History of the Russian Mennonites

Heinrich Jacob Bräul was a village teacher in Pordenau and Rudnerweide, Molotschna—and my great-grandfather. While we have almost no family source material, here is an attempt to piece together his life in a manner which may give some profile to Russian Mennonite life in the “golden era.” Heinrich was born in 1843 in Rudnerweide where his father Jacob was a recognized bilingual schoolmaster as well as a master painter. In 1855 his father wrote an essay on school discipline for the Molotschna School Association, and in 1856 an essay on the moral condition of their village ( note 1 ). These documents paints a positive picture of Heinrich’s school, home and village life. As the son of a teacher, the family was landless and generally poor; in his old age his father “lived under the most dire circumstances” despite having many adult children ( note 2 ). In 1856 Rudnerweide had 33 farmsteads and 67 Anwohner or “cottager” families ( note 3 ). Heinrich was old enough to have experienced ...

Maps are political artifacts. Russia or Ukraine?  A late nineteenth-century map of “German Settlements and Presence throughout History” offers a good example from the Mennonite settlements ( note 1 ). It was based on the German Colonial Atlas of Paul Langhans ( note 2 ). Langhans was the most important mapmaker and promoter of German settlements around the globe; he continued this work of “pan-Germanism” well into the Nazi era ( note 3 ). Already in the nineteenth century, more than one Russian journalist claimed that Russian Germans—including Mennonites in Russia—promoted pan-Germanism in their schools and spread hatred against Russia ( note 4 ). The consequences on the ground were harsh: Johannes H. Janzen—a geography instructor in the Mennonite high school in Ohrloff—who was known “to love the Russian people and Fatherland more than most of his contemporaries,” was placed under “serious suspicion of treason” for an instructional map ( note 5 ) he made of the Molotschna Mennoni...

Mennonite memoirs typically paint a golden picture of schools in the so-called “golden era” of Mennonite life in Russia. The official “Reports on Molotschna Schools: 1895/96 and 1897/98,” however, give us a more lackluster and realistic picture ( note 1 ). What do we learn from these reports? Many schools had minor infractions—the furniture did not correspond to requirements, there were insufficient book cabinets, or the desks and benches were too old and in need of repair. The Mennonite schoolhouses in Halbstadt and Rudnerweide—once recognized as leading and exceptional—together with schools in Friedensruh, Fürstenwerder, Franzthal, and Blumstein were deemed to be “in an unsatisfactory state.” In other cases a new roof and new steps were needed, or the rooms too were too small, too dark, too cramped, or with moist walls. More seriously in some villages—Waldheim, Schönsee, Fabrikerwiese, and even Gnadenfeld, well-known for its educational past—inspectors recorded that pupils “do not ...

It is rare that Mennonites make the news for their protests to pressure government or industry. Here is one example. The agricultural machinery factories in in the Greater Zaporozhzhia-Alexandrovsk economic zone—including the villages of Chortitza, Einlage, Osterwick, and Schönwiese—were places of significant labour unrest in the early 1900s ( note 1 ). In February and March 1905 factory workers mobilized at the Mennonite factories of Schulz, and of Lepp and Wallmann in Alexandrovsk, where the following demands were made: an 8-hour workday a weekly or bi-weekly pay schedule courteous treatment of employees immunity from punishment for elected labour representatives minimum wages no child labour appropriate equipment for moving heavy weights free family medical care free schooling for children workmen’s compensation regulation of overtime factory hygiene including showers and proper air ventilation lunch room facilities conflict resolution mechanisms the abolition of fines accidenta...

Below are stories of two pogroms and of the responses in two Mennonite communities in Ukraine/Russia. The first location is Einlage (Chortitza) in 1905, with two episodes. The rage of peasants and the working class exploded with strikes, bloody revolts, chaos and plundering across the land, especially on the estates early in 1905. The Greater Zaporozhzhia-Alexandrovsk economic zone, with larger Mennonite manufacturers of agricultural machinery in Einlage as well, was a centre for some of that labour unrest ( note 1 ). In the shadows of the larger March 1905 Russian Revolution, there were so-called provocateurs named the "Black Hundred" ( note 2 ) who organized pogroms across Russia, but especially in ethnic Ukrainian and Polish areas. “Jewish stores, shops, and homes were broken into, robbed, and plundered; Jewish women and girls were raped and brutally murdered. Many Jews lost not only their belongings in Russia, but also their lives. And all with impunity. The police ...

Cardinal Richelieu, the sinister clergyman portrayed in Disney’s “Three Musketeers” film, was the great-grand-uncle of Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis, the Duke of Richelieu. The Duke knew the Mennonites of New Russia very well and was a key figure in their early health and success. In exile from France, Richelieu volunteered in Catherine the Great’s Imperial army and was decorated for his 1789 leadership in fighting the Turkish Ottoman Empire. In 1803, Alexander I appointed Richelieu as Governor of newly founded city of Odessa, and then as Governor General of all New Russia in 1804. He would later return to France where he served twice as Prime Minister ( note 1 ). Richelieu was viewed as the “colonizer of genius” ( note 2 ), and his most trusted colonization official was Samuel Contenius, who was most directly involved in the successful settlement and early economic development of Mennonites in Russia. Contenius (b. 1748) was the son of a German pastor; he came to Russia at age 25 whe...