Moral Condition of Molotschna: Teacher Reports, 1856

Johann Cornies was a young lad when he immigrated to Russia with his parents. They first wintered in Chortitza where, under the supervision of his aging father, the teen managed Jacob Höppner’s brandy distillery. There he observed the moral impact of poverty on good people (Chortitza pioneers came with little capital; note 1).

In the years after his death in 1848, a landless crisis dominated the Mennonite Molotschna Colony--the district the had so carefully and energetically nurtured to achieve excellent economic and social outcomes. The crisis was marked by corruption, inequities, and economic disparities. As David G. Rempel summarizes, it shook most of the Mennonite villages “to their very foundation” (note 2).

In 1856 the Molotschna Society for Advancement of Schools tasked teachers to submit reflections on the moral condition of colony inhabitants and to offer their advice.

Thirty-seven of these essays are buried in the massive 140,000-page archive by Peter J. Braun, lost in 1921 and rediscovered in Odessa in 1990. While preparing a publication on the history of education in the Molotschna in 1921 (note 3), Braun summarized the essays. The summary remains unpublished but is found in a 1932 letter to his brother Abram (note 4). The Brauns were reflecting on the moral decline of the colony and the beginnings of the Mennonite Brethren movement four years later. But decline was occurring in a context of social and economic collapse.

David Rempel suggested decades ago that the “seemingly endemic wranglings and splits” of the Mennonite church in South Russia were only seldom or superficially related to doctrine, and “almost invariably and intimately bound up with some of the most serious social and economic issues” that afflicted one or more of the congregations in the settlement (note 5).

Shockingly teachers used the following descriptive terms for colony life: “crude, coarse, impudent, obstreperous, stubborn,” and marked by “drunkenness, cursing, outrages, disputes, fraud in commerce” (note 6).

One teacher cited Jeremiah 9:4 to make his point: “Beware of your friends; do not trust anyone in your clan. For every one of them is a deceiver”; another Psalm 14:3—“All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.”

Other teachers included the following descriptions:

"Indecent behaviour occurs in all places, even in the churches; brawling behaviour is usual at weddings: crazed singing, dancing and drinking; it is customary to mock marriage with whoring and adulterous verses; … respected persons lead in immorality; members of the church wallow undisturbed in vice; Sundays and holidays are desecrated; churches are empty and taverns full; the better-tempered are slandered and mocked …; [morally] everything is quite dilapidated; is at a very miserable and broken level; is in the greatest state of decline."

I have extracted and transcribed two of these reports: one from the 24-year-old teacher Bernhard Harder (b. 1832, #37422) in Blumstein. Harder would later become a powerful preacher/ evangelist and published poet/ hymn writer (note 7).

The other report was written by 53-year-old Jacob Bräul (b. 1803, #69626) of Rudnerweide. Bräul “had as pupils the grandchildren of his first pupils” (note 8); P. M. Friesen praised Bräul as one of the very few Mennonite instructors of his generation whose teaching “created a special sensation” in the colony, who had the “ability to awaken in his pupils an interest in learning,” and who was “famous” not only for his teaching of Russian, but also his approach to “arithmetic, singing, and penmanship” (note 9). But like his younger colleagues, he was landless and retired in poverty (note 10).

Bernhard Harder dared to name the power differential. The teacher’s “position in the community makes it, if not impossible, extremely difficult for him to enter into this matter specifically and impartially; especially since the request to do so has come from a side that must necessarily offer a point of view” (note 11). Authorities who worked closely with corrupt Mennonite leaders make “superficial comparisons,” Harder argues between Mennonites and other ethnic groups and “give our people exaggerated recognition and regard us as a model of all virtues. But the schoolteacher's eye sees quite differently.”

“What shame! What a disgrace!, when the older drunkard, trampling under foot the dignity of his age, indulging in his vice and rejecting all moral feeling, out does even the wildest youth in arrogance, folly and disorderly chatter! … The weddings as they are celebrated here are real nurseries of Satan: here the youth, even the schoolchildren, are actually and apparently quite deliberately consecrated to him! … The adults must first become moral and not undermine the morality of the youth with such diligence! Order must be stricter, but it must be understood in true biblical terms in accordance with the meaning of our confession. … If one were to shed more light on the social and family life of many congregational members, … arrogance, selfishness, boasting, indeed shame and vice confront us everywhere. … Injustice has gained the upper hand and love, self-sacrificing love, which alone is the basis of true morality, is growing cold in many! … As long as the stumbling blocks that are so pernicious for the children are not removed, in short, as long as the greater part of the brotherhood, and especially those at the top, remain in an unconverted state, the prospect of a marked improvement in our moral condition will remain in the misty distance. Without Christ we can do nothing, and until He is fully established among us, we cannot think of true morality.”

At some risk to his livelihood in the village that hired and paid him, Harder pulled no punches.

The tone and energy of Jacob Bräul’s report is decidedly calmer (note 12). Near the end of a successful teaching career and able to put the present into a longer context, he chose a different route, reflecting the religious stirrings that accompanied the unrest.

Bräul agreed with his younger colleagues that the morality in the colony “is not very commendable.” But in contrast to his colleagues, he did not detail the “sad manifestations” of immorality in the community. Rather, he chose to focus on a root problem—which at his stage of his life was “not difficult” to see, he says.

“Without the inner renewal of the whole person, one’s external morality is nothing, lacking both strength and anchor,” Bräul wrote. A Christian community “is to be without blemish, as the Word of God commands,” but rules on their own—which some were asking for—are weak in face of the “temptations of evil vices and desires that rise up within a person.”

In his assessment, the “majority of inhabitants are satisfied with an external morality,” which is ultimately insufficient to shape individuals “to live and act morally.”

Bräul offered three scripture texts as guideposts. The first, from the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians (4:22–32) reminds the Christian community to continually take off the old self and its “walk of life, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds.” Bräul pointed to the “admonitions of the Apostle Paul” and contrasted those to “the various transgressions amongst us.”

Secondly, he recalled the great commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:4–9), and complemented this with a third text, to “meditate day and night on the Book of the Law, for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall be successful” (Joshua 1:8).

In reflection on his own community, Bräul suggested that “the one who does not follow these words of God will not be able to live and act completely morally. Whoever does not have the mind of Christ, is not his.” Moving forward he recommended a prayer, namely that “the mind and spirit of Christ may soon be enlivened amongst us!”

Harder and Bräul both call for religious renewal in the colony and hint of schisms still to come. Neither joined the Mennonite Brethren movement four years later (though at least one of Bräul’s landless adult children did) but chose to work towards similar ends within the established institutions. Harder and one of his lay ministerial colleagues Franz Isaac—a leader of the landless fight—later visited and reported on a worship service of the Mennonite Brethren, noting differences but finding nothing offensive (note 13).

I have not transcribed the other 35 essays; however if Peter Braun is correct there was a consensus among teachers that the community was on the brink of moral collapse. And with an insight from Cornies, I would add that the poverty, corruption and injustice connected to the landless crisis provided an important context for understanding that collapse.

Here again David Rempel is not far off the mark: “Had it not been for the extreme narrow-mindedness and intolerance of the rank and file of the Mennonite preachers [most of whom were landholders] this religious dissent could have easily been composed [contained?].” Many landless seemed to find in the brethren movement their place to dissent or find some joy, “and henceforth the land quarrel was often closely intertwined with the religious one” (note 14).

The landless crisis was not the singular cause of the observed moral crisis; the Crimean War which concluded that same year (1856) undoubtedly played a role. The youth who travelled in the wagon convoys—about seven trips per farmstead, 550 km away—acquired new and unsavory habits:

“These boys were told to smoke and also drink brandy to ward off contagious diseases. ... They also acquired the use of profane language from their rough companions. When they returned home they felt quite out of place with the other boys of the village. ... Father said war did not tend to improve mankind.” (Note 15)

Notably landholders often hired out these wartime obligations to the landless in their village which only exacerbated the problem observed and reported by the colony’s teachers. The reports offer an important window onto the Mennonite experiment in Molotschna.

Cornelius Krahn claimed that Harder’s later work in "cultural and spiritual aspects" was “a singular contribution comparable to that of Johann Cornies in the economic realm” (note 16). That is certainly an overstatement, but it does point to the contribution of teachers (and increasingly teacher-preachers), both in the old church and in the Mennonite brethren movement, in time of crisis.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: [N.n.] Gavel, “Beilage: Johann Cornies, geboren den 29. Juni 1789, gestorben den 13. März 1848,” Unterhaltungsblatt 3, no. 10 (October 1848), 9–18, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Buch/Walt1.pdf [= eulogy for Cornies; reference to his early days] .

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, 179, https://archive.org/details/themennonitecoloniesinnewrussiaastudyoftheirsettlementandeconomicdevelopmentfrom1789to1914ocr. On the crisis, see previous post: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/landless-crisis-molotschna-1840s-to.html.

Note 3: Peter J. Braun, Der Molotschnaer Mennoniten-Schulrat, 1869–1919. Zum Gedenktag seines 50jährigen Bestehens, edited by Wladimir Süss (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001). See English summary in idem, “The Educational System of the Mennonite Colonies in South Russia,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 3, no. 3 (July 1929), 169–182. On the archive’s origins, loss, rediscovery and contents, see: Ingrid I. Epp, and Harvey L. Dyck, The Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive, 1803–1920: A Research Guide (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), https://www.mharchives.ca/holdings/papers/pdfs/PJBRussMennArchiveFA2.pdf.

Note 4: Peter J. Braun to [brother] Abram J. Braun, November 16, 1932, 1f., in Mennonite Library and Archives, Newton, KS, MS 91, Folder 4. https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_91/folder_4/SKMBT_C35107121310570_0001.jpg, AND https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_91/folder_4/SKMBT_C35107121310570_0002.jpg.

Note 5: David G. Rempel, “Disunity and schisms in the Mennonite Church ca. 1789 -1870,” 2. Unpublished typed manuscript from David G. Rempel Collection, Box 39: 20, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.

Note 6: P. Braun to A. Braun, November 16, 1932.

Note 7: Bernhard Harder, “Die Moralität der hiesigen Bewohner,” December 27, 1856, in Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive, reel 52, file 1820. From Robarts Library, University of Toronto. For a biography of Harder, cf. Cornelius Krahn, “Harder, Bernhard (1832-1884),” GAMEO, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Harder,_Bernhard_(1832-1884); and Gerhard Harder, “Mittheilungen aus dem Lebensgange des Verfassers,” in B. Harder, Geistliche Lieder, volume 1,VIII-XXIV. Bernhard Harder’s hymns and poems were collected after his death and published by Heinrich Franz, Geistliche Lieder und Gelegenheitsgedichte von Bernhard Harder, 2 volumes (Hamburg: A-G, 1888), vol 1: https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Pis/Hard1.pdf; vol. 2: https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Pis/Hard2.pdf. See also a posthumously published sermon by Harder: “Eine Predigt vom seligen Prediger und Dichter Bernhard Harder,” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1908 6 (1909), 57–66, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/kb/mj1908.pdf.

Note 8: Peter Isaac, A Family Book from 1694 to 1916 and Personal Experiences (Rosenort, MB: 1980), 47. Isaac (of the Kleine Gemeinde) adds: “Apparently, this is a rare occurrence. I take for granted that their village thought very highly of him.”

Note 9: Peter M. Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia (1789-1910), 2nd ed. (Fresno, CA: Christian Literature Mennonite Brethren Churches, 1980), 1034, fn. 31; 781, https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/. In 1830 the head of the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Settlers, Andrei Fadeev, recognized Bräul as one of only eight teachers out of 116 in Katerynoslav and Tauria fit to teach (notably he also taught Russian) See Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 780f.; and 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 (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1994), 20, https://archive.org/details/germanukrainianr0000unse/page/10/mode/2up.

Note 10: In 1867 miller and one-time Rudnerweide resident Heinrich Görz reminded his son—an aspiring teacher—of the “scandalous” situation of Mennonite teachers in general. He gives us a sample of comparative wages and a glimpse of Jacob Bräul’s poverty in retirement. See Heinrich Goerz, in John B. Toews, “Cultural and Intellectual Aspects of the Mennonite Experience in Russia,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 53, no. 2 (1979) 137–159; 146f.

Note 11: Bernhard Harder, “Die Moralität der hiesigen Bewohner.” December 27, 1856. From Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive, file 1820, reel 52. From Robarts Library, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON.

Note 12: Jacob Bräul, “Die Moralität der hiesigen Bewohner,” December 20, 1856, in Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive, file 1820, reel 52. From Robarts Library, University of Toronto.

Note 13: Mennonitische Blätter 10, no. 1 (February 1863), 15, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennonitische%20Blaetter/1854-1900/1863/DSCF0285.JPG (see also bottom of 15, top of 16; Harder is a contributor to that piece as well). See Franz Isaac, Die Molotschnaer Mennoniten. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte derselben (Halbstadt, Taurien: H. J. Braun, 1908), https://archive.org/details/die-molotschnaer-mennoniten-editablea. English translation by Tim Flaming and Glenn Penner: https://www.mharchives.ca/download/3573/.

Note 14: Rempel, “Mennonite Colonies in New Russia,” 187.

Note 15: Jacob Unruh, cited in James Urry and Lawrence Klippenstein, “Mennonites and the Crimean War, 1854–1856,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 7 (1989), 18, https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/748/747. See also previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/mennonites-and-crimean-war-1853-56.html.

Note 16: Krahn, “Harder, Bernhard.” Bräul’s grandson (b. 1854) continued his grandfather’s and father's legacy as a noted educator in Molotschna; GAMEO, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Br%C3%A4ul,_Johann_J._(1854-1916).

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To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Moral Condition of Molotschna: Teacher Reports, 1856," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), November 11, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/moral-condition-of-molotschna-teacher.html.