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

1929 Flight of Mennonites to Moscow and Reception in Germany

At the core of the attached video are some thirty photos of Mennonite refugees arriving from Moscow in 1929 which are new archival finds. While some 13,000 had gathered in outskirts of Moscow, with many more attempting the same journey, the Soviet Union only released 3,885 Mennonite "German farmers," together with 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists, and 7 Adventists. Some of new photographs are from the first group of 323 refugees who left Moscow on October 29, arriving in Kiel on November 3, 1929. A second group of photos are from the so-called “Swinemünde group,” which left Moscow only a day later. This group however could not be accommodated in the first transport and departed from a different station on October 31. They were however held up in Leningrad for one month as intense diplomatic negotiations between the Soviet Union, Germany and also Canada took place. This second group arrived at the Prussian sea port of Swinemünde on December 2. In the next ten ...

Plague and Pestilence in Danzig, 1709

Russian and Prussian Mennonites trace at least 200 years of their story through Danzig and Royal Prussia, where episodes of plague and pestilence were not unfamiliar ( note 1 ). Mennonites arrived primarily from the Low Countries and in large numbers in the middle of the 16th century—approximately 750 families or 3,000 refugees and settlers between 1527 and 1578 to Danzig and Royal Prussia ( note 2 ). At this time Danzig was undergoing tremendous demographic, cultural and economic transformation, almost tripling in population in less than 100 years. With 80% of Poland’s foreign trade handled through this port city ( note 3 ), Danzig saw the arrival of new people from across Europe, many looking to find work in the crammed and bustling city ( note 4 ). Maria Bogucka’s research on Danzig in this era brings the streets of the maritime city to life: “Sanitation facilities were inadequate … The level of personal hygiene was low. Most people lived close together: five or six to a room, sle...

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...

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 ...

Ukraine Independence--Russian Aggression--German Interests (1918)

The semi-autonomous Ukrainian People's Republic was established shortly after Russia's February Revolution in 1917. Much was still fluid, however. After the October Bolshevik Revolution the Central Rada of Ukraine in Kyiv declared full state independence from the Russian Republic on January 22, 1918. The Ukrainian People's Republic negotiated an end to its participation in Great War, and on February 9, 1918 signed a protectorate treaty in Brest-Litovsk. On February 17, Ukraine appealed to Germany and Austria-Hungary for assistance to repel Russian Bolshevik “invaders,” to detach Ukraine from Russia, and to establish conditions of stability. The World War had not yet ended. Imperialist Germany was desperate for grain and natural resources from Ukraine, eager to end the war in the east while containing Russia, and determined to establish post-war markets for German goods, technologies and influence ( note 1 ). For its part the Russian Bolshevik regime was eager to save ...

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 ...

“The way is finally open”—Russian Mennonite Immigration, 1922-23

In a highly secretive meeting in Ohrloff, Molotschna on February 7, 1922, leaders took a decision to work to remove the entire Mennonite population of some 100,000 people out of the USSR—if at all possible ( note 1 ). B.B. Janz (Ohrloff) and Bishop David Toews (Rosthern, SK) are remembered as the immigration leaders who made it possible to bring some 20,000 Mennonites from the Soviet Union to Canada in the 1920s ( note 2 ). But behind those final numbers were multiple problems. In August 1922, an appeal was made by leaders to churches in Canada and the USA: “The way is finally open, for at least 3,000 persons who have received permission to leave Russia … Two ships of the Canadian Pacific Railway are ready to sail from England to Odessa as soon as the cholera quarantine is lifted. These Russian [Mennonite] refugees are practically without clothing … .” ( Note 3 ) Notably at this point B. B. Janz was also writing Toews, saying that he was utterly exhausted and was preparing to ...

Shaky Beginings as a Faith Community

With basic physical needs addressed, in 1805 Chortitza pioneers were ready to recover their religious roots and to pass on a faith identity. They requested a copy of Menno Simons’ writings from the Danzig mother-church especially for the young adults, “who know only what they hear,” and because “occasionally we are asked about the founder whose name our religion bears” ( note 1 ). The Anabaptist identity of this generation—despite the strong Mennonite publications in Prussia in the late eighteenth century—was uninformed and very thin. Settlers first arrived in Russia 1788-89 without ministers or elders. Settlers had to be content with sharing Bible reflections in Low German dialect or a “service that consisted of singing one song and a sermon that was read from a book of sermons” written by the recently deceased East Prussian Mennonite elder Isaac Kroeker ( note 2 ). In the first months of settlement, Chortitza Mennonites wrote church leaders in Prussia: “We cordially plead ...

Four-Part Singing in Mennonite Schools and Church in Russia

The significance of singing instruction may seem trite, but it became a key vehicle in the Mennonite school curriculum for fostering a basic appreciation of the arts and for faith formation. In Johann Cornies’ circulated guidelines for teachers, singing was recommended as a means “to stimulate and enliven pious feelings” in the children—a guideline he copied directly from a German Catholic pedagogue and circulated freely under his own name ( note 1 ). On January 26, 1846 Cornies distributed a curriculum regulation to all schools that mandated “singing by numbers ( Zahlen ) from the church hymnal” ( note 2 ). Attention to singing instruction in the schools precipitated significant and controversial changes in Mennonite liturgy. An 1854 visiting observer to the Bergthal Colony—a Chortitza daughter colony outside of Cornies’ purview—wrote: “Endlessly long hymns from the Gesangbuch (hymnal) were begun by the Vorsänger (song leader) of the congregation, and sung with so many flo...

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...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog