Fortress Alexandrovsk and the first Mennonites in New Russia

When the first Mennonites arrived at Chortitza in 1789, they landed in the immediate vicinity of Fortress Alexandrovsk, today Zaporizhzhia.

March 23, 1788: The first organized Mennonite group to leave Danzig for Russia was led by land scout Jakob Höppner; they were advised to leave on smaller ships docked near the village of Bohnsack to avoid attention, and not from Danzig itself (note 1).

After a short early-morning farewell near the Lutheran parish church in Bohnsack on Easter morning, Höppner family plus seven others totaling fifty individuals embarked on their journey to Russia (note 2).

Because official permission for visas was granted only with pressure from St. Petersburg, the first groups of families—much smaller than originally expected, “mostly people without property such as milkmen, carpenters and labourers”—prepared to leave quietly in March 1788. But membership in this group too was not automatic with a visa; for example, “Arendt Fast and Jakob Willms … were left behind because they enjoyed drink more than work” (note 3).

Another 221 families would leave later in the year, and they too were “all poor folk searching for a better lot in life,” according to the first brief history of the Russian Mennonite colony of Chortitza, by Heinrich Heese (note 4).

Sixteen-year-old Jacob Breyel Jr. of Neumünsterberg was a member of the first group of seventy. He travelled together with the Höppner family and would later marry Höppner’s niece Anna. Like Höppner, his father was a hawker of small goods; years later after unsuccessful farming he is listed as one of the community’s first teachers in 1811 (note 5). Breyel’s uncle and family—eight members in total—were also among this first group. His parents would come later. The journey was recorded in detail by Peter Hildebrand, a single young man who was raised Lutheran, travelled with the Höppner family and later married into the Höppner clan as well (note 6).

The first travel day brought the group to the freshwater port of Stutthof. Here they loaded their belongings from wagons onto sleds and on the next day crossed the river on ice which, due to the warm weather, had become thin. Rain hampered their progress the second day and they were forced to spend the night under open sky. Soon the Höppner group could embark on a ship to Riga, reaching their initial destination five weeks and three-hundred miles later.

They stayed one month at Düna just outside of Riga before plodding another six weeks along muddy roads to Dubrovna—an estate of Potemkin—by caravan, arriving on June 24, 1788 (note 7).

It was not until the next spring (1789) after a hard winter, that the new immigrants could finally leave the Potemkin estate at Dubrovna for the “promised land” near Berislav.

Most in the group travelled by barge from Kremenchug as far as Ekaterinoslav (later named Dnepropetrovsk) and met those travelling with wagons at Chortitza in July 1789.

Here they first set up camp around a huge oak tree three kilometres west of the river. They spent the second winter at Alexandrovsk and then gradually moved out to set up villages.

The fortress was founded in 1770 and became one of the settlements that gave rise to Zaporizhzhia (note 8).

Notably some “obstinate” Mennonites lived in the fortress for the first winter—and some were also imprisoned here the next year for the same bad attitude. Here is the story:

On their journey to New Russia in Summer 1789 Mennonites received the bad news at Kremenchug: Gregory Potemkin, Tsarina Catherine’s vice-regent and administrator of New Russia, informed Deputy Jacob Höppner that because of new hostilities with the Turkish Ottoman Empire he had decided it was too dangerous for the Mennonites to settle on the agreed lands on the lower Dnieper River near Berislav.

Instead, the Mennonites would have to settle on land situated across from the recently established frontier Fortress Alexandrovsk on the east side of the river, plus a small strip of land on the east side of the Dnieper for the Frisian village of Schönwiese (immediately bordering Alexandrovsk on the little Mokraja River) as well as the Island of Chortitza.

(The island had been a major Cossack army headquarters [Sech] on the Dnieper River from the 16th century to the 18th century; it was situated across from the recently established frontier Fortress Alexandrovsk; see note 9).

The settlers objected vehemently—but unsuccessfully—to their new lot. The hilly lands around the Island of Chortitza and on the west side of the river were much dryer and less fertile than the land for which they had originally negotiated, and without meadows or many trees.

Upon arrival at Fortress Alexandrovsk—with no real options—many began to build though there was hardly any lumber available. The first earthen huts (Semljanken; note 10) were constructed where the Chortitza River enters the Dnieper, and where the villages of Chortitza and Neuendorf would later arise. Höppner and Bartsch built homes of wood the Island of Chortitza.

A significant group, however, was “infected with the delusion that the land was useless, and that better land should be sought,” according to an early teacher Heinrich Heese (note 11). When Winter arrived these people had no shelter and had to be housed in Fortress Alexandrovsk for their first winter, 1779/80. Throughout the winter they were quite certain they would be granted the better land.

Yet when Spring arrived, Alexandrovsk’s Commander Schwarz simply ordered these Mennonites out of the fortress to settle new villages around Chortitza (note 12). Some still resisted, and those “troublemakers landed in jail until they came to their senses,” according to Heese.

Because of lack of wood and ill-will, some settlers lived in earthen huts in the first four years and many died of dysentery—normally caused by poverty as well as lack of good hygiene and clean drinking water—“a pitiable report that I could not read without tears,” land agent and recruiter for Russia Georg Trappe wrote (note 13).

The original Mennonite settlers did not plan to settle in compact villages, but on individual plots of land as was the style in Prussia.

That plan changed because of the lack of an adequate survey, the fear of attacks by Cossacks, and thefts by roaming bandits.

In the first years of settlement, two older military men stationed on Chortitza Island to protect the crown tree plantation were called upon when six masked robbers from Alexandrovsk sacked land scout Jacob Höppner’s large house, bound everyone, and almost killed Höppner—one attempt with a knife, and the second with a rifle—in their attempt to extort monies. Another Mennonite rushed to the crime scene on horseback, armed with “rifle and sword” (note 14)!

This robbery only occurred after “discontented settlers [!]” told merchants in Alexandrovsk that Höppner had received money from the Crown but refused to distribute it.

Sometime later government authorities provided Chortitza Mennonites with Cossak guards under the command of the German-trained Count Kyrylo Rozumovsky, the last Hetmann of the Zaporizhian Host the Cossacks and a Field Marshall in the Russian Army (note 15).

However the Cossaks robbed as much as they protected, in Mennonite memory, and in one story Höppner’s associate used a long plank to hit one of the robbing Cossaks off his horse.

In the first years the 346 settler families lost an astonishing 545 horses and 704 cattle through theft (note 16).

Fast-forward to 1819: Quaker visitors noted that parents in Schönwiese—adjacent to the now "city" of Alexandrovsk—were anxious about the temptations that it presented for their children. Indeed, over time Schönwiese Mennonites would become more integrated (culturally, linguistically, economically) with the larger society around them than any other Russian Mennonite communities—because of Alexandrovsk (note 17).

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

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Special thanks to Brent Wiebe, https://trailsofthepast.com/, for sharing the historical maps.

Travel map: William Schroeder and Helmut T. Huebert, Mennonite Historical Atlas (Winnipeg, MB: Springfield, 1990), 15, https://archive.org/details/MolotschnaHistoricalAtlasOCRopt/page/n17/mode/2up.

Note 1: Grigorii G. Pisarevskii, Izbrannye proizvedenija po istorii inostrannoj kolonizacii v Rossii [Selected works on the history of foreign colonization in Russia], edited by I.V. Cherkazyanova (Moscow: ICSU, 2011), 168, http://www.rusdeutsch.ru/biblio/files/417_biblio.pdf. See English translation by Danila Sobchakov, edited by Glenn Penner: https://www.mharchives.ca/download/3422/. On the initial visit and report back by the land scouts, Höppner and Bartsch, see previous post: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/invitation-to-russian-consulate-danzig.html.

Note 2: Peter Hildebrand, Erste Auswanderung der Mennoniten aus dem Danziger Gebiet nach Südrußland (Halbstadt: P. Neufeld, 1888), 43, 46, https://dlib.rsl.ru/viewer/01004497897; also David G. Rempel, “The Mennonite Migration to New Russia (1787–1870): II. The Emigration to Russia,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 9, no. 3 (July 1935), 109–128; idem, “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia. A study of their settlement and economic development from 1789–1914,” PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1933, pp. 70ff., https://archive.org/details/themennonitecoloniesinnewrussiaastudyoftheirsettlementandeconomicdevelopmentfrom1789to1914ocr/page/n85/mode/2up; Horst Quiring, "Die Auswanderung der Mennoniten aus Preussen 1788–1870,” Mennonite Life 6, no. 2 (April 1951), 37–40, https://mla.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/pre2000/1951apr.pdf. Cf. also George K. Epp, Geschichte der Mennoniten in Rußland, vol. 1 (Lage: Logos, 1997).

Note 3: Hermann G. Mannhardt, Die Danziger Mennonitengemeinde. Ihre Entstehung und ihre Geschichte von 1569–1919 (Danzig, 1919), 129, https://archive.org/details/diedanzigermenno00mannuoft.

Note 4: Heinrich Heese, et al. “Das Chortitzer Mennonitengebiet 1848. Kurzgefasste geschichtliche Übersicht der Gründung und des Bestehens der Kolonien des Chortitzer Mennonitenbezirkes,” in: Margarete Woltner, ed., Die Gemeindeberichte von 1848 der deutschen Siedlungen am Schwarzen Meer (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1941), 1-27, https://www.osmikon.de/id/ostdok/BV014463862; also: https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/kb/woltner.pdf.

Note 5: Richard D, Thiessen, “Chortitza Mennonite Settlement Census for May 1811,” Archives of Dnipropetrovsk Region (SADR), Fond 134, Opis 1, Delo 299, http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/Chortitza_Mennonite_Settlement_Census_May_1811.pdf.

Note 6: Cf. Hildebrand, Erste Auswanderung der Mennoniten; also Benjamin H. Unruh, Niederländisch-niederdeutschen Hintergründe der mennonitischen Ostwanderungen (Karlsruhe: Self-published, 1955), 205.

Note 7: Hildebrand, Erste Auswanderung der Mennoniten.

Note 8 / pic: [Google Translate from Ukrainian] Alexander Vasiliev, “A day in history: September 5 (1770)—The founding of the city of Alexandrovsk,” Ukraina.ru (September 5, 2019), https://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=uk&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fukraina.ru%2Fhistory%2F20190905%2F1024863506.html; also https://timenews.in.ua/447023/pavel-kravchuk-aleksandrovskij-forshtat-stal-embrionom-iz-kotorogo-razrossya-ves-gorod; also https://timenews.in.ua/443521/v-zaporozhe-nashli-vozmozhnye-ostatki-aleksandrovskoj-kreposti.

Note 9: For a fascinating account of the region and its peoples written in the 1680s, cf. Diary of General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries, 1635–1699, volume IV: 1684–1689, edited by Dmitry Fedosov (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 2015), https://aberdeenunipress.org/site/books/10.57132/book4/download/8873/.

Note 10: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/08/earthen-huts-semljanken-firstand-for.html.

Note 11: Heese, et al. “Das Chortitzer Mennonitengebiet 1848." 

Note 12: George K. Epp, Geschichte der Mennoniten in Rußland, vol. 1 (Lage: Logos, 1997), 90f.; David G. Rempel (“The Mennonite Migration to New Russia, 1787–1870 [part II],” Mennonite Quarterly Review 9, no. 3 [July 1935], 109–128; 112 n.13), suggests that it “is not improbable.”

Note 13: In Grigorii G. Pisarevskii, Izbrannye proizvedenija po istorii inostrannoj kolonizacii v Rossii [Selected works on the history of foreign colonization in Russia], edited by I.V. Cherkazyanova (Moscow: ICSU, 2011), 201, http://www.rusdeutsch.ru/biblio/files/417_biblio.pdf; English translation: https://www.mharchives.ca/download/3422/. Cf. also Epp, Geschichte der Mennoniten in Rußland I, 93.

Note 14: Gerhard G. Klassen, “Ereignisse aus dem 17. [sic] Jahrhundert.” Botschafter 9, no. 17 (February 28 [March 13], 1914), 2, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Pis/B14-17.pdf.

Note 15: Klassen, “Ereignisse aus dem 17. [sic] Jahrhundert.” For more early stories, see David Epp, Die Chortitzer Mennoniten. Versuch einer Darstellung des Entwicklungsganges derselben (Odessa, 1889), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Dok/Epp.pdf.

Note 16: Detlef Brandes, “German Colonists in Southern Ukraine up to the Repeal of the Colonial Statute,” in German-Ukrainian Relations in Historical Perspective, edited by H.-J. Torke and J.-P. Himka, 10–28 (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1994), 11f., https://archive.org/details/germanukrainianr0000unse/page/10/mode/2up.

Note 17: Memoirs of the Life and Gospel Labours of Stephen Grellet, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Longstreth, 1867), 453, https://books.google.ca/books?id=ErsRqec-8DYC&vq=temptations&pg=PA453#v=snippet&q=temptations&f=false.

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To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Fortress Alexandrovsk and the first Mennonites in New Russia," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), November 18, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/fortress-alexandrovsk-and-first.html.