Skip to main content

"They are useful to the state." An almost forgotten Prussian view of Mennonites, ca. 1780s-90s

In 1787 Mennonite interest for emigration was extremely strong outside the quasi independent City of Danzig in the Prussian annexed Marienwerder and Elbing regions. Even before the land scouts Johann Bartsch and Jacob Höppner had returned from Russia later that year, so many Mennonite exit applications had flooded offices that officials wrote Berlin in August 1787 for direction (note 1a). Initially officials did not see a problem: because Mennonites do not provide soldiers, the cantons lose nothing by their departure, and in fact benefit from the ten-percent tax imposed on financial assets leaving the state. 

Ludwig von Baczko (1756-1823), Professor of History at the Artillery Academy in Königsberg, East Prussia, was the general editor of a series that included a travelogue through Prussia written by a certain Karl Ephraim Nanke. Nanke had no special love for Mennonites, but was generally balanced in his judgements and based his now almost forgotten account of Mennonites on personal engagement, correspondence and interviews (note 1b).

Nanke’s first example is from the Stuhm Lowlands and the Mennonites of the Tragheimerweide congregation.

“Another remarkable thing was that [during the 7 Years War, 1756–1763] there had never been a dispute with the Mennonites living here in the district (Stuhm in West Pr.), although they consisted of more than 600 people. All the district officials and [non-Mennonite] clergy I asked about this agree that these people are the most obedient subjects and the most industrious farmers.

They practice their trade not merely mechanically, but with much insight, and know how to make excellent use of every local advantage. They are engaged only in farming and animal husbandry; spinning and weaving is rarely practiced by them on a large scale. From the bourgeois trades they excel in brandy distilling, and some also engage in trade.” (Note 2).

Strangely the Stuhm Mennonites did “not like to call themselves Mennonites,” but rather followed the Dutch variation: Taufgesinnte (Doopsgezinde) or “baptism-minded.” In particular Nanke noted, “they do not want to be known as originating from the Anabaptists much less as descended from Thomas Müntzer”—though he thinks otherwise. This suggests that the term “Anabaptist” (Wiedertäufer) was still weighted with the memory of the Münster “Old Testament" inspired “theocracy,” and the “fanatical” and “militant” Münsterite Anabaptists of the sixteenth century. Thomas Müntzer—a different case—was a Reformation peasant radical and mystic, marginally related to some mainstream Anabaptists, and generally a revolutionary from whom Mennonites still sought to distance themselves (note 3).

Nanke appreciated the turn Anabaptists took under Menno Simons, who sought to mirror the community after the “early church” of the New Testament. “In this way they achieve the goal of being able to influence the morality of the community and to form a society of quiet, industrious people” (note 4).

Nanke then described the community leadership model that developed among Mennonites, and how it served to shape communal discipline and morality in the Mennonite Marienburger settlements as a whole.

“The people elect leaders (Vorsteher) from among themselves, whose business it is to [ensure all] adhere to exhortations in worship and also to discipline in the church. Like a good housefather, the leader with the involvement of their [church] elders oversees the whole [Mennonite] community and prevents every evil from arising." (Note 5)

Their work ethic, care for the poor, and way of addressing sloth or mismanagement were all connected matters for the whole community.

“One of their leaders once said to me when I asked him about their almshouses: We have no poor; for we see to it that none of us becomes impoverished; a misfortune of an individual through no fault of his own is regarded as a burden that the whole community must bear. Misfortunes that are caused by the persons themselves are mitigated by [community] forbearance and care—as long as there is hope for improvement. If not, we put the unfortunate one in the position of no longer being able to harm himself and his neighbours in the same way.” (Note 6)

So that Mennonites could follow their convictions and be released from military service, the community as a whole was responsible for a lump sum tax payment of 5,000 Thaler annually since 1772ff.—enough to cover the majority capital portion and annual operating costs of a new military cadet school at Culm. The community of 12,603 persons (1780) was also restricted from acquiring more farming land, because military conscription quotas were canton based (note 7). For these reasons the Mennonite community had a stake in how every farm was operated. Nanke wrote:

“I have also been assured that if a landowner manages his farm poorly and runs up too much debt, his property will be taken from him by the [Mennonite] community (Gemeinde) and he will be forced to work as a hired-hand for a good landlord. This severity is in fact necessary, because they are liable for the taxes in solidum [as a group] and in this way the Royal Treasury does not lose money with them.” (Note 8)

Even later in Russia, Mennonites as a whole would have shared obligations to the state with charter expectations, and even later with a communal tax system to cover the significant costs of their alternative service obligations. 

But in the late 1780 and early 1790s, it was Nanke’s assessment Mennonites were citizens worth retaining in Prussia despite their unique scruples.

“They are useful to the state in this regard [taxes] and with respect to the good example they set through diligence and good manners. One does not find any drunkards among them or hear of any salacious debauchery. Most of their disputes are settled amicably by community leaders (Vorsteher). They are restrained from cheating and bickering by their religious convictions. According to their principles, they are forbidden to take an oath. The state has also exempted them from this, so that their unsworn testimony is also valid in court. Lies and shady tricks (Winkelzüge) are extremely rare among them.” (Note 9)

To support these claims, Nanke cited a recently completed study by Wilhelm Crichton on the Mennonites in Prussia (1786):

“In it an excellent testimony is given to their morality, and among other things it is told that there is no known example of a Mennonite who had had a criminal trial in Königsberg. And in the Marienburg area over thirty years there have been only two [Mennonite] criminal offenders. One of them was a (woman) child murderer who was however declared insane.” (Note 10)

Yet at the same time Nanke also noted moral exceptions. Some who have known Mennonites for a longer time and their original “innocent morality,” claim to have seen change among some Mennonites—a decay in morality--according to Nanke, especially because of “increased wealth” and “bad example.” While Nanke was convinced that these too were exceptions, he noted that some now view Mennonites in a negative light (note 11).

A comparable picture of  West Prussian Mennonites at Brenkenhoffswalde was reported in an Augsburg (Bavarian) newspaper in 1779 (note 12). Fourteen years earlier, 35 families had been expelled from the Culm lowlands by local noblemen and given permission by the King to settle in the “marshy” Netzebruch region.

"(Berlin, March 22, 1779): The Mennonites in West Prussia deserve special attention. In all the districts in which they dwell it is found that Mennonites are chiefly industrious, useful, and quiet citizens of the state. They understand what belongs to the best cattle breeding, and make very tasty cheeses, which resemble the Dutch ones. They also weave very fine linen, and they are trusted to be very conscientious in handling other people's property.

For a few years now, three colonies [villages] of these honest people have settled in the Neumark, specifically at Netzebruch, at the instigation of the Councilor of Brenkenhof. These consist of 40 families, which include 210 people at the time of their settlement. While they have brought only 65 horses, 214 head of cattle and 1010 Reichsthaler cash into the country, their diligence and example alone is of great value.

The king has granted them a detailed charter of privileges, and in it has assured them the unrestricted practice of their religion, and that they will be permanently exempt from taking the oath and from military service...”

These reports point to the mixed and debated opinion about Mennonites in the late 18th century--at the very time that many were immigrating or planning to immigrate to Russia. In 1788, as the numbers of revenue-generating agriculturalists wanting to emigrate swelled, Frederick William II’s mind changed, and only the landless were granted exit visas (note 13). In this very public debate the voices that recommended to keep the Mennonites had some impact. Despite the perceived negatives, "they are useful to the state." 

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Portrait: Ludwig von Baczko, Geschichte meines Lebens, vol. 1 (Königsberg, 1824), http://prussia.online/books/geschichte-meines-lebens.

Note 1aPaul Karge, “Die Auswanderung ost- und westpreussischen Mennoniten nach Südrussland (nach Chortiza und der Molotschna), 1787–1820,” Elbinger Jahrbuch 3 (1923) 87, http://dlibra.bibliotekaelblaska.pl/dlibra/doccontent?id=13874.

Note 1b: 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. Kurt Kauenhowen referred to this account in 1938, but incorrectly named Baczko as the author; see Kauenhowen, “Die Mennoniten in West- und Ostpreußen im Jahre 1794,” Mitteilungen 4, no. 5 (October 1938), 128-132, https://www.mharchives.ca/download/1426/.

Note 2: Baczko, Nankes Wanderungen durch Preussen, 111f.; on Stuhm and Tragheimerweide, see https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Stuhm_Lowlands_(Pomerania_Voivodeship,_Poland); https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Tragheimerweide_(Pomeranian_Voivodeship,_Poland).

Note 3: Baczko, ed., Nankes Wanderungen durch Preussen, 112f. See the 1701 prejudice and propaganda against Anabaptist-Mennonites as Münsterites in another post (forthcoming). The term Münsterite was also an insult employed by the Frisians against the Flemish for their harsh use of the ban; 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. On Thomas Müntzer, cf. GAMEO entry, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=M%C3%BCntzer,_Thomas_(1488/9-1525).

Note 4: Baczko, Nankes Wanderungen durch Preussen, 114.

Note 5: Baczko, Nankes Wanderungen durch Preussen, 114.

Note 6: Baczko, Nankes Wanderungen durch Preussen, 114f.

Note 7: Baczko, Nankes Wanderungen durch Preussen, 124.

Note 8: Baczko, Nankes Wanderungen durch Preussen, 115.

Note 9: Baczko, Nankes Wanderungen durch Preussen, 115f.

Note 10: Baczko, Nankes Wanderungen durch Preussen, 118; cf. Wilhelm D. Crichton, Zur Geschichte der Mennoniten (Königsberg, 1786), https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bvb:384-uba003137-1.

Note 11: Baczko, Nankes Wanderungen durch Preussen, 121f.

Note 12Augspurgische Ordinari Postzeitung, nos. 79 & 80 (April 3, 1779), 3, https://digipress.digitale-sammlungen.de/view/bsb10505145_00307_u001/3?cq=mennonisten. On the Mennonite community at "Brenkenhoffswalde," see GAMEO, Brenkenhoffswalde and franztal (lubusz voivodeship, poland) - GAMEO.

Note 13: Karge, “Auswanderung ost- und westpreussischen Mennoniten,” 87–89.










Print Friendly and PDF

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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...

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...

Molotschna: The final months, Summer 1943

These photos are from German propaganda material filmed in Molotschna (called "Halbstadt") in 1943—just a few months before the evacuation from Ukraine and trek to German-annexed Poland (Warthegau). Not all of the film is of the Mennonite settlement, however, but much of it is. Below are some frames from the film. The edited shorter version is of higher quality and designed as propaganda to be consumed by Germans in the Reich and to secure their approval .  The scenes are marked by cleanliness, orderliness and discipline. There is economic activity, a model Kindergarten, and always happy ethnic German people in the newly occupied territories. A predominantly Mennonite Cavalry Regiment (Waffen-SS) guarding Ukrainian and Russian workers is also highlighted. This hard to see and disturbing. Anything that may have been good here for Mennonites meant enslavement, hunger and death for untold numbers of others. Two versions of the film are available: Shorter (edited for l...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...