Coronation Day, 1856

Molotschna Mennonite District Chairman David Friesen was invited to represent the Mennonites at the coronation of Tsar Alexander II in 1856. The extravagant pictures below are from the official coronation album (note 1).

I have translated the courtly letter of congratulations on behalf of “the entire Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia” signed by all nine church elders (but not Kleine Gemeinde) and two district chairmen (note 2).

"Most serene and supremely powerful Emperor! Most Gracious Emperor and Lord!

May your Imperial Majesty, Most Gracious One, be willing to accept our heartfelt congratulations and thankful feelings, which we are so bold to lay down before the feet of the Most High's illustrious throne in all humility, All Gracious One.

In the happy knowledge that we, the whole Mennonite Brotherhood in southern Russia, with sincere hearts and filled with thanksgiving, are true subjects of your Imperial Majesty, we gladly follow with all our soul the inner drive of the heart, to express reverently and in childlike manner before our Imperial Majesty, that we owe our thanks for this noble peace [Crimean War had just ended], next to God's all-wise guidance, to the most gracious and fatherly sentiments of your Imperial Majesty, through whose blessings we feel constantly committed, and especially for the upcoming coronation, to prayer with all inwardness, that God the Lord would bestow the richest fullness of His blessings and gifts upon your Imperial Majesty as well as upon our whole, passionately beloved Imperial House, so that the reign of your Imperial Majesty may be long and blessed ...

Mindful of the privileges most graciously bestowed upon our Mennonite Brotherhood by the revered Emperor and Lord Paul in a Most High Decree of Grace (Privilegium) on the 6th of September, 1800, we will gratefully continue to show ourselves more and more worthy, and strive with all of the strength and means at our disposal, to secure the benevolence of the Most Gracious One (Emperor) toward us in the future as well, that we and our children may live a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and respectability under the most gracious protection of your Imperial Majesty, as we have been so blessed to this day under your Imperial Majesty and His majestic, most-blessed ancestors.

May the Lord our God fulfill in the richest measure our childlike prayers and wishes for a long, happy and blessed life and rule of your Imperial Majesty and direct the heart of your Imperial Majesty according to His divine [God's] good pleasure.

We are unspeakably happy to be in deepest reverence your Imperial Majesty's most humble and most faithful subjects, the Mennonite Brotherhood in southern Russia, in the name and on behalf of the churches and district of Chortitza, Mariupol [Bergthal] and Molotschna.

[Signatures --see attached pic]

Mennonite leaders were sincere in their praise, but not naive about the need to protect their charter of privileges with a new emperor. The congratulatory letter is a recommitment to the charter—that Mennonites will continue to show themselves “even more worthy” of the generous its privileges as a model community, and will strive toward that end “with all of the strength and means at our disposal.” And in return, their request is that the Tsar to be benevolent toward them, so that they and their children “may live a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and respectability" under the Tsar's protection. This was not only wholly compatible with scripture (I Timothy 1:2f.), but also with their recently republished confession of faith and its article on “secular authority” (note 3).

To Russian Mennonites, the democratic revolutions across Europe appeared as chaotic eruptions that aimed to replace divinely ordained rulers with human institutions established on the “grace of the people” alone, not of God.

Popular evangelist and poet-minister Bernhard Harder was convinced that the Russian monarch was a divinely ordained bulwark against the “pestilence” and “vain and sinister schemes of democrats” and “servants of Satan” (note 4).

When Alexander II was assassinated in 1881, Russian Mennonites told their recently resettled siblings now in America of their deepest grief at this “irreplaceable loss” at the hands of “democrats” (note 5).

Years later after the 1905 Russian Revolution, historian P.M. Friesen described his Mennonite people as a “genuine Christian-conservative and generally bourgeois group,” among whom “ninety-nine out of one hundred … considered such words as ‘democrat,’ ‘democratic’ with suspicion, foreboding ill, and from a democracy only evil was expected” (note 6). While Friesen was articulating the prevailing opinion of Mennonite leadership, he was blind to the social unrest in large Mennonite factories, and the growing class distinctions among Mennonites in Russia.

--Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Coronation Album, from Brown University Library, https://library.brown.edu/readingritual/totos.html.

Note 2: “Abschrift der eingereichten Dankschrift der Mennoniten im südlichen Rußland an Sr. Majestät den Kaiser Alexander II. vor der Krönung im August 1856,” Mennonitische Blätter 4, no. 1 (1857), 5, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennonitische%20Blaetter/1854-1900/1857/DSCF0069.JPG. Pics from copy of original in “Letters of Appeal to the Tsar, 1856–1866,” Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive, Reel 52, File 1827.

Note 3: See “Article XI: Concerning Secular Authority” of the United Frisian, Flemish, German Confession, now known as the “Rudnerweide Confession,” https://anabaptistwiki.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Confession,_or_Short_and_Simple_Statement_of_Faith_(Rudnerweide,_Russia,_1853)#XI._Concerning_Secular_Authority

Note 4: Geistliche Lieder und Gelegenheitsgedichte von Bernhard Harder, edited by Heinrich Franz (Hamburg: A-G, 1888) vol. 1, no. 519, 566; no. 533, 583f. Regarding democratic assassins, see poems no. 521, p. 568f., https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Pis/Hard1.pdf.

Note 5: Cf. letters from the villages of Fabrikerweise (Mennonitische Rundschau I, no. 23 [May 1, 1881], 1), Schönau and Halbstadt (MR I, no. 22 [April 15, 1881], 1), and Großweide (MR II, no. 1 [June 1, 1881], 1), https://archive.org/details/pub_die-mennonitische-rundschau?query=&sort=week&&and[]=year%3A%221881%22.

Note 6: Peter M. Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978) 627; https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/.

---

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Coronation Day, 1856,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 9, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/coronation-day-1856.html.

Comments

Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp, 1942: List and Links

Each of the "Commando Dr. Stumpp" village reports written during German occupation of Ukraine 1942 contains a mountain of demographic data, names, dates, occupations, numbers of untimely deaths (revolution, famines, abductions), narratives of life in the 1930s, of repression and liberation, maps, and much more. The reports are critical for telling the story of Mennonites in the Soviet Union before 1942, albeit written with the dynamics of Nazi German rule at play. Reports for some 56 (predominantly) Mennonite villages from the historic Mennonite settlement areas of Chortitza, Sagradovka, Baratow, Schlachtin, Milorodovka, and Borosenko have survived. Unfortunately no village reports from the Molotschna area (known under occupation as “Halbstadt”) have been found. Dr. Karl Stumpp, a prolific chronicler of “Germans abroad,” became well-known to German Mennonites (Prof. Benjamin Unruh/ Dr. Walter Quiring) before the war as the director of the Research Center for Russian Germans...

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...

Ideas for Educational Reform, 1832

After four decades in Russia, the president of the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Colonists, Andrei Fadeev, considered only eight of 116 Mennonite teachers in the two larger regions of Katerynoslav and Tauria—which included the Molotschna—fit to teach ( note 1 ). Jakob Bräul’s Rudnerweide schoolhouse was given the same status as Heinrich Heese’s Ohrloff Agricultural Society School with regard to policies and “especially for the teaching of Russian” ( note 2 ). Fadeev triggered great angst when by “imperial decree” he distributed a book to church elders written by German Mennonite Abraham Hunzinger on the modernization of Mennonite schools and church. It was a friendly gesture and poke. The Molotschna was already a tinderbox, and this spark introduced by a state official to strengthen the community ignited a fire in the colony. Fadeev wrote to Johann Cornies on January 12, 1832: “Most valued Cornies ... I advise you to acquire and read a booklet sent to your church leaders f...

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...

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 ...

Canadian Mennonites and Paraguay: 1922

The first attached photo vividly depicts a meeting of conservative Mennonite elders in Saskatchewan and Manitoba in 1922 who intended to lead their communities to Paraguay. This was happening as hundreds of “Old Colony” Mennonites were leaving for Mexico. The “Old Colonists” from Manitoba’s West Reserve were in fact the first conservative Canadian Mennonites to scout out Paraguay for settlement land. In 1920 they were assisted in their search by New York financier and lawyer, General Samuel McRoberts, who had extensive holdings as well as political and business connections in Paraguay. The delegation travelled 90 km into the Chaco interior, west of the Paraguay River. They were however unimpressed with the land and ultimately recommended Mexico to their community ( note 1 ). Other conservative groups in Manitoba and Saskatchewan were however interested in sending their own scouts to assess the Chaco and the political climate in Paraguay vis-à-vis the list of privileges they were seek...

Russo-Japanese War and the Mennonite Response, 1904-05

In February 1904, Russia declared war on Japan and Mennonite congregations sent the Tsar messages of loyalty, love and prayers. The large Lichtenau-Petershagen-Schönsee congregation in the Mennonite Molotschna Colony in today’s Ukraine led by 80-year-old Elder (Bishop) Jakob Töws expressed its “deep loyalty and love for the throne and the Fatherland” ( note 1 ). Similarly, the Mennonite Chortitza congregation declared that Mennonites bow “humbly before the Imperial Majesty with most faithful love and devotion,” and “together with all faithful subjects send their most passionate prayers and supplications to the Most High, that He may extend his mighty hand over the beloved Tsar and the Russian people, and that peace may soon be returned” ( note 2 ). The Einlage Mennonite Brethren congregation offered a similar statement, “inspired by feelings of boundless dedication to the Sovereign Fatherland,” with “passionate prayers” for the Tsar and Fatherland, based on 1 Timothy 2:1–4 ( note 3 ...

1843: London Bible Society, revival and School reform

In 1843 the Russian Mennonite colonies received a visitation from the London Bible Society. It was the same year that Charles Dickens published "A Christmas Carol" about the miser Ebenezer Scrooge and his conversion after the visitation of three Christmas ghosts! Dickens was not happy that the Church’s overseas mission budget was so large, while in his view they neglected the poor on their own doorsteps in London. Ebenezer was in fact a common British name of the era. A few years earlier the Molotschna was visited by a delegation from the British and Foreign Bible Society. The British agent, Reverend Ebeneezer Henderson, convinced Molotschna elders and Johann Cornies to establish their own Bible Society. "As they live on habits of friendship and intimacy with their Tatar neighbours, and one of their principal men [Cornies] speaks the Tatar with fluency, we furnished him with a good supply of New Testaments, and other portions of Scripture, in that language, that they m...

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...

Non-Resistant Service: Forestry Camps

The 1902 photos are of the Mennonite Crimean Forestry ( Forstei ) “Commando” in the vineyards and orchards of southern Crimea on route to Yalta (" Gut [estate] Forroß"; note 1). The tasks for the units or commandos were to plant forests, lay out nurseries, and raise model orchards—work not directly or meaningfully connected to non-resistance, but deemed by the state as an acceptable alternative to state or military service. This non-combatant, alternative service program was the largest, most expensive and most formative, faith-based undertaking by Mennonites during the Mennonite "golden era" in Russia ( note 2 ). The first cohort of young men were chosen and sent for their term of alternative service in 1880: “On November 15 [1880] in Tokmak the first German youth were chosen [by lot] in the presence of the [Mennonite] district mayor and also of Elder A. Goerz. There, with singing and prayer, they beseeched the Lord for His mercy, which interested the Russian ...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog