Formidable Fräulein Marga Bräul (1919

Formidable Fräulein Marga Bräul (1919–2011)

Fräulein Bräul left an indelible mark on two generations of high school students in the Mennonite Colony of Fernheim, Paraguay. Former students and acquaintances recall that Marga Bräul demanded the highest effort and achievements of her students, colleagues and of herself—the kind of teacher you either love or hate but will never forget!

In March 1947, Marga was offered a position at the Fernheim Secondary School (Zentralschule). A recent refugee to Paraguay from war-torn Europe, she taught mathematics, physics, and chemistry. In 1952, she was the only female faculty member (note 1).

Marga wedded a strong commitment to academics with a passion for quality arts and crafts. She provided extensive extra-curricular instruction to students in handiwork and was especially renowned for her artwork—which included painting and woodworking— end of year art exhibits with students, theatre sets, and festival decorations.

Marga’s pedagogical philosophy was holistic; she told Mennonite educators in Canada in 1972:

"It is not a matter of how much time you have, but how you utilize it. When you are tired of working with your brain, then take a drawing or craft to hand and rest your mind. After a while your brain is rested and your hand has produced something to give you satisfaction. Now you can turn to your studies refreshed and satisfied." (Note 2)

She was known to have a tireless, creative capacity with a broad range of interests and gifts. Marga was more theologically literate than most pastors; on a visit to Canada she gave me an informed albeit decidedly conservative and vigorous evaluation of the work of German existentialist theologian Rudolf Bultmann--I was doing my PhD at the time on this material! She loved debate and, despite concerns of some parents and churches, she became a strong advocate for sports training for girls in Mennonite schools as well.

Not only was Marga Bräul able to engage and inspire—she could terrify, according to former students.

In the early 1970s she was asked by North Americans whether Mennonite youth in Paraguay shared the rebelliousness of adolescents in other parts of the world. Bräul answered:

Our youth have a full day. They must in addition to their studies, keep the yard and buildings of the school clean and in good repair. Our girls plant flowers and generally tend the garden. Twice a week the girls clean the dining room thoroughly, and they are also in charge of meals. There is little time for mischief. (Note 3)

Marga’s motto was to “do your duty,” which reflected both the strengths and weaknesses of her generation’s worldview and the value it placed on obedience. In 1972, the western cultural revolution had not yet shaken the Paraguayan Chaco.

Marga witnessed the impact of Stalin’s terror firsthand. In 1933 at age 14, her 74-year-old Klassen grandfather was arrested and imprisoned in Halbstadt without food for two weeks. He was released but died on the way back. That same day, their Paulsheim home was ransacked and the pillow and mattress on which his bed-ridden wife lay were taken and cut-open. She went into shock and unable to speak when Marga’s parents found her and died that very night. Because they were deemed kulaks, wagons came on the day of the burial and all the furniture, beds and clothes were carried off. One of Marga’s disenfranchised uncles and minister Aron Bräul hid at their home for a time. Four of her uncles were arrested and shot or exiled (1937-38). Her father survived because he had had tuberculosis and was left with only a part of one lung. Her younger brother however was deported—in his father's stead, they believed (note 4).

Despite the turbulence of the 1930s Marga completed high school and also entered teachers’ college at the Soviet German Language-Pedagogical Institute, with one year of training in Odessa and one year in the port city of Berdjansk on the Sea of Azov.

Marga majored in politically safe or neutral courses: mathematics, algebra, geometry, physics and chemistry. She was not however exempt from military studies, and was trained as a parachutist (note 5). After teachers’ college, she taught two years in a Russian school near Melitopol on the Molotschna River.

With German occupation in 1941, Marga was employed as a bookkeeper and translator for the occupation forces and stationed in Nishnije Serogosy (Nyzhni Sirohozy), Zaporoshje (note 6). With the retreat of the Germans in 1943, she also ended up in Warthegau/Poland. In 1944 in Lutbrandau, she was retrained for teaching in the German Reich under S.S. Storm Leader and friend of the Mennonites, Karl Götz.

Marga inspired and shaped hundreds of Mennonite high school students over more than four decades at the Fernheim high school—including her much younger cousin Käthe Bräul, my mother.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Cf. Joseph Winfield Fretz, Pilgrims in Paraguay: The Story of Mennonite Colonization in South America (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1953), 80, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001448782.

Note 2: Marga Bräul, cited in Lore Lubosch, “Little time left for mischief,” Mennonite Mirror 2, no. 1 (September 1972), 11–12; 11, https://cmbs.mennonitebrethren.ca/publications/mennonite-mirror/.

Note 3: Cited in Lubosch, “Little time left for mischief,” 12.

Note 4: Agatha Klassen Bräul, Diary [Marga’s mother]. Copy in my possession.

Note 5: Gati Harder, “Bräul, Marga,” Lexikon der Mennoniten in Paraguay, Online 2011, http://www.menonitica.org/lexikon/?B:Br%E4ul%2C_Marga.

Note 6: Einwandererzentrale (Central Immigration Office), National Archives Collection Microfilm Publication, EWZ A3342-EWZ50-A073, 2054.

Comments

Swiss and Palatinate Connections

Sometime after 1850 Andreas Plennert and his family immigrated to South Russia from the Culm Region of West Prussia. Though there was at least one Mennonite “Plehnert” who had already immigrated to Russia in 1793, it is not a very common Prussian-Russian Mennonite name. As such, however, it is easier to trace than many and offers a minority narrative and identity within the longer and broader Russian Mennonite story. The account below is adapted largely from information in Horst Penner, Die ost- und westpreußischen Mennoniten , vol. 1, though I have expanded upon his work to offer a slightly different narrative. In 1724 there was a group of Mennonites forced out of the Memel region in East Prussia for political and religious reasons and were given assistance to resettle back to West Prussia in areas populated by Mennonites. Among the 23 households that went to the Stuhm region there is one Plenert listed, namely Christian Plenert. We know that Mennonites entered the Memel region ...

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 ...

Quiet in the Land: Peter Fast, 1932-2010

My father Peter Fast passed away in January 2010. The years have given me many opportunities to reflect on his life and impact. He was a gentle and good person--and could work like horse. He was born into poverty in 1932 in Paraguay. His parents were pioneers, first in Fernheim and then (1937) in Friesland. He liked to tell me that he ate manioc root for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was never sure if that was true, and it didn’t help to convince me to eat things I didn’t like. His mother died when he was fourteen; the basic medical aid she needed was out of reach. His new step-mother was a complex person who made life difficult for him and others. Dad only finished the 6th grade in Friesland. He was more than happy to get off the school bench and onto a horse. I don’t think I ever saw him write a complete sentence in my life, whether in English or in German. He had no interest in history, let alone reading—though over time he read the local city paper. Nothing I’ve written on...

Jews and Mennonites Together in Danzig's Suburbs

There has been very little reflection on the relationship of Jews and Mennonites in the suburb of Schottland (or Alt-Schottland or Stare Szkoty) where Mennonites first settled in the mid-1500s. Here Mennonites and Jews lived in the small community together for two centuries, quite literally on the margins outside the gates of the city of Danzig. Many historic maps that include Alt Schottland have become available in recent years ( note 1; pic ). H.G. Mannhardt’s book on the Danzig Mennonite church community plus some archival membership lists are our best sources for the Mennonite experience, while illustrations from the day bring many of those episodes of prosperity, repressions, war, plague, emigration, flooding etc. in an urban environment to life ( note 2 ). Peter J. Klassen’s writings on Mennonites in Poland and Prussia also present newer research on Mennonite life in and around Danzig in helpful ways ( note 3 ). There is one small sentence in Klassen’s larger volume that sugg...

Snapshots of Danzig Mennonites, late 1600s & early 1700s

A picture can be worth a thousand words. We do not have photographs, but we have a few colour paintings of life in and around Danzig in the late 1600s and early 1700s, as well as maps. We also have a limited number of "textual snapshots" of Mennonites at this time and place, which offer an instructive window into that foreign world. These snapshots of work, worship, health, education, community relationships, smaller repressions, and security can contribute to the creation of a larger collage of Mennonite life in Danzig and Polish Prussia. Snapshot 1 : In 1681 there were approximately 180 Mennonite families who lived in the “gardens” or villages outside Danzig, with 113 of those families within the jurisdiction of the city. At this time Mennonites were barred from owning houses within the walls of the city. Of these 113 family heads, we know: 43 were retailers of spirits, 24 merchants, 9 lacemakers, 7 dyers, 3 silk dyers, 3 pressers, 2 brokers, 2 treasurers, 2 waitresses, et...

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...

"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 perso...

The Politics of Map-Making: A "Mennonite Map"

Maps are political artifacts. Russia or Ukraine? A late nineteenth-century map of “German Settlements and Presence throughout History” offers a good example from the Mennonite settlements ( note 1 ). It was based on the German Colonial Atlas of Paul Langhans ( note 2 ). Langhans was the most important mapmaker and promoter of German settlements around the globe; he continued this work of “pan-Germanism” well into the Nazi era ( note 3 ). Already in the nineteenth century, more than one Russian journalist claimed that Russian Germans—including Mennonites in Russia—promoted pan-Germanism in their schools and spread hatred against Russia ( note 4 ). The consequences on the ground were harsh: Johannes H. Janzen—a geography instructor in the Mennonite high school in Ohrloff—who was known “to love the Russian people and Fatherland more than most of his contemporaries,” was placed under “serious suspicion of treason” for an instructional map ( note 5 ) he made of the Molotschna Mennoni...

Mennonite-Designed Mosque on the Molotschna

The “Peter J. Braun Archive" is a mammoth 78 reel microfilm collection of Russian Mennonite materials from 1803 to 1920 -- and largely still untapped by researchers ( note 1 ). In the files of Philipp Wiebe, son-in-law and heir to Johann Cornies, is a blueprint for a mosque ( pic ) as well as another file entitled “Akkerman Mosque Construction Accounts, 1850-1859” ( note 2 ). The Molotschna Mennonites were settlers on traditional Nogai lands; their Nogai neighbours were a nomadic, Muslim Tartar group. In 1825, Cornies wrote a significant anthropological report on the Nogai at the request of the Guardianship Committee, based largely on his engagements with these neighbours on Molotschna’s southern border ( note 3 ). Building upon these experiences and relationships, in 1835 Cornies founded the Nogai agricultural colony “Akkerman” outside the southern border of the Molotschna Colony. Akkerman was a projection of Cornies’ ideal Mennonite village outlined in exacting detail, with un...

Invitation to the Russian Consulate, Danzig, January 19, 1788

B elow is one of the most important original Mennonite artifacts I have seen. It concerns January 19. The two land scouts Jacob Höppner and Johann Bartsch had returned to Danzig from Russia on November 10, 1787 with the Russian Immigration Agent, Georg von Trappe. Soon thereafter, Trappe had copies of the royal decree and agreement (Gnadenbrief) printed for distribution in the Flemish and Frisian Mennonite congregations in Danzig and other locations, dated December 29, 1787 ( see pic ; note 1 ). After the flyer was handed out to congregants in Danzig after worship on January 13, 1788, city councilors made the most bitter accusations against church elders for allowing Trappe and the Russian Consulate to do this; something similar had happened before ( note 2 ). In the flyer Trappe boasted that land scouts Höppner and Bartsch met not only with Gregory Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s vice-regent and administrator of New Russia, but also with “the Most Gracious Russian Monarch” herse...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog