Land Scout Johann Bartsch and "the Smashed Violin," 1800

Around 1800 the Chortitza Flemish ministerial ordered Russian Mennonite former land scout/ deputy Johann Bartsch to destroy several family musical instruments including his violin. Playing an instrument was feared by leaders to be flirtation with the demonic. Bartsch apparently broke his violin in two and threw the pieces at the feet of “the guardians of the purity of faith” (note 1).

The Mennonite Historical Archives in Winnipeg has a painting of this dramatic incident created by descendent Henry Pauls, as well as a family document written about the event some generations later.

Here is a little more background.

Bartsch had a more refined or sensitive side than many of the first settlers, including his fellow deputy Jacob Höppner. The letters he wrote to his wife while he and Höppner were scouting land in Russia, 1786-87 have survived; they are eloquent, beautifully written, and indicate a high level of literacy (note 2).

Not long after settlement, Chortitza’s first elder David Epp seized leadership and power from the deputies, and both Höppner and Bartsch were soon placed under church discipline. Bartsch relented, but Höppner paid a steep price of arrest and imprisonment. Mennonites had no experience with self-government and they arrived without ministers. The community was dysfunctional from the first day (note 3).

The leadership struggle and conflict over music could have ended differently; but by all accounts Elder David Epp was a polarizing figure with a tainted past and uncanny ability to stir division (note 4). Bartsch lived until 1821 and unlike Höppner, he became melancholic and withdrew from community life--a broken man discarded by his people (note 5).

The actions of the Chortitza ministerial had precedent in their Prussian home congregations—but as discipline directed towards wayward youth or congregational members who owned a pub/inn. For example, in 1797 in Tiegenhagen Frisian Elder Heinrich Donner noted that he would not baptize two young people because the one played a violin at a wedding (note 6). New disciplinary measures in 1805 held the line: “No Mennonite innkeeper shall allow music in his guesthouse” (note 7).

The diary of Donner’s Flemish colleague Gerhard Wiebe shows a similar view towards instruments. He mentions congregants “bartending at ‘the Kruge’ with music and all manner of 'wicked things'”; leading a “immoral” lifestyle, and dancing in “the Lame Hand” pub (note 8). But these are different than the Chortitza case: Bartsch was neither young nor an innkeeper nor wild—but a pious, recognized leader who appreciated and loved music.

Older accounts of disciplining accomplished artists in the congregation are well documented. A century earlier Danzig Flemish Elder Georg Hansen threatened to ban painter Enoch Seemann, who in response tore up his paintings at the feet of ministers (note 9). Seemann’s portraits were consistent with the best of seventeenth-century Dutch portraiture painting (Mennonite congregations in Holland were well represented in the “Dutch Golden Age” of painting).

The Seemann conflict gave profile to the struggles of the church with early modernity. E.g., are God-created human beings primarily “individuals” responsible to fulfill their unique spiritual and intellectual potential, or called primarily to obey God and to test and live this out in mutual submission to the Christian community? Moreover: What are the limits to the authority of leaders in a believers’ church?

In his assessment of Mennonites in Polish-Prussia in the late 17th century, Edmund Kizik concludes that Mennonites began to pull back from society physically and psychologically; they became a “rather dour,” “unexciting religious community” (note 10)!

That may be overstated. But generally space in the church for the artist, poet or inventor to flourish and feed the soul of the church and serve their civic community was challenged far too often in the Mennonite story—and the church community became poorer for it.

The Bartsch "case of the smashed violin” stands for many others now lost in time. The painting and the story it portrays is a protest against the excesses of congregational discipline that had burdened Mennonites for generations in an attempt to achieve the impossible: a pure and spotless church.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: David G. Rempel, “From Danzig to Chortitza: The First Mennonite Migration,” Preservings 20 (June 2002), 18, https://www.plettfoundation.org/files/preservings/Preservings20.pdf. Also in Nick J. Kroeker, Erste Mennoniten Doerfer Russlands 1789–1943: Chortitza–Rosental (Vancouver, BC: Self-published, 1981), 49.

Note 2: Lawrence Klippenstein, “Four letters to Susanna from Johann Bartsch, a Danzig Mennonite Land Scout, 1786–1787,” Polish Review 54, no. 1 (2009), 31–59, https://web.archive.org/web/20170424033641/http:/mmhs.org/sites/default/files/0354iKlippensteinFINISHED.docx.

Note 3: See previous post (forthcoming)

Note 4: On Elder David Epp, see previous post, (forthcoming)

Note 5: Cf. David H. Epp, Die Chortitzer Mennoniten. Versuch einer Darstellung des Entwicklungsganges derselben (Odessa, 1889), 63, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Dok/Epp.pdf.

Note 6: Heinrich Donner and Johann Donner, "Orlofferfelde Chronik," transcribed by Werner Janzen, 2010, p. 54. From Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College, Newton, KS, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/cong_303/ok63/orlofferfeldechronik.html.

Note 7: Ibid., 65.

Note 8: Gerhard Wiebe, “Verzeichniß der gehaltenen Predigten samt andern vorgefallenen Merkwürdigkeiten in der Gemeine Gottes in Elbing und Ellerwald von Anno 1778 d. 1. Januar.” Transcriptions from the original by Willi Risto, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Buch/Risto1.pdf.

Note 9: On the Seeman controversy in Danzig, see previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2022/09/1690s-scandal-in-danzig-flemish-church.html.

Note 10: Edmund Kizik, “Religious freedom and the limits of social assimilation. The History of the Mennonites in Danzig and the Vistula Delta until their tragic end after World War II,” in From Martyr to Muppy (Mennonite Urban Professionals): A Historical Introduction to Cultural Assimilation Processes of a Religious Minority in the Netherlands, the Mennonites, edited by A. Hamilton et al., 48–64 (Amsterdam, NL: Amsterdam University Press, 1994), 51, https://archive.org/details/frommartyrtomupp0000unse.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “ Land Scout Johann Bartsch and 'the Smashed Violin,'” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), July 25, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/07/mennonites-queen-anthem-and-monarchy.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

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

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

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

“First Arrival of German Troops in Halbstadt” (Volksfreund, April 20, 1918)

“ April 19, 1918 will always remain significant in the history of the Molotschna German Colony. That which until recently could hardly be imagined has occurred: the German military has arrived to free us from the despotism, rape and pillaging of barbarous people and to reestablish the order and security of life and property--something desperately necessary for our land. For this we give thanks above all to the One in whose hands the peoples and nations and also individuals rest. ...” ( Note 1 ) Mennonites greeted their “guests and liberators” with festivities that included baked goods (Zwieback), meats and even the German anthem “ Deutschland, Deutschland über alles "—all before the watchful eyes of their Russian /Ukrainian neighbours. The troops arrived by train; and to the shock of most present, three bound prisoners—all well-known bandits and terrorists—“were brought out of one of the railway cars without any prior notice, lined up and shot right in front of us” as an exampl

“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

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog