Johann Cornies: "Enlightened Despot" of the Mennonites

In the past few years, two volumes of the extensive John Cornies' correspondence discovered 1990 have been transcribed and published in English (note 1). A third and final volume is forthcoming.

No single Russian Mennonite has been as revered historically—or also despised or feared by his own!—as Johann Cornies (1789-1848). He was a larger-than-life figure who ruled over the Molotschna like a benevolent Mennonite Tsar and father of all, as some remember him, and for others as a despot with the demands and ideas of a devil! With some historical distance, David G. Rempel aptly refers to him as an “enlightened despot” (note 2).

Cornies was never elected to a Mennonite civic or religious post. But he would acquire a real power over all of those offices—de facto more than de jure—and over the manner in which all landholders in the Molotschna would farm, plant, build and develop. How did this happen?

The Russian state required Mennonites and other foreign colonies to adopt a local political and administrative system with elected village mayors (Schulz) and councilors (Beisitzer), as well as an elected mayor/ chairman (Oberschulz) for the district (Gebietsamt or volost or colony). At this level the mayors together with the district chairman formed a representative assembly for all regional matters. Teachers often played the role of village scribe.

These local governments had broad freedoms with certain limits, and with prescribed goals for ordering their communities. Specifically they were responsible to the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Settlers. The Guardianship Committee in turn was responsible to the Ministry of the Interior, and after 1837, to the Ministry of State Domains, to protect, guide and supervise the foreign settlements in New Russia. Most successive Guardianship Committee presidents supported and spear-headed pioneering strategies to settle and farm the Ukrainian steppe with the foreign settler colonies under their oversight. Economic success, social order and advancement in education was rewarded.

One of its earliest chairmen (or its equivalent) was State Counsellor Samuel Contenius, the son of a German Westphalian pastor—remembered as a brilliant and innovative agriculturalist and generous, “fatherly” colonial administrator and protector for the Mennonites. The elderly Contenius recognized, mentored and awarded the Mennonites, and eventually the young Cornies as well (note 3).

The two early Mennonite colonies and other foreign colonies—German Lutheran/Catholic, Swedish, Bulgarian, etc.—would have certainly collapsed in the early decades without the Guardianship Committee. The Committee not only ensured the courteous, hospitable and safe reception of colonists, but was also responsible to oversee the work of local elected officials in that they perform their duties accurately and without prejudice; they also provided general police and legal protections that ensured that colonists could achieve the economic mission of the state.

These local Mennonite offices were required to execute directives from the Guardianship Committee and to fulfill the requirements of the Mennonite charter (Privilegium), including the maintenance of their roads and bridges, and broadly to be a “model” community in its agricultural initiatives and practices, and encouraging good order—including church attendance, mutual support, grain reserves, education and appropriate health measures. However moral oversight and discipline as well as education and definitions of what it meant to be an exemplary community were historically the domain of church leadership, and this would lead to conflict in the Molotschna and specifically with Cornies.

The young Cornies found favour with the Guardianship Committee for his large-scale farms and tree plantations on the steppe; in 1817 at the age of twenty-nine, Cornies was given full authority to head the “Mennonite Land Settlement Commission” for the Molotschna Colony, which arranged for the appropriate settlement land and distribution to new co-religionists arriving from Prussia. Soon afterwards the state asked him to do the same for settlers from Württemberg coming to the Mariupol District.

Because of his demonstrated success with agricultural models consistent with the objectives of the state, Cornies became the government-appointed Chair for life of the Sheep Society (1824), the Forestry Society (1831–1836), and finally Chair for life of the very powerful Agricultural Society (after 1836) for the Molotschna, which ultimately included oversight of schools as well. His powers and areas of oversight became vast, insofar as the colony as a whole was responsible to and dependent upon the state, through the Guardianship Committee.

Cornies was offered—but refused “as a simple Mennonite”—to take any state positions. He was in effect a servitor of the state for Molotschna, and as commissioned by the state he carried out other projects for other communities as well—taking direction and inspiration from the Guardianship Committee and carrying out plans with its authority.

In case after case, all opposition to Cornies’ agricultural and municipal development policies in Molotschna were interpreted as rebelliousness to the state and its “fatherly” care and oversight. With the authority of the Guardianship Commission behind him, Cornies imposed punishments on elected Mennonite village mayors, colony chairmen, ministers and elders when they—as elected and recognized office holders in their own right—resisted Cornies' directives. Cornies was personally involved with the silencing and then defrocking of a church elder, the exiling of an elder, the flogging of insubordinate mayors, the invalidating of local elections, as well as the more usual punishments of fines, public labour or flogging of rebellious Mennonite farmers (e.g., for not planting properly according to the Society’s direction). Ultimately, hard opposition to Cornies’ scientifically informed agricultural developments, or interpretation of Privilegium expectations for an “exemplary community” (in a Mennonite tradition), would have to face the more extreme “fatherly” punishments of Guardianship Commission presidents.

By and large the community wanted to do well, sought to be diligent and took a measure of pride in their Privilegium-calling to be a model community. Cornies had an extensive lending library updated regularly with agricultural journals and books to inform his policies and experiments. He ran what was, in effect, an agricultural research station—with his farms and arguably with Molotschna as a whole. This was complemented by a strong aesthetic vision for architectural and planning beauty and order, for buildings, streets and farms.

Because of personal drive, vision and opportunity he was also awarded by the state with lands beyond the colony. He not only leveraged his personal wealth to introduce better breeding stock and experiment with crops and their care, but he also became a benefactor to many and investor in micro-projects by colonists seeking to improve themselves and their community. Meaningful employment and moral uprightness went hand-in-glove for Cornies.

Conversely, because the colony was granted to the Mennonites as a whole and contingent on meeting charter expectations, Cornies regularly removed some “lazy,” troublesome, or incompetent farmers from their farmstead (Hof) and assigned it to “more deserving” young couples who show promise as farmers! That was the power of the Chairman for Life of the Agricultural Society (note 4).

With regard to the church, the state wanted and expected each foreign religion in its respective locality to thrive and care for moral order of its colony. In this way each minority religion would also underpin the empire and serve God’s purposes for imperial Christian Russia in and through the Royal Family and its oversight of many peoples. The first church buildings in Molotschna, including the Rudnerweide Frisian “prayer house” in the east of the colony, were built with generous government funding. The state was willing to fund the clergy too, but that was not Mennonite practice.

Notably the Guardianship Committee presidents were highly reluctant to intervene in religious affairs, except in situations of “disobedience” or “rebelliousness.” They did the same with German Lutheran, Pietist Separatist, and Catholic colonies as well. The principle of complete religious toleration was balanced by a second principle: where religion interferes with the affairs of the state, “the latter not only may, but must itself interfere in the affairs of the church and indicate to [that church] its true purpose and limits.” The Guardianship Commission President could judge which acts of faith had political content “in accordance with the particular spirit of each,” and they were authorized to intervene (note 5). In effect, Cornies was both a buffer against, and agent for, such intervention.

Cornies understood his role, with the authority and trust placed in him by the Guardianship Committee, to find this balance—and safeguard their privilegium, land and freedom from military service. In effect, Cornies’ “guardianship” role was to guide his Mennonite community to faithfully remake itself and promote new visions of religious-Mennonite orthodoxy while deepening their integration in, and subordination to, the institutions of the empire.

Most famously in 1842, for example, Elder Jacob Warkentin of the "Large" Pure Flemish Church (majority break-off from Ohrloff Elder Bernhard Fast) complained to the President of the Guardianship Committee, von Hahn, about Cornies’ “dictatorial” manner and disregard of the church’s approach to discipline and reconciliation in accordance with Matthew 18. Von Hahn knew of Warkentin’s long-standing opposition to Cornies’ reforms and leadership, which had started with Warkentin’s reaction against Cornies’ introduction of more attractive, brick building material (note 6)!

Warkentin’s interpretation of community mission as “model colonists” was as a fixed, unchanging and withdrawn community that was clergy led. However Cornies’ vision was adaptive and responsive to that state’s objectives of a model community—with innovations for success that were arguably consistent with Mennonite values and ways. Von Hahn stood with Cornies and personally dismissed the interfering elder from his church office and forbade him to speak or participate in community events. Other elders, moreover, were not to acknowledge him as a ministerial colleague, and his congregation was to be divided into three, with three newly elected elders.

Von Hahn, when angry, announced that he would visit the colony not as father and guardian as he would like, but as judge to punish using the most severe measures to render innocuous the disobedient, rebellious, disorderly and harmful spirits in the colony. He would expect full cooperation from elders and mayors to mobilize every possible means at their disposal to halt the scourge and bring the guilty ones—even if they are an elder—to deep, open-hearted contrition. Cornies and his men carried out these kinds of punishments.

Every religious and ethnic group had its own unique charter with the state, with unequal laws, expectations, supports and privileges. It was an imperial model of statehood—not a democracy—with a variety of institutional arrangements, for the inclusion of a wide range of ethnic minorities. In many cases community elite like Cornies were identified to achieve these state-defined missions (note 7).

This administrative system continued until the Great Reforms of the 1860s. Starting after the unsuccessful Crimean War, Nicholas I initiated Russia’s transition to a modern nation-state model, characterized by increased assimilation and Russification, as well as an increasing centralization of power.

Cornies died suddenly in 1848 at the age of 59. On the occasion of his death, Cornies was officially honoured by the Committee: his “life and work were exemplary, he was in the true sense of the word a Christian, a faithful subject of his Monarch, who displayed that through his actions.” The new Guardianship Committee President von Rosen noted that it is “only through an exemplary life, useful and active engagement, that colonists can show their thankfulness to their Monarch for the many privileges which they have received.” The model of Cornies should serve to “strengthen and summon” Mennonites in the “exercise of their duties as colonists” (note 8).

Immediately after his death few Mennonites chose to praise Cornies; of the forty-four village histories completed only months later, only eight gave any mention to Cornies (note 9). He had demanded too much for some, he was too hard on many, inappropriately progressive, perhaps, for others. A half century later some leaders would hail Cornies as the fitting complement to Menno Simons—as body is to spirit!—both, critical for the life and vitality of a people. Others, however, were still "heaping anger and contempt upon the residents of Ohrloff and the defenders of Cornies" (note 10).

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

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Note 1: Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies, vol. 1: 1812–1835; vol. 2: 1836–1842, translated by Ingrid I. Epp; edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015; 2020). See esp. the introductory chapters by Staples. Volume 2 download: https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/100164/1/Southern_Ukrainian_Steppe_UTP_9781487538743.pdf.

Note 2: David G. Rempel, “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia. A study of their settlement and economic development from 1789–1914.” PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1933, 173, https://archive.org/details/themennonitecoloniesinnewrussiaastudyoftheirsettlementandeconomicdevelopmentfrom1789to1914ocr.

Note 3: This is a firm and warm relationship by 1822; cf. letter by Contenius to Cornies, October 18, 1822, in Cornies, Transformation I, no. 9. See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/duke-of-richelieu-and-molotschna.html.

Note 4: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/landless-crisis-molotschna-1840s-to.html.

Note 5: This implicit or operational principle was in a Special Commission Memorandum in 1866; cited in Paul Werth, The Tsar’s foreign faiths. Toleration and the fate of religious freedom in imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 108; 110.

Note 6: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/religious-toleration-in-new-russia-and.html. On Cornies’ “pandemic spirituality,” see previous post: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/a-mennonite-pandemic-spirituality-1830.html; on Cornies and the Bible Society, see: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/02/1843-london-bible-society-revival-and.html.

Note 7: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/mennonites-like-to-visit-back-and-forth.html.

Note 8: Fedor von Rosen, “Zum Andenken des verewigten Johann Cornies,” Unterhaltungsblatt für deutsche Ansiedler im südlichen Rußland 3, no. 10 (October 1848), 1, https://www.hfdr.de/sub/pdf/unterhaltungsblatt/1848_Blatt_8-10.pdf. Cornies was also honored in a Bavarian journal, “Johann Kornies,” Didaskalia, no. 199 (August 20, 1852), 3.

Note 9: Cf. histories collected in Margarete Woltner, ed., Die Gemeindeberichte von 1848 der deutschen Siedlungen am Schwarzen Meer (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1941), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/kb/woltner.pdf.

Note 10: Cf. Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), 199; 152f., https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/.

Select Bibliography for Further Reading:

Dirks, Heinrich. “Ein Abschnitt aus der Gnadenfelder Gemeindechronik mit Nekrologie des ‘alten Cornies.’” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1907 5 (1908), 52–65. https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/kb/mj1907.pdf.

Dyck, Harvey. “Russian Servitor and Mennonite Hero. Light and Shadow in Images of Johann Cornies.” Journal of Mennonite Studies 2 (1984) 9–28. https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/118/118.

Epp, David H. Johann Cornies: Züge aus seinem Leben und Wirken [1909]. Historische Schriftenreihe, Buch 3. Rosthern, SK: Echo, 1946. https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/1dok15.pdf.

Froese, Leonhard. “Johann Cornies’ pädagogischer Beitrag.” Der Evangelischer Erzieher 6, no. 6 (1954), 172–176. https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Buch/Corn4.pdf.

Gavel, (n.n.). “Beilage: Johann Cornies, geboren den 29. Juni 1789, gestorben den 13. März 1848.” Unterhaltungsblatt für deutsche Ansiedler im südlichen Rußland 3, no. 10 (October 1848), 9–18. https://www.hfdr.de/sub/pdf/unterhaltungsblatt/1848_Blatt_10-12.pdf.

Janzen, Jacob H. “Auf Ivan Ivanovichs Cornies’ Tod.” Mennonitische Volkswarte 2, no. 9 (September 1936), 283–284. https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/pdf/vpetk380.pdf.

Jung, Karl-Günther, and Heinold Fast. “Bericht Ludwig Bezner über seinen Besuch bei Johann Cornies, 1821.” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter (1988), 70–77.

Quiring, Walter (Jakob). “Johann Cornies.” Warte-Jahrbuch, vol. 1 (1943), 67-74. https://archive.org/details/N022797/N022797/page/66/.

Reimer, Johannes. Johann Cornies. Der Sozialreformer aus den Steppen des Südrusslands. Nuremberg: VTR, 2015.

Staples, John R. “Afforestation as Performance Art: Johann Cornies’ Aesthetics of Civilization.” In Minority Report: Mennonite Identities in Imperial Russia and Soviet Ukraine Reconsidered, 1789–1945, edited by Leonard G. Friesen, 61–81. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018.

______. “Johann Cornies and Pietism in the Molochna.” Preservings 24 (December 2004), 16–17. https://www.plettfoundation.org/preservings/archive/35/.

Urry, James. “The Source of Johann Cornies’s ‘Rules’ on Schools and Education.” Mennonite Historian 45, no. 4 (December 2019), 10–11. http://www.mennonitehistorian.ca/45.4.MHDec19.pdf. See many of Urry's other writings for important insights on Cornies.

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To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Johann Cornies: 'Enlightened Despot' of the Mennonites," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), November 7, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/johann-cornies-enlightened-despot-of.html.