A Mennonite Pandemic Spirituality, 1830-1831

Asiatic Cholera broke out across Russia in 1829 and ‘30, and further into Europe in 1831. It began with an infected battalion in Orenburg (note 1), and by early Fall 1830 the disease had reached Moscow and the capital. Russia imposed drastic quarantine measures. Much like today, infected regions were cut off and domestic trade was restricted.

The disease reached the Molotschna River district in Fall 1830, and by mid-December hundreds of Nogai deaths were recorded in the villages adjacent to the Mennonite colony, leading state authorities to impose a strict quarantine.

When the Mennonite Johann Cornies—a state-appointed agricultural supervisor and civic leader—first became aware of the nearby cholera-related deaths, he recommended to the Mennonite District Office on December 6, 1830 to stop traffic and prevent random contacts with Nogai. For Cornies it was important that the Mennonite community do all it can keep from carrying the disease into the community, though “only God knows our destiny” (note 2).

On December 30, 1830, Cornies reported the situation to his Mennonite friend Johann Wiebe in Tiege, West Prussia. He noted the actions they had taken, but also offered a theological framework for understanding their crisis.

“God alone knows what will befall us in this sad time. Our villages exist like an island in an ocean of cholera, and there is evil all around. ... We have taken the following precautionary measures.

In every village, two men visit each house daily to check on the family’s health. To separate the sick from the healthy, one house has been emptied for use as a hospital. A large bathtub, etc. stands beside each Village Office.

We do not know what the future holds. Only the Eternal can see it. We must build on His grace and plead with Him to turn this scourge away from our empire and our villages.

With complete faith in the wisdom of our government, we await the Almighty’s ordinances without fear.

May every Christian, every thinking person harbour the personal conviction that whatever comes from God will serve our well-being. May this supreme wisdom divinely illumine man’s immortal spirit, created in His image, and cast light into the darkness of our earthly path.

We do not strive against God’s will by using our minds in taking precautions against disease and in battling disruptive natural forces. We are using our talents from on high, submitting them to His wise counsels and thereby praising His holy name. As you know, some people here consider precautionary measures to be sinful. Others continue to indulge in frivolity, even in this depressed, discouraging time.” (Note 3)

Cornies praised the state’s self-distancing measures:

“All roads are blocked and no one is allowed through without undergoing quarantine. It is impossible to thank God enough for His fatherly guardianship of our administration, which protects us through its wise measures” (note 4).

“If we follow these regulations scrupulously, the only thing left for us to do is to pray honestly and to submit to God’s Will” (note 5).

Within a few months, the pandemic broke out in the city of Danzig as well, despite a 20-day quarantine on individuals and goods coming from Russia. On June 16, 1831, Prussia began to treat vessels proceeding from Danzig “as if coming from Russia” (note 6).

The Mennonite and German colonies of the region were spared a cholera outbreak. September 18, 1831: “Until now our community has been spared, although we have felt ourselves under siege since May … I consider no doctor to be God and no medicine as Saviour, but I firmly believe that if God does not give His blessing to our daily bread or our medications, they will neither nourish us nor heal us” (note 7).

During the German occupation of Ukraine in 1942 was the following 1831 vaccination record was found: “Table on Vaccination of Children in the Districts of Chortitza and Molotschna” (note 8). Unfortunately, the document itself appears to be lost.

Vaccinations for Mennonites were not new; good cow pox immunization records for children in Chortitza in 1809 and 1814 are available (note 9).

Johann Cornies’ reading of scripture makes him confident that the Tsar’s response—including vaccination encouragement—is divinely led.

"[T]he Lord has power over all human hearts and directs them as He wishes, guiding them like water in a brook [cf. Proverbs 21:1]. In this way He also directed the loving father of our country to go to Moscow to take measures that would ease the suffering. Many others followed his lead with significant acts of benevolence and support for the poor. We give God a thousand thanks." (Note 10)

Reason, prayer and hope in the emperor are three strands of one cord for Cornies. The pandemic took some 250,000 lives in Russia, with a fifty-percent mortality rate among those infected (note 11).

The global dimensions of the pandemic, the large numbers of deaths, the state enforced quarantines, the crippling economic consequences, the existential fear of death—all of these aspects bear a striking resemblance to our own times. Perhaps there is something to learn from the spirituality of the time as well.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Pic 1: Johann Cornies

Pic 2: Nogai village, in Daniel Schlatter, Bruchstücke aus einigen Reisen nach dem südlichen Rußland in den Jahren 1822 bis 1828 (St. Gallen, 1830), 74, https://www.e-rara.ch/zuz/content/zoom/7886108.

Map: Courtesy of Brent Wiebe; see his important website (especially for map collections) and the illustrations to my related article, https://trailsofthepast.com/2020/08/07/mennonitesepidemics/.

Note 1: John P. Davis, Russia in the Time of Cholera, Disease under Romanovs and Soviets (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2018), 40.

Note 2: Cornies to Molotschna Mennonite District Office, December 6, 1830, in: Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies, vol. 1: 1812–1835, translated by Ingrid I. Epp; edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 198, no. 198.

Note 3: Cornies to Johann Wiebe, Tiege, West Prussia, December 30, 1830, in Transformation I, 205, no. 202.

Note 4: Cornies to Blueher, December 10, 1830, in Transformation I, 200, no. 200.

Note 5: Cornies to Andrei M. Fadeev, Dec. 22, 1830, Transformation I, 202, no. 201.

Note 6: History of the epidemic spasmodic cholera of Russia (London: Murray, 1831), 245f. https://archive.org/details/b22478371/page/246/mode/2up.

Note 7: Cornies to Jacob van der Smissen, September 18, 1831, in Transformation I, 244, 239.

Note 8: Records of the National Socialist German Labor Party (NSDAP), National Archives Microcopy, no. T-81, roll 606, image 5396345. Deutsches Ausland-Institut, file 1397. American Historical Association. American Committee for the Study of War Documents. Washington, DC, 1956. Scanned on FamilySearch.org records, image 639 of 1,309, https://www.familysearch.org/records/images/image-details?page=1&place=5337&endDate=1942&startDate=1942&rmsId=TH-909-64122-19191-56&imageIndex=638&singleView=true&fbclid=IwAR2a1h4O-gjFi-CdKONW8Co5P31hOdWdIOloc7VSR0TUxbh4y-FoVwVD6f0.

Note 9: See previous post on vaccinations 1809 and 1814 (forthcoming); see also for the plague in Danzig, 1709, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/plague-and-pestilence-in-danzig-1709.html; and also Spanish Flu, 1918 and its impact on Mennonites, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/03/spanish-flu-pandemic-in-ukraine-and.html.

Note 10: Cornies to Blueher, 10 December 1830, in Transformation I, 205, no. 200. Cornies also uses this Proverb in correspondence to Wilhelm Frank, March 10, 1826 (no. 51, p. 59) as does Elder Bernhard Fast to Cornies, February 16, 1827 (no. 97, p. 115).

Note 11: Davis, Russia in the Time of Cholera, 42.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "A Mennonite Pandemic Spirituality, 1830-1831," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 29, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/a-mennonite-pandemic-spirituality-1830.html.

Comments

Outrage in Canada: Ukrainian in Waffen-SS honoured in Parliament. Mennonite Connections

As an historic peace church, Russian Mennonite congregations in Canada never celebrated “their veterans” who had volunteered with the Waffen-SS or Wehrmacht in complex times; hundreds did however volunteer to protect and defend their corner of Ukraine from a new era of Moscow-based Bolshevism. Some later self-identified as "The Lost Generation." German Prussian Mennonites in contrast understood that heritage differently and celebrated the “Heroes' Day Memorial” service anually until 1945. After 1945 Germany appropriately renamed their remembrance day as Volkstrauertag —the People’s Day of Mourning ( note 1 ). Many descendents live in Canada. A parallel Ukrainian story made the news in Canada in September 2023. The Speaker of the House of Commons invited a 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian war veteran to a joint session of Parliament for the visit and address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on September 22. Without good vetting by the Speaker, the guest was laud...

From USSR to Cherrywood Station: Mennonites winter in Markham-Stouffville, 1924

On September 26, 1924, 126 Russian Mennonite passengers disembarked the S. S. Melita at Quebec City ( note 1 ). They were among some 20,000 Mennonites who could immigrate to Canada from the Soviet Union in the 1920s. A number of these families received train cards to Cherrywood (Pickering) and Locust Hill (Markham) stations, where they were received by Markham area Mennonites. The Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization (CMBC) registration forms record each family's travel dates as well as their "first place of arrival" in Canada. The attached artifacts—a few pages from the financial records booklet kept by Markham-Stouffville treasurer J. L. Grove, plus some correspondence—profile concretely the level of support of this community north-east of Toronto for co-religionists fleeing the Soviet Union. Mennonites in Ontario had been well informed of the relief needs in Russia since 1921 and plans for mass immigration ( note 2 ). In April 1924 the local Stouffville Tribune ...

“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 ...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 1 (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 accuarte and carefully considered. ~ANF American Mennonite leaders who supported Trump will be responding to the election results in the near future. Sometimes a template or sample conference address helps to formulate one’s own text. To that end I offer the following. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mennonites in Germany sent official greetings by telegram: “The Conference of the East and West Prussian Mennonites meeting today at Tiegenhagen in the Free City of Danzig are deeply grateful for the tremendous uprising ( Erhebung ) that God has given our people ( Volk ) through the vigor and action of [unclear], and promise our cooperation in the construction of our Fatherland, true to the Gospel motto of [our founder Menno Simons], ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.’” ( Note 1 ) Hitler responded in a letter...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Mennonites, the Queen, the Anthem and Monarchy Generally

For most Canadians, Queen Elizabeth II had been omnipresent their entire lives: on our coins, bills and stamps. In school in the 1960s and early -70s, my generation sang "God Save the Queen" every other day in class, and "O Canada" on the other days. A portrait of the Queen was in every classroom. I vividly remember lining Niagara Street in St. Catharines as a school child in 1973 when the Queen came whizzing through in a black limo in the rain to get to Niagara-on-the-Lake, the first capital of Upper Canada, now full of Mennonite farms. That black limo was owned by a wealthy Mennonite fruit farmer—my relative Isbrand Boese! It is not outside the tradition for Mennonites to sing “God save the Queen/King”. On Sunday, September 20, 1937, 700 people gathered in the Coaldale Mennonite Church (Alberta), and the service concluded with the singing of national anthem ["God save the King”] ( note 1 ). Mennonites organized this celebration to give thanks and to honour ...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog