Four-Part Singing in Mennonite Schools and Church in Russia

The significance of singing instruction may seem trite, but it became a key vehicle in the Mennonite school curriculum for fostering a basic appreciation of the arts and for faith formation.

In Johann Cornies’ circulated guidelines for teachers, singing was recommended as a means “to stimulate and enliven pious feelings” in the children—a guideline he copied directly from a German Catholic pedagogue and circulated freely under his own name (note 1).

On January 26, 1846 Cornies distributed a curriculum regulation to all schools that mandated “singing by numbers (Zahlen) from the church hymnal” (note 2).

Attention to singing instruction in the schools precipitated significant and controversial changes in Mennonite liturgy. An 1854 visiting observer to the Bergthal Colony—a Chortitza daughter colony outside of Cornies’ purview—wrote:

“Endlessly long hymns from the Gesangbuch (hymnal) were begun by the Vorsänger (song leader) of the congregation, and sung with so many flourishes and embellishments that the melody became completely unrecognizable, and it was impossible despite my good ear, to retain any one of these strange melodies in my memory.” (Note 3)

The apple does not fall far from the tree, apparently. The singing in the Chortitza Colony was especially unbearable and unholy to Heinrich Heese—a former Einlage (Chortitza) teacher and colony administrator and now Cornies’ lead educationalist in Molotschna: “There still seems to be no taste [in the Chortitza area] for singing in harmony. … O that our Lord Jesus would no longer be greeted with such distorted singing in our churches, from which even the angels turn away in offence!” (note 4).

Notably it was not the church, but the schools where a new form of religious singing based upon a system of musical notation was first introduced in Molotschna. This approach was initiated by “Prussian school teachers”—notably Heinrich Franz in the village of Gnadenfeld, a former student of Gnadenfeld’s Elder Friedrich Lange at Rodlofferhufen, Prussia.

Heinrich Heese sought to instill in his students in Ohrloff his own dream for quality singing in the colonies, connecting aesthetics with piety and ethics. He recalled that:

“[… in Prussia] Mennonites would sing so sublimely that all hearts would soften to the blessed joy in Christ and even the angels in heaven would join in ... The songbooks of the time had notes above each song; it was only later, when the notes were omitted in the newer revised hymnals, that the singing in our churches deteriorated into the present-day disharmony. To the extent to which the harmonious singing in our churches was lost, to the same extent our fathers lost their holy way of life in true love to God and his holy Word.” (Note 5)

There was some support for new music styles in Rudnerweide too, for example, where Jacob Bräul was teacher (also previously in Einlage). P. M. Friesen reported on Bräul’s ability to teach Russian as well as the fact that he was “famous for his teaching of arithmetic, singing, and penmanship” (note 6). In 1840 Rudnerweide Elder Benjamin Ratzlaff wrote to his Chortitza counterpart Jacob Hildebrandt about a proposed hymnal not yet in print (note 7). In 1844, a new edition of the Prussian hymnal was published in Odessa for Russian Mennonite congregations—the same hymn texts, but in many cases new suggested melodies, though without notation; 15,400 copies were published in three editions by 1859, and soon every household had a hymnal—together with a Bible, and a few instructional and devotional books (note 8).

As early as 1837 copies of Heinrich Franz’s growing collection of music also started to circulate, and in 1860 the Choralbuch was published in its first edition of 5,000 copies. Franz introduced four-part harmony instruction in his school and beyond “for the beauty, purity and correctness” as well as “uniformity” of singing across congregations (note 9).

Besides offering 163 melodies for songs in the hymnal, the Choralbuch also introduced another 112 songs for church, school and home. For Franz, singing participates in God’s own work of “training for the kingdom of heaven” (note 10); four decades later P. M. Friesen could write that Franz’s “Chorale-book in ciphers has transformed the spiritual singing of Russian Mennonites (…) and even dominates it today” (note 11).

Not surprisingly the change in music proved to be a source of great distress for others (note 12). If traditional Mennonite singing could be described in 1822 as “exceedingly harsh and loud, forced from the throat” (note 13), traditionalists now compared part-singing in harmony “to a pub-song” style (note 14). Others thought that it “was military in character,” and found it to be so “repugnant” that they “could not attend such meetings”; some even saw in it “a great evil” and an “innovation as contrary to the Christian faith” (note 15).

Yet by 1890—after many conservatives had left for North America—most churches especially in the secessionist Mennonite Brethren congregations “had a choir that sang on Sunday morning” (note 16). The love of good hymn-singing that developed among Russian Mennonites would later give great joy in faith, and sustain many in the darkest chapters still to come—wholly consistent with the long tradition of writing and singing hymns that is reflected even in their martyr stories (note 17).

---Notes---

Note 1: In David Epp, Johann Cornies: Züge aus seinem Leben und Wirken [1909], Historische Schriftenreihe, Buch 3 (Rosthern, SK: Echo, 1946), 62, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/?file=1dok15.pdf. For further and detailed research on this topic, see especially the references below to the writings of Peter Letkemann and Wesley Berg.

Note 2: In Epp, Johann Cornies, 75.

Note 3: Cf. Augustin Engelbrecht, Aufsätze pädagogischen Inhalts. Ein Buch für Seelsorger und Volksschullehrer zur angenehmen und belehrenden Unterhaltung (Landshut: Krüll, 1821), 237, https://books.google.ca/books?id=ZTlNAAAAcAAJ&lpg. On Cornies' use of Engelbrecht, cf. James Urry, “The Source of Johann Cornies’ ‘Rules’ on Schools and Education,” Mennonite Historian 45, no. 4 (December 2019), 10–11, http://www.mennonitehistorian.ca/45.4.MHDec19.pdf; and Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Cornies and Engelbrecht on Schools and Rules,” Mennonite Historian 46 no. 2 (June 2020), 9–10, http://www.mennonitehistorian.ca/46.2.MHJun20.pdf.

Note 4: Jacob A. Klassen, cited in Wesley Berg, “The Development of Choral Singing Among the Mennonites of Russia to 1895,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 55, no. 2 (April 1981), 133. See also Berg, “Music among the Mennonites of Russia,” in Mennonites in Russia, edited by John Friesen, 203–219 (Winnipeg, MB: CMBC, 1989).

Note 5: Heinrich Heese, “Brief History of our Mennonite Brethren,” excerpted in Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), 113, https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/.

Note 6: Heese in Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 111. Cf. Wesley Berg, “Hymns of the Old Colony Mennonites and the Old Way of Singing,” The Musical Quarterly 80, no. 1 (1996), 77–117.

Note 7: Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 781.

Note 8: John B. Toews, Perilous Journey. The Mennonite Brethren in Russia 1860–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Kindred, 1988), 21, https://archive.org/details/PerilousJourneyBookocr. Cf. also “Vorwort zur dritten Auflage,” Gesang-Buch in welchem eine Sammlung geistreicher Lieder befindlich, 3rd edition in Russia (Odessa: Franzow, 1859), https://books.google.ca/books?id=MtwTAAAAYAAJ&lpg.

Note 9: August von Haxthausen, Studien über die innern Zustände, das Volksleben und insbesondere die ländlichen Einrichtungen Rußlands, part II (Hannover: Hahn, 1847), 189n., https://archive.org/details/studienberdiein03kosegoog/.

Note 10: Heinrich Franz (1880), “Vorwort,” Choralbuch zunächst zum Gebrauch in den mennonitischen Schulen Südrusslands, 2nd edition (Leipzig, 1880), https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nc01.ark:/13960/t50g5wb1m. Abram Kröker (Pfarrer Eduard Wüst. Der große Erweckungsprediger in den deutschen Kolonien Südrußlands [Spat, Crimea: Self-published, ca. 1903], 64f., https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Pis/Kroeker.pdf) contends, however, that Eduard Wüst—or more specifically his wife—introduced Russian Mennonites to four-part harmony and mixed choirs; Jakob Prinz, Die Kolonien der Brüdergemeinde. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien Südrußlands (Pjatigorsk, 1898), 90, http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id369529960.

Note 11: Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 712.

Note 12: Cf. James Urry, “None but Saints”: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia, 1789–1889 (Winnipeg, MB: Hyperion, 1989), 216; John B. Toews, “Harmony amid Disharmony: A Diary Portrait of Mennonite Singing in Russian during the 1860s,” Mennonite Life 40, no. 4 (1985) 4–7, https://mla.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/pre2000/1985dec.pdf; idem, Perilous Journey, 70f.

Note 13: Daniel Schlatter, Bruchstücke aus einigen Reisen nach dem südlichen Rußland in den Jahren 1822 bis 1828 (St. Gallen: Huber, 1830), 364, https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb11008440_00005.html.

Note 14: "Brandweingesang"; cf. full quotation in Peter Letkemann, “Der Streit um den Zifferngesang und der Gesangunterricht in den mennonitischen Schulen Russlands, 1845-1870,” Rückblick: Glaube und Gemeinde im Spiegel der Geschichte, no. 1 (July 2011), 14, https://neu.chortitza.org/2022/02/zeitschrift-rueckblick-2011-01/.

Note 15: Toews, “Harmony and Disharmony,” 5–6.

Note 16: Berg, “Development of Choral Singing,” 134f.

Note 17: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/02/when-singing-becomes-urgent-survival.html.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Four-Part Singing in Mennonite Schools and Church in Russia,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), June 13, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/four-part-singing-in-mennonite-schools.html.

Comments

The Executioner of Dnepropetrovsk, 1937-38

Naum Turbovsky likely killed more Mennonites than anyone in the longer history of the Anabaptist-Mennonite movement. This is an emotionally difficult post to write because one of those men was my grandfather, Franz Bräul, born 1896. In 2019, I received the translation of his 30-page arrest, trial and execution file. To this point my mother never knew her father's fate. Naum Turbovsky's signature is on Bräul's execution order. Bräul was shot on December 11, 1937. Together with my grandfather's NKVD/ KGB file, I have the files of eight others arrested with him. Turbovsky's file is available online. Days before he signed the execution papers for those in this group, Turbovsky was given an award for the security of his prison and for his method of isolating and transferring prisoners to their interrogation—all of which “greatly contributed to the success of the investigations over the enemies of the people,” namely “military-fascist conspirators, spies and saboteurs.” T

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

Prof. Benjamin Unruh as a Public Figure in the Nazi Era

Professor Benjamin H. Unruh (1881-1959) was a relief and immigration leader, educator, leading churchman, and official representative of Russian Mennonites outside of the Soviet Union throughout the National Socialism era in Germany. Unruh’s biography is connected to the very beginnings of Mennonite Central Committee in 1920-1922 when he served as a key spokesperson in Germany for the famine-stricken Mennonites in South Russia. Some years later he again played the central role in the rescue of thousands of Mennonites from Moscow in 1929 and, along with MCC, their resettlement in Paraguay, Brazil, and Canada. Because of Unruh’s influence and deep connections with key German government agencies in Berlin, his home office in Karlsruhe, Germany, became a relief hub for Mennonites internationally. Unruh facilitated large-scale debt forgiveness for Mennonites in Paraguay and Brazil, and negotiated preferential consideration for Mennonite relief work to the Soviet Union during the Great Famin

"Women Talking" -- and Canadian Mennonites

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 th

The Shift from Dutch to German, 1700s

Already in 1671, Mennonite Flemish Elder Georg Hansen in Danzig published his German-language catechism ( Glaubens-Bericht für die Jugend ) as preparation for youth seeking baptism. Though educational competencies varied, Hansen’s Glaubens-Bericht assumed that youth preparing for baptism had a stronger ability to read complex German than Dutch ( note 1 ). Popular Mennonite preacher Jacob Denner (1659–1746), originally from the Hamburg-Altona Mennonite Church, lived in Danzig for four years in the early 1700s. A first volume of his Dutch sermons was published in 1706 in Danzig and Amsterdam, and then in 1730 and 1751 he published two German collections. Untrained preachers would often read Denner’s sermons: “Those who preached German—which all Prussian preachers around 1750 did, with the exception of the Danzig preachers—had no sermons books from their co-religionists other than this one by Jacob Denner” ( note 2 ). In Danzig and the Vistula Delta region there were some differences

“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

The Tinkelstein Family of Chortitza-Rosenthal (Ukraine)

Chortitza was the first Mennonite settlement in "New Russia" (later Ukraine), est. 1789. The last Mennonites left in 1943 ( note 1 ). During the Stalin years in Ukraine (after 1928), marriage with Jewish neighbours—especially among better educated Mennonites in cities—had become somewhat more common. When the Germans arrived mid-August 1941, however, it meant certain death for the Jewish partner and usually for the children of those marriages. A family friend, Peter Harder, died in 2022 at age 96. Peter was born in Osterwick to a teacher and grew up in Chortitza. As a 16-year-old in 1942, Peter was compelled by occupying German forces to participate in the war effort. Ukrainians and Russians (prisoners of war?) were used by the Germans to rebuild the massive dam at Einlage near Zaporizhzhia, and Peter was engaged as a translator. In the next year he changed focus and started teachers college, which included significant Nazi indoctrination. In 2017 I interviewed Peter Ha

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

Why Danzig and Poland?

In the late 16th century, Poland became a haven for a variety of non-conformists which included Jews, Anti-Trinitarians from Italy and Bohemia, Quakers and Calvinists from Great Britain, south German Schwenkfelders, Eastern Orthodox, Armenian, and Greek Catholic Christians, some Muslim Tatars, as well as other peaceful sectarians like the Dutch and Flemish Anabaptists. Unlike the Low Countries and most of western Europe, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a “state without stakes,” and as such fittingly described as “God’s playground” ( note 1 ). In the view of 17th-century Dutch dramatist Joost van den Vondel, it was “the ‘Promised Land,’ where the refugee could forget all his sorrow and enjoy the richness of the land” ( note 2 ). Over the next two centuries an important strand of Mennonite life and spirituality evolved into a mature tradition in this relatively hospitable context ( note 3 ). Anabaptists from the Low Countries began to arrive in Danzig and region as early as 15

Plague and Pestilence in Danzig, 1709

Russian and Prussian Mennonites trace at least 200 years of their story through Danzig and Royal Prussia, where episodes of plague and pestilence were not unfamiliar ( note 1 ). Mennonites arrived primarily from the Low Countries and in large numbers in the middle of the 16th century—approximately 750 families or 3,000 refugees and settlers between 1527 and 1578 to Danzig and Royal Prussia ( note 2 ). At this time Danzig was undergoing tremendous demographic, cultural and economic transformation, almost tripling in population in less than 100 years. With 80% of Poland’s foreign trade handled through this port city ( note 3 ), Danzig saw the arrival of new people from across Europe, many looking to find work in the crammed and bustling city ( note 4 ). Maria Bogucka’s research on Danzig in this era brings the streets of the maritime city to life: “Sanitation facilities were inadequate … The level of personal hygiene was low. Most people lived close together: five or six to a room, sle

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog