Spiritual Snapshot of Liberated Mennonites in Ukraine: German Mennonite Theo Glück, 1942-43

Nazi German forces in Ukraine found Mennonites depleted and broken—physically, mentally, socially and spiritually—from Stalinist repression.

“Every individual initiative in them has been killed or stifled, because to be an individual is to be suspect, in danger of being reported. They hesitate to express any private opinions, fearing … spies are still at work” (note 1).

The 1942 Commando Dr. Stumpp village reports confirm an almost complete breakdown of social life. “Because of the many frictions on the collective [farm], each became weary and wary (überdrüssig) of the other.” “After collectivization, neighbours no longer wished to see their neighbours.” “If a few people got together, they were politically suspect. No one trusted each other anymore.” “Life on the collective farm embittered people, and they began to hate each other. Each lived for himself alone, in dreary brooding, without hope of a better future” and “happy if on a Sunday he can stay away from the community for a few hours and finally be alone to himself” (note 2).

Mennonite memoirs confirm the same:

• Abram Reimer: “Everybody watched his tongue, we Mennonites even more than the Russians (note 3).
• Katie Friesen: “We lived in fear of those who would take what little we had left. … not even neighbours and friends could be trusted. One never knew when one would become a scapegoat for the purposes of the state” (note 4).
• Victor Janzen: “[Y]ou did not know anymore whom you could trust. … Many a wound, inflicted in those days, is not quite healed even today” (note 5).
• Helene Dueck: “Honesty, diligence, brotherly love and willingness to help disappeared more and more. Everyone tried to get by in a selfish way, especially in the famine years when everything edible was scarce and thousands died of hunger. Many collaborated with the godless regime. They even betrayed their friends and relatives to save their lives. ... no one could be trusted. A wife often did not know what her husband was thinking, and the husband did not trust his own wife. Children would inform on their parents, and were praised for it at school. One did not know what was right and what was wrong, what was legal and what was illegal” (note 6).

When I lived in Europe two decades ago I met Theo Glück—already 90 years old. In WW2 he was chief paymaster in the Nazi German Airforce stationed for a year at Dnepropetrovsk—between Easter 1942 and 1943—and had good connections with recently liberated Soviet Mennonites. When I met him, he was a long-retired German Mennonite minister and peace activist (note 7).

During the war in 1944 Glück wrote about his encounters with Soviet Mennonites, as a type of plea to his Mennonite contemporaries to open their hearts to these co-religionists. 35,000 had now been evacuated from Ukraine to Warthegau (German-annexed Poland) together with a million other ethnic Germans. Those “who got to know the Mennonite settlements in the East recognized with astonishment and respect the high morals and unshakable character of these valuable people” (note 8).

In this diary-report Glück notes that in Dnepropetrovsk he met socially with a small group of Mennonite young adults who also worked for the occupying German forces. He writes that he was impressed with the questions they posed, with their genuine curiosity about Mennonite congregations in Germany, and about German Mennonite views on the state, church, as well as education. He observed that the Bible was not read regularly in many homes, and that “the old Christian custom of table grace had not yet become common practice again”—even a year after German liberation. The young adults did not know the basic tenants of the Christian faith, let alone the Bible, its books and concepts, or how to interpret it—something Glück and his circle of German Mennonite youth had pursued passionately and at a high level for years, especially in their circular letter (Rundbriefe) writing groups (note 9). While these Soviet Mennonites knew they were “Mennonite,” they had no idea what that meant or how it was unique.

Because of Glück’s piety and rootedness in the church, the Soviet Mennonites asked him about God; they wanted to believe in God’s existence—despite, or in spite, of their atheist education, he wrote. But these youth understood God as something distant, not as a personally present being. Their bitter life experiences brought out the larger existential questions, Glück noted: If God exists, then why this war and why is there suffering and evil in the world?

While they were quite able to explain intellectually the differences between Bolshevism and National Socialism, Glück tried to emphasize to them that Christian faith as “attachment to God” was something altogether different from a worldview. Glück also took efforts to explain the spiritual and intellectual developments in Germany since the Great War. “All of this was completely new to them. Some things seemed unbelievable to them at first; many things excited them.” Notably at this point Glück held faith in God and in the Nazi German leader close together.

Glück was aware that under Stalin Mennonites could not speak of their faith but felt that their “practical Christianity” explicitly communicated their religious attitude and religious thinking. Glück praised the parents and grandparents whose faith withstood the years of intimidation and atheistic propaganda and, despite much human weakness, “passed” the test.

Again, in his report Glück pointed to their “practical Christianity”—a term preferred by the Nazi regime—though employed differently.

Glück connected Mennonite faith and Germanness, convinced that it was their quiet faith that had allowed them to preserve their Germanness—something which the Nazi occupying forces praised. "Practical Christianity" as it has taken shape in the character and life of their own parents, their grandparents, etc., had had a deep formative and communal impact on the Mennonite youth, in his judgement. For him it was incontrovertible proof that their faith was the real reason why Black Sea Mennonites were most successful—according to official reports—in preserving their “Germanness” (95% compared to 50 to 60% among German Catholics in the same region). Their ardent love for the German homeland and the German people is not disconnected from the faith that lives in their hearts, according to Glück.

A long-time observer of Mennonites abroad, and most recently principal of two ethnic German teachers’ colleges in the Ukraine Karl Götz, advised SS superiors in a confidential report that, in his opinion, Mennonite leaders in Germany would be able to guide the Russian Mennonites over time toward an appropriate and “thoroughly German religiosity (Gottgläubigkeit). Their desire is for the divine, for awe before the Almighty, the inconceivable, the sublime. Mennonite leaders are now working to lead the world of Mennonitism (Mennonitentum) toward this German god-believing, religious attitude” (note 10).

These "spiritual snapshots" of Mennonites in Ukraine by a German Mennonite—himself wandering in their own toxic ideological fog—are important reminders of the world from which some Russian Mennonites emerged 80 or so years ago.

Notably after the war, Glück inspired new generations of Mennonite to embrace a global Anabaptist vision as advocates for peace and nonviolence.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Photos: Search WWW on Herbert List, pictures of occupied Ukraine. On List's work during this period, see: https://www.libraryhist.com/2022/09/herbert-lists-pictures-from-german.html.

Note 1: Anonymous, “Zwischen Odessa and Perekop in den ersten Monaten des deusche-russischen Krieges,” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1949, cited in Anne Konrad, Red Quarter Moon: A Search for Family in the Shadow of Stalin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 151.

Note 2: “Adelsheim (Chortitza) Dorfbericht,” sec. VII (f), 348b [4] (the Hochfeld, Neuhorst, and Nikolaifeld village reports also use the term “überdrüssig” to describe relationships within their respective village); “Blumengart (Chortitza) Dorfbericht,” sec. VII (f), 484b [4]; “Chortitza Dorfbericht,” sec. VII (f), 7b [4]; “Katharinovka (Borosenko) Dorfbericht,” sec. VII (g), 2b [4]; “Kronstal (Chortitza) Dorfbericht,” sec. VII (f), 443b [4]. From 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; copies posted in State Electronic Archive of Ukraine, https://tsdea.aewrchives.gov.ua/deutsch/.

Note 3: Eduard Allert (pseud), “The Lost Generation," in The Lost Generation and other Stories, edited by Gerhard Lohrenz, 9–128 (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1982), 30. Cf. fuller German original: Eduard [Abram] Reimer, unpublished memoir (n.d.), from Mennonite Heritage Archive, Gerhard Lohrenz Fonds, 60, no. 63, vol. 3333.

Note 4: Katie Friesen, Into the Unknown (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1986), 29.

Note 5: Victor Janzen, From the Dniepr to the Paraguay River (Winnipeg, MB: Self-published, 1995), 27.

Note 6: Helene Dueck, Durch Trübsal und Not (Winnipeg, MB: Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 1995), 16f., https://archive.org/details/durch-truebsal-und-not/mode/2up.

Note 7: “Glück, Theo (Theodor),” MennLex V, https://www.mennlex.de/doku.php?id=art:glueck_theo.

Note 8: Theo Glück, “Bei den Mennoniten in der Ukraine. Aus einer Niederschrift im Jahre 1944,” Mennonitischer Gemeinde-Kalender (1956), 26–32, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Christlicher%20Gemeinde-Kalender/1951-1970/DSCF7522.JPG.

Note 9: Cf. Imanuel Baumann, “Die ‘Mennonitische Jugend-Rundbrief-Gemeinschaft’ und die nationalsozialistische ‘Machtergreifung,’” in Mennoniten in der NS-Zeit. Stimmen, Lebenssituationen, Erfahrungen, edited by Astrid von Schlachta, 90–107 (Bolanden-WLieierhof: Mennonitischer Geschichtsverein, 2017); for samples, see Mitteilungen des Mennonitischen Jugend-Rund-Briefes, Group 12, Round 2, from Mennonite Library and Archives- Bethel College, MS 165, box 48, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_165/box%2048%20Rundbriefe/.

Note 10: Karl Götz, Das Schwarzmeerdeutschtum: Die Mennoniten (Posen: NS-Druck Wartheland, 1944), 11f. From BA R 187/267a, Bundesarchiv Berlin; copies in multiple places, including https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1944 and https://chortitza.org/pdf/0v772.pdf. On Götz and the booklet (with translation), see Benjamin Goossen, “‘A Small World Power’: How the Nazi Regime Viewed Mennonites,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 92, no. 2 (2018), 173–206, https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goossen/files/goossen_a_small_world_power_2018.pdf.

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Spiritual Snapshot of Liberated Mennonites in Ukraine: German Mennonite Theo Glück, 1943-43," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), June 11, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/spiritual-snapshot-of-liberated.html.