"Should Holy Baptism be offered to Deaf-Mutes (1886)?”

In 1886 the General Conference of the Mennonite Congregations in Russia (elders and ministers) adopted the following resolution: “A deaf-mute who desires Holy Baptism may be baptized, providing he is not an idiot (blödsinnig), and an understanding of baptism is first introduced to him as far as possible” (note 1).

A. G. Ambarzumov, a Protestant Armenian who had been trained in Germany and Switzerland for teaching the deaf, started a small initiative in the Mennonite “Molotschna Settlement” in Ukraine/South Russia in the 1870s. After a difficult start, benefactors in the Molotschna embraced the idea of a larger institution for the deaf—the first such institution in South Russia--especially because of the demonstrable results produced in the lives of students.

“After only four months, Herr Ambarzumov could demonstrate encouraging results; the students were able to pronounce almost all vowels and consonants and speak and write some words" (note 2).

The institution's name--"Mary School for the Deaf" (Marien-Taubstummenschule) was chosen to commemorate the silver anniversary of the reign of Alexander II, and as a demonstration of Mennonite loyalty and willingness to contribute to the state. Alexander's wife was the German-bashing, Danish-born Russian Empress Maria Fjodorowna.

Similar training schools for the deaf were established during this time in England, Germany and the USA. For those motivated by faith “it was justified as providing access to the New Testament, the path of salvation,” equivalent to the “education of the ‘savages’ of the New World” (note 3). The private initiative in Molotschna was officially transferred to the General Conference of the Mennonite Congregations in Russia in 1884 under the oversight of the Molotschna Mennonite School Board.

After a second, well-attended public examination of deaf students in the Ohrloff Mennonite Church in 1886, “those who to this point had doubted the possibility that deaf-mutes could learn anything, were now convinced on the basis of these achievements" (note 4).

That same month in 1886 the General Conference of the Mennonite Congregations in Russia (elders and ministers) adopted the resolution above.

In 1905, its director proudly reported on three graduates ready for faith and life, who “now understand wherefore they live and recognize their responsibilities to God and their neighbour, and that one day they too will have to give an account before God for all they do or leave undone” (note 5). That year the school prepared for a fourth class of ten students—almost all from the larger Mennonite community.

What was the thinking of the times?

If persons can understand the gospel and also understand the call to discipleship, then they are "accountable," and need to/can make a decision for faith and baptism, or not. Until then Mennonites would have assumed that "deaf-mutes" cannot hear the gospel, they cannot read the New Testament, they cannot articulate a confession of their faith in word or in writing, and so they are like children--under God's care, of course, but not accountable for a decision of faith, for which a request to be baptized is the sign.

Notably in traditional Mennonite inheritance practice, deaf-mutes, as well as epileptics, the intellectually disabled, physically handicapped and the blind traditionally received a double-inheritance (note 6).

Addendum

Fast forward some decades. Mennonites lost control of all social institutions after the 1918 Communist Revolution, but the school remained a school for the deaf. These children however were murdered during German occupation. Ben Stobbe writes in his travel blog (2017):

“On the way to Tiege in the Orlovo area, we passed the memorial monument to the 131 deaf and mute children who were killed by the Nazis in WWII. It is a tribute to Ukrainians in this area in that they wanted a monument to remember the children. At the top of this monument is a bell that rings in the wind. Etched around and near top of the monument are children's faces. The chiming bell reminds us of the children.” (Note 7)

This is consistent with what we know otherwise about the Nazi regime: those born deaf were categorized as “defective” and “biologically inferior human material” and typically sterilized. Schools for the deaf were considered a product of Christian sentimentality in which “the greater the degree of idiocy, feeblemindedness, blindness, deafness or other physical handicap was, the greater the public expenditure for these biologically inferior people” (note 8). The singular goal of the Nazi "genetic health policy" was “to give back and maintain the health, resilience, and performance capacity of the German Volk”—and “no clear and rationally thinking fellow German national has ever doubted the legitimacy of racial legislation,” according to a rationale published for the ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) in the Nazi paper read by Mennonites in Ukraine. The policy “has resulted not only in an increased birth rate and a considerable decline in unsuitable elements, but has also impacted, among other things, the crime statistics,” according to the unnamed author (note 9).

But for at least four decades Mennonites in Russia had embraced these so-called weaknesses as important for them as an Anabaptist-Mennonite community. On her death bed in 1884, the unwed estate heiress Helene Schröder willed 6,000 rubles to help establish the Mary School for the Deaf, 6,000 rubles to secure the future of the Ohrlof High School Library, and 6,000 to overseas mission (note 10).

Follow the money: passion for education, charitable work (“inner mission”), and foreign mission were all connected, and marked the self-identity and sense of worth of the larger Mennonite community in this era—including the baptism of those formerly thought to be blödsinnig.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Heinrich Ediger, ed., Beschlüsse der von den geistlichen und anderen Vertretern der Mennonitengemeinden Rußlands abgehaltenen Konferenzen für die Jahren 1879 bis 1913 (Berdjansk: Ediger, 1914), 21, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Buch/MJ/MK1.pdf.

Note 2: Abraham Görz, “Kurzgefaßter Bericht über die Marienschule für Taubstumme in Blumenort in Südrußland,” in H. G. Mannhardt, ed., Jahrbuch der Altevangelischen Taufgesinnten oder Mennoniten-Gemeinden, 143–147 (Danzig, 1888), 145, https://books.google.ca/books?id=ok5FAQAAMAAJ&dq&fbclid. For more background information, cf. Margarita Dick, "'Marien- Taubstummenschule' in Tiege, Molotschna," https://chortitza.org/Buch/MDick.pdf.

Note 3: Jan Branson and Don Miller, Damned for their Difference. The Cultural Construction of Deaf People as ‘Disabled’ (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2002), 125f., https://books.google.ca/books?id=KBaFchM0dowC&dq.

Note 4: Görz, “Kurzgefaßter Bericht über die Marienschule für Taubstumme," 145.

Note 5: Johann Wiebe, “Werte Freunde!” Report, School for the Deaf, Tiege, July 1905. In Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive, file 3450, reel 75. From Robarts Library, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON.

Note 6: Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), 809, https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/page/n845.

Note 7: From http://benstobbe.blogspot.com/2017/05/. One Mennonite doctor participated in the requested examination of these children before their killing; cf .Dmytro Myeshkov, “Mennonites in Ukraine before, during, and immediately after the Second World War,” in European Mennonites and the Holocaust, edited by Mark Jantzen and John D. Thiesen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020), 217f.

Note 8: Karl Lietz, “The Place of the School for the Deaf in the New Reich,” in Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe, edited by Donna F. Ryan and John S. Schuchman, 114–120 (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2002), 117, https://books.google.ca/books?id=8d56MtJWQ7sC&dq.

Note 9: “Schutz gegen Volkszerfall,” Ukraine Post, no. 8 (February 27, 1943), 4, https://libraria.ua/en/numbers/878/32422/.

Note 10: See editorial note (attached) to “Drei Landgüter mennonitischer Gutsbesitzer,” Mennonitische Rundschau (January 28, 1885), 2n., https://chortitza.org/kb/eklas114.pdf.

Comments

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

Flemish Anabaptists and Witch Hunts

Political leaders have long used the term "witch hunt"--and there is an historical connection to Mennonites. Anabaptists and so-called “witches” were arrested and tried for related reasons in the Low Countries in the 1500s: namely, as a means to divert God’s wrath. The late-Medievals feared that heresy—in this case ana-baptism and the challenge to other sacraments—invited the wrath of God, and was an instrument for the devil’s own hellish apocalyptic assault. The assumption: the devil's tactics to destroy Christendom included the use of both heretics and sorcerers. Gary Waite writes convincingly that both were seen as “polluting” the community and thus both had to be "excised." "This fear of pollution, or scandalizing God or the saints, also explains why small numbers of peaceable Mennonites were so harshly treated during the second half of the sixteenth century. Plagues, fires, and economic and social crises were often blamed on the presence of even a smal...

Catherine the Great’s 1763 Manifesto

“We must swarm our vast wastelands with people. I do not think that in order to achieve this it would be useful to compel our non-Christians to accept our faith--polygamy for example, is even more useful for the multiplication of the population. … "Russia does not have enough inhabitants, …but still possesses a large expanse of land, which is neither inhabited nor cultivated. … The fields that could nourish the whole nation, barely feeds one family..." – Catherine II (Note 1 ) “We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade, they are also most convenient for the development and growth of many kinds ...

What does it cost to settle a Refugee? Basic without Medical Care (1930)

In January 1930, the Mennonite Central Committee was scrambling to get 3,885 Mennonites out of Germany and settled somewhere fast. These refugees had fled via Moscow in December 1929, and Germany was willing only to serve as first transit stop ( note 1 ). Canada was very reluctant to take any German-speaking Mennonites—the Great Depression had begun and a negative memory of war resistance still lingered. In the end Canada took 1,344 Mennonites and the USA took none born in Russia. Paraguay was the next best option ( note 2 ). The German government preferred Brazil, but Brazil would not guarantee freedom from military service, which was a problem for American Mennonite financiers. There were already some conservative "cousins" from Manitoba in Paraguay who had negotiated with the government and learned through trial and error how to survive in the "Green Hell" of the Paraguayan Chaco. MCC with the assistance of a German aid organization purchased and distribute...

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 ...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog