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.

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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.

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History of the Russian Mennonites

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