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

What is the Church to Say? Letter 4 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accurate and carefully considered. ~ANF Preparing for your next AGM: Mennonite Congregations and Deportations Many U.S. Mennonite pastors voted for Donald Trump, whose signature promise was an immediate start to “the largest deportation operation in American history.” Confirmed this week, President Trump will declare a national emergency and deploy military assets to carry this out. The timing is ideal; in January many Mennonite congregations have their Annual General Meeting (AGM) with opportunity to review and update the bylaws of their constitution. Need help? We have related examples from our tradition, which I offer as a template, together with a few red flags. First, your congregational by-laws. It is unlikely you have undocumented immigrants in your congregation, but you should flag this. Model: Gustav Reimer, a deacon and notary public from the ...

Catherine the Great’s 1763 Manifesto

“We must swarm our vast wastelands with people. I do not think that in order to achieve this it would be useful to compel our non-Christians to accept our faith--polygamy for example, is even more useful for the multiplication of the population. … "Russia does not have enough inhabitants, …but still possesses a large expanse of land, which is neither inhabited nor cultivated. … The fields that could nourish the whole nation, barely feeds one family..." – Catherine II (Note 1 ) “We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade, they are also most convenient for the development and growth of many kinds ...

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 ...

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...

"They are useful to the state." An almost forgotten Prussian view of Mennonites, ca. 1780s-90s

In 1787 Mennonite interest for emigration was extremely strong outside the quasi independent City of Danzig in the Prussian annexed Marienwerder and Elbing regions. Even before the land scouts Johann Bartsch and Jacob Höppner had returned from Russia later that year, so many Mennonite exit applications had flooded offices that officials wrote Berlin in August 1787 for direction ( note 1a ). Initially officials did not see a problem: because Mennonites do not provide soldiers, the cantons lose nothing by their departure, and in fact benefit from the ten-percent tax imposed on financial assets leaving the state. Ludwig von Baczko (1756-1823), Professor of History at the Artillery Academy in Königsberg, East Prussia, was the general editor of a series that included a travelogue through Prussia written by a certain Karl Ephraim Nanke. Nanke had no special love for Mennonites, but was generally balanced in his judgements and based his now almost forgotten account of Mennonites on perso...

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...

German Village on the Dnieper: Occupation Propaganda Photos. Chortitza, 1943

The following propaganda photos are of the Mennonites community in Chortitz, Ukraine during German occupation in World War II. German armies reached the Mennonite villages on the west bank of the Dnieper River on August 17, 1941. The photos below were taken almost two years later. However the war was already turning, and within two months the trek out of Ukraine would begin. The photographs are accompanied by an article about the Low-German speakers of Chortitza for a readership in the Reich ( note 1 ). The author repeatedly draws on the myth of one-sided German pioneer accomplishments abroad: “The first settlers found the land desolate and empty,” the reader is told, and were “left to fend for themselves in a foreign environment” where with German diligence, order and cleanliness they thrived. The article correctly recognizes the great losses of the ethnic Germans under Bolshevism--as if to convince readers that the war is a shared burden of all Germans, and which is now payin...

Flooding as a weapon of war, 1657

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these maps speak volumes. In February 1657, the Swedish King Carolus Gustavus ordered an intentional breach of the embankments along the Vistula River to completely flood the villages of the Danzig Werder. See the vivid punctures and water flow in 1657 map below; compare with the 1730 maps with rebuilt villages and farms ( note 1 ). In Polish memory this war is appropriately remembered as "The Deluge". Villages in the Danzig Werder (delta) from which Mennonites immigrated to Russia include: Quadendorf, Reichenberg, Krampitz, Neunhuben, Hochzeit, Scharfenberg, Wotzlaff, Landau, Schönau, Nassenhuben, Mönchengrebin, and Nobel ( note 2 ). In the war the suburbs outside the gates of Danzig suffered most; Mennonites lived here in large numbers, e.g., in Alt Schottland and Stoltzenberg. First, these villages were completely razed by the City of Danzig to keep the invading Swedes from using the villages to their advantage in battle. ...

Molotschna: The final months, Summer 1943

These photos are from German propaganda material filmed in Molotschna (called "Halbstadt") in 1943—just a few months before the evacuation from Ukraine and trek to German-annexed Poland (Warthegau). Not all of the film is of the Mennonite settlement, however, but much of it is. Below are some frames from the film. The edited shorter version is of higher quality and designed as propaganda to be consumed by Germans in the Reich and to secure their approval . The scenes are marked by cleanliness, orderliness and discipline. There is economic activity, a model Kindergarten, and always happy ethnic German people in the newly occupied territories. A predominantly Mennonite Cavalry Regiment (Waffen-SS) guarding Ukrainian and Russian workers is also highlighted. This hard to see and disturbing. Anything that may have been good here for Mennonites meant enslavement, hunger and death for untold numbers of others. Two versions of the film are available: Shorter (edited for l...

Nazi German love for Mennonites in Ukraine. Why?

For Mennonites the dramatic and massive invasion of USSR by German forces in Summer/Fall 1941 meant liberation from Soviet state terror and answer to prayer. Nazi Germany spared neither money nor personnel to free, feed, cloth, protect, heal and educate the Soviet Union’s ethnic Germans—and Mennonites in particular. Mennonite memoirs, village reports and EWZ (naturalization applications) autobiographies are consistent with praise for the German Reich and its leader. From the highest levels, goodwill, care and patience towards ethnic Germans was policy. Reichsführer -SS Heinrich Himmler was also named by Hitler as Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood . This authorized Himmler and his para-military SS to oversee and coordinate the Germanization, resettlements and population transfers which came with the invasion and partial annexation of Poland (Warthegau), and later occupation plans for parts of Ukraine and Russia. The VoMi ( Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle )...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog