Skip to main content

"Petitioning" to become a teacher in the 1860s

School attendance for Russian Mennonite boys and girls aged (6)7 to 14 was obligatory. The attendance lists, for example, are keys that have unblocked many a genealogical impasse (note 1). But an understanding of the developments in the Mennonite schools as such is also indispensable for the stories of those families, their villages and of Mennonites in their context.

In short, the momentum of school reform did not abate with Johann Cornies’ death in 1848. However we soon enter a period of “archival darkness.” Only a few pieces exist from this era which I have transcribed (more below; see selected pics).

As we know, education in the Mennonite colonies happened from the outset, but was largely dismal or at least very uneven (note 2). This changed when the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Colonists gave oversight of Molotschna’s schools to the powerful Agricultural Society and Cornies, its chairman for life in 1843. Many a school was reconstructed to become roomier and brighter, and was better equipped and maintained. Village teachers too were better resourced, with a more uniform curriculum and schedule. While there was no formal pedagogical training, teaching apprenticeships became common, and participation in monthly seminars for professional development required.

After Cornies’ death, his son-in-law Philipp Wiebe took on the role until 1855. Wiebe aimed to ensure that a teacher was paid “so that he can live properly, feed himself without being anxious, clothe himself properly and keep himself warm,” that is, without the need of taking on a second job (note 3). Teachers’ stature rose in the community: they were to be well-dressed and lead exemplary lives, but hardly any had pedagogical training. “We lacked an appropriate educational institution, a teacher training college. If education is to flourish, the teacher must have had the opportunity to train as a pedagogue. … Our central schools of the forties and fifties could not fully satisfy this need” (note 4).

When Wiebe resigned in 1855 for health reasons, Cornies’ brother David became chairman of the “Molotschna Society for the Advancement of Schools” (under the Agricultural Society chair) followed in 1862 by the wealthy Steinbach estate owner Peter Schmidt.

While Braun can confirm that both were faithful, enlightened promoters of education, “there is little material in archives from the [David] Cornies – Schmidt period,” that is, until the 1869 creation of the “Molotschna Board of Education.”

The Peter J. Braun Archive however includes a few records--in particular correspondence related to the examination of teacher candidates which I have tried to transcribe (note 5).

The “Molotschna Society for the Advancement of Schools” deliberated on regulations concerning the examination of teacher candidates. The conference of church elders and ministers also had a role in the examination. The exam itself, as far as can be ascertained, consisted of biblical history, reading, spelling, and arithmetic. Russian language competency was not yet required. A commission of two church leaders and two educational leaders reported the results of the examination to the Society with the signatures of all members present. Here is a sample:

“As a result of today's examination of the eight school teacher candidates, we hereby report to the Society that three of them, namely Heinrich Gooßen from Marienthal, Johann Esau from Halbstadt, and Peter Dyck from Muntau--who has really worked on his knowledge since his first examination, and should be given preference in our opinion--will try to improve themselves more and more, and should be accepted for which we wish them the Lord's richest blessing and His grace from the bottom of our hearts.

The others are so weak in every respect that there is little hope for them. [my emphasis -ANF]

[Signed] Halbstadt, Jan. 23, 1863. August Lenzmann, Elder; Dirk Warkentin, Elder; Gust. Rempel, District school teacher; B. Harder, Teacher”

The society was intent to set and keep the bar high. Exams were also held the next January:

“As a result of today's examination, we hereby report to the association that the candidates Johann Unrau, Johann Bekker, Peter Löwen, Jakob Nikkel, Martin Hübert and Peter Reimer, who appeared for examination, are still rather weak in their knowledge; the first five however should be able to advance with further training. However we strongly recommend that Martin Hübert work to specifically improve his arithmetic skills; and we recommend that Peter Reimer be directed to continue to work on all subject areas.

[Signed] Halbstadt, January 17, 1864; Church Elder Dirk Warkentin; Church Elder Bernhard Peters; District Teacher Gust. Rempel; Teacher B. Harder”

Teacher candidates applied (Nov./Dec.) for formal examination (January) and placement. Their letters of application were simple; typically they outlined their desire for teaching and private preparation, more than any skill or training.

Jacob Nickel of Muntau wrote the Society that he would like to be examined and take on a school in the next year "because I have felt a drive to be a school teacher within me for several years."

Peter Löwen of Muntau, however wrote in November 1863 that he had prepared for 2 years in the Halbstadt Bezirksschule [Central school] and the desire to become a teacher has grown within him. He asks the Society to be offered a placement in one of the expected openings. Martin Hiebert, Neukirch, feels like he would like to teach, has expanded his knowledge and would like to be considered. 


Peter Reimer of Tiegerweide wrote to Chairman Schmidt in December 1863:

“Driven by desire and love for school matters, I am continue to occupy myself with this collection. Although I am still lacking in higher academics, I intend to attend the local school punctually until vacation time, and will participate in the evening lessons by the local school teacher. I hope with God's help, with diligence and activity, to acquire the necessary school knowledge in all subjects by the time of the examination. For this reason I present the honourable Society with this humble request to give me permission to offer assistance to a school (as teacher).”

Jacob Neufeld of Alexanderkrone who has not yet graduated also asks for a school, but preferably one that is too large school. The folder includes a list of those examined in 1864; Neufeld did not pass.

Peter Braun of Lichtfelde wrote the following to the chair in November 1863:

“Most sincere request! Since I have had a desire and love for schooling for several years, but have held back because of my poor level of knowledge. This winter however I am apprenticing with my brother in Lichtfelde, and I intend to perfect this, and I think that by Spring of 1864 I will have come so far as to be able to serve a small or medium-sized village school with God's help. I turn to the honourable Society with the request that, after prior examination, you will help me so that I can take on a school position." (Marginal note: "Zurückgeblieben" [did not proceed]).

From Münsterberg Jacob Heidebrecht wrote the Society that his family situation had changed and he believes that he is now able to take on the role of a teacher. Johann Becker, Franzthal, seeks the same, and promises that he will study and learn more.

The folder also includes a request from the new Mennonite settlements in Crimea, preferably someone connected to Gnadenfeld. Chairman Peter Schmidt recommended Johann Unrau of Prangenau, who however declined:

"Regarding the letter I received from the Society concerning the position of school teacher in Crimea, I would like to inform you that I have decided not to take it on, because I feel in myself that I do not have enough knowledge to take on the position of school teacher completely, and that I would not yet be able to make much progress in Crimea because, as I said, there are only few or almost no learned school teachers from whom I could receive instruction.

So I also request from the Society to assist me all the more in order to be able to take over a school position somewhere in the Molotschna Colony, for which I will diligently strive with God's help to acquire the knowledge still required for this purpose. This is the sincere wish of your most devoted servant, Johann Unrau, Prangeneau, July 5 [1863]."

Gerhard Goossen wrote a short letter to Schmidt as well indicating that he was no longer wanted as teacher in Fischau and asks the Society chair for another placement (Nov. 1863).

The correspondence preserved from this era on educational matters suggests that the role of teacher in the community was evolving into a desired, respectable community role requiring application and some competency. The role was regulated and also compensated fairly (more or less)—whereas in the pre-Cornies era this was not the case in most villages.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Cf. the Glenn H. Penner’s “Guide to the available Molotschna Settlement School Registers,” https://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/Molotschna_School_Lists_Guide.pdf.

Note 2: See previous posts, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/mennonite-literacy-in-polish-prussia.html.

Note 3: Peter J. Braun, Der Molotschnaer Mennoniten-Schulrat, 1869–1919. Zum Gedenktag seines 50jährigen Bestehens, edited by Wladimir Süss (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001 [1920 manuscript]), 28. See also idem, “The Educational System of the Mennonite Colonies in South Russia,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 3, no. 3 (July 1929), 169–182; idem, “Education among the Mennonites in Russia,” GAMEO, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Education_Among_the_Mennonites_in_Russia. See also Leonhard Froese, “Das pädagogische Kultursystem der mennonitischen Siedlungsgruppe in Russland,” PhD dissertation (University of Göttingen, 1949). See also idem, “Schulwesen der Mennoniten in Rußland,” Mennonitisches Lexikon, Bd. 4, ed. Gerhard Hein et al. (Baden: Schneider, 1967), 109-114; 111.

Note 4: Abraham Görz, Die Schulen in den Mennoniten-Kolonien an der Molotschna im südlichen Russland (Berdjansk: Molotschner Mennoniten-Kirchenkonvent 1882), 5f., https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/?file=Pis/Goerz.pdf.

Note 5: File 1961, “Society for Advancement of Schools: Reports and Correspondence, 1863-64,” Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive, 1803-1920. Robarts Library, University of Toronto. All of the correspondence noted in this post are transcribed and translated from this file the author --ANF.

Print Friendly and PDF

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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...

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 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 ...

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...

Stalin’s Purge (1937-38) and Mennonite Suffering: 8 theses

1. Millions died under Stalin One of the more recent studies on the Stalin-era estimates that more than 28.7 million people suffered in the northern prisons and slave camps of the Gulag and 2.75 million people died there during Stalin’s reign ( note 1 ). To this number must be added the “close to a million political executions, the millions who died in transit to the Gulag, and some six to seven million who died of starvation during the early 1930s” ( note 2 ). The mass deportation of workers and peasants provided millions of forced labourers in the Arctic and Siberia. George K. Epp calculated that approximately one-third of Mennonites in the Soviet Union—at least 30,000—died due to exposure, beatings, overwork, disease, starvation or shootings ( note 3 ). 2. Mennonites in Ukraine suffered together with their Ukrainian neighbours Moscow was fearful of “losing Ukraine” ( note 4 ) and specifically targeted it with a “lengthy schooling” designed to ruthlessly break the threat of U...

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 ...

Queen Elizabeth II and Aunt Adina Neufeld Bräul

This month (April 2023) we celebrated my aunt’s 97th birthday—Adina Neufeld Bräul. Queen Elizabeth II and Aunt Adina were born within hours of each other, April 20-21, 1926. She once told me—in somewhat different words—that this makes her wonder about God’s providence … In 1944 in German-annexed Poland, my 16-year-old uncle Walter Bräul was required to report for military service. His first thought: no good soldier should be without a girlfriend! Before leaving for training, he asked one of the girls from "the trek" on a date to see a movie in Exin. Seven years later they would marry in Paraguay. Adina and her mother and sister were on the same trek or group (Gnadenfeld/ Molotschna) out of Ukraine as Walter and my mother (in the 2023 photo). Adina’s most terrible memory of the trek was when their wagon almost tipped over into a deep ravine. She was 17—a year older than Walter—and it was Walter’s 17-year-old brother Peter who literally jumped from his wagon to physically stop ...

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...

A Traveler's Impressions of the Molotschna, 1927

In November 1927, Susanna Toews of Ohrloff, Molotschna wrote to her brother Gerhard in Canada, "Father is sleeping and the sisters are reading, even though they have read the stuff ten times. . .. Twice a week we get Das Neue Dorf . We read the most important material the first evening and then father reads the rest of it the next day" ( note 1 ). A youth in Friedensruh, Molotschna reported to the communist youth paper Die Saat in 1928, that their village receives 13 copies of Das Neue Dorf , 6 copies of Die Saat , one of the Moscow-based Deutsche Zentral-Zeitung , 16 copies of Die Trompete, 2 copies of Neuland , and some Russian papers as well. On average, 2 papers per household--all communist papers. A Mennonite-based monthly agricultural journal, “The Practical Agriculturalist” ( Der praktische Landwirt ) had been approved for publication in Ukraine in 1924 but was shut down in December 1926. Government authorities in Ukraine were exasperated to see a “significant a...

The Shift from Dutch to German, 1700s

Already in 1671, Mennonite Flemish Elder Georg Hansen in Danzig published his German-language catechism ( Glaubens-Bericht für die Jugend ) as preparation for youth seeking baptism. Though educational competencies varied, Hansen’s Glaubens-Bericht assumed that youth preparing for baptism had a stronger ability to read complex German than Dutch ( note 1 ). Popular Mennonite preacher Jacob Denner (1659–1746), originally from the Hamburg-Altona Mennonite Church, lived in Danzig for four years in the early 1700s. A first volume of his Dutch sermons was published in 1706 in Danzig and Amsterdam, and then in 1730 and 1751 he published two German collections. Untrained preachers would often read Denner’s sermons: “Those who preached German—which all Prussian preachers around 1750 did, with the exception of the Danzig preachers—had no sermons books from their co-religionists other than this one by Jacob Denner” ( note 2 ). In Danzig and the Vistula Delta region there were some differences...