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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 attend classes very regularly.”

The training of teachers was now largely uniform. Almost all teachers in the reports had completed a four-year Zentralschule (high school) program in either Ohrlof, Halbstadt, or Gnadenfeld. Beyond this, most had also completed two post-secondary years of pedagogical training in Halbstadt—a program begun in 1878. A few of these teachers had done something equivalent in Chortitza, Kharkov, Berdjansk, Melitipol, Odessa, or Pavlograd. A minority of villages still appointed teachers who had not yet completed teacher training, including in Elisabethtal, Friedensruh, Großweide, Kleefeld, Klippenfeld, Landskrone, Marienthal, Nikolaidorf, Schardau and Waldheim. There may be more between the lines, because we know that one of those auxiliary teachers, the young Jacob H. Janzen, in Rudnerweide, was unusually gifted and on his way to becoming a leading educator, poet, playwright and later minister and elder.

All teachers were men, except for one Russian Orthodox auxiliary teacher in the Neu Halbstadt Girls School. The trustee of this school was the wealthy heiress Anna Schröder Franz. Not only Neu-Halbstadt, but Gnadenfeld, Sparrau, and Halbstadt also had a Russian Orthodox auxiliary teacher. Teacher David Dirks, born in Indonesia as a missionary child, had studied theology in Basel, Switzerland. Some schools had a small number of Lutheran or Catholic students.

Payment for teachers was not regulated yet—most were given a house attached to the school, plus a small salary in addition to defined contributions of farm products and the use of a small plot of land. A decade earlier an external assessment concluded that remuneration was “sufficient to support a teacher even with a larger family,” i.e., between 200 and 500 rubles per year in addition to some benefits (note 2). Not surprisingly, the specialized teachers in the school for the deaf--trained in Frankfurt, Germany—received the highest salary.

The wealthiest Mennonites often had their own small schools on their estates or estate clusters. In the 1890s Hochfeld, Neuteich, Rosenhof and Rykopol employed younger teachers with no teacher training. With very few exceptions “sports” was not taught in any villages, but it was practiced in the estate schools. In each case it was the “not fully qualified teachers” doing sports.

Notably almost all teachers were under the age of 40. A generation of older teachers with only Zentralschule training had been almost wholly retired and replaced. An outlier: lead teacher at the Neu Halbstadt Girls School was 62 years-of-age.

In 1881, all schools in the former German settlements were officially transferred to the Ministry of National Education and school boards lost the relative autonomy they had enjoyed. Teachers were now required to pass exams set by the state, and by 1891 pass state exams in Russian language. Graduates from schools with approved curricula could have their period of mandatory civil service reduced from six years to four. This could be reduced by a further year if they graduated from an approved high school—a strong incentive for Mennonite youth to study. The proviso put significant pressure on the board to redraw its curriculum and teacher qualifications to meet both the conditions of the state and the internal formational needs of the Mennonite faith and ethnic community. Though this intrusion by the state was not welcomed initially, it resulted in the formation of highly competent teachers, greater respect for teachers and their opinions, better local remuneration, and a broad awareness of the challenges of Mennonite self-preservation—including the need for better educated congregational leaders (note 3). Only after the 1905 revolution was a teachers’ union or association formed in Molotschna, which was joined by almost all area teachers (note 4).

At the Mennonite high school in Ohrloff, students under teacher J. J. Bräul used a 200-page Russian language theory text, as well as a 330-page Russian and world history text. Graduates were required to speak Russian correctly and fluently and write a large paper in Russian on an advanced topic without errors in grammar, spelling or sentence structure (note 5). An external examiner chaired the examinations, and by 1888 all 56 Molotschna village schoolteachers with only a few exceptions were graduates of this system. By order of government school inspectors, Mennonite representatives also participated in larger pedagogical conferences with academic papers, together with educators of nearby German colonies; this apparently proved satisfying for all (note 6). A visiting Prussian Mennonite colleague observed that Molotschna teacher-candidates were, in general, “comparable to the teacher-candidates from the Prussian teacher colleges (Lehrerseminaren)”: weaker in music, science and drawing, equal in geography, history, and mathematics, and superior in language and literature, mastering both the German and Russian materials (note 7). The same observer praised village school teachers for “the patience and effort required to train nine- to fourteen-year-olds in one of the most difficult European languages to the point that they can understand what they read, and freely discuss it orally as well as in writing” (note 8). 

In 1900, about three percent of Mennonites between ten and nineteen years of age were receiving secondary education—similar to Germany and higher than Great Britain. By 1914 that soared to fifteen percent—significantly higher than Germany and Britain, and similar to the United States (note 9). Literacy levels were the hallmarks of progress for Western nations, and by 1897 Mennonites had an almost hundred percent literacy rate for both males and females, whereas only about twenty-eight percent of Russians could read and write.

Excursus:

Whereas preachers had been traditionally elected from those with land and sufficient wealth to carry out their duties without remuneration, now there was a clear shift to the calling and election of teachers into those roles (note 10).

Village teachers not only completed two years of pedagogical training, but their high school examinations included detailed testing of Bible knowledge including the cultural-historical, geographical, and contextual knowledge of the Old and New Testaments; knowledge of the author, composition, goal, and contents of individual biblical books; ability to interpret five to seven Psalms, five chapters of prophetic Old Testament books, the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew and two sections of the Acts of the Apostles. Moreover, graduates had to give a chronological ordering of the life of Jesus, were tested on the basis of the standard German Protestant school church history text by Ottobald Bischoff, as well as on Mennonite church history and its theology using the catechism. Finally, teacher-candidates were tested in music and church hymnody, and were required to interpret eighteen hymns (note 11).

This laid a solid foundation not only for Mennonite teachers, but also for the election of competent lay-preachers, and the opportunity for a select few to pursue advanced studies in theology in Germany or Switzerland, or in other disciplines at Russian universities.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Glenn Penner and Wilhelm Friesen, trans., “Reports on Molotschna Mennonite Settlement Schools: 1895/96 and 1897/98.” From Odessa State Archives, Fond 89, Opis 1, Delo 3232 3258. Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive, reel 71. Posted by Richard D. Thiessen, https://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/Molotschna_Schools_1896_and_1898.pdf. Cf. also Abraham Görz, Die Schulen in den Mennoniten-Kolonien an der Molotschna im südlichen Russland, edited by the Molotschner Mennoniten-Kirchenkonvent (Berdjansk, 1882), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/?file=Pis/Goerz.pdf; Peter J. Braun, Der Molotschnaer Mennoniten-Schulrat, 1869–1919. Zum Gedenktag seines 50jährigen Bestehens, edited by Wladimir Süss (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001).

Note 2: Wilhelm Neufeld, “Unterrichtswesen unter den Mennoniten in Rußland,” in Jahrbuch der Altevangelischen Taufgesinnten oder Mennoniten-Gemeinden, edited by H. G. Mannhardt, 134–143 (Danzig, 1888), 136, https://books.google.ca/books?id=ok5FAQAAMAAJ&dq.

Note 3: George K. Epp, Geschichte der Mennoniten in Rußland, vol. 3 (Lage: Logos, 2003), 137-140.

Note 4: Cf. “Gründerversammlung des Molotschnaer Lehrervereins,” reprinted in Mennonitische Volkswarte 2, no. 3 (March 1936), 88–90, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/vpetk351.pdf.

Note 5: On J. J. Bräul, cf. Epp, Geschichte der Mennoniten III, 131; P. M. Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789-1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), 716f., https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/; Neuer Haus- und Landwirthschafts-Kalender Rußland auf das Jahr 1906 (Odessa: Nitzsche, 1905), 82, https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bvb:355-ubr13400-7; A. Kröker, Christlicher Familienkalender 21 (1919), 64, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Pis/CFK19a.pdf; Heinrich F. Goerz, The Molotschna Settlement, trans. by Al Reimer and John B. Toews (Winnipeg, MB: CMBC, 1993), 195; GAMEO, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Br%C3%A4ul,_Johann_J._(1854-1916).

Note 6: Mennonitische Rundschau 4, no. 36 (September 5, 1883), 1, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1883-09-05_4_36. 

Note 7: W. Neufeld, “Unterrichtswesen unter den Mennoniten,” 136.

Note 8: W. Neufeld, “Unterrichtswesen unter den Mennoniten,” 136.

Note 9: Cf. James Urry, “Prolegomena to the Study of Mennonite Society in Russia 1880–1914,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 8 (1990), 57, https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/658/658.

Note 10: See the example of Jacob H. Janzen noted above; for more: https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Janzen,_Jacob_H._(1878-1950). An earlier example of the shift can be seen in the election of the school teacher Heinrich D. Epp as minister in Chortitza in 1864. He served as chair of the Chortitza School Board for seven years, and then as Elder of the Chortitza Church for the last eleven years of his life, 1885 to 1896. Cf. Heinrich Epp, Kirchenältester der Mennonitengemeinde zu Chortitza (Südrußland) (Leipzig: Prieß, 1897), 15, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/vpetk218.pdf.

Note 11: W. Neufeld, “Unterrichtswesen unter den Mennoniten,” 138f.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "School Reports, 1890s," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), June 10, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/school-reports-1890s.html.

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