High Crimes and Misdemeanors: Mennonite Murders, Infanticide, Rapes and more

To outsiders, the Mennonite reality in South Russia appeared almost utopian—with their “mild and peaceful ethos.” While it is easy to find examples of all the "holy virtues" of the Mennonite community, only when we are honest about both good deeds and misdemeanors does the Russian Mennonite tradition have something authentic to offer—or not.

Rudnerweide was one of a few Molotschna villages with a Mennonite brewery and tavern, which in turn brought with it life-style lapses that would burden the local elder. For example, on January 21, 1835, the Rudnerweide Village Office reported that Johann Cornies’s sheep farm manager Heinrich Reimer, as well as Peter Friesen and an employed Russian shepherd, came into the village “under the influence of brandy,” and:

"…at the tavern kept by Aron Wiens, they ordered half a quart of brandy and shouted loudly as they drank, banged their glasses on the table. The tavern keeper objected asking them to settle down, but they refused and also broke a bottle and a glass. With the assistance of other clients, Wiens found it necessary to remove these trouble-makers from the premises. They refused, however, to settle down but rushed back into the tavern where they beat Wiens. With the help of other individuals, he removed them from the building a second time, and when they still refused to stop their violent behaviour, the Village Office found it necessary to arrest them and put them under guard." (Note 1).

Once Reimer and Friesen had admitted their guilt to the District Office ten days later, the matter was transferred “to the honourable church teachers [ministers] to take appropriate action.”

Petty crimes could be punished with twenty lashes: “In this month in Einlage [Chortitza] four delinquents were thoroughly thrashed with 20 blows each, namely Peter Dyck, Abraham Wiebe … ” (note 2).

And sins of greater consequence including “debts, drunkenness, bad housekeeping, and an unregulated way of life” could be cause for losing one’s property within the model colony—as was the case in other German colonies as well (note 3).

Incest and rape carried a more severe, state-imposed punishment: 60 lashes with a birch switch, two-years hard-labour, and surveillance at home after release (note 4).

However, between 1816 and 1819, a minister who “forcibly committed his shame [with a woman] on the open steppes” was simply removed from his ministerial position, “as they did not know what else they could do,” and he was placed “under the ban for three or four days” (note 5). The rapist, Cornelius Janzen, was a minister of the Large Flemish, though he was with the Kleine Gemeinde.

Chortitza minister David Epp is most explicit. "Immorality seems to have the upper hand. ... Higher authorities wish to curb the immoral lifestyle in the congregations. The district books are to be circulated, the names of immoral members entered and their transgressions as well as punishments listed" (note 6).

In 1841, Epp notes that the first case of infanticide amongst Mennonites was uncovered in the Bergthal Colony. Elders properly reported this to authorities. July 2, 1841: “The daughter of Cornelius Friesen had an affair with the young man Siemens and gave birth to a child. It was murdered and found dead on the manure pile. … How horrible!” (note 7).

The same year in Altonau, Molotschna, a widow Thiessen’s was the victim of an arsonist, resulting in the loss of all her cattle and many goods; the fire was set at 1 AM by her apprentice miller, the Mennonite Peter Giesbrecht, who then shot himself in the mill (note 8).

On the shared Mennonite-Jewish Colony Judenplan, the Mennonite mayor Heinrich Goerz was accused of beating and then killing a Jewish man; complaints were also made against his successor Jacob Dyck for temper and the use of corporal punishment (note 9).    

Sometimes archival information can ruin a family or church narrative. In 1996, William Schroeder offered a history of his ancestor Johann Schroeder (1807-1884). He mentions that Johann's father was stabbed to death in 1826 in an attempt "to settle a dispute in the village beer parlour" (note 10). Apparently he was a night watchman. Perhaps.

Schroeder referenced early Mennonite Brethren historian P. M. Friesen, who in turn cites Peter Hildebrand—a Frisian church elder and original setter:

“In his little booklet … Hildebrand also recounts many sad episodes in the moral life of the young colony. In one village the Mennonite settlers built themselves a tavern where they, in a drunken stupor, committed a murder. All of this tends to disillusion the reader, especially when he … recalls Menno Simon’s [writings] … and the chapter on the martyrs” (Note 11).

For Friesen, this was a clear indictment of the larger church and its ineffective church discipline—especially in the early years.

But the longer story of Johann Schroeder Sr. is much more interesting—and troubling—than P. M. Friesen knew or cared to record.

In recent years we have fuller access to Guardianship Committee minutes on Mennonite petitions, cases and reports. Glenn Penner has translated a few of the reports by Chortitza District Mayor Peter Siemens regarding Johann Schroeder, 1812-14 (note 12).

What do they show? In 1812, church and district leaders as well as the Guardianship Committee investigated a possible murder—the suspicious suicide-hanging of Katharina Kasdorf Schroeder of Kronsthal, the wife of Johann Schroeder. Not only did Schroeder marry the family’s much younger maid Katharina Olfert “almost immediately” after the hanging, but Schroeder admitted “at times to having agitated and offended" his first wife.

When Schroeder and his maid were questioned about “their unbecoming behaviour towards the unfortunate woman,” both “screamed like mad animals against the District Council as well as the [church] elders, charging them with wanting to ruin their lives. Because of their gross behaviour, they were banned from the church" (note 13).

The two were incarcerated until the Guardianship Committee acquitted them. Yet within a year they—with a neighbour—plotted the assault and battery of fellow church member Martin Siemens. According to district reports,

"Schroeder and his Katharina [Olfert] and Balman [=Bannman] used trickery to invite [Martin] Siemens to Schroeder’s house for a friendly visit. Upon entering he was hit on the head with a fist by Schroeder and Balman caught him by the feet and they dragged him into the shed. This was where Schroeder’s [first] wife, Katharina [Kasdorf], hanged herself. They hit Siemens so hard that … it was feared he would die." (Note 14)

Surprisingly the District Office petitioned the Guardianship Committee to release Schroeder and his accomplice “as soon as possible, with the promise that they do not repeat these evil acts and after this behave as good and honest men towards all" (note 15).

The two accused gave notice that they were “heartily sorry for the beating of Martin Siemens” and that they “shall not commit such evils anymore, but will use all our strength in being peaceful and diligent householders for the rest of our lives” (note 16).

A decade later Schroeder was stabbed to death in the context of a village beer parlour dispute.

He died as violently as he had lived.

Archival sources for outliers like Johann Schroeder and the others above will enrich Mennonite community stories—even when the next generations do not like what they find. They display well how the community functioned as a whole—and that also makes these stories important, even if we might wish to disown those involved.

As noted at the outset, it is not hard to document the good, peaceful holy virtues of the Mennonites in Russia. But as James Urry aptly suggests, the “None but Saints” view (note 17) of this people and the white-washing of its history make the whole inauthentic and unbelievable. Only when we are honest with the past do we find real communities like our own who perhaps have some wisdom to offer.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: “No. 475: District Office to Johann Cornies, 26 January 1835,” in Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe. Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies, vol. 1: 1812–1835, translated by Ingrid I. Epp; edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 404.

Note 2: Tagebuch von Jakob Wall 1824–1859, part I, https://chortitza.org/Eich/WallOr1.htm.

Note 3: See case of Mennonite Dirk Thun of Fürstenwerder, “Guardianship Committee of Foreign Settlers in South Russia,” Inventory 3, File 15348. Odessa Region State Archives Fond 6. From Mennonite Heritage Centre, Winnipeg, http://www.mennonitechurch.ca/programs/archives/holdings/organizations/OdessaArchivesF6.htm.

Note 4: Ibid., Inventory 2, File 9664, 1847; case of Mennonite man who had impregnated his daughter-in-law.

Note 5: Cited in Delbert Plett, Golden Years: The Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde in Russia (1812–1849) (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1985), 184, https://www.mharchives.ca/download/1216/.

Note 6: Diaries of David Epp: 1837–1843, translated and edited by John B. Toews (Vancouver, BC: Regent College, 2000), 165f. (Google book link).

Note 7: D. Epp, Diaries of David Epp: 1837–1843, 157 (Google book link).

Note 8: Tagebuch von Jakob Wall 1824–1859, Part II, March 29, 1841, https://chortitza.org/Eich/WallOr2.htm.

Note 9: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-jewish-colony-judenplan-and-its.html.

Note 10: William Schroeder, “Johann Schroeder (1807–1884),” Preservings 8.2 (June 1996). 44–47, https://www.plettfoundation.org/preservings/archive/8-2/.

Note 10: Cf. Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), 114, https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/page/n155/mode/2up (German p. 98: https://chortitza.org/pdf/pmfries1.pdf). See also Peter Hildebrand, Erste Auswanderung der Mennoniten aus dem Danziger Gebiet nach Südrußland (Halbstadt: Neufeld, 1888), 80, https://dlib.rsl.ru/viewer/01004497897#?page=80.

Note 11: Glenn Penner, “The Bergthal Colony Schroeders, Part II,” Heritage Posting: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society 48 (April 2005), 6–9, https://mmhs.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Heritage-Posting-no.-48.pdf. Penner's source: Odessa State Regional Archives Fond 6, Inventory 1, file 711, https://www.mharchives.ca/holdings/organizations/OdessaArchiveF6/F6-1.htm.

Note 12: Peter Siemens, “Report I, Chortitza Colony Gebiets-Vorsteher [District Mayor] to the Guardianship Department” (no. 142, November 19, 1812), in Penner, “Bergthal Colony Schroeders," 7; translation slightly altered.

Note 13: P. Siemens, “Report I, Chortitza Colony Gebiets-Vorsteher to the Guardianship Department” (no. 8, January 10, 1814), in Penner, “Bergthal Colony Schroeders," 8.

Note 14: P. Siemens, "Report III, February 16, 1814," Chortitza Colony Gebiets-Vorsteher to the Guardianship Department,” in Penner, “Bergthal Colony Schroeders," 8.

Note 15: P. Siemens, "Report IV, June 6, 1814" (with signed confession /petition by J. Schroeder), Chortitza Colony Gebiets-Vorsteher to the Guardianship Department” (no. 8, February 1814), in Penner, “Bergthal Colony Schroeders," 9.

Note 16: See James Urry, “None but Saints”: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia, 1789–1889 (Winnipeg, MB: Hyperion, 1989).

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To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "High Crimes and Misdimeanors: Mennonite Murders, Infanticide, Rapes and more," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), November 19, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/high-crimes-and-misdemeanors-mennonite.html.