as well; racial background is calculated by percentage (!). Applicants were asked about their citizenship, their e...
Post a Comment
Read more

“German Days” on the Prairie, 1930s

Recently an acquaintance shared a photo from a Saskatchewan picnic, likely from the late 1930s. Twenty-seven individuals, children, parents and grandparents, are dressed in festive but comfortable clothing. The group includes her grandparents—both children of Mennonites who came to the US from Russia in the 1870s—and other relatives and friends. In the middle of the photograph, spread out like a picnic blanket, is a large swastika flag with the iron cross—the symbol of the German veterans’ association ( Deutscher Reichskriegerbund ; note 1 ); a young boy holds one corner of the flag. There are good reasons to think that this photo was taken at “German Day” ( Deutscher Tag ) celebrations, which were held annually in the 1930s in each prairie province. Saskatchewan German Day rallies rotated annually between Regina and Saskatoon, between seeding and harvest time. Its first gathering was in 1930 which drew some 4,000 attendees ( note 2 ). In 1932, six months before Hitler’s seizure of pow...
Post a Comment
Read more

Snapshots of Danzig Mennonites, late 1600s & early 1700s

A picture can be worth a thousand words. We do not have photographs, but we have a few colour paintings of life in and around Danzig in the late 1600s and early 1700s, as well as maps. We also have a limited number of "textual snapshots" of Mennonites at this time and place, which offer an instructive window into that foreign world. These snapshots of work, worship, health, education, community relationships, smaller repressions, and security can contribute to the creation of a larger collage of Mennonite life in Danzig and Polish Prussia.  Snapshot 1 : In 1681 there were approximately 180 Mennonite families who lived in the “gardens” or villages outside Danzig, with 113 of those families within the jurisdiction of the city. At this time Mennonites were barred from owning houses within the walls of the city. Of these 113 family heads, we know: 43 were retailers of spirits, 24 merchants, 9 lacemakers, 7 dyers, 3 silk dyers, 3 pressers, 2 brokers, 2 treasurers, 2 waitresses, et...
Post a Comment
Read more