"Mennonites like to visit back and forth ... this is a principle of their religion"

How do you define Mennonites? What is their essence. Many historians and theologians have tripped up trying to address this question!

In 1838, Russian Mennonite leader Johann Cornies was asked to comment on a settlement idea by Russian State Counselor Peter Keppen—and he did not shy away from identifying what is at the core of their faith and identity.

Keppen’s recommendation was to settle small clusters of three Mennonite families each—as model farmers, like a chain of pearls at key junctures—deep into central and western Crimea, on roads connecting Perekop, through Simferopol to Yevpatoria.

Why? Mennonites were officially “foreign colonists” in Russia who were deemed especially “useful” and given favourable privileges and gratuities by the crown. These benefits were dependent on being model agriculturalists on the South Russian steppe. The expectation: that "their good habits would eventually rub off on the coarser people around them” (note 1).

In response, Cornies gave Keppen a brief lesson on who and what Mennonites are and how they can be best settled. Curiously the description is found among letters where Cornies describes different breeds of sheep and cows and the environment and treatment each type needs to survive and thrive!

First, good, industrious Mennonites would not settle this way, and the community would not allow less industrious settlers to participate “lest they become a disgrace to the community and draw the ire of the government."
Second, “a life lived in isolation is also not in keeping with Mennonite customs and would be too lonely. Mennonites like to visit back and forth, sharing joys and sorrows. This is a principle of their religion. This is the way in which they help one another with brotherly support, edifying themselves spiritually and comforting and encouraging one another.”
Third, “their children must be provided with enough schooling that would allow them, at the very minimum, to learn to read and write. [At the time of their baptism] they must be able to deliver their confession of faith orally in order to be accepted into the community and must convince the community of the propriety of their behaviour. This is essential and important to Mennonites. The community must know that a [candidate for baptism] has led a life which makes him acceptable and worthy of membership, a fact to be confirmed by witnesses."

Fourth, “the situation would be a very different if a regular settlement, including professionals necessary in an agricultural economy, were established in the region near these roads. This settlement would need to have a house of worship and a school and be provided with a schoolteacher."
Fifth, "[the proposed] road stations, with three families each, might be an extension of the larger settlement. Leadership and protection could originate from the settlement. To endure and become permanent, every settlement needs appropriate leadership, mutual encouragement, support and protection" (note 2).

Notably, helping and encouraging one another in community is absolutely central to a Mennonite understanding of faith, Cornies notes. He also assumes a non-resistant community, as well as state policing protection. And access to basic education for both girls and boys is non-negotiable because reading (Bible, catechism) is critical for believers' baptism.

The linkage of order, work and economic vitality, on the one hand, and morality and faith on the other, had always been key for Cornies.

Keppen was a Baltic German who grew up in Kharkiv and had his first administrative appointment in Crimea, before being called to St Petersburg. Now returning to southern Ukraine as an academic and senior state official for the new Ministry of State Domains, he finds an ally in Cornies (note 3). Mennonites had "everything that a Russian administrator could want in a foreign colonist: 'capital,' laudable personal qualities (industriousness, cleanliness, moderate drinking habits), and expertise as farmers and craftsmen" (note 4).

The generous Mennonite Privilegium and its terms are best understood under Greater Russia’s sense of imperial, messianic mission to serve and rule nobly over many peoples (note 5)--which is displayed in this correspondence. The growing emotional attachment and loyalty of Russian Mennonites to the royal house, and their own religious sense of call or mission as “model” colonists and agriculturalists, took root within this context.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Map:

Note 1: Willard Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 117.

Note 2: Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies, vol. 2: 1836–1842, translated by Ingrid I. Epp; edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020) 104-106, no. 127 –https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/100164/1/Southern_Ukrainian_Steppe_UTP_9781487538743.pdf.

Note 3: John Staples, "Introduction," 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), xlviii.

Note 4: Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field, 117. “Nearly all Mennonites are orderly and clean in their domestic life, sober and honest in their moral life and diligent and industrious in their economic life” (Contenius, cited in David G. Rempel, “Mennonite Migration to New Russia [II],” Mennonite Quarterly Review 9, no. 3 [July 1935], 109–128; 115).

Note 5: David G. Rowley, “‘Redeemer Empire’: Russian Millenarianism,” American Historical Review 104, no. 5 (1999), 1582–1602.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “‘Mennonites like to visit back and forth ... this is a principle of their religion’,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), June 12, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/mennonites-like-to-visit-back-and-forth.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...

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 ...

Eduard Wüst: A “Second Menno”?

Arguably the most significant outside religious influence on Mennonite s in the 19th century was the revivalist preaching of Eduard Wüst, a university-trained Württemberg Pietist minister installed by the separatist Evangelical Brethren Church in New Russia in 1843 ( note 1 ). With the end-time prophesies of a previous generation of Pietists (and many Mennonites) coming to naught, Wüst introduced Germans in this area of New Russia to the “New Pietism” and its more individualistic, emotional conversion experience and sermons on the free grace of God centred on the cross of Christ ( note 2 ). Wüst’s 1851 Christmas sermon series give a good picture of what was changing ( note 3 ). His core agenda was to dispel gloom (which maybe could describe more traditional Mennonites) and induce Christian joy. This is the root impulse of the Mennonite Brethren beginnings years later in 1860. “Satan is not entitled to present his own as the most joyful.” His people “sing, jump, leap ( hüpfen ) ...

1871: "Mennonite Tough Luck"

In 1868, a delegation of Prussian Mennonite elders met with Prussian Crown Prince Frederick in Berlin. The topic was universal conscription--now also for Mennonites. They were informed that “what has happened here is coming soon to Russia as well” ( note 1 ). In Berlin the secret was already out. Three years later this political cartoon appeared in a satirical Berlin newspaper. It captures the predicament of Russian Mennonites (some enticed in recent decades from Prussia), with the announcement of a new policy of compulsory, universal military service. “‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire—or: Mennonite tough luck.’ The Mennonites, who immigrated to Russia in order to avoid becoming soldiers in Prussia, are now subject to newly introduced compulsory military service.” ( Note 2 ) The man caught in between looks more like a Prussian than Russian Mennonite—but that’s beside the point. With the “Great Reforms” of the 1860s (including emancipation of serfs) the fundamentals were c...

Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (Holodomor), 1932-1933

In 2008 the Canadian Parliament passed an act declaring the fourth Saturday in November as “Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (‘Holodomor’) Memorial Day” ( note 1 ). Southern Ukraine was arguably the worst affected region of the famine of 1932–33, where 30,000 to 40,000 Mennonites lived ( note 2 ). The number of famine-related deaths in Ukraine during this period are conservatively estimated at 3.5 million ( note 3 ). In the early 1930s Stalin feared growing “Ukrainian nationalism” and the possibility of “losing Ukraine” ( note 4 ). He was also suspicious of ethnic Poles and Germans—like Mennonites—in Ukraine, convinced of the “existence of an organized counter-revolutionary insurgent underground” in support of Ukrainian national independence ( note 5 ). Ukraine was targeted with a “lengthy schooling” designed to ruthlessly break the threat of Ukrainian nationalism and resistance, and this included Ukraine’s Mennonites (viewed simply as “Germans”). Various causes combined to bring on w...

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...

Becoming German: Ludendorff Festivals in Molotschna, 1918

During the friendly German military occupation of Ukraine at the end of WWI, patriotic “Ludendorff Festivals” were encouraged by German forces to raise funds to support injured German soldiers. A first such festival in the Molotschna was held on June 25, 1918 in Ohrloff, and was attended by “a great many German officers, soldiers and colonists with music, [patriotic] speeches and social interaction” From the perspective of the German army press, the event was “extremely enjoyable;” it was accompanied with music by a 30-piece regiment orchestra, and beer, sausage, sandwiches, ice-cream, raspberries and cherries were sold. It closed with a “small dance,” raising 7,387 rubles or 9,850 German marks in donations ( note 1 ). Later that summer, a Ludendorff Festival in Halbstadt began with Sunday worship, followed by an early concert, games and performances by the Selbstschutz , as well as “entertainment and merriment of every kind,” with short plays and dancing into the morning ( note ...

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...

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 flo...

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