In March 2023 the film "Women Talking" won an Oscar for "Best adapted Screenplay." It was based on the novel of the same name by Mennonite Miriam Toews. The conservative Mennonites portrayed in the film are from the "Manitoba Colony" in Bolivia--with obvious Canadian connections.
Now that many Canadians have seen the the film, Mennonites like me are being asked, "So how are you [in Markham-Stouffville, Waterloo or in St. Catharines] connected to that group?" Most would say, "We're not that type of Mennonite." And mostly that is a true answer, though unnuanced. Others will say, "Well, it is complex," but they can't quite unfold the complexity.
Below is my attempt to do just that. At the heart of the story are things that happened in Ukraine (at the time "New" or "South" Russia) over 200 years ago.
It is not easy to rebuild the influence and contribution of "Russian Mennonite" women and their un-minuted "talking" (and for the record, they were talking in Low German dialect, not Russian or Ukrainian).My way of access is Johann Funk, b. 1836, the "elder" (=bishop) of the conservative Mennonite Bergthal Colony in southern Manitoba from 1882 and 1911. The colony was named after their colony of the same name in Ukraine. I want to suggest that the “talk” of his mother (Margaretha Breyel, 1805–1889)—a daughter, sister, aunt and great aunt of multiple school teachers—was in part to “blame” or "praise" for the Manitoba "Mennonite Gretna School Controversy" which split the Bergthalers in the 1890s. This will to understand the roots of the community and their conflicts in the film.
There are two good biographical articles that piece together Johann's life story (note 1). Not surprisingly there is nothing written about his mother. Margaretha is first mentioned in the 1808 Russian Census (note 2; pic). Her father Jacob Breyel (also my ancestor) was listed as a farmer, 36 years old, living in the village of Burwalde (very close to today's Zaporizhzhia), with wife Margaretha, age 35 with six children ages twelve to nine months old. The next census of 1811 lists her father as “schoolteacher” in this village of 33 families (note 3). Jacob Breyel is the only Mennonite schoolteacher mentioned in the entire 1811 census, and apparently the first in any Mennonite (Chortitza Colony) document. With other pioneers to "New Russia," he had left Prussia as a 16-year-old after Catherine the Great cleared what is today south Ukraine of Indigenous Nogai/Tatar peoples. Breyel was young enough to have been compelled to complete a modernized German Prussian education—and thus better qualified to teach than most older than he.
A “progressive” conservative family? Perhaps. We know Margaretha was vaccinated for smallpox in 1809 as a four-year-old, together with most children in their Chortitza Colony (some of her conservative descendants would be shocked; note 4).
Margaretha’s brother became Heese's protégé, no doubt with family approva. He (Jacob Bräul) would later leave Chortitza for Molotschna with Heese where they both took up teaching positions ca. 1828—the one in Ohrloff, and the other in Rudnerweide. Both communities were "progressive," and both teachers introduced Russian into the German-language curriculum (note 5).
Back to 1814: Margaretha’s widowed mother married 66-year-old Peter Mantler of Nieder Chortitza—23 years her senior (note 6); Margaretha was about 8. It is unclear when this stepfather died.
At some point, Margaretha Breyel left Nieder Chortitza and moved to her brother Jacob’s Molotschna village of Rudnerweide where she married. A 1836 document shows that Margaretha and her husband Peter Funk applied to the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Settlers to move from Rudnerweide back to Nieder Chortitza (note 7).
As mentioned, it is complex and we will try not to get lost in weeds of genealogy.
Notably Rudnerweide was from the more progressive "Frisian" Mennonite group, and more “Prussian” and Pietist than the majority "Flemish" Mennonite settlers in Molotschna were comfortable with. Peter Funk's family arrived with others from Prussia to settle Rudnerweide in 1819—30 years after Margaretha's father arrived in Russia. Funk came as a 19-year-old, i.e., he was socialized as a Prussian. Their eldest child, Margaretha, b. 1827, would have been educated later by her uncle Jacob Bräul in Rudnerweide.
In 1830, the "Guardianship Committee for Foreign Settlers in New Russia" considered only eight of 116 teachers in the two larger regions of Katerynoslav and Tauria—which included the Molotschna—fit to teach; Bräul’s schoolhouse was given the same status as Heese’s Ohrloff Agricultural Society School with regard to policies for “proposed intermediate schools,” and “especially for the teaching of Russian” (note 8 ).
Meanwhile in Nieder Chortitza, the community still rejected spelling and reading charts as spiritually harmful and leading away from the Mennonite faith—as late as 1847 (note 9). Already by the late 1830s the differences in education were become sharper.
Nevertheless, in 1836 Margarethe and her husband Peter Funk had applied to transfer back from Rudnerweide to Nieder Chortitza. Why? Her mother was still living (age 63); and here Margaretha gave birth to her son Johann, the future Bergthal elder. Importantly, they were landless and here they qualified with other Chortitza landless folk for settlement in the new Chortitza daughter colony of Bergthal (near today's Mariupol), located 100 kilometres east of the Molotschna.
Though Johann Funk grew up in Bergthal—known for very conservative attitudes towards education—it is inconceivable that Margaretha and Peter Funk would adopt a conservative approach to education for their household and their children.
In the 1870s, then Bergthal Elder Gerhard Wiebe and his community were among the most suspicious of the broad Russian state reforms of the early 1870s, and rightfully feared the prospect that Mennonites might have to do military service (the main reason they left Prussia for Russia). Wiebe was not only convinced that Christian non-resistance was an “apostolic teaching,” but he was also a conservative with regard to education. Wiebe argued that the school’s primary function is as handmaiden of the church, to prepare children for responsible church membership. Higher education—indeed, any materials other than the Bible, even the picture book readers recommended by government officials—could destroy community values and bring confusion within the church, just “as it did in the fourth century” when Christianity changed from being the faith of martyrs and became the religion of the Empire (note 10).
The concern was to “protect and save” their children not only from military service, but also from “religious decline” and the “nightfall upon Christendom.” The whole colony was convinced that “no other way remained but to emigrate” (note 11), and the entire 500-family, 2,833-person colony—two-thirds of whom were landless—chose to transplant itself to Canada.
The Funk and Wiebe families were among some 600 Bergthalers who had arrived in Quebec City on July 1, 1875 (note 12; pic). An earlier group arrived in 1874 and wintered with “Swiss Mennonites” in Ontario. In the spring of 1875 they were escorted to Manitoba by Markham Mennonite saw- and gristmill proprietor Simeon Reesor —a cousin to the influential senator in the new Canadian government, David Reesor. On July 6, 1875, Aaron Schantz (Kitchener-Waterloo) took the 600 newly arrived Russian Mennonites from Toronto by rail via Sarnia, Detroit, Chicago, St. Paul and Moorehead (note 13); from there they went by steamer on the Red River to Winnipeg (note 14), in “search of utopia,” in the words of sociologist E. K. Francis (note 15).
Margaretha Breyel Funk’s son Johann became Elder/Bishop of the Bergthalers seven years later (1882). He was soon embroiled in government-initiated school reforms and he encouraged his community to support the creation of a government compliant Mennonite teacher-training institute. Notably Canadian educationalists were looking closely at the Prussian system as they developed their own!
Funk was attacked by conservative forces within the church who considered him and his allies—like Franz Kliewer, b. 1845, a one-time student of Funk’s Rudnerweide uncle—to be “in the service of evil” (note 16).
At this same time in South Russia (Ukraine), Funk’s first-cousin Johann Bräul—a pioneering teacher in his own right—and his university-trained son J. J. Bräul--were transforming education among Russian Mennonites (note 17). It is not a stretch to think that Funk’s mother Margaretha still corresponded with her two teacher-nephews and a great nephew in Molotschna, where her maiden name had become synonymous with progressive education.
Margaretha lived until 1889, the year that the Normal School (later known as Mennonite Educational Institute) opened at Gretna, Manitoba. It is easy to imagine that Margaretha's voice, memory, and passion shaped her son's vision and engagement for education and teacher training, and that at least indirectly she was behind the Manitoba Mennonite School Controversy (E.g., If in Russia her brother could introduce Russian into the curriculum, why shouldn't Mennonites in Manitoba also learn English and take guidance from the state for educational reform? Also: Girls were always educated equal to the boys in Mennonite schools--critical for an informed decision for adult baptism)
The controversy in Manitoba did not end in 1889, but "came to a head in January 1892 during a series of meetings which Funk called to discuss the issue. The result was a schism in the Bergthaler church” (note 18). Some 415 of the 476 families in the Bergthal Church on Manitoba's West Reserve rejected Funk’s leadership and separated to form the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church. This led to Funk’s eventual resignation as elder in 1911 (the group in the movie in Bolivia today include Sommerfelder).
The school controversy also split Funk’s family. His son-in-law Bernhard J. Toews was a well-known Mennonite educator in the Manitoba Sommerfeld community and was imprisoned in 1920 after the Public School Act banned private schools in Manitoba. He and his wife refused to send their children to the public schools. One year later he was sent by his community to explore new settlement opportunities in Paraguay and Mexico and make arrangements for a mass migration of Mennonites out of Canada.
His children, together with other descendants of Margaretha Breyel Funk immigrated to Paraguay in 1926/7 (and later Bolivia). They unwittingly opened the way to Paraguay for later Mennonite refugee groups seeking to escape Stalin's Soviet Union in 1929/30, as well as post-WW2 refugees. Among the latter group was a "formidable" secondary school educator and long-lost cousin, Fräulein Marg Bräul (note 19)--and my mother Käthe Bräul.
I would argue that Margaretha Breyel Funk was a “talker” and responsible for at least one important schism. She was likely a woman who had the ear of many other women in her circle—both progressive and conservative, and she was a "mother" of both.
But it's complex!
---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast
---Notes---
Note 1: Lawrence Klippenstein, “Ältester Johann Funk (1836–1917),” in Church, Family and Village: Essays on Mennonite Life on the West Reserve, edited by Adolf Ens, Jacob E. Peters and Otto Hamm, 213–339 (Winnipeg, MB: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society, 2001); idem, “Funk, Johann,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online (University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003), http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/funk_johann_14E.html.
Note 2: Benjamin H. Unruh, Niederländisch-niederdeutschen Hintergründe der mennonitischen Ostwanderungen im 16., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Karlsruhe: Self-published, 1955), 276; for original scan, cf. P. Franz, “Einwohnerbücher mennonitischer Siedlungen in Chortitz und Umgebung 1808: Burwalde,” https://chortitza.org/Dok/Bw1808.pdf.
Note 3: "Chortitza Mennonite Settlement Census for May 1811," Dnipropetrovsk Archives, Fond 134, Opis 1, Delo 299, trans. by Richard D. Thiessen, http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/Chortitza_Mennonite_Settlement_Census_May_1811.pdf; “Chortitza Mennonite Settlement Census for 4 October 1814,” Dnipropetrovsk Archives, Fond 134, Opis 1, Delo 405, translated by Richard D. Thiessen; see Einlage, (landowner household no. 7, Jakob Sawatzky, foster child Jakob); landless household no. 16, Heinrich Heese. http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/Chortitza_Mennonite_Settlement_Census_October_1814.pdf.
Note 4: Cf. Tim Janzen, “Smallpox Vaccinations in Chortitza Colony, 12 August 1809,” Odessa Archives, Fund 6, Inventory 1, File 195, http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/1809.htm.
Note 5: Cf. David H. Epp and Nikolai Regehr, Heinrich Heese und Johann Philipp Wiebe. Zwei Vordermänner des südrussländischen Mennonitentums (Steinbach, MB: Echo, 1952).
Note 6: Unruh, Niederländisch-niederdeutschen Hintergründe, 281.
Note 7: “Mennonites from the Molotschna Colony Who Requested Transfer to the Chortitza Colony” (document dated January 29, 1836), from Odessa Archives, fond 6, inventory 1, file 4127, http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/1836_Transfers_Molotschna_to_Chortitza.htm. See also "The Molotschna Colony Census of 1835: Chortitza and Bergthal Colony Connections," by Glenn Penner, http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/Chortitza_Mennonite_Settlement_Census_May_1811.pdf.
Note 8: Peter M. Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), 780f., https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/; Detlef Brandes, “German Colonists in Southern Ukraine up to the Repeal of the Colonial Statute,” in German-Ukrainian Relations in Historical Perspective, edited by H.-J. Torke and J.-P. Himka, 10–28 (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1994), 20.
Note 10: Gerhard Wiebe, Ursachen und Geschichte der Auswanderung der Mennoniten aus Russland nach Amerika (Winnipeg, MB, 1900), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/?file=Pis/Wiebe.pdf.
Note 11: Wiebe, Ursachen und Geschichte der Auswanderung der Mennoniten.
Note 12 (and pic): Johann Funk, as well as his parents, wife Susanna, and children departed from Liverpool, England on June 17, 1875 on the SS Moravian, landing in Quebec City on July 1 (Library and Archives Canada. “Passenger lists of the Moravian arriving in Quebec, Que., on 1875,” https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/immigration/immigration-records/passenger-lists/passenger-lists-1865-1922/Pages/image.aspx?Image=e003538343&URLjpg=http%3a%2f%2fcentral.bac-lac.gc.ca%2f.item%2f%3fid%3de003538343%26op%3dimg%26app%3dpassengerlist&Ecopy=e003538343.
Note 13: Cf. Isaac Horst, “Colonization in the 1870s,” Ontario Mennonite History 16, no. 2 (October 1998) 19–23; 20f., http://www.mhso.org/sites/default/files/publications/Ontmennohistory16-2.pdf.
Note 14: Cf. Horst, “Colonization in the 1870."
Note 15: Cf. E. K. Francis, In Search of Utopia: The Mennonites in Manitoba (Glencoe, IL: Free, 1955), https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015027929622;view=1up;seq=7.
Note 16: Cited in E. K. Francis, “The Mennonite school problem in Manitoba, 1874–1919,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 27, no. 3 (1953) 204–237; 217; on Kliewer, cf. Gerhard J. Ens, “Die Schule muss sein”: A History of the Mennonite Collegiate Institute (Gretna, MB: Mennonite Collegiate Institute, 1990) 9f. For more on Johann Funk, see Richard D. Thiessen, "Funk, Johann (1836-1917)," Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (GAMEO), https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Funk,_Johann_(1836-1917). For a 1895 report on the schools by School Inspector H. H. Ewert, 1895, cf. "Die District-Schulen in der Mennoniten-Reserve in Süd-Manitoba," Mennonitische Rundschau 16, no. 17 (April 24, 1895), 1, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/?file=0v842.pdf. Ewert ordered a German translation of the relevant sections of the education act for rural schools, because in his estimation fewer than one-percent of the population knew enough English to understand the requirement. He felt that much of the "difficulties" stemmed from misunderstandings and rumours.
Note 17: On J. J. Bräul, see for example B. H. Unruh, "Bräul, Johann J. (1854-1916)," GAMEO, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Br%C3%A4ul,_Johann_J._(1854-1916).
Note 18: Klippenstein, “Funk, Johann,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
Note 19: See my post on Marga Bräul, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/03/formidable-fraulein-marga-braul-19192011.html.
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