Diary of Johann Jantzen, 1843-1903

Johann Jantzen was born in 1823 in Neuteichsdorfsfeld, West Prussia, resided in Neuendorf near Danzig, and migrated late to Russia (1869), then Central Asia, and finally in 1884 to Nebraska, USA. He died in 1903. Decades later his descendants translated his diary of notable annual highlights, entitled: Accounts of various Experiences in Life. A Diary begun in the Year 1839 (note 1).

The little West Prussian villages he names regularly are familiar place to many with Russian Mennonite family history: Schönau, Neu Münsterberg, Schönsee, Lakendorf, Neuteicherwalde, etc. While most Russian Mennonite families left Prussia much earlier than Jantzen, his diary offers a picture of the typical rhythm of life that Mennonites lived in West Prussia over generations.

It also offers something I did not expect. The revolutions across Europe in 1848 had a local impact which he mentions, and he gives us a hint as to the other political highlights and episodes of civil unrest that were on the minds of Mennonites as well. Here are some that stand out between 1840 and 1858.

June- August 1840: “King Friedrich Wilhelm III died;” “Friedrich Wilhelm IV passed through here on his way to Königsberg for the crowning ceremony.”
March 26-31, 1848 “Mobs took over Neuteich and Tiegenhof.” [He also notes the revolutions in France and in Berlin that year].
June 14, 1848: “The laboring class in Gross Lichtenau revolted and several were shot.”
November 1850, the Prussian “Army mobilized against Austria; sold two horses to them for 78 Thaler.”
March 1854: “The rioters pulled out and went to the Okrseke [?] Feld.”
January 25, 1858: “A very large celebration was held in Danzig at the marriage of the Crown Prince [of Prussia] to the English Princess Victoria [eldest child of Queen Victoria] with magnificent illumination of the Town House and its grounds.”

Beyond these relatively scant political highlights, Jantzen's life and concerns in West Prussia revolved around family (immediate and extended) and neighbours, the Mennonite congregation and larger community of Mennonites, farming and weather, as well as fire and floods.

Engagements and marriages in the clan and those of neighbours were items of highest interest:

Johann Wall’s wedding: “the second time to the sister of his first wife”
Peter Wiens “from Neu Münsterberg was married to Wienses daughter from Reichenberg”
June 3, 1858: "Celebrated my engagement to my cousin Lisette Jantzen from Nassenhuben.“

Of course the many deaths and funerals are noted; the large number of children who die is heartbreaking. The baptisms of friends and family are not mentioned until June 1867, which is curious because Jantzen becomes a preacher/minister in 1856:

“Brother-in-law Johannes in Fürstenwerder was baptized by Elder Johann Wiebe.”

Harvests amounts are recorded exactly (e.g., “191 loads of grain from 52 Morgen”), as well as the cost of land sold or purchased:

February 8, 1853: “My parents sold their home in Neuteichsdorfsfeld, with 4 Hufen land and no inventory for 25,333 Thaler to Claassen from Vierzehnhuben because they had decided to migrate to Russia.”

Occasional hailstorms and their damage, as well as an eclipse are noted; also extreme temperatures, mild winters, and always the number of good weeks for sleighing (from zero to five)—clearly a preferred form of travel in the winter.

Fire was always a fear and possibility. “All the buildings burned down at Isaacs of Prangenau.” Sometimes it was lightning; sometimes an accident; sometimes arson. In August 1845 all the buildings on the Bröskerfelde farms of Franz Wall and “the Epps” were burnt to the ground, twelve days apart. Then the stunning line: “Franz Wall’s 11-year-old son lit both fires. He was sentenced to four years in prison.”

But perhaps most striking are Jantzen’s regular references to flooding. The entries are a stark reminder of this ever-present worry in the lives of all of Mennonites in West Prussia. Brent Wiebe’s map (below; note 2) shows how almost all Mennonite settlements were on the flood plain of the Vistula River, and many below sea level.

Catastrophic floods impacting Mennonites are well-documented, as in 1737 (note 3); sometimes dikes were broken as a strategy of war, as in 1657 (note 4). But smaller, localized flooding was an annual, ever-present danger. Floods, dikes, dams, sluices, ditches, water-pumping windmills—are mentioned repeatedly throughout Horst Penner, Settlement of Mennonite Dutch in the Vistula Delta (note 5).

Below are Jantzen's flood references over a sixteen-year period, from 1839 to 1855. They are a good sampler of what worried Russian Mennonite ancestors in Polish-Prussia every single year for over two centuries:

April 1, 1839: “A dam broke by Schönau from the Nogat. By evening the water was in our area.”
May 20, 1839: “The leak or breakthrough was closed on the land side. On the lake side the work was discontinued after 5 weeks.”
July 6, 1839: “Water came down from the lowlands. We had plowed only 15 acres during this time from June 15-20 …”
February 1840: “There was a breakthrough of the dunes at Neufähr, 1 mile from Danzig. A remarkable occurrence.”
July-August, 1844: “High water in the rivers; 8 feet 4 inches on the land by the dam. The outer fields and approaches, as well as the higher lowlands were all under water. Much rain caused flooding on all the fields and much hay rotted.”
April 10, 1845: “A dam broke at Schönau at 2 o’clock at night and was already in our area at 3 o’clock in the afternoon.”
May 10, 1845: “The break is closed. The water level is 22 inches lower than after the first break in Schönau.”
June 13, 1845: “King Friedrich Wilhem IV came to the Werder (delta lands) to see the breakthrough.”
March 28, 1841: “A breakthrough on the Kall and flooding as far as the Schwente” [small river adjacent to Mierau, Tiege, Rückenau, Marienau …].
February 26, 1850. “A dam break caused flooding at Lakendorf, the water coming up to the Schwente.”
February 28, 1850. “Flooding on this side of the Schwente to Schönsee, Schöneberg and Ladekopp.”
March 14-17, 1850. “A very strong wind from the north drove the water far out of bounds. … We got some of this water too, which immediately froze to ice.”
March 18, 1854: “The Vistula dam broke through by the Rote Kruge which was caused by slow leakage in the dam. The flood water reached us the same day and continued to rise to the 20th. We had no water in the buildings.”
April 6: “Began repair on the dam. Work was completed on the 13th.”
January 9, 1855: “The Lakenwalde dam broke and flooded into Nassenhuben.”
March 28, 1855: Two dams broke by Muntau causing severe flooding in the Large Werder (delta).”
April 1, 1855: “Another dam break at Klassowe in the Large Werder (delta). The water rose 3½ feet higher than after the (Sch_?) shore break. Many cattle drowned. Because the ice prevented drainage into the bay, the water flowed up the Elbing River and into the Elbinger lowlands, and on the Danziger border [?] everything was also flooded.”
June 2, 1855: “We rescued 14 head of someone else’s cattle from the flood waters.”
July 19, 1855: “The dike in the Mottlau washed under water. Had very heavy rains.”
July 21, 1855: “A breakthrough of the Radenauer [?] dam towards Müggenkuhl. There is much flood damage.”
July 26, 1855: “The Kladau broke through and caused flooding in Landau, Grebin and Rohtau.”
August 1, 1855: “A breakthrough of the main dam at Gütland. The meadows along the Mottlau are flooded.”

Flood stories make an important thread in the larger Prussian-Russian Mennonite story and they both tested and gave contour and shape to Mennonite commitments to mutual aid (note 6). The Jantzen diary penned over many year helps one to picture that world concretely from the eyes of one very average Mennonite living a very normal life in the Vistula delta as his ancestors had lived for generations.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Johann Jantzen, Accounts of various Experiences in Life. A Diary begun in the Year 1839. For original and 1976 translation: https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_549/ (GRanDMA #343731).

Note 2: Map courtesy of Brent Wiebe, https://trailsofthepast.com.

Note 3: On the catastrophic flood of 1737, cf. Horst Quiring, “Ein Notjahr in Westpreußen,” Christlicher Gemeinde-Kalender 47 (1938), 70–73, https://mla.bethelks.edu/.../Chris.../1933-1941/DSCF7096.JPG.

Note 4: On the 1657 flood caused by the Swedes, see previous post: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/02/flooding-as-weapon-of-war-1657.html.

Note 5: Horst Penner, Settlement of Mennonite Dutch in the Vistula Delta from the Middle of the 16th Century until the Beginning of the Prussian Period, translated by Tim Flaming and Glenn Penner (Winnipeg, MB: Mennonite Heritage Archives, 2021), https://www.mharchives.ca/download/3408/. For the history of Vistula River flooding, cf. Jerzy Cyerski, Marek Grzes et al., “History of floods on the River Vistula,” Hydrological Sciences Journal 51, no. 5 (2006), 799-817, https://doi.org/10.1623/hysj.51.5.799.

Note 6: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/flooding-and-mennonites-common-thread.html.

---

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Diary of Johann Jantzen, 1843-1903," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), November 4, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/diary-of-johann-jantzen-1843-1903.html.

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