What is the Church to Say? Letter 3 (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 accurate and carefully considered. ~ANF

Mennonite endorsement Trump the man

No one denies the moral flaws of Donald Trump, least of all Trump himself. In these next months Mennonite pastors who supported Trump will have many opportunities to restate to their congregation and their children why someone like Trump won their support. It may be obvious, but the words can be difficult to find. To help, I offer examples from Mennonite history with statements from one our strongest leaders of the past century, Prof. Benjamin H. Unruh (see the nice Mennonite Encyclopedia article on him, GAMEO). I have substituted only a few words, indicated by square brackets to help with the adaptation.

The [MAGA] movement is like the early Anabaptist movement!

In the change of government in 1933, Unruh saw in the [MAGA] movement “things breaking forth which our forefathers in the 16th century had advocated” (note 1). Specifically, Unruh writes to a state official some years later, “Mennonites find much in the teaching of the [President] that which they had emphasized already in the 16th century, e.g., the emphasis on a practical Christianity” (note 2). Elsewhere Unruh would include freedom of conscience and separation of church and state. (Substitutions: National Socialism; Führer).

[Trump] can be evangelized!

In 1936 Unruh was convinced that [Trump]'s “spirit is open to the truth of the gospel." However [Trump] “will never be able to perceive this gospel in its broad generosity unless a great redeeming word of the message comes to him by a "core group" of Christians (like the Mennonites) who can embody that good news of the gospel! Unruh was confident that Mennonite commitments to practical discipleship and dynamic understanding of church are timely (note 3). (Substitution: Hitler)

We can work with [Trump]!

Church leaders critical of the new government are "headstrong and therefore ultimately unevangelical," according to Prof. Unruh. His own method has always been to trust in God, trust Christ, but also to work with influential authorities earnestly and without fear, and to trust them too (note 4). Those critical Mennonite voices that are all "whipped up," or the liberal or pietist Mennonite voices can have very little positive impact (note 5). (Substitution: Hitler).

[Trump] is not pious, but like Mennonite leaders of old, he is a man of action!

Prof. Unruh likened [Trump] to a [Mennonite] district mayor in Russia: usually a man of action who brought Mennonite settlements to the heights of development, though perhaps not always the most pious man. [Trump] is the man for [America], to whom the [American] people [will] owe their well-being.” Don’t worry; there are [MAGA] leaders with whom Unruh had talked who were fully committed to true Christian doctrine" (note 6). (Substitutions: Hitler; Germany, Nazi Party)

Give praise where praise is due!

Prof. Unruh had opportunity to share his view with a government official: “[Donald Trump] wants nothing for himself, everything only for his [United States of America]. I honour him with my whole heart, and I love him as one can only love a sovereign … Only history will reveal what God through [Donald Trump] has granted the [American] people in its entirety … and what he will still also grant Europe and the world; [Trump] is the great combatant of [extreme socialists] (note 7). (Substitutions: Hitler, Germans, Stalin)

He is the carrier of America’s blessing to be a blessing.

The great [presidents] like [Lincoln], “called by God, have passed, but now that hand of blessing is laid on [Donald Trump]’s head. That blessing comes from the depths! It has power” (note 8). (Substitutions: Hindenburg; Hitler)

In [Trump] there is joy!

In 1936 Mennonite doctoral candidate Fritz Kliewer (Unruh’s protégé) returned from Paraguay to complete his studies. On the eve of the leader’s re-election, Kliewer described the euphoria: “When one witnesses such weeks in [America], one is involuntarily drawn into the [President]’s spell and you cannot help but profess allegiance to the [MAGA] movement. I listened to almost all of the [President]’s speeches. ... A response of indescribable jubilation roared out everywhere, which often did not want to end. All the speeches were imbued with a sincere will for peace. I particularly liked the parts where he spoke of his responsibility towards the [American] people and to the Almighty and “not to any international court” (note 9). (Substitutions: Germany, Führer, Nazi movement)

[Trump] is God-sent

“And as Prof. Unruh has aptly said,” Fritz Kliewer wrote to the Mennonite paper in Paraguay, “‘[Donald Trump] is the great opponent of [radical left-wing socialists],’ and that is why he is also the God-sent leader of the [American] people” (note 10). (Substitutions: Adolf Hitler; Stalin, German)

Being true to God equals being true to [America]

Prof. Unruh reminded his readers in the Canadian paper Der Bote that Christians never live in a vacuum, but that they are always situated in a “people,” and that and each people has its unique divine mission. “Being true to God implies being true to one’s people, which in turn requires faithfulness to the nation,” as Frank H. Epp summarized Unruh’s Bote arguments (note 11). (Substitution: Germany)

In 1936, Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung employed the term Ergriffenheit—of being seized or possessed—to describe this eruption of the collective unconscious of a people with “one man who is obviously possessed” and who “is possessing a whole people to such an extent that everything is set in motion and has started rolling, and is slipping unstoppably out of control" (note 12).

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Benjamin Unruh, in Erich Göttner, “Zur Kirchenfrage der Mennoniten: Außerordentliche Kuratoriumssitzung der Vereinigung der Mennonitengemeinde im Deutschen Reich in Berlin vom 17. –19. November 1933,” Mennonitische Blätter 80, no. 12 (December 1933), 114. https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennonitische%20Blaetter/1933-1941/DSCF0887.JPG.

Note 2: Benjamin Unruh to SS-Hauptsturmführer Walther Kolrep, January 30, 1940, 1, letter, MS 295, folder 13, Mennonite Library and Archives—Bethel College. https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_295/folder_13/SKMBT_C35107061214280_0001.jpg.

Note 3: B. H. Unruh to Christian Neff, October 5, 1936, 1, 2b, Schowalter Correspondence 1929–1945, from Mennonitische Forschungsstelle Weierhof (hereafter MFSt)

Note 4: B. Unruh to Abram Braun, Feb. 5, 1944, from Vereinigung Collection, MFSt.

Note 5: B. Unruh to Christian Neff, October 5, 1936, 1, 2b.

Note 6: N. J. Neufeld (Winnipeg), “Unsere Rückreise von Europa nach Amerika,” Mennonitische Rundschau 59, no. 47 (November 18, 1936), 13. https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1936-11-18_59_47/page/n11/mode/2up.

Note 7: B. Unruh, December 8, 1934, extracted in B. Unruh to Major Reitzenstein, January 29, 1937, 6f., from Bundesarchiv, copy in MS 416, from MLA-B. https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_416/potsdam%20microfilm%20selections/69558-142.jpg.

Note 8: Menno-Blatt, 6, no. 5 (May 1935), 3. https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennoblatt/1930-1945/1935-1940/DSCF7169.JPG

Note 9: Fritz Kliewer, “Aus Deutschland,” Kämpfende Jugend (Menno-Blatt) 3, no. 5 (June 1936) 3. https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennoblatt/1930-1945/1935-1940/DSCF7222.JPG.

Note 10: Fritz Kliewer, “Aus Deutschland,” Kämpfende Jugend (Menno-Blatt) 3, no. 5 (June 1936) 4.

Note 11: Cf. Frank H. Epp, “An Analysis of Germanism and National Socialism in the Immigrant Newspaper of a Canadian Minority Group, the Mennonites, in the 1930’s,” PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1965, 227, 228, 229.

Note 12: Carl Gustav Jung, Essays on Contemporary Events: The Psychology of Nazism, translated by R.F.C. Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 16. Trans. altered.

---

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "What is the Church to Say? Letter 3 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), November 17, 2024. https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2024/11/what-is-church-to-say-letter-3-of-4-to.html

Comments

Swiss and Palatinate Connections

Sometime after 1850 Andreas Plennert and his family immigrated to South Russia from the Culm Region of West Prussia. Though there was at least one Mennonite “Plehnert” who had already immigrated to Russia in 1793, it is not a very common Prussian-Russian Mennonite name. As such, however, it is easier to trace than many and offers a minority narrative and identity within the longer and broader Russian Mennonite story. The account below is adapted largely from information in Horst Penner, Die ost- und westpreußischen Mennoniten , vol. 1, though I have expanded upon his work to offer a slightly different narrative. In 1724 there was a group of Mennonites forced out of the Memel region in East Prussia for political and religious reasons and were given assistance to resettle back to West Prussia in areas populated by Mennonites. Among the 23 households that went to the Stuhm region there is one Plenert listed, namely Christian Plenert. We know that Mennonites entered the Memel region ...

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...

Catherine the Great’s 1763 Manifesto

“We must swarm our vast wastelands with people. I do not think that in order to achieve this it would be useful to compel our non-Christians to accept our faith--polygamy for example, is even more useful for the multiplication of the population. … "Russia does not have enough inhabitants, …but still possesses a large expanse of land, which is neither inhabited nor cultivated. … The fields that could nourish the whole nation, barely feeds one family..." – Catherine II (Note 1 ) “We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade, they are also most convenient for the development and growth of many kinds ...

Why Danzig and Poland?

In the late 16th century, Poland became a haven for a variety of non-conformists which included Jews, Anti-Trinitarians from Italy and Bohemia, Quakers and Calvinists from Great Britain, south German Schwenkfelders, Eastern Orthodox, Armenian, and Greek Catholic Christians, some Muslim Tatars, as well as other peaceful sectarians like the Dutch and Flemish Anabaptists. Unlike the Low Countries and most of western Europe, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a “state without stakes,” and as such fittingly described as “God’s playground” ( note 1 ). In the view of 17th-century Dutch dramatist Joost van den Vondel, it was “the ‘Promised Land,’ where the refugee could forget all his sorrow and enjoy the richness of the land” ( note 2 ). Over the next two centuries an important strand of Mennonite life and spirituality evolved into a mature tradition in this relatively hospitable context ( note 3 ). Anabaptists from the Low Countries began to arrive in Danzig and region as early as 15...

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...

Plague and Pestilence in Danzig, 1709

Russian and Prussian Mennonites trace at least 200 years of their story through Danzig and Royal Prussia, where episodes of plague and pestilence were not unfamiliar ( note 1 ). Mennonites arrived primarily from the Low Countries and in large numbers in the middle of the 16th century—approximately 750 families or 3,000 refugees and settlers between 1527 and 1578 to Danzig and Royal Prussia ( note 2 ). At this time Danzig was undergoing tremendous demographic, cultural and economic transformation, almost tripling in population in less than 100 years. With 80% of Poland’s foreign trade handled through this port city ( note 3 ), Danzig saw the arrival of new people from across Europe, many looking to find work in the crammed and bustling city ( note 4 ). Maria Bogucka’s research on Danzig in this era brings the streets of the maritime city to life: “Sanitation facilities were inadequate … The level of personal hygiene was low. Most people lived close together: five or six to a room, sle...

"Motherhood of the People": Halbstadt Midwife Helene Berg and the SS

Recently Benjamin Goossen posted an important piece on the “well-known” Halbstadt midwife Helene Berg. Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler had taken a special interest in “old Mrs. Berg” and had publicly recognized her for helping birth some 8,000 Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) babies ( note 1 ). Goossen and I have shared archival materials in the past years. Below I would like to continue the exploration of Taunte Bojsche (or "Aunt Berg") and the surprisingly broad interest in her by Nazi officials as icon. I begin with a family story as a window onto the times. Some 35,000 Mennonites were evacuated out of German-occupied Ukraine in Fall 1943. After a grueling trek west the survivors landed in German-annexed Wartheland (previously Poland) where they were naturalized as German citizens. My grandmother Helene Bräul had eight children, and Helene Berg may very well have been her midwife for one or more of them. Like many Mennonite mothers in Wartheland, my grandmother was ...

Mennonite Literacy in Polish-Prussia

At a Mennonite wedding in Deutsch Kazun in 1833 (pic), neither groom nor bride nor the witnesses could sign the wedding register. A Görtz, a Janzen, a Schröder—born a Görtzen – illiterate. “This act was read to the married couple and witnesses, but not signed because they were unable to write.” Similarly, with the certification of a Mennonite death in Culm (Chelmo), West Prussia, 1813-14: “This document was read and it was signed by us because the witnesses were illiterate.” Spouse and children were unable to read or write. Names like Gerz, Plenert, Kliewer, Kasper, Buller and others. 14 families of the 25 Mennonite deaths registered --or 56%--could not sign the paperwork ( note 1 ; pic ). This appears to be an anomaly. We know some pioneers to Russia were well educated. The letters of the land-scout to Russia, Johann Bartsch to his wife back home (1786-87) are eloquent, beautifully written and indicate a high level of literacy ( note 2 ). Even Klaas Reimer (b. 1770), the founder t...

Invitation to the Russian Consulate, Danzig, January 19, 1788

B elow is one of the most important original Mennonite artifacts I have seen. It concerns January 19. The two land scouts Jacob Höppner and Johann Bartsch had returned to Danzig from Russia on November 10, 1787 with the Russian Immigration Agent, Georg von Trappe. Soon thereafter, Trappe had copies of the royal decree and agreement (Gnadenbrief) printed for distribution in the Flemish and Frisian Mennonite congregations in Danzig and other locations, dated December 29, 1787 ( see pic ; note 1 ). After the flyer was handed out to congregants in Danzig after worship on January 13, 1788, city councilors made the most bitter accusations against church elders for allowing Trappe and the Russian Consulate to do this; something similar had happened before ( note 2 ). In the flyer Trappe boasted that land scouts Höppner and Bartsch met not only with Gregory Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s vice-regent and administrator of New Russia, but also with “the Most Gracious Russian Monarch” herse...

Jews and Mennonites Together in Danzig's Suburbs

There has been very little reflection on the relationship of Jews and Mennonites in the suburb of Schottland (or Alt-Schottland or Stare Szkoty) where Mennonites first settled in the mid-1500s. Here Mennonites and Jews lived in the small community together for two centuries, quite literally on the margins outside the gates of the city of Danzig. Many historic maps that include Alt Schottland have become available in recent years ( note 1; pic ). H.G. Mannhardt’s book on the Danzig Mennonite church community plus some archival membership lists are our best sources for the Mennonite experience, while illustrations from the day bring many of those episodes of prosperity, repressions, war, plague, emigration, flooding etc. in an urban environment to life ( note 2 ). Peter J. Klassen’s writings on Mennonites in Poland and Prussia also present newer research on Mennonite life in and around Danzig in helpful ways ( note 3 ). There is one small sentence in Klassen’s larger volume that sugg...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog