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

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...

Flooding as a weapon of war, 1657

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these maps speak volumes. In February 1657, the Swedish King Carolus Gustavus ordered an intentional breach of the embankments along the Vistula River to completely flood the villages of the Danzig Werder. See the vivid punctures and water flow in 1657 map below; compare with the 1730 maps with rebuilt villages and farms ( note 1 ). In Polish memory this war is appropriately remembered as "The Deluge". Villages in the Danzig Werder (delta) from which Mennonites immigrated to Russia include: Quadendorf, Reichenberg, Krampitz, Neunhuben, Hochzeit, Scharfenberg, Wotzlaff, Landau, Schönau, Nassenhuben, Mönchengrebin, and Nobel ( note 2 ). In the war the suburbs outside the gates of Danzig suffered most; Mennonites lived here in large numbers, e.g., in Alt Schottland and Stoltzenberg. First, these villages were completely razed by the City of Danzig to keep the invading Swedes from using the villages to their advantage in battle. ...

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 ed...

“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 ...

Mennonite “Displaced Persons” and MCC’s “Jewish Argument”

At the conclusion of the war Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) was fully aware that “their” 13,000-plus Russian Mennonite refugees in Germany did not qualify as displaced persons and for support from the International Refugee Organization. They were refused IRO “care and maintenance” as Soviet citizens, i.e., they were free to return home. MCC sought to convince the IRO that the Mennonite refugees were not “Soviet Germans” and--if they had became German citizens in Warthegau (also a disqualifier), it was done under duress ( note 1 ). Astonishingly MCC’s Europe Director Peter J. Dyck—later seen as the Moses of the Mennonites—proposed to top military personnel at US military headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany (USFET) in July 1946, that Mennonites be granted the same status as Jews as a persecuted people. “By a recent decree all Jews, regardless of their nationality, are automatically given the status of 'D.P.' [displaced person] on the grounds that they are victims of persecu...

On Becoming the Quiet in the Land

They are fair questions: “What happened to the firebrands of the Reformation? How did the movement become so withdrawn--even "dour and unexciting,” according to one historian? Mennonites originally referred to themselves as the “quiet in the land” in contrast to the militant--definitely more exciting--militant revolutionaries of Münster ( note 1 ), and identification with Psalm 35:19f.: “Let not my enemies gloat over me … For they do not speak peace, but they devise deceitful schemes against those who live quietly in the land.” How did Mennonites become the “quiet in the land” in Royal Prussia? Minority non-citizen groups in Poland like Jews, Scots, Huguenots or the much smaller body of Mennonites did not enjoy full political or economic rights as citizens. Ecclesial and civil laws left linguistic or religious minorities vulnerable to extortion. Such groups sought to negotiate a Privilegium or charter with the king, which set out a legal basis for some protections of life an...

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 ...

Immigration to Canada, 1923: Background

In April 1921 Mennonites in the Caucasus and Don Region officially petitioned Moscow for permissions to emigrate—which Lenin had “flatly refused.” Their rationale was more than economic. “The disruption of economic conditions leads to impoverishment, which again goes hand in hand with the degradation of morals and has an alarming impact on our youth, who are also constantly exposed to the pressure of brutal and ruthless agitation on the part of those in power. … This decay of our spiritual and economic goods will only become greater and more ruinous.” ( Note 1 ) Later that year and some months before the large-scale feeding operations could begin in the Soviet Union, American Mennonite Relief (AMR) commissioner A.J. Miller petitioned the Soviet Embassy in London for exit permissions for 20,000 Mennonites ( note 1b) . He was unsuccessful. Nonetheless in a highly secretive meeting in Ohrloff, Molotschna on February 7, 1922, key Mennonite leaders took a decision to work toward the re...

School Reports, 1890s

Mennonite memoirs typically paint a golden picture of schools in the so-called “golden era” of Mennonite life in Russia. The official “Reports on Molotschna Schools: 1895/96 and 1897/98,” however, give us a more lackluster and realistic picture ( note 1 ). What do we learn from these reports? Many schools had minor infractions—the furniture did not correspond to requirements, there were insufficient book cabinets, or the desks and benches were too old and in need of repair. The Mennonite schoolhouses in Halbstadt and Rudnerweide—once recognized as leading and exceptional—together with schools in Friedensruh, Fürstenwerder, Franzthal, and Blumstein were deemed to be “in an unsatisfactory state.” In other cases a new roof and new steps were needed, or the rooms too were too small, too dark, too cramped, or with moist walls. More seriously in some villages—Waldheim, Schönsee, Fabrikerwiese, and even Gnadenfeld, well-known for its educational past—inspectors recorded that pupils “do not ...

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 ...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog