Russian and Prussian Mennonite Participants in “Racial-Science,” 1930

In December 1929, some 3,885 Soviet Mennonites plus 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists and seven Adventists were assisted by Germany to flee the Soviet Union. They entered German transit camps before resettlement in Canada, Brazil and Paraguay (note 1)

In the camps Russian Mennonites participated in a racial-biological study to measure their hereditary characteristics and “racial” composition and “blood purity” in comparison to Danzig-West Prussian, genetic cousins.

In Germany in the last century, anthropological and medical research was horribly misused for the pseudo-scientific work referred to as “racial studies” (Rassenkunde). The discipline pre-dated Nazi Germany to describe apparent human differences and ultimately “to justify political, social and cultural inequality” (note 2). But by 1935 a program of “racial hygiene” and eugenics was implemented with an “understanding that purity of the German Blood is the essential condition for the continued existence of the German people” (note 3).

In this context Mennonites were an interesting group to study because they had preserved their Germanic culture and identity as a minority group for generations abroad, with little marriage outside their circle. Mennonite ministers and leaders from both groups were keen to cooperate. The study was published a year after Hitler took power; Mennonite genealogist Dr. Kurt Kauenhowen claimed it “is indisputably the most important biological contribution to the history of German Mennonites to date” (note 4).

Medical technicians from Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics and the University of Kiel carried out the anthropological examinations and surveys January 1930 with 1,271 of the Mennonites housed at the Hammerstein, Mölln and Prenzlau refugee/transit camps (note 5).

Not just weight, height and build were measured and recorded, but also skull shape, eye colour (men=40% light blue; pic), hair colour, forehead, eye-brow line, nose base, width, tip and prominence, ear length and width, and chin shape. The next year (May and June 1931), some 386 Mennonites from the Prussian Mennonite congregations of Danzig, Rosenort, Orlofferfelde, Ladekopp, Elbing, Markushof-Thiensdorf, and Heubuden were similarly examined with enthusiastic support of church leadership (note 6). Mennonites were considered an unusually “pure” Germanic subgroup—and now they had proof.

The main researcher identified a series of minor physical variances between these two Mennonite populations but considered these to be environmentally conditioned only. The racial-biological differences were only “about as great as those between identical twins” (note 7).

Kauenhowen thought the one improvement the author could have made would be to add a quote from American Mennonite historian C. Henry Smith, who had written: “The term Mennonite might almost as well be applied to a special race as to a body of religious belief” (Note 8).

While the specifics of this very detail rich study may be interesting for those with this same family background—much the way collected DNA results could be—its ideological context and purposes were consistent with those being promoted by National Socialism (note 9).

The research is referenced to or expanded in at least two race-based journals during the Nazi era. The popular journal “Volk und Rasse (Race)” published materials on racial theory and typically lauded German people groups in comparison to others.

“For religious reasons they fundamentally rejected mixed marriages with fellow Germans of other faiths. ... For this reason alone the Mennonites have a special Volk-biological significance, and therefore deserve closer attention as well … Amongst Germans in the Vistula, region Mennonites form a community that is separated spiritually and intellectually, the characteristics of which are also evident in the groups that settled in southern Russia, as Keiter has already proven in his investigations some years ago.” (Note 10)

In an academic journal for racial and social biology, an article on Russian Mennonite family structure and fertility rates precedes another essay with the following opening paragraph:

“Researching questions of genetic-hygiene is one of the most vital tasks which our leader Adolf Hitler gives to scientists and his German people to solve, because the future of a people depends on its quantitative and qualitative reproduction.” (Note 11)

The research on 473 Russian Mennonites couples who had reached the end of their fertility showed that Mennonites of the “parent generation” had on average 8.22 children with 5.13 living past childhood. The infant mortality rate for Mennonites of this generation was 12.1%, and a fully 36% died before reaching adulthood. The high birth rates were due, according to researchers, to the absence of abortion or contraception, and the relatively young age for women to marry. Mennonite men were on average older when they married, compared to the Lutherans and Catholics from Russia in the study group. The Mennonite “grandparent generation” had an average of 9.5 children per married woman, with an average of 2.7 childhood deaths. 5.4 children per couple entered into a marriage. The families of the grandparent generation grew up in peaceful times, whereas their children established families in the context of the war, revolution, famine and post-war chaos in the Soviet Union (note 12).

Those theories of race, Volk, and blood were already of strong quasi academic interest by 1929-30 and were further developed and shaped by Nazi-government policy and support by the mid-1930. Mennonite refugees in 1930 brought this experience and its assumptions of “racial science” to their new settlement lands of Paraguay, Brazil and Canada—which would infect their worldview and debates for the decade to come (note 13). Mennonites in Ukraine who were resettled and naturalized by Nazi Germany 1943-44 were most directly impacted by the politics of this so-called racial science (note 14).

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Pics: From Friedrich Keiter (n.5 below); also photographs of the 1929-30 refugee crisis published in the Mennonitische Blätter, the denominational paper of the north German and Prussia Mennonites (Vereinigung), February 1930 to March 1931, https://dlibra.bibliotekaelblaska.pl/dlibra/publication/25820#structure.

Note 1: See previous posts, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/christmas-with-refugees-1929.html; AND https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/03/death-of-refugee-children-as-political.html.

Note 2: See especially the work of the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum in Dresden. It was founded in 1912, and after 1933 used to propagate Nazi race ideology: “Rassismus: Die Erfindung von Menschenrassen,” https://www.dhmd.de/ausstellungen/rueckblick/rassismus.

Note 3: “Nuremberg Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, September 15, 1935,” Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center, https://www.yadvashem.org/docs/nuremberg-law-for-protection-of-german-blood-1935.html.

Note 4: Kurt Kauenhowen, Mitteilungen des Sippenverbandes der Danziger Mennoniten Familien Epp-Kauenhowen-Zimmermann 2, no. 1 (February 1936), 29f., https://www.mharchives.ca/download/1403/.

Note 5: Friedrich Keiter, Rußlanddeutsche Bauern und ihre Stammesgenossen in Deutschland. Untersuchungen zur spezielen und allgemeinen Rassenkunde (Jena: Fischer, 1934), 33, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Pis/RusBauer.pdf. More generally see idem, “Wir Deutsche: Was wir im Vergleich zu den anderen Völkern sind und nicht sind,” Volk und Rasse 16, no. 4 (April 1941), 61-65, https://archive.org/details/nsdap-volk-und-rasse-1941-04/page/n2/mode/1up.

Note 6: Keiter, Rußlanddeutsche Bauern und ihre Stammesgenossen, 2; eye colour chart, p. 36.

Note 7: Keiter, Rußlanddeutsche Bauern und ihre Stammesgenossen¸ 84.

Note 8: C. Henry Smith, The Coming of the Russian Mennonites (Berne, IN: Mennonite Book Concern, 1927), 209, https://archive.org/details/comingofrussianm00unse/page/208/mode/2up; Kauenhowen, Mitteilungen des Sippenverbandes, 30 (my emphasis).

Note 9: For ethical reflection on this era and Mennonite participation, cf. Benjamin W. Goossen, Chosen Nation: Mennonites and Germany in a Global Era (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 121-123; 140f.; idem, “Terms of Racial Endearment: Nazi Categorization of Mennonites in Ideology and Practice, 1929–1945,” German Studies Review 44, no. 1 (2021), 27-46; 30, https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goossen/files/goossen_terms_of_racial_endearment_german_studies_review_2021.pdf; idem, “Hitler’s Mennonite Voters,” Anabaptist Historians, online, https://anabaptisthistorians.org/2021/10/07/hitlers-mennonite-voters/.

Note 10: Erich Keyser, “Die Mennoniten im Weichselland,” Volk und Rasse 17, no. 4 (1942), 71f.; 73, https://dlibra.bibliotekaelblaska.pl/dlibra/publication/65799/edition/60776/content.

Note 11: Heinz Boeters, “Familienaufbau und Fruchtbarkeitsziffern bei rußlanddeutschen Bauern,” 36–42; and Wilhelm Lohoff, “Erbhygenische Untersuchungen an Hilfsschulkindern in Oberhausen und Mühlheim an der Ruhr,” in Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Biologie 30 (1936), 36–42; 42, https://books.google.ca/books?id=GcUjAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA36#v=onepage&q&f=false. The study is also referenced in Helmut Hackbarth, Rassentypische Verhaltungsweisen der Mennoniten im Weichsel-Nogat-Delta (Munich: J. F. Lehmanns, 1939), https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1939,%20Hackbarth,%20Rassentypische%20Verhaltungsweisen%20der%20Mennoniten%20im%20Weichsel%20Nogat%20Delta/1939,%20Hackbarth,%20Rassentypische%20Verhaltungsweisen.pdf.

Note 12: Boeters, “Familienaufbau und Fruchtbarkeitsziffern.”

Note 13: See esp. Frank H. Epp, “An Analysis of Germanism and National Socialism in the Immigrant Newspaper of a Canadian Minority Group, the Mennonites, in the 1930s.” PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1965. See previous posts: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2022/09/canadian-mennonites-on-prairie-and.html; AND https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2022/09/in-january-2020-i-received-information.html.

Note 14: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/08/mennonites-highly-attractive-and.html.

---

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Russian and Prussian Mennonite Participants in 'Racial Science', 1930," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), Septemer 25, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/09/russian-and-prussian-mennonite.html.

Comments

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons!

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons: Heart-Shaped Waffles and a smooth talking General In 1874 with Mennonite immigration to North America in full swing, the Tsar sent General Eduard von Totleben to the colonies to talk the remaining Mennonites out of leaving ( note 1 ). He came with the now legendary offer of alternative service. Totleben made presentations in Mennonite churches and had many conversations in Mennonite homes. Decades later the women still recalled how fond Totleben was of Mennonite heart-shaped waffles. He complemented the women saying, “How beautiful are the hearts of Mennonites!,” and he joked about how “much Mennonites love waffles ( Waffeln ), but not weapons ( Waffen )” ( note 2 )! His visit resulted in an extensive reversal of opinion and the offer was welcomed officially by the Molotschna and Chortitza Colony ministerials. And upon leaving, the general was gifted with a poem by Bernhard Harder ( note 3 ) and a waffle iron ( note 4 ). Harder was an inf...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 1 (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 accuarte and carefully considered. ~ANF American Mennonite leaders who supported Trump will be responding to the election results in the near future. Sometimes a template or sample conference address helps to formulate one’s own text. To that end I offer the following. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mennonites in Germany sent official greetings by telegram: “The Conference of the East and West Prussian Mennonites meeting today at Tiegenhagen in the Free City of Danzig are deeply grateful for the tremendous uprising ( Erhebung ) that God has given our people ( Volk ) through the vigor and action of [unclear], and promise our cooperation in the construction of our Fatherland, true to the Gospel motto of [our founder Menno Simons], ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.’” ( Note 1 ) Hitler responded in a letter...

"Anti-Menno" Communist: David J. Penner (1904-1993)

The most outspoken early “Mennonite communist”—or better, “Anti-Menno” communist—was David Johann Penner, b. 1904. Penner was the son of a Chortitza teacher and had grown up Mennonite Brethren in Millerovo, with five religious services per week ( note 1 )! In 1930 with Stalin firmly in power, Penner pseudonymously penned the booklet entitled Anti-Menno ( note 2 ). While his attack was bitter, his criticisms offer a well-informed, plausible window on Mennonite life—albeit biased and with no intention for reform. He is a ethnic Mennonite writing to other Mennonites. Penner offers multiple examples of how the Mennonite clergy in particular—but also deacons, choir conductors, Sunday School teachers, leaders of youth or women’s circles—aligned themselves with the exploitative interests of industry and wealth. Extreme prosperity for Mennonite industrialists and large landowners was achieved with low wages and the poverty of their Russian /Ukrainian workers, according to Penner. Though 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...

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, ...

Anti-Jewish Pogroms and Mennonite responses in Einlage (1905) and Sagradovka (1899)

Below are stories of two pogroms and of the responses in two Mennonite communities in Ukraine/Russia. The first location is Einlage (Chortitza) in 1905, with two episodes. The rage of peasants and the working class exploded with strikes, bloody revolts, chaos and plundering across the land, especially on the estates early in 1905. The Greater Zaporozhzhia-Alexandrovsk economic zone, with larger Mennonite manufacturers of agricultural machinery in Einlage as well, was a centre for some of that labour unrest ( note 1 ). In the shadows of the larger March 1905 Russian Revolution, there were so-called provocateurs named the "Black Hundred" ( note 2 ) who organized pogroms across Russia, but especially in ethnic Ukrainian and Polish areas. “Jewish stores, shops, and homes were broken into, robbed, and plundered; Jewish women and girls were raped and brutally murdered. Many Jews lost not only their belongings in Russia, but also their lives. And all with impunity. The police ...

Farming as Religious Imperative? Quiet on the Land?

In 1847 agricultural scientist and Russia expert Baron August von Haxthausen reported that for the conservative Mennonites in Russia tilling the soil is a “religious duty from which no one is exempt except those with special need, for the Bible teaches: ‘By the sweat of your brow you will you cultivate the ground’” ( note 1 ). This same rationale for Mennonite farming is picked up in Friedrich Matthäi’s 1866 volume of German settlements in Russia ( note 2 ). The biblical reference is a composite of Genesis 3:17 and 3:23. God says to Adam: “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life” (3:17); and 3:23; God “banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.” That perspective however was rooted neither in Mennonite tradition nor theology. In the sixteenth century Flemish Anabaptists were largely urban; ability to read scripture was an imperative—not farming. While Genesis 3:17 is qu...

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 ...

1873: First Russian Mennonites leave for North America

On February 4, 1873, ministers and elders held a special meeting in Elder Isaak Peters’ Pordenau Molotschna church ( note 1 ). It was a larger building with balcony, constructed in 1860 after the original 1828 stone church building had been torn down. They had put down deep roots in Russia; nonetheless Peters spoke strongly in favour of emigration and supported a decision to send land scouts to America. The team was given a mandate to negotiate for the possibility of some 50 to 60,000 Mennonite immigrants ( note 2 ). Eager to compete with the United States for settlers, the Canadian government passed an Order-in-Council on March 3, 1873 to create a Mennonite reservation of nine-and-one-third townships ( note 3 ). The twelve-member deputation—including two Molotschna elders—which had been sent to North America returned in September with a favourable report ( note 4 ). Despite divergent opinions on the ground, the first hundred Russian Mennonite agriculturalists arrived in the United...

Landless Crisis: Molotschna, 1840s to 1860s

The landless crisis in the mid-1800s in the Molotschna Colony is the context for most other matters of importance to its Mennonites, 1840s to 1860s. When discussing landlessness, historian David G. Rempel has claimed that the “seemingly endemic wranglings and splits” of the Mennonite church in South Russia were only seldom or superficially related to doctrine, and “almost invariably and intimately bound up with some of the most serious social and economic issues” that afflicted one or more of the congregations in the settlement ( note 1 ). It is important from the start to recognize that these Mennonites were not citizens, but foreign colonists with obligations and privileges that governed their sojourn in New Russia. For Mennonites the privileges, e.g. of land and freedom from military conscription, were connected to the obligation of model farming. Mennonites were given one, and then later two districts of land for this purpose. Within their districts or colonies , villages w...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog