Mennonites, the Queen, the Anthem and Monarchy Generally

For most Canadians, Queen Elizabeth II had been omnipresent their entire lives: on our coins, bills and stamps. In school in the 1960s and early -70s, my generation sang "God Save the Queen" every other day in class, and "O Canada" on the other days. A portrait of the Queen was in every classroom.

I vividly remember lining Niagara Street in St. Catharines as a school child in 1973 when the Queen came whizzing through in a black limo in the rain to get to Niagara-on-the-Lake, the first capital of Upper Canada, now full of Mennonite farms. That black limo was owned by a wealthy Mennonite fruit farmer—my relative Isbrand Boese!

It is not outside the tradition for Mennonites to sing “God save the Queen/King”. On Sunday, September 20, 1937, 700 people gathered in the Coaldale Mennonite Church (Alberta), and the service concluded with the singing of national anthem ["God save the King”] (note 1). Mennonites organized this celebration to give thanks and to honour 81-year-old Col. J. S. Dennis, long-time commissioner of colonization for the Canadian Pacific Railway. He had been instrumental in transporting and settling Mennonites in Western Canada in the 1920s, but also in the 1870s as well. The 1937 service was led by immigration leaders B. B. Janz and David Toews. “It was a most impressive ceremony throughout, notable particularly for the spirit of thanksgiving which pervaded it.”

Similarly in June 1939, when B. B. Janz’s Mennonite Brethren congregation in Coaldale dedicated their large, new church building. A number of public officials were present, and Janz “asked the congregation to rise and sing the National Anthem [God save the King], which concluded a very inspiring and impressive service, permeated with a spirit of thankfulness throughout”. At the time Janz and some others were eager to show that the sympathies of Canadian Mennonites lie with the British monarch, not the German leader Hitler (note 2).

For those who came to Canada in the 1870s too, privileges were sought and granted by the crown. When first scouting out land in Canada, Frank H. Epp’s history notes that “the sales pitch included liberal references to Queen Victoria, herself a German, and to her daughter, who had married the heir to the German crown” (note 3). Upon settlement her representative Lord Dufferin communicated to Mennonites “in the name of Queen Victoria and the empire” that they “are as welcome to our affection as you are to our lands, to our liberties and freedom … you will find protection, peace, civil and religious liberty, constitutional freedom and equal laws’” (note 4). They were settlers—colonists—oblivious in some ways to the brutality of colonialism on Indigenous peoples. But as in Russia, so in the British empire, their assumption was that under a good monarch all people groups would be protected and would flourish.

Deep down, Russian Mennonites were monarchists.

In Russia, every Mennonite school room had a picture of the Tsar. P.M. Friesen's iconic history of Mennonites in Russia opens with a picture of the Tsar. Apparently most homes had one too at the turn of the century.

Not surprisingly in May 1904 at the centennial anniversary of the founding of the Molotschna Colony, Gnadenfeld Elder Heinrich Dirks praised both God and Tsar after which worshippers sang the national anthem in the Gnadenfeld Mennonite Church (note 5). The 1911 Mennonite Ministers’ Manual for elders (bishops) and preachers in Russia includes sample sermons and prayers for “crown feast days,” i.e., services for celebrating royal coronations, accession to the throne, and royal birthdays. A sample service for the blessing of young men entering alternative service units includes the singing of the Russian national anthem (note 6). The Manual emphasizes that government authority / Tsar is God’s appointed and anointed servant to control evil, promote the good, preserve order and security; it is God’s compliant instrument to help build, extend, fortify and promote the kingdom of heaven on earth. Ministers are to teach that Christians not only give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but also pray for, intercede, bless, love, honour, fear, be subject to, obey, and follow the Tsar, so that they might live a quiet and peaceful life, and live out their faith and calling to be a “light to the world” and “the salt of the earth.”

The sudden death of a monarch was an emotional experience for Russian Mennonites. In March 1881 when Tsar Alexander II was assassinated, Mennonites expressed great grief upon hearing the news. They marked the Tsar’s death with special worship services, condemnations of the evil mob, hymns of grief written in honour of the “Father of the Nation,” and letters to the Mennonitische Rundschau telling relatives of their grief and “irreplaceable loss” at the hands of “democrats” (note 7). As with the previous generation, there was a lively sense that the purposes of God were at work in and through the Russian Royal Family, through whom God’s kingdom is glorified on earth.

In 2022 Mennonites in Canada processed the loss of their Queen—with an emotion that makes the monarchy of previous Mennonite generations a little more understandable.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1 (and pic): Lethbridge Herald 30, no. 237 (September 20, 1937), 1, 3, https://digitallibrary.uleth.ca/digital/collection/herald/id/153258/rec/1.

Note 2: Lethbridge Herald (July 5, 1939), 14, https://digitallibrary.uleth.ca/digital/collection/herald/id/162537/rec/1; cf. Benjamin B. Janz, “Am I a National Socialist?,” in “Canadian Mennonites Loyal to New Fatherland, Leader of Coaldale Colony Declares,” Lethbridge Herald (June 1, 1940), 14, https://digitallibrary.uleth.ca/digital/collection/herald/id/167501/rec/13. German: “Bin Ich National Sozialist? Bewahre!,” Mennonitische Rundschau 62, no. 2 (January 11, 1939), 4–5, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1939-01-11_62_2/page/n3/mode/2up.

Note 3: Frank Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1786–1920: The History of a Separate People (Toronto: MacMillan, 1974), 191, https://uwaterloo.ca/grebel/sites/ca.grebel/files/uploads/files/mic_ireduced.pdf.

Note 4: F. Epp, Mennonites in Canada, vol. 1, p. 218.

Note 5: Heinrich Dirks, “Die Centenarfeier der Molotschnaansiedlung," Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1904 2 (1905), 18, https://chortitza.org/kb/mj1904.pdf.

Note 6: Handbuch zum Gebrauch bei gottesdienstlichen Handlungen zunächst für die Aeltesten und Prediger der Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Rußland, edited by the Allgemeiner Konferenz der Mennoniten in Rußland (Berdjansk: Ediger, 1911), https://mla.bethelks.edu/books/264.097%20Al34h/.

Note 7: Cf. letters from the villages of Fabrikerweise (Mennonitische Rundschau I, no. 23 [May 1, 1881] 1, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1881-05-01_1_23/mode/2up?q=alexander), Schönau and Halbstadt (MR I, no. 22 [April 15, 1881], 1, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1881-04-15_1_22/), and Grossweide (MR II, no. 1 [June 1, 1881], 1, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1881-06-01_2_1/mode/2up).

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Mennonites, the Queen, the Anthem and Monarch Generally,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), July 15, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/07/mennonites-queen-anthem-and-monarchy.html.

Comments

The End of Schardau (and other Molotschna villages), 1941

My grandmother was four-years old when her parents moved from Petershagen, Molotschna to Schardau in 1908. This story is larger than that of Schardau, but tells how this village and many others in Molotschna were evacuated by Stalin days before the arrival of German troops in 1941. -ANF The bridge across the Dnieper at Chortitza was destroyed by retreating Soviet troops on August 18, 1941 and the hydroelectric dam completed near Einlage in 1932 was also dynamited by NKVD personnel—killing at least 20,000 locals downstream, and forcing the Germans to cross further south at Nikopol. For the next six-and-a-half weeks, the old Mennonite settlement area of Chortitza was continuously shelled by Soviet troops from Zaporozhje on the east side of the river ( note 1 ). The majority of Russian Germans in Crimea and Ukraine paid dearly for Germany’s Blitzkrieg and plans for racially-based population resettlements. As early as August 3, 1941, the Supreme Command of the Soviet Forces received noti...

Mennonites in Danzig's Suburbs: Maps and Illustrations

Mennonites first settled in the Danzig suburb of Schottland (lit: "Scotland"; “Stare-Szkoty”; also “Alt-Schottland”) in the mid-1500s. “Danzig” is the oldest and most important Mennonite congregation in Prussia. Menno Simons visited Schottland and Dirk Phillips was its first elder and lived here for a time. Two centuries later the number of families from the suburbs of Danzig that immigrated to Russia was not large: Stolzenberg 5, Schidlitz 3, Alt-Schottland 2, Ohra 1, Langfuhr 1, Emaus 1, Nobel 1, and Krampetz 2 ( map 1 ). However most Russian Mennonites had at least some connection to the Danzig church—whether Frisian or Flemish—if not in the 1700s, then in 1600s. Map 2 is from 1615; a larger number of Mennonites had been in Schottland at this point for more than four decades. Its buildings are not rural but look very Dutch urban/suburban in style. These were weavers, merchants and craftsmen, and since the 17th century they lived side-by-side with a larger number of Jews a...

Russia: A Refuge for all True Christians Living in the Last Days

If only it were so. It was not only a fringe group of Russian Mennonites who believed that they were living the Last Days. This view was widely shared--though rejected by the minority conservative Kleine Gemeinde. In 1820 upon the recommendation of Rudnerweide (Frisian) Elder Franz Görz, the progressive and influential Mennonite leader Johann Cornies asked the Mennonite Tobias Voth (b. 1791) of Graudenz, Prussia to come and lead his Agricultural Association’s private high school in Ohrloff, in the Russian Mennonite colony of Molotschna. Voth understood this as nothing less than a divine call upon his life ( note 1; pic 3 ). In Ohrloff Voth grew not only a secondary school, but also a community lending library, book clubs, as well as mission prayer meetings, and Bible study evenings. Voth was the son of a Mennonite minister and his wife was raised Lutheran ( note 2 ). For some years, Voth had been strongly influenced by the warm, Pietist devotional fiction writings of Johann Heinrich Ju...

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 ...

Mennonite-Designed Mosque on the Molotschna

The “Peter J. Braun Archive" is a mammoth 78 reel microfilm collection of Russian Mennonite materials from 1803 to 1920 -- and largely still untapped by researchers ( note 1 ). In the files of Philipp Wiebe, son-in-law and heir to Johann Cornies, is a blueprint for a mosque ( pic ) as well as another file entitled “Akkerman Mosque Construction Accounts, 1850-1859” ( note 2 ). The Molotschna Mennonites were settlers on traditional Nogai lands; their Nogai neighbours were a nomadic, Muslim Tartar group. In 1825, Cornies wrote a significant anthropological report on the Nogai at the request of the Guardianship Committee, based largely on his engagements with these neighbours on Molotschna’s southern border ( note 3 ). Building upon these experiences and relationships, in 1835 Cornies founded the Nogai agricultural colony “Akkerman” outside the southern border of the Molotschna Colony. Akkerman was a projection of Cornies’ ideal Mennonite village outlined in exacting detail, with un...

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 ...

Volendam and the Arrival in South America, 1947

The Volendam arrived at the port in Buenos Aires, Argentina on February 22, 1947, at 5 PM, exactly three weeks after leaving from Bremerhaven. They would be followed by three more refugee ships in 1948. The harassing experiences of refugee life were now truly far behind them. Curiously a few months later the American Embassy in Moscow received a formal note of protest claiming that Mennonites, who were Soviet citizens, had been cleared by the American military in Germany for emigration to Paraguay even though the Soviet occupation forces “did not (repeat not) give any sanction whatever for the dispatch of Soviet citizens to Paraguay” ( note 1 ). But the refugees knew that they were beyond even Stalin’s reach and, despite many misgivings about the Chaco, believed they were the hands of good people and a sovereign God. In Buenos Aires the Volendam was anticipated by North American Mennonite Central Committee workers responsible for the next leg of the resettlement journey. Elisabeth ...

On Becoming the Quiet in the Land

They are fair questions: “What happened to the firebrands of the Reformation? How did the movement become so withdrawn--even "dour and unexciting,” according to one historian? Mennonites originally referred to themselves as the “quiet in the land” in contrast to the militant--definitely more exciting--militant revolutionaries of Münster ( note 1 ), and identification with Psalm 35:19f.: “Let not my enemies gloat over me … For they do not speak peace, but they devise deceitful schemes against those who live quietly in the land.” How did Mennonites become the “quiet in the land” in Royal Prussia? Minority non-citizen groups in Poland like Jews, Scots, Huguenots or the much smaller body of Mennonites did not enjoy full political or economic rights as citizens. Ecclesial and civil laws left linguistic or religious minorities vulnerable to extortion. Such groups sought to negotiate a Privilegium or charter with the king, which set out a legal basis for some protections of life an...

What were Molotschna Mennonites reading in the early 1840s?

Johann Cornies expanded his Agricultural Society School library in Ohrloff to become a lending library “for the instruction and better enlightenment of every adult resident.” The library was overseen by the Agricultural Society; in 1845, patrons across the colony paid 1 ruble annually to access its growing collection of 355 volumes (see note 1 ). The great majority of the volumes were in German, but the library included Russian and some French volumes, with a large selection of handbooks and periodicals on agronomy and agriculture—even a medical handbook ( note 2 ). Philosophical texts included a German translation of George Combe’s The Constitution of Man ( note 3 ) and its controversial theory of phrenology, and the political economist Johann H. G. Justi’s Ergetzungen der vernünftigen Seele —which give example of the high level of reading and reflection amongst some colonists. The library’s teaching and reference resources included a history of science and technology with an accomp...

Fraktur (or Gothic) font and Kurrent- (or Sütterlin) handwriting: Nazi ban, 1941

In the middle of the war on January 1, 1942, the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Rundschau published a new issue without the familiar Fraktur script masthead ( note 1 ). One might speculate on the reasons, but a year earlier Hitler banned the use of the font in the Reich . The Rundschau did not exactly follow all orders from Berlin—the rest of the paper was in Fraktur (sometimes referred to as "Gothic"); when the war ended in 1945, the Rundschau reintroduced the Fraktur font for its masthead. It wasn’t until the 1960s that an issue might have a page or title here or there with the “normal” or Latin font, even though post-war Germany was no longer using Fraktur . By 1973 only the Rundschau masthead is left in Fraktur , and that is only removed in December 1992. Attached is a copy of Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann's official letter dated January 3, 1941, which prohibited the use of Fraktur fonts "by order of the Führer. " Why? It was a Jewish invention, apparent...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog