Russo-Japanese War and the Mennonite Response, 1904-05

In February 1904, Russia declared war on Japan and Mennonite congregations sent the Tsar messages of loyalty, love and prayers. The large Lichtenau-Petershagen-Schönsee congregation in the Mennonite Molotschna Colony in today’s Ukraine led by 80-year-old Elder (Bishop) Jakob Töws expressed its “deep loyalty and love for the throne and the Fatherland” (note 1).

Similarly, the Mennonite Chortitza congregation declared that Mennonites bow “humbly before the Imperial Majesty with most faithful love and devotion,” and “together with all faithful subjects send their most passionate prayers and supplications to the Most High, that He may extend his mighty hand over the beloved Tsar and the Russian people, and that peace may soon be returned” (note 2).

The Einlage Mennonite Brethren congregation offered a similar statement, “inspired by feelings of boundless dedication to the Sovereign Fatherland,” with “passionate prayers” for the Tsar and Fatherland, based on 1 Timothy 2:1–4 (note 3).

At the centennial anniversary of the founding of the Molotschna Colony two months later, Elder Heinrich Dirks praised both God and Tsar after which—not surprisingly—worshippers sang the Russian national anthem in his Gnadenfeld church (note 4).

In part because neighbouring ethnic German reservists in Russia had also been mobilized for the war, Mennonites sought to demonstrate their willingness to help “carry the load of the Fatherland” as well (note 5). In order to show their “deep gratitude” to Tsar, Fatherland and army, services of prayer and solidarity were held (note 6), and Molotschna Mennonites agreed in September to a voluntary taxation rate of five kopecks per desiatina (ca. 1 hectare) land per month for the duration of the war; three-fifths was designated for the Taurida provincial field-hospital, and two-fifths for needy and poor families of soldiers from neighbouring Russian villages (note 7).

Herman Enns of Schönau, Molotschna had this memory as a seven-year-old:

“One day in the summer a group of Russian officers came onto our yard. They came up onto the veranda, set up a table and chairs and sat down. The farmers in the village had to bring all their horses onto our yard, and parade them in front of the Commission, who then picked out the best horses for their army. From us they took a beautiful big chestnut horse.” (Note 8)

The Molotschna Pordenau congregation chose a committee of three ministers and three lay people to distribute the monies or gifts in kind to near-by needy families (note 9).

Some like Crimean Mennonite Church Elder Heinrich Unruh were unsatisfied, however, and advocated that Mennonites also send medics. Money, horses and clothing donations alone were “too impersonal” and “could too easily look like an excuse to remain comfortably at home” (note 10).

After meeting in September 1905, elders sent a telegram to the Tsar passionately expressing their thanks and their loyalty as servants and subjects of the Russian crown. This telegram signed by all “Russian Mennonite elders” made clear that their political loyalty was to the land in which they lived (note 11).

This history recalls how church elders sought to show solidarity with the land that treated them well, as they struggled creatively to bring their beliefs, privileges, commitments (care for the neighbour; non-resistance)—and some kind of proper nationalism—together. The example above is not so much offered as a model for today, but rather as another example of how Mennonites in Russia wrestled authentically in new contexts with what it meant to be a Christian people of peace.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Otkliki russkoj semli na zarskoe slowo o wojne s Japonijej [Responses from the Russian Land to the Royal Announcement about War with Japan] (St. Petersburg: Ministry of the Interior, 1904), 316, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Dok/1904.pdf.

Note 2: Otkliki russkoj semli … Japonijej [Responses … to the Royal Announcement about War with Japan], 88.

Note 3: Otkliki russkoj semli … Japonijej [Responses … to the Royal Announcement about War with Japan], 88f.

Note 4: Heinrich Dirks, “Die Centenarfeier der Molotschnaansiedlung,” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1904 2 (1905), 18–24, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/kb/mj1904.pdf.

Note 5: Benjamin H. Unruh, “Der Kampf der russischen Gemeinden um die Wehrlosigkeit,” Jugend Warte (June 1925), 52–61; 53. https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennonitische%20Jugendwarte/DSCF8408.JPG.

Note 6: Cf. Heinrich Dirks, “Fortsetzung der Geschichte des Mennonitenvölkleins in Rußland im Jahre 1905,” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1905/6 3 (1906), 9–21, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Buch/MJ/MJ05-1.pdf. Cf. letters by Heinirch Rempel (Mennonitische Rundschau 28, no. 24 [June 14, 1905], 9f., https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1905-06-14_28_24/page/8/mode/2up) and Peter Neumann (Mennonitische Rundschau 29, no. 2 [January 10, 1906], 10, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1906-01-10_29_2/page/10/mode/2up).

Note 7: Mennonitische Rundschau 27, no. 44 (October 26, 1904), 9, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1904-10-26_27_44/page/8/mode/2up?q=japan.

Note 8: “Excerpts from Diary of Herman Enns,” Voices of Essex-Kent Mennonites, 2004, http://www.ekmha.ca/voices/archive/files/70ed2c3a3bf475101672f3867401a96e.pdf.

Note 9: Mennonitische Rundschau 28, no. 2 (January 11, 1905), 9, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1905-01-11_28_2/page/8/mode/2up.

Note 10: Summarized by Lawrence Klippenstein, “Mennonites and Military Service in the Soviet Union to 1939,” in Essays on Pacifism from 1918 to 1945, edited by Peter Brock and Thomas P. Socknat, 3–20 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 19f. Heinrich Unruh was the father of Mennonite theologian and immigration leader, Benjamin H. Unruh. See also Heinrich Ediger, ed., Beschlüsse der von den geistlichen und anderen Vertretern der Mennonitengemeinden Rußlands abgehaltenen Konferenzen für die Jahren 1879 bis 1913 (Berdjansk: Ediger, 1914), 104 (Minutes, September 1904), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Buch/MJ/MK4.pdf.

Note 11: Ediger, ed., Beschlüsse, 112f.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Russo-Japanese War and the Mennonite Response, 1904-1905,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), July 15, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/07/russo-japanese-war-and-mennonite.html.

Comments

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

A Mennonite Pandemic Spirituality, 1830-1831

Asiatic Cholera broke out across Russia in 1829 and ‘30, and further into Europe in 1831. It began with an infected battalion in Orenburg ( note 1 ), and by early Fall 1830 the disease had reached Moscow and the capital. Russia imposed drastic quarantine measures. Much like today, infected regions were cut off and domestic trade was restricted. The disease reached the Molotschna River district in Fall 1830, and by mid-December hundreds of Nogai deaths were recorded in the villages adjacent to the Mennonite colony, leading state authorities to impose a strict quarantine. When the Mennonite Johann Cornies—a state-appointed agricultural supervisor and civic leader—first became aware of the nearby cholera-related deaths, he recommended to the Mennonite District Office on December 6, 1830 to stop traffic and prevent random contacts with Nogai. For Cornies it was important that the Mennonite community do all it can keep from carrying the disease into the community, though “only God knows...

1920s: Those who left and those who stayed behind

The picture below is my grandmother's family in 1928. Some could leave but most stayed behind. In 1928 a small group of some 511 Soviet Mennonites were unexpectedly approved for emigration ( note 1 ). None of the circa 21,000 Mennonites who emigrated from Russia in the 1920s “simply” left. And for everyone who left, at least three more hoped to leave but couldn’t. It is a complex story. Canada only wanted a certain type—young healthy farmers—and not all were transparent about their skills and intentions The Soviet Union wanted to rid itself of a specifically-defined “excess,” and Mennonite leadership knew how to leverage that Estate owners, and Selbstschutz /White Army militia were the first to be helped to leave, because they were deemed as most threatened community members; What role did money play? Thousands paid cash for their tickets; Who made the final decision on group lists, and for which regions? This was not transparent. Exit visa applications were also regularly reje...

Penmanship: School Exercise Samples, 1869 and 1883

Johann Cornies recommended “penmanship as the pedagogical means for [developing] a sense of beauty” ( note 1 ). Schönschreiben --calligraphy or penmanship--appears in the handwritten school plans and manuals of Tobias Voth (Ohrloff, 1820), Jakob Bräul (Rudnerweide, 1830), and Heinrich Heese (Ohrloff, 1842). Heese had a list of related supplies required for each pupil, including “a Bible, slate, slate pencil, paper, straight edge, lead pencil, quill pen, quill knife, ink bottle, three candlesticks, three snuffers, and a container to keep supplies; the teacher will provide water color ( Tusche ) and ink” ( note 2 ). The standard school schedule at this time included ten subject areas: Bible; reading; writing; recitation and composition; arithmetic; geography; singing; recitation and memory work; and preparation of the scripture for the following Sunday worship—and penmanship ( note 3 ). Below are penmanship samples first from the Molotschna village school of Tiege, 1869. This student...

The Beginnings: Some Basics

The sixteenth-century ancestors of Russian Mennonites were largely Anabaptists from the Low Countries. Because their new vision of church called for voluntary membership marked by adult baptism upon confession of faith, they became one of the most persecuted groups of the Protestant Reformation ( note 1 ). For a millennium re-baptism ( a na -baptism) had been considered a heresy punishable by death ( note 2 ), and again in 1529 the Imperial Diet of Speyer called for the “brutal” punishment for those who did not recognize infant baptism. Many of the earliest Anabaptist cells were found in Belgium and The Netherlands--part of the larger Habsburg Empire ruled after 1555 by “the Most Catholic of Kings,” Philip II of Spain. The North Sea port cities of the Low Countries had some limited freedoms and were places for both commercial and cultural exchange; ships arrived daily not only from other Hanseatic League like Danzig, but also from Florence, Venice and Genoa, the Americas and the Far Ea...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog