All Quiet on the Western Front

I recently viewed the 2023 Academy Award winning film, All Quiet on the Western Front.

As an undergraduate I read the novel in German and now watched it in German as well. It is rated R for “strong bloody war violence and grisly images”—which really is the case. It is not pro-war, however, but unfolds and displays the futility of patriotism and strong national pride. Though written by a German and published in Berlin, it was among the first books burned by the Nazis in 1933.

While watching the film my ears popped up when the lead character shouted in German for a Sanitäter (medic); I had to think of Germany’s “eastern front”.

Russia experienced as many military casualties as France (upwards of 1.5 million each) in WW1 and even more civilian casualties. Some 7,000 Russian Mennonites were on that front as Red Cross Sanitäter/ medics, including both my grandfathers. Our best source for stories is the edited collection: “Onsi Tjedils”: Ersatzdienst der Mennoniten in Rußland unter den Romanows. A sample:

“We carried the wounded from the front … and loaded between 300 and 400 wounded soldiers at a time. … To help these men somewhat, to alleviate their need and to say a kind word, that was our task. … We had one orderly who would read a chapter from the Gospels to the wounded in each load.” (Note 1)

In All Quiet on the Western Front the older schoolmaster gave a passionate patriotic speech in praise of the glory of Germany, encouraging his 18 year-old students not to wait for the draft, but to enlist immediately in service of the Fatherland.

The portrayal reminded me of the Hamburg-Altona (Germany) Mennonite pastor and denominational leader Hinrich van der Smissen—and his “talk” to Mennonite soldiers and medics in Germany six years before the start of WW1. Van der Smissen was an ardent German nationalist and helped to promote connections between Germany and Germans abroad, in particular, with Mennonites in North America and Russia. He was well connected with Chortitza elder D. H. Epp, and had visited Russia. In a larger article for a popular German geographical journal, he boasted of the flourishing Mennonite colonies now spread across Russia which “in language, essence and character” have all “remained German” (note 2).

Van Smissen’s talk is appended to a booklet produced by the Soldiers’ Commission of the Conference of South German Mennonites entitled, Warnings and Advice while in the Military.

The booklet advised young Mennonite soldiers that the military can be “a good school in obedience, punctuality, love for orderliness and cleanliness,” and can strengthen one’s health and steel one’s body (note 3; p. 6). All of the moral dangers are also noted, but the commission’s concern was that Mennonites in the military do not boast about their service or “lose the best which one has, namely a pure and pious heart” (p. 28).

Pastor van der Smissen tells his readers how he eagerly served the “Fatherland” as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and (boasts) of those formative experiences in service of God and country. He would have been known to Russian Mennonites studying in Germany/Switzerland at this time, including Benjamin Unruh and the mid-wife Helene Berg (note 4).

Van der Smissen encouraged the young men with heroic stories of how it was when he served as medic under military command.

“Whoever was fit, literally rushed to be included in the multitudes that went out to the borders to protect the fatherland from the hordes of the French Turks and Zuaves ... . Was it any wonder that a young student of 18, who with his friends had joyfully and wholeheartedly celebrated the love of the fatherland in his songs, felt nothing else in himself but the burning desire to give his best, and if need be his life, for the fatherland with the rest of his classmates? ...

Indeed, the horrors of war confronted us in horrible form as soon as we took our first step into enemy territory. And we understood that war is a bloody trade and leaves much misery and sorrow in its wake. … We had the great privilege of knowing however that our way of serving the fatherland was also a very necessary and beneficial one.” (Note 5).

For young Mennonites in the Russian Empire, the option to go to the front was also much more popular than the alternative—forestry service. The experience of horrific conditions forced the medics to mature quickly. In a letter to his young wife, one Mennonite Sanitäter wrote:

"A freight train had just pulled up next to ours with approximately 1,000 wounded soldiers, who lay in filthy freight cars terribly overcrowded. … The men had built fires directly on the floors, never mind the smoke that filled the car. These poor fellows just wanted to be warm. There were no bedsteads; the floors were covered with horse manure. For four days they had eaten nothing. When we gave them bread, they devoured it as ravenously as wild animals. You simply can’t imagine it." (Note 6)

Unfortunately the best Russian Mennonite playwright of the era, J. H. Janzen, did not write a novel of those experiences; the above could make for compelling episodes in a movie as well.

We know the returning Russian Mennonite medics were more than ready for a generational change in leadership after all they had seen and experienced. Some of their leaders too old to serve on the front now seemed to them too defensive of the status quo at home, too pompous, assertive, and impressed with what they thought they knew of the world (e.g., critique of Benjamin Unruh; note 7). The movie expressed the same for the returning German soldiers.

Van der Smissen’s patriotic words in 1908 mirrored that old world view--albeit for German Mennonites--that had now been shattered. For Van der Smissen and his generation there is something normal in war with opportunities for personal growth. His pastoral challenge does not go further than to be disciplined, do one’s duty, be courageous, give a good moral example to comrades, fear God, and keep from unnecessary cruelty—and then return to normal life after the battle's end.

“It is honorable and gives evidence of good upbringing when civilized and human behaviour characterizes you even in such extraordinary times. One can even say it is a Christian's duty and high privilege to set a good example for your comrades and ... to show that in addition to military discipline our conscience and fear of the holy God keeps us from any unnecessary cruelty and raw behaviour. We have to prove our heroic courage in places where one faces death and can be called away from life at any moment. Our endurance should prove itself in hardships; but when the roar of battle is over, we are also human beings and Christians in our quarters and must act like such.” (Note 8)

The point of All Quiet on the Western Front was the lesson learnt by Mennonites on the eastern front as well, I think. With the sheer carnage and brutality of the Great War, the idea that a military response to conflict might still be a noble enterprise carried out with dignity, restraint and morality for the fatherland was fatally wounded. Normal had ended for them. In Russia the immediate consequence was revolution, the abdication of the Tsar, and everything but normal (note 9).

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: A. Bergmann, in Waldemar Günther, David P. Heidebrecht and Gerhard J. Peters, eds., “Onsi Tjedils”: Ersatzdienst der Mennoniten in Rußland unter den Romanows (Yarrow, BC: Self-published, 1966), 73. See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/mennonite-medical-orderlies-in-world.html. See also Russian Empire video of Sanitäter, https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxOoI3IKhVIfoPa_GVSsK9T4USuX0WLd2e AND; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVNJGaBQTSc, see 4:13 to 5:34.

Note 2: See my related post (forthcoming); Hinrich Van der Smissen, “Entwickelung und jetziger Stand der deutschen Mennonitenkolonien in Südrußland,” in Dr. A. Petermanns Mitteilungen aus Justus Perthes’ Geographischer Anstalt, vol. 44, edited by A. Supan, 169–174 (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1898), 174, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/vpetk274.pdf. On Van der Smissen, see GAMEO, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Smissen,_Hinrich_van_der_(1851-1928).

Note 3: Konferenz Süddeutscher Mennoniten Soldaten-Kommission, Warnungen und Winke für die Militärzeit (Kaiserslautern: Lösch und Behringer, 1908), https://mla.bethelks.edu/books/warnungen_und_winke.pdf.

Note 4: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/03/motherhood-of-people-halbstadt-midwife.html.

Note 5: Warnungen und Winke für die Militärzeit, 29f., 36.

Note 6: Nicolai Rempel in a letter to his wife Katharina, in Teodor Rempel, ed., Letters of a Mennonite Couple, Nicolai and Katharina Rempel: Russia, World War I, and the Revolution, 1914-1917 (Winnipeg, MB: Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 2014), 18f.

Note 7: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2022/09/how-should-mennonites-organize.html. Key source: “A Mennonite Witness to Revolution. Johann G. Rempel’s Memoir of Moscow, March–June 1917,” translated with notes by David G. Rempel; edited with an introduction and conclusion by James Urry, Mennonite Quarterly Review 91, no. 3 (July 2017), 201–230.

Note 8: Warnungen und Winke für die Militärzeit, 58.

Note 9: See previous posts.

Comments

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...

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...

Ideas for Educational Reform, 1832

After four decades in Russia, the president of the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Colonists, Andrei Fadeev, considered only eight of 116 Mennonite teachers in the two larger regions of Katerynoslav and Tauria—which included the Molotschna—fit to teach ( note 1 ). Jakob Bräul’s Rudnerweide schoolhouse was given the same status as Heinrich Heese’s Ohrloff Agricultural Society School with regard to policies and “especially for the teaching of Russian” ( note 2 ). Fadeev triggered great angst when by “imperial decree” he distributed a book to church elders written by German Mennonite Abraham Hunzinger on the modernization of Mennonite schools and church. It was a friendly gesture and poke. The Molotschna was already a tinderbox, and this spark introduced by a state official to strengthen the community ignited a fire in the colony. Fadeev wrote to Johann Cornies on January 12, 1832: “Most valued Cornies ... I advise you to acquire and read a booklet sent to your church leaders f...

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...

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 ...

1843: London Bible Society, revival and School reform

In 1843 the Russian Mennonite colonies received a visitation from the London Bible Society. It was the same year that Charles Dickens published "A Christmas Carol" about the miser Ebenezer Scrooge and his conversion after the visitation of three Christmas ghosts! Dickens was not happy that the Church’s overseas mission budget was so large, while in his view they neglected the poor on their own doorsteps in London. Ebenezer was in fact a common British name of the era. A few years earlier the Molotschna was visited by a delegation from the British and Foreign Bible Society. The British agent, Reverend Ebeneezer Henderson, convinced Molotschna elders and Johann Cornies to establish their own Bible Society. "As they live on habits of friendship and intimacy with their Tatar neighbours, and one of their principal men [Cornies] speaks the Tatar with fluency, we furnished him with a good supply of New Testaments, and other portions of Scripture, in that language, that they m...

Canadian Mennonites and Paraguay: 1922

The first attached photo vividly depicts a meeting of conservative Mennonite elders in Saskatchewan and Manitoba in 1922 who intended to lead their communities to Paraguay. This was happening as hundreds of “Old Colony” Mennonites were leaving for Mexico. The “Old Colonists” from Manitoba’s West Reserve were in fact the first conservative Canadian Mennonites to scout out Paraguay for settlement land. In 1920 they were assisted in their search by New York financier and lawyer, General Samuel McRoberts, who had extensive holdings as well as political and business connections in Paraguay. The delegation travelled 90 km into the Chaco interior, west of the Paraguay River. They were however unimpressed with the land and ultimately recommended Mexico to their community ( note 1 ). Other conservative groups in Manitoba and Saskatchewan were however interested in sending their own scouts to assess the Chaco and the political climate in Paraguay vis-à-vis the list of privileges they were seek...

Non-Resistant Service: Forestry Camps

The 1902 photos are of the Mennonite Crimean Forestry ( Forstei ) “Commando” in the vineyards and orchards of southern Crimea on route to Yalta (" Gut [estate] Forroß"; note 1). The tasks for the units or commandos were to plant forests, lay out nurseries, and raise model orchards—work not directly or meaningfully connected to non-resistance, but deemed by the state as an acceptable alternative to state or military service. This non-combatant, alternative service program was the largest, most expensive and most formative, faith-based undertaking by Mennonites during the Mennonite "golden era" in Russia ( note 2 ). The first cohort of young men were chosen and sent for their term of alternative service in 1880: “On November 15 [1880] in Tokmak the first German youth were chosen [by lot] in the presence of the [Mennonite] district mayor and also of Elder A. Goerz. There, with singing and prayer, they beseeched the Lord for His mercy, which interested the Russian ...

Russo-Japanese War and the Mennonite Response, 1904-05

In February 1904, Russia declared war on Japan and Mennonite congregations sent the Tsar messages of loyalty, love and prayers. The large Lichtenau-Petershagen-Schönsee congregation in the Mennonite Molotschna Colony in today’s Ukraine led by 80-year-old Elder (Bishop) Jakob Töws expressed its “deep loyalty and love for the throne and the Fatherland” ( note 1 ). Similarly, the Mennonite Chortitza congregation declared that Mennonites bow “humbly before the Imperial Majesty with most faithful love and devotion,” and “together with all faithful subjects send their most passionate prayers and supplications to the Most High, that He may extend his mighty hand over the beloved Tsar and the Russian people, and that peace may soon be returned” ( note 2 ). The Einlage Mennonite Brethren congregation offered a similar statement, “inspired by feelings of boundless dedication to the Sovereign Fatherland,” with “passionate prayers” for the Tsar and Fatherland, based on 1 Timothy 2:1–4 ( note 3 ...

“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...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog