“Mixed Race Couples” (Mischehen), 1942

The quasi-scientific, Nazi-German racial hocus-pocus about “blood” and the Reich’s tireless effort to quantify percentages of “Nordic” or “Slavic” or “Jewish” blood in order to separate and rank individuals and racial groups hierarchically, and in turn to deny basic human rights to most--justified by some bizarre correlation to “racial” resilience, health, cultural vitality, and achievement by some mythical German racial corpus--is nothing short of repulsive.

These theories had horrific outcomes. Yet somehow it was compelling in the 1930s and 1940s to think, speak, and act in this way. Mennonites were part of that story—one which is not so easily unraveled. At best this post can add one or two new elements to that story.

I begin in Canada. In two issues of the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Volkswarte in 1936 Heinrich Hajo Schröder—born in Halbstadt and a one-time student of Benjamin H. Unruh—offered extensive explanations of Aryanism and its supporting racial "theory"—e.g., that racial-genetic purity is critical for the development of a people; that foreign blood is poison for a people; that the Nordic race is the determinant race for the German people; that “Frisians” are the most ancient Aryan branch; that God has given every race a mission in the place that they have dwelt for centuries; the importance of a politics of race and a racial state; the yearning for a Menno-state, praise of Hitler, and all of this peppered with explicit anti-Semitic statements. It was so compelling that it was reprinted in the church-based Mennonitische Rundschau also from Winnipeg) in 1938 (note 1).

Later that same year a German government envoy in Paraguay concluded that  

“… the Mennonites are of the most valuable German blood. They carry a biological inheritance which makes them into workers with extraordinary capacity for achievement, and which gives them the feeling of cohesion and order. ... Their Nordic blood gives them unprecedented willpower, tenacity and perseverance. … We cannot leave such valuable German racial material unattended. … Some of them begin to free themselves from their intimate communities and wish to grow into the greater German Volk-community.” (Note 2)

Some years later the theory and vision was employed with the Mennonite communities in newly occupied Ukraine. The SS Special Command “R” (Russia) made the following early external assessment of the Mennonite settlements within the first month of occupation: “Even today, the Mennonites, out of all ethnic Germans, make the best physical and spiritual impression. … The racial picture is to some extent excellent, generally good. Things German are genuinely adhered to” (note 3). 

Mennonites certainly had prejudices prior to German occupation, but the idea of a “master race” was foreign (note 4). In 1943 one of the two new German propaganda papers in Ukraine published the article: “Blood Legacy of the Fathers: The Biological Power of Ethnic Germans in Ukraine.” It noted that Sonderkommando of Dr. Karl Stumpp had been tasked by the Reichsminister for the Occupied East Territories “to provide a genealogical and Volks-biological accounting of the Volksdeutsche in Ukraine” (note 5). Stumpp’s work on the racial composition of Mennonites in Ukraine was already well-documented by work done before the war (note 6). Between April and May 1942 supporting genealogical information was to be compiled in each of the Mennonite villages upon which residents were issued their ethnic German Volk identity card (Volkstumsausweis; note 7). The cards attested that the named person “is a Volksdeutscher and is under the protection of the Greater German Reich” (note 8).

Stumpp’s reports documented for the nineteen villages of the Chortitza District, for example, 223 mixed-race marriages of 8,010 family units, or 2.7%. None of the former 1,066 Jews from these villages and towns remained. Most of the mixed-race families were located in the more urban areas of Chortitza, Einlage or Osterwick, for example, where 7% of children were “mixed-race” (note 9). These reports were crucial for the regime’s assessment of German Volk purity.

Mixed-race couples (Mischehen) and mixed-race children (Mischlinge)—these were legally defined categories—were named, their homes marked (not only on maps), and those so identified were restricted in their rights and privileges. including their food and clothing rations, education, and medical services.

In the months after the arrival of German armies, two German newspapers, public addresses and rallies, and training programs for ethnic German teachers, administrators and self-defence units were among the means used to introduce ethnic Germans in Ukraine into a National Socialist worldview. For those over forty, it was new to think that “custom and morality are not determined by religion, but by race,” or that some existential “Germanic feeling of life (Lebensgefühl)” and “sense of morality … lives within the Germanic race” as a whole. No doubt they were glad to hear that National Socialism supported “practical Christianity,” but were likely confused to hear that the church's ultimate purpose was to unify, strengthen and empower the Volk (note 10). It did not go unnoticed that in the new teacher training institutes for ethnic Germans that religion was not in the curriculum—once the defining discipline in Mennonite schools. Now race anthropology (Rassenkunde) and hereditary studies (Vererbungslehre) were core courses that supported the biological goals of the Reich (note 11). I know at least four individuals who were trained in these pedagogical schools.

A compulsory school policy would soon apply to all ethnic German children in Ukraine lasting eight years beginning at age seven, and was “intended to secure the education and instruction of youth in the spirit of National Socialism” (note 12). Youth were encouraged to follow the example of the Führer who neither smoked nor drank, and were warned to avoid socializing with non-Germans in order to maintain racial purity (note 13). Specifically, young adults were informed that marriages between Germans and other races were now forbidden, and where undertaken, legally void (note 14). Notably students of “mixed marriages” were not eligible for enrollment in Prischib Teacher Training School, for example (note 15).

In September 1942, the N@zi weekly Ukraine Post ran an article on the historical achievements of the German colonies in Ukraine, and praised their “amazing racial-biological prowess.” They are “perhaps the strongest and clearest proof of the inexhaustible power of German racial ethnicity which, even detached from the actual mother soil, again and again renewed itself from itself” (note 16).

Over twenty-five weeks the Ukraine Post outlined and winningly explained the twenty-five planks of the Nazi Party platform to its Volk German readership, with the fourth instalment on the racial unity of the German Volk on October 24, 1942 (note 17). Beliefs about blood purity were deemed to be critical for understanding the “why” of German cultural achievement or decline, and it gave a rationale for Germany’s rejection of universal human rights.

“A people can only attain high achievements if it keeps its blood pure. … A mixture of German blood with Jewish blood leads to a reduction in the achievements of our people and thus to racial decline and finally to collapse. National Socialism is the fiercest opponent of that Marxist theory of the equality of all that bears the face of man.” (Note 18)

From Canada to Paraguay and then later to Ukraine, this worldview was accepted and taught by many, and given the implicit blessing of some church leaders.

Poles, Ukrainians, Russians and Jews are rightfully repulsed to read this chapter of Mennonite history. It is painful, but important for Mennonites to document it with honesty and humility. The intergenerational impact of this racial worldview held by many Mennonites less than eighty years ago still needs to be explored.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

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Note 1: Heinrich H. Schröder, “Was heißt völkisch?,” Mennonitische Volkswarte 2, no. 8 (August 1936), 252–256 (part 1); no. 9 (September 1936), 279–282 (part 2), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/vpetk379.pdf; https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/vpetk380.pdf, reprinted in Mennonitische Rundschau 61, no. 5 (February 2, 1938), 12f., https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1938-02-02_61_5/page/12/mode/2up

Note 2: Hans Carl Büsing, Excerpt from Report “German Embassy in Asunción, Paraguay, on the Paraguayan Mennonite Colonies, June 20, 1938,” 7f. Archiv Fernheim, Paraguay, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_416/fernheim_archives/SKMBT_C35108043009400_0007.jpg.

Note 3: Sonderkommando Russland, “German Affairs in the Area of Kriwoi-Rog, Saporoshje, Dnjepropetrowsk, in the District of Melitopol and in the District of Mariupol. Preliminary Statement, in particular the Mennonite Settlements,” November 1, 1941. Translated by Allen E. Konrad. Deutsches Ausland-Institut, Film T-81/606/5396845-854, http://www.blackseagr.org/pdfs/konrad/Mennonite Settlements in Melitopol and Mariupol Districts.pdf. Minor corrections.

Note 4: Victor Janzen, From the Dniepr to the Paraguay River (Winnipeg, MB: Self-published, 1995), 36, recalled as a youth seeing the term “sub-human” (Untermensch) with reference to Russians and Ukrainians in the German literature left in their home by German soldiers.

Note 5: “Das Bluterbe der Väter: Die biologische Kraft der Volksdeutschen in der Ukraine,” Ukraine Post no. 9 (March 6, 1943), 3 (for all Ukraine Post articles below, see: https://libraria.ua/all-titles/group/878/).

Note 6: Cf. Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 3, no. 1 & 2 (December 1938), 97, 99, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennonitische%20Geschichtsblaetter/1936-1940/DSCF4535.JPG). Cf. Eric J. Schmaltz and Samuel D. Zinner, “The Nazi Ethnographic Research of Georg Leibbrandt and Karl Stumpp in Ukraine and Its North American Legacy,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 14, no. 1 (Spring 2000), 56. A Heidelberg University professor and later Nazi (Dr. Dettweiler) was invited to the 1931 Palatinate-Hessian Mennonite Conference meetings to speak on “Mennonite Family Research.” Three years later, the conference historian writes, this impulse would find “tremendous confirmation” in the Third Reich. Cf. Christlicher Gemeinde-Kalender 46 (1937) 99f., https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Christlicher%20Gemeinde-Kalender/1933-1941/DSCF7056.JPG.

Note 7: See Gerhard Fast, Das Ende von Chortitza (Winnipeg, MB: Self-published, 1973), 71.

Note 8: See any EWZ (Einwanderungszentralstelle) file which typically include returned identification cards; https://chortitza.org/List/EWZBem.htm; https://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/EWZ_Mennonite_Extractions_Alphabetized.pdf.

Note 9: See “Gebiet Chortitza - Bericht,” R6, Mappe 626, “Bevölkerungsübersicht, Tafel A,” 63 [81], as well as the Osterwick village report, “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp.” Prepared for the German Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, 1942. In Bundesarchiv Koblenz, BArch R6 GSK, files 620 to 633; 702 to 709, https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/main.xhtml; also State Electronic Archive of Ukraine, https://tsdea.aewrchives.gov.ua/deutsch/.

Note 10: “Die 25 Punkte,” Ukraine Post 10 (March 13, 1943), 6; the article is a commentary on the Nazi Party platform policy no. 24 on religion, as part of a series written for Volksdeutsche in Ukraine. The quote is from Alfred Rosenberg, Minister for the Occupied Territories, who visited the Molotschna in 1943.

Note 11: Gerhard Winter, ed., Die volksdeutsche Lehrerbildungsanstalt (LBA) zur Zeit der deutschen Besatzung in Rußland (Wolfsburg: Self-published, 1988), 143f. Racial theory had been a required course for all schools in Prussia since September 1933.

Note 12: “Schulpflicht für Volksdeutsche Kinder,” Ukraine Post I, no. 22 (June 5, 1943), 8.

Note 13: Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 170.

Note 14: “Deutsches Eherecht für Volksdeutsche,” Ukraine Post, no. 30 (August 10, 1943), 8.

Note 15: Justine Janzen Fiebig, “Die volksdeutschen Lehrerbildungsanstalten zur Zeit der deutschen Besetzung in Rußland,” in Winter, Die volksdeutsche Lehrerbildungsanstalt (LBA), 118.

Note 16: “Deutsche Leistung in der Ukraine,” Ukraine Post 1, no. 11 (September 26, 1942), 3f.

Note 17: “Die 25 Punkte: Das Programm der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP),” Ukraine Post, no. 15 (October 24, 1942), 4.

Note 18: Ibid.

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To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "'Mixed Race Couples' (Mischehen), 1942," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 17, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/mixed-race-couples-mischehen-1942.html.