“Münsterite!”: The ultimate Mennonite insult

In the 16th century, the term “Mennonite” was adopted by several Anabaptist groups after the tolerant Countess of East Friesland, Anna von Oldenburg, insisted on distinguishing between the “fanatical” Münsterite Anabaptists, on the one hand, and Menno’s peaceful adherents—the Menniten—on the other (note 1).

In 1534, Anabaptists who found refuge in Münster had attempted to establish an “Anabaptist kingdom,” the “New Jerusalem,” in part with he forceful uprooting of the ungodly (note 2). This new holy city was marked by a variety of excesses including polygamy and the community of goods as they awaited the end-time apocalyptic battle between good and evil. This ended disastrously: the armies of the bishop besieged the city and, once inside, killed almost all the men. The three leaders were caged, severely tortured, displayed throughout the country, and put to death six months later.

The next year another 300 Münsterites, and possibly Menno’s brother, occupied a monastery in Friesland near Bolsward, where 37 were beheaded immediately, and another 54 later.

For next generations in Royal Prussia, an obsession with status quo together with rigorous and frequent application of the ban led the Frisian Mennonites to refer disparagingly to their more rigorous Flemish brethren as “Münsterites.” But critiques by the Frisians did not bother the Flemish, apparently, whom the Flemish referred to as “rubbish carts” (Dreckwagen)—for they picked up any kind of smutty Mennonite (note 3)!

Moreover, some Mennonites in Prussia did “not like to call themselves Mennonites,” but rather Taufgesinnte or “baptism-minded.” They did not want to be known as originating from the fanatical and militant Münsterite Anabaptists of the 16th century (note 4). Others alternately spoke of themselves as “quiet in the land” in contrast to the militant Münsterite revolutionaries of old (note 5),

One of the first elders in Chortitza, David Epp, had a very difficult first year as elder. His misdemeanors were detailed in a lengthy letter of formal complaint dated September 1793 to elders in Danzig and Prussia and endorsed by nineteen signatories. The elder’s leadership was responsible for “causing dissension, hate and strife and the like,” and the writers even compared Epp and his supporters with the militant, theocratic Anabaptist “Münsterites” (note 6).

After the Russian Revolution, Mennonite leader Benjamin Unruh wrote that “Bolshevik putschism” stands in direct continuity with the revolutionary “sectarian” Anabaptism of Münster. Both could employ violence (“social revolution with the sword of Gideon”) as a strategy for inaugurating the new world order. In “genuine” Anabaptism, in contrast, the congregation is similar to a “shock troop and bearer of an unbroken devotion to the final goals” and “coming ‘order of God,’” but it is “never the kingdom of God” itself, according to Unruh (note 7). Ironically Unruh was writing (positively) about shock troops in a context in which Nazi shock troops in Germany were first having an impact.

With this context it is not surprising that others too produced hate literature that conflated Mennonites and Münsterites to warn against the murderous errors of "new” Anabaptists. In 1701, etchings known as the "Warning Mirror" (Warnungs-Spiegel) were produced—a kind of mirror opposite of the copper-plate etchings of the Martyrs Mirror by Jan Luyken (d. 1712; note 8).

Below are some of those etchings that warn earnestly against "new Anabaptists," including Mennonites, Quakers, Pietists, atheists, polygamists and many more heretics and arch-heretics.

The etchings function a little like extreme political cartoons in our day, but here with the message that though the Old Anabaptists “may be dead, but their spirit and legacy is still to be eradicated!"

And in Mennonite circles if you are looking to start a new schism, remember that the “ultimate putdown” after many centuries is still to call your fellow Mennonite a Münster-ite (or alternatively a Dreckwagen, depending on context or perspective).

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Anna Oldenburg-Delmenhorst, Countess of East Friesland, “On the Treatment of Sectarians,” February 15, 1545. In A. F. Mellink, ed., Documenta Anabaptistica Nederlandica, Part I: Friesland en Groningen, 1530–1550 (Leiden: Brill, 1975) I, 190.

Note 2: Cf. Walter Klaassen, Living at the End of the Ages. Apocalyptic Expectation in the Radical Reformation (New York: University of America Press, 1992), 45-51, https://archive.org/details/livingatendofage0000klaa.

Note 3: Cf. Abraham Hartwich, Geographisch-Historische Landes-Beschribung [sic] derer dreyen im Pohlnischen Preußen liegenden Werdern (Königsberg, 1723), 279, http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/resolve/display/bsb10000874.html.

Note 4: Cf. Ludwig von Baczko, ed., Nankes Wanderungen durch Preussen, vol. 2 (Hamburg and Altona, Vollmer, 1800), 111-125, https://archive.org/details/reisedurcheinen00baczgoog/page/n378/mode/2up; OR https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bvb:70-dtl-0000000449#061, 112f.

Note 5: Benjamin H. Unruh, “Die Wehrlosigkeit.” Vortrag, gehalten auf der Allgemeinen Mennonitischen Konferenz am 7. Juni 1917, 16, 17, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1917,%20Unruh,%20Wehrlosigkeit/.

Note 6: In Peter Hildebrand, From Danzig to Russia (Winnipeg, MB: CMBC, 2000), 40. Also in Gerhard Wiebe, “Verzeichniß der gehaltenen Predigten samt andern vorgefallenen Merkwürdigkeiten in der Gemeine Gottes in Elbing und Ellerwald von Anno 1778 d. 1. Januar.” Transcriptions from the original by Willi Risto, https://chortitza.org/Buch/Risto1.pdf; also Ingrid Lamp: https://mla.bethelks.edu/Prussian%20Polish%20Mennonite%20sources/wiebe.html.

Note 7: B. H. Unruh, “Geleitwort,” in Das Mennonitentum in Rußland von seiner Einwanderung bis zur Gegenwart, by Adolf Ehrt, III–VI (Berlin-Leipzig: Belz, 1932), IV, https://chort.square7.ch/Pis/Ehrt; also B. H. Unruh, “Das Wesen des evangelischen Täufertums und Mennonitentums,” Mennonitische Jugendwarte 17, no. 1 (February 1937), 12f., https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennonitische%20Jugendwarte/DSCF9305.JPG.

Note 8: Zacharia Theobaldo, Der alten und neuen Schwärmer widertäufferischer Geist (Cöthen: Meyer, 1701), front pages, https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb11204036_00005.html. Compare the etchings in Thieleman van Braght, The Martyrs’ Mirror: The Story of Fifteen Centuries of Martyrdom (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2001), https://archive.org/details/MartyrsMirror. Also Rachel Epp Buller, "Beyond the Martyrs Mirror: The Prints of Jan Luyken," Anabaptist Historians (Jan. 2018), https://anabaptisthistorians.org/2018/01/25/beyond-the-martyrs-mirror-the-prints-of-jan-luyken/.

Comments

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...

"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 ...

“Operation Chortitza” (Part II) – Resettler Camps in Danzig-West Prussia, 1943-44

Waldemar Janzen, my former German professor and advisee, turned eleven years old in 1943. He and his mother and 3,900 others from Chortitza and Rosenthal (Ukraine) were evacuated west to the ethnic German resettler camps in Gau Danzig-West Prussia in October that year (see Part I; note 1 ). Years later Janzen could still recall much from this childhood experience—including the impact of the visit by Professor Benjamin H. Unruh a few weeks after their arrival. “He was a man who had extended much help to his fellow Mennonites ever since they began to emigrate from Russia during the 1920s” ( note 2 ). Unruh was a father-figure to his people, and his arrival at their camp in West Prussia signaled to the evacuees that they were in good hands ( note 3 ). Unruh’s impact on 7,000 other Chortitza District villagers in Upper Silesia would be the same some weeks later ( note 4 ). Surprisingly Unruh’s West Prussian camps visit left an equally indelible impression on the Gau’s Operations Commande...

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 ...

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 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...

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 ...

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, ...

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...

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...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog