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.

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...

Soviet “Farmer Giesbrecht” and the German Communist Press, 1930

The 1930 booklet Bauer Giesbrecht was published by the Communist Party press in Germany —some months after most of the 3,885 Mennonite refugees at Moscow had been transported from Germany to Canada, Paraguay and Brazil ( note 1 ). In Fall 1929 Germany set aside an astonishingly large sum of money and flexed its full diplomatic muscle to extract these “German Farmers” (mostly Mennonites) who had fled the Soviet countryside for Moscow in a last ditch attempt to flee the "Soviet Paradise". About 9,000 however were forcibly turned back. Communists in Germany saw their country’s aid operation—which their crushed economy could ill afford—as a blatant propaganda attempt to embarrass Stalin with formerly wealthy ethnic German farmers and preachers willing to tell the world’s press the worst "lies." With Heinrich Kornelius Giesbrecht from the former Mennonite Barnaul Colony in Western Siberia they finally had a poster-boy to make their point: in Germany he had seen an...

Snapshots of Danzig Mennonites, late 1600s & early 1700s

A picture can be worth a thousand words. We do not have photographs, but we have a few colour paintings of life in and around Danzig in the late 1600s and early 1700s, as well as maps. We also have a limited number of "textual snapshots" of Mennonites at this time and place, which offer an instructive window into that foreign world. These snapshots of work, worship, health, education, community relationships, smaller repressions, and security can contribute to the creation of a larger collage of Mennonite life in Danzig and Polish Prussia. Snapshot 1 : In 1681 there were approximately 180 Mennonite families who lived in the “gardens” or villages outside Danzig, with 113 of those families within the jurisdiction of the city. At this time Mennonites were barred from owning houses within the walls of the city. Of these 113 family heads, we know: 43 were retailers of spirits, 24 merchants, 9 lacemakers, 7 dyers, 3 silk dyers, 3 pressers, 2 brokers, 2 treasurers, 2 waitresses, et...

Swiss and Palatinate Connections

Sometime after 1850 Andreas Plennert and his family immigrated to South Russia from the Culm Region of West Prussia. Though there was at least one Mennonite “Plehnert” who had already immigrated to Russia in 1793, it is not a very common Prussian-Russian Mennonite name. As such, however, it is easier to trace than many and offers a minority narrative and identity within the longer and broader Russian Mennonite story. The account below is adapted largely from information in Horst Penner, Die ost- und westpreußischen Mennoniten , vol. 1, though I have expanded upon his work to offer a slightly different narrative. In 1724 there was a group of Mennonites forced out of the Memel region in East Prussia for political and religious reasons and were given assistance to resettle back to West Prussia in areas populated by Mennonites. Among the 23 households that went to the Stuhm region there is one Plenert listed, namely Christian Plenert. We know that Mennonites entered the Memel region ...

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...

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 ...

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...

Vaccinations in Chortitza and Molotschna, beginning in 1804

Vaccination lists for Chortitza Mennonite children in 1809 and 1814 were published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic with little curiosity ( note 1 ). However during the 2020-22 pandemic and in a context in which some refused to vaccinate for religious belief, the historic data took on new significance. Ancestors of some of the more conservative Russian Mennonite groups—like the Reinländer or the Bergthalers or the adult children of land delegate Jacob Höppner—were in fact vaccinating their infants and toddlers against small pox over two hundred years ago ( note 2 ). Also before the current pandemic Ukrainian historian Dmytro Myeshkov brought to light other archival materials on Mennonites and vaccination. The material below is my summary and translation of the relevant pages of Myeshkov’s massive 2008 volume on Black Sea German and their Worlds, 1781 to 1871 (German only; note 3 ). Myeshkov confirms that Chortitza was already immunizing its children in 1804 when their District Offic...

Easter and Molotschna's First Ethnic German Cavalry Regiment of the Waffen-SS, 1942

For the two years of German occupation, 1941-43, the Molotschna Settlement area—renamed “Halbstadt” after its largest village—was under S.S. ( Schutzstaffel ) control. During this time, new National Socialist ceremonies and liturgies were introduced to the Mennonites in Ukraine, including Easter. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler named Halbstadt with its surrounding 144 villages a district commando. SS-Storm Unit Leader ( Sturmbannführer ) Hermann Roßner was appointed the Special Command R[ussia] leader for Halbstadt. Halbstadt had Waffen-SS doctors, a Waffen-SS pharmacist team and pharmacy, hospital equipment from the medical offices of the Waffen-SS and soon a Waffen-SS cavalry self-defense regiment of some 500-plus Mennonite young men ( note 1 ). Two of my uncles became members of the cavalry unit; a later, long-time lay minister in my home congregation was in the regiment as well. SS-celebrations for “Easter” were deliberately non-religious and anti-Christian, though careful ...

Molotschna's 50th Anniversary Celebration Plans, 1854

There is no mention of this celebrative event in Hildebrand’s Chronologischer Zeittafel, no report in the newly launched Prussian church paper Mennonitische Blätter , or in the Unterhaltungsblatt for German colonists in South Russia. But plans to celebrate five decades of Mennonite settlement on the Molotschna River were well underway in 1853; detailed draft notes for the event are found in the Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive ( note 1 ). Perhaps most importantly the file includes the list of names of the first settlers in each of the first nine Molotschna villages (est. 1804). While each village had been mandated a few years earlier to write its own village history ( note 2; pics ), eight of these nine did not list their first settler families by name. The lists with the male family heads are attached below. By 1854 Molotoschna’s population had increased to about 17,000; more than half of those living in the original nine villages were landless Anwohner ( note 3 ). Celeb...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog