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 received by Elder Franz Regehr, Rosenort:
“[From] The Reich Chancellor, Berlin, September 1933. I would like to express my sincere thanks for the loyal attitude that you expressed in your letter and your willingness to work on building the German Reich. Adolf Hitler.” (Note 2)

"Celebrating Good News."
The early enthusiasm for the new government is captured well in reports of the September 1933 special meeting of the Union (Vereinigung) of Mennonite Congregations in the German Reich and its member conference of Prussian Mennonite congregations. The following is a composite of the reports by Pastors Emil Händiges of Elbing and Erich Göttner of Danzig (note 3) and may be helpful for creating a narrative and conference text today.

"Economic Grievances: We will Make Germany Great Again."
Germans as a whole were humiliated, demoralized, and impoverished by the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles at the conclusion of the Great War, and are threatened by anti-Christian Bolshevism. The national “arising” (Erhebung) however is a new birth or “becoming” (Werden) of the Volk after a long period of testing. Hitler as Führer is “a divine gift of salvation to our people,” writes Göttner.

"God is at Work! Faith and Nation"
“God has called men to the head of the government who have placed themselves with a clear confession on the foundation of Christian faith.” Yet it will require a transformation of the heart—and not just of individuals but of the Volk, writes Händiges. For this to happen, Christianity and Germanness need to find each other, and the church must emerge out of ossified Christendom and traditionalism, including the Mennonite church, Göttner argues.

"The Election Result is Good for the Church"
The promise by the Führer and the Nazi Party of religious freedom and legal protection, as long as it does not “conflict with the manners and moral sentiments of the Germanic race,” was unprecedented good news and opportunity for Mennonites.

"Addressing Morality-Gone-Wild"
In these 1933 reports, there is a shared perception that Germany will benefit from a single and totalitarian ordering of life, including coordination of state and church for the up-building of the German Volk and to address perceived morality-gone-wild. “The challenge today is to become aware, in a new way, of what these goals mean for our congregations, and to wrestle for a ‘new becoming’ amongst ourselves as well,” writes Göttner.

As one elderly German Mennonite recalled years later, Nazism “came over us like a revival” (note 4).

--Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: “Bericht über die 4. allgem. westpr. Konferenz in Tiegenhagen am 10. September 1933,” Mennonitische Blätter 80, no. 10 [October 1933] 101, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennonitische%20Blaetter/1933-1941/DSCF0880.JPG
Note 2: “Die Antwort der Reichsregierung auf die Begrüßungsgtelegramme der Konferenz zu Tiegenhagen, Freie Stadt Danzig,” Mennonitische Blätter 80, no. 11 [November 1933] 109, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennonitische%20Blaetter/1933-1941/DSCF0884.JPG
Note 3: Erich Göttner and Emil Händiges, “Zur Kirchenfrage der Mennoniten. Bericht über die außerordentliche Zusammenkunft der Vorstände der Ost- und Westpreußischen und Freistaat-Danziger Mennonitengemeinden zu Kalthof am 25. August 1933,” Mennonitische Blätter 80, no. 9 (September 1933), 85–91; 89. https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennonitische%20Blaetter/1933-1941/DSCF0873.JPG I’ve taken this summary from my essay: “German Mennonite Theology in the Era of National Socialism,” in European Mennonites and the Holocaust, edited by Mark Jantzen and John D. Thiesen, 125–152 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020).
Note 4: As told by Dean Taylor, “Mennonite Nazis: A Lesson from History,” Ephrata Ministries Blog, Ephrata Christian Fellowship. http://www.ephrataministries.org/remnant-2012-11-mennonite-nazis.a5w.

---
To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "What is the Church to Say? Letter 1 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), November 11, 2024. https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2024/11/what-is-church-to-say-letter-1-of-4-to.html

Comments

Life in Exin, 1944: German-Occupied Poland

After the 1943-44 portion of the Great Trek ended with settlement of some 35,000 Mennonites in German-annexed Poland, the Gnadenfeld area trek members were scattered in resettler camps ( Umsiedler-Lager ) around Exin ( Kcynia ) and the Altburgund District administrative centre of Dietfurt ( Żnin ), including the hamlets of Kiefernrode ( Słupowiec ), Schwarzerde ( Malice ), Schmiedebach, etc. ( note 1) . Until World War I, the area was part of the German-Prussian Province of Posen, about 170 kilometres south-west of Danzig ( Gdańsk ) and about 400 kilometres east of Berlin. Almost all ethnic German resettlers from Ukraine arrived through Litzmannstadt (Łódź), one of two entrance points from the east into new German province of “Warthegau” ( note 2) . Here thousands were cleansed, deloused and processed daily. Some Gnadenfeld group members were brought to Janowitz (Janowiec) , near Hermannsbad in the District of Hohensalza for quarantine. Here fresh straw was laid out on the floor for ...

More Royal News! Mennonites give gifts of “Oxen, Butter, Ducks, Hens & Cheese” to new King (1772)

What do Mennonites offer a new king? The ritual ceremonies of homage to a new European king—as we see on TV these days--are ancient. Exactly 250 years yesterday, Frederick the Great became king over Mennonites in the Vistula River Delta where most of our ancestors lived. Here is how that played out. On May 31, 1772, Heinrich Donner was elected elder of the Orlofferfelde Mennonite Church, 25 km north of Marienburg Castle in Polish-Prussia; thankfully he kept a diary ( note 1 ). Only a few months later the weak Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth collapsed and was partitioned by powerful, land-hungry neighbours: Austria, Prussia and Catherine the Great’s empire. In the preceding decades Mennonites had lived with significant autonomy, felt secure under the Polish crown and could appeal to the king for protection . Now some 2,638 Mennonite families were under Prussian rule. Frederick II took possession of his new lands on September 13, and then invited four persons of nobility plus clergy from ...

Mennonites in Danzig's Suburbs: Maps and Illustrations

Mennonites first settled in the Danzig suburb of Schottland (lit: "Scotland"; “Stare-Szkoty”; also “Alt-Schottland”) in the mid-1500s. “Danzig” is the oldest and most important Mennonite congregation in Prussia. Menno Simons visited Schottland and Dirk Phillips was its first elder and lived here for a time. Two centuries later the number of families from the suburbs of Danzig that immigrated to Russia was not large: Stolzenberg 5, Schidlitz 3, Alt-Schottland 2, Ohra 1, Langfuhr 1, Emaus 1, Nobel 1, and Krampetz 2 ( map 1 ). However most Russian Mennonites had at least some connection to the Danzig church—whether Frisian or Flemish—if not in the 1700s, then in 1600s. Map 2 is from 1615; a larger number of Mennonites had been in Schottland at this point for more than four decades. Its buildings are not rural but look very Dutch urban/suburban in style. These were weavers, merchants and craftsmen, and since the 17th century they lived side-by-side with a larger number of Jews a...

Fraktur (or Gothic) font and Kurrent- (or Sütterlin) handwriting: Nazi ban, 1941

In the middle of the war on January 1, 1942, the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Rundschau published a new issue without the familiar Fraktur script masthead ( note 1 ). One might speculate on the reasons, but a year earlier Hitler banned the use of the font in the Reich . The Rundschau did not exactly follow all orders from Berlin—the rest of the paper was in Fraktur (sometimes referred to as "Gothic"); when the war ended in 1945, the Rundschau reintroduced the Fraktur font for its masthead. It wasn’t until the 1960s that an issue might have a page or title here or there with the “normal” or Latin font, even though post-war Germany was no longer using Fraktur . By 1973 only the Rundschau masthead is left in Fraktur , and that is only removed in December 1992. Attached is a copy of Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann's official letter dated January 3, 1941, which prohibited the use of Fraktur fonts "by order of the Führer. " Why? It was a Jewish invention, apparent...

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...

Canadian Mennonites and Paraguay: 1922

The first attached photo vividly depicts a meeting of conservative Mennonite elders in Saskatchewan and Manitoba in 1922 who intended to lead their communities to Paraguay. This was happening as hundreds of “Old Colony” Mennonites were leaving for Mexico. The “Old Colonists” from Manitoba’s West Reserve were in fact the first conservative Canadian Mennonites to scout out Paraguay for settlement land. In 1920 they were assisted in their search by New York financier and lawyer, General Samuel McRoberts, who had extensive holdings as well as political and business connections in Paraguay. The delegation travelled 90 km into the Chaco interior, west of the Paraguay River. They were however unimpressed with the land and ultimately recommended Mexico to their community ( note 1 ). Other conservative groups in Manitoba and Saskatchewan were however interested in sending their own scouts to assess the Chaco and the political climate in Paraguay vis-à-vis the list of privileges they were seek...

Ideas for Educational Reform, 1832

After four decades in Russia, the president of the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Colonists, Andrei Fadeev, considered only eight of 116 Mennonite teachers in the two larger regions of Katerynoslav and Tauria—which included the Molotschna—fit to teach ( note 1 ). Jakob Bräul’s Rudnerweide schoolhouse was given the same status as Heinrich Heese’s Ohrloff Agricultural Society School with regard to policies and “especially for the teaching of Russian” ( note 2 ). Fadeev triggered great angst when by “imperial decree” he distributed a book to church elders written by German Mennonite Abraham Hunzinger on the modernization of Mennonite schools and church. It was a friendly gesture and poke. The Molotschna was already a tinderbox, and this spark introduced by a state official to strengthen the community ignited a fire in the colony. Fadeev wrote to Johann Cornies on January 12, 1832: “Most valued Cornies ... I advise you to acquire and read a booklet sent to your church leaders f...

“The way is finally open”—Russian Mennonite Immigration, 1922-23

In a highly secretive meeting in Ohrloff, Molotschna on February 7, 1922, leaders took a decision to work to remove the entire Mennonite population of some 100,000 people out of the USSR—if at all possible ( note 1 ). B.B. Janz (Ohrloff) and Bishop David Toews (Rosthern, SK) are remembered as the immigration leaders who made it possible to bring some 20,000 Mennonites from the Soviet Union to Canada in the 1920s ( note 2 ). But behind those final numbers were multiple problems. In August 1922, an appeal was made by leaders to churches in Canada and the USA: “The way is finally open, for at least 3,000 persons who have received permission to leave Russia … Two ships of the Canadian Pacific Railway are ready to sail from England to Odessa as soon as the cholera quarantine is lifted. These Russian [Mennonite] refugees are practically without clothing … .” ( Note 3 ) Notably at this point B. B. Janz was also writing Toews, saying that he was utterly exhausted and was preparing to ...

From USSR to Cherrywood Station: Mennonites winter in Markham-Stouffville, 1924

On September 26, 1924, 126 Russian Mennonite passengers disembarked the S. S. Melita at Quebec City ( note 1 ). They were among some 20,000 Mennonites who could immigrate to Canada from the Soviet Union in the 1920s. A number of these families received train cards to Cherrywood (Pickering) and Locust Hill (Markham) stations, where they were received by Markham area Mennonites. The Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization (CMBC) registration forms record each family's travel dates as well as their "first place of arrival" in Canada. The attached artifacts—a few pages from the financial records booklet kept by Markham-Stouffville treasurer J. L. Grove, plus some correspondence—profile concretely the level of support of this community north-east of Toronto for co-religionists fleeing the Soviet Union. Mennonites in Ontario had been well informed of the relief needs in Russia since 1921 and plans for mass immigration ( note 2 ). In April 1924 the local Stouffville Tribune ...

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog