Mennonites, Politics, and Peoplehood: 1525 to 1980 0887556884, 9780887553448

Citation preview

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

This page intentionally left blank

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD EUROPE - RUSSIA - CANADA 1525-1980

JAMES URRY

UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA PRESS

®James Urry, 2006 University of Manitoba Press Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2 Canada www.umanitoba.ca/uofmpress Printed in Canada on acid-free paper by Friesens. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of University of Manitoba Press, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from ACCESS COPYRIGHT (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), 6 Adelaide Street East, Suite 900, Toronto, Ontario M5C 1H6, www.accesscopyright.ca. Cover design: Kirk Warren Text design: Relish Design Studio Maps: Weldon Hiebert

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Urry, James Mennonites, politics, and peoplehood : Europe, Russia, Canada, 1525-1980 / James Urry. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-88755-688-4 1. Mennonites-Political activity-Europe-History. 2. Mennonites-Political activity-Russia-History. 3. Mennonites-Political activity-Canada-History. I. Title. BX8115.U77 2006

322'. 1'0882897 C2005-907055-2

Publication of this book has been made possible with the generous assistance of the Publishing Fund of the International Council for Canadian Studies, and of the Chair in Mennonite Studies, University of Winnipeg. The University of Manitoba gratefully acknowledges the financial support for its publication program provided by the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council, and the Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Tourism.

To the Memory of David Gerhard Rempel (1899-1992) and Roy H. Vogt (1934-1997)

This page intentionally left blank

CONTENTS

FOREWORD by Harry Loewen

PREFACE INTRODUCTION: THE QUIET IN THE LAND

ix

xiii 3

PART 1 EUROPE

1 CONFESSIONS AND MAGISTRATES (1525-1750) 2 MANDATES AND PRIVILEGIA (1650-1800) 3 REVOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS (1750-1874)

17 39 55

PART 2 RUSSIA

4 POWER AND PRIVILEGE (1790-1905) 5 CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOLIDARITY (1905-1918) 6 AUTONOMY AND IDEOLOGY (1918-1929)

85 Ill 137

PART 3 CANADA

7 PARTY AND PATRONAGE: MANITOBA (1890-1920) 8 COMMUNITIES AND IDENTITIES: THE RUSSLANDER (1923-1940) 9 PARTY AND "ETHNICITY": MANITOBA (1927-1974) 10 POLARIZATION AND PARTISANSHIP: WINNIPEG (1921-1980)

161 185 205 229

CONCLUSION: THE LOUD IN THE LAND

255

ENDNOTES

265

BIBLIOGRAPHY

353

INDEX

389

This page intentionally left blank

FOREWORD

W

hen the late Frank H. Epp first ran for political office in the 1970s, John A. Toews of the Mennonite Brethren Bible College in Winnipeg advised his friend not to become involved in politics. Toews said to me, "Frank can do more good as an educator and minister of the Gospel than in federal government." Epp was not elected to the halls of power—no doubt, for Toews, a blessing in disguise. Frank Epp represented a Russian-Mennonite tradition whose members favoured political involvement, whereas Toews still held to the view that Mennonites should not seek governmental office. As members of separate religious communities, Anabaptist-Mennonites were to model a Christian faith and life in a predominantly godless society. According to the earliest Anabaptist confession of faith, drawn up at Schleitheim in 1527, believers were to separate themselves from the world, including sinful pleasures, all forms of violence, and the holding of political office. While until fairly recently the principle of separation from the world remained an ideal for many Mennonites, from the very beginning of their history, Mennonites still acted politically. Persecuted for their beliefs and forced to flee from place to place, Mennonites negotiated settlement terms and "privileges" with regional rulers in order to exercise their faith, achieve social stability, and prosper economically. The very survival of Mennonites as a people was largely due to this ability to come to

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

terms with rulers and governments. In his writings Menno Simons had already expressed the opinion that "the office of the magistrate is of God" and had addressed some rulers as "Christians." Mennonites in the Netherlands were among the first of their kind to view a ruler like William I of Orange sympathetically and to seek terms that would benefit them. Similarly, Mennonite merchants close to Hamburg and in the Danzig area needed to establish working relationships with magistrates that would help them to survive as a people and benefit them economically. The Mennonite confessions of faith written after Schleitheim reflect these changed attitudes toward rulers and governments, even if Mennonite leaders continued to encourage their members to avoid political office and political activities. The Mennonites who later settled in Russia, and even later in Canada and the United States, learned to use government institutions and political processes to their advantage in religious, cultural, and economic affairs. While the Swiss-South German branch of Mennonites in Europe and America remained more withdrawn from the "world," Russian Mennonites were less hesitant to become involved in the political life of their surrounding communities. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, some Mennonites in Russia had become politically minded and, at the start of the twentieth century, politically active. This political awareness and involvement extended into the early Soviet period before many Mennonites were forced to abandon their Russian homeland and emigrate to Canada. Those who remained were suppressed by the Stalinist system. In reading the works of the pioneer Mennonite church-oriented historians such as Peter M. Friesen, David H. Epp, and others, it becomes clear that the Russian Mennonites were not only a people of faith, but also a practical, materialistic, and politically astute people. Yet these historians invariably portray Mennonites as a people who acted religiously in all they did. Even later historians, such as Heinrich Gb'rz and others, leave their readers with the impression that the motives, objectives, and plans of Russian Mennonites were primarily religious in nature. They are portrayed, especially during the time of the Russian Civil War, the period of anarchy, and during their preparations for emigration to Canada, as victims at the mercy of political forces they hardly understood and much less could control. Above all, Russian Mennonites were seen as religious refugees fleeing the Soviet Union because their faith and religious institutions were in jeopardy at the hands of an atheistic regime. Later, academically trained historians, notably David G. Rempel, E.K. Francis, John B. Toews, and James Urry, have begun to revise this historical image of the Russian Mennonites. In their works the one-dimensional religious Mennonite environment of earlier historians has become multidimensional, as the complex X

FOREWORD

social, economic, and political aspects of the Russian "Mennonite commonwealth" are presented as a more complicated world. Russian Mennonites are now portrayed as a people who were not only concerned with preserving their religious values, but who also were motivated by material and ideological concerns. As a people they acted politically to preserve and advance their religious, cultural, and social institutions. The first group of Russian Mennonites to emigrate to Canada in the 1870s, known to some as Kanadier, might be considered apolitical. They sought to escape government changes in Russia, including threats to their pacifist beliefs, and their more liberal brethren who were willing to adapt to government demands to serve the state in some organized way and accept educational changes, including teaching in Russian in their schools. In Canada, however, many realized that they could not remain separated from the new democratic institutions and related political processes. Even before the more politically astute refugees from the Soviet Union arrived in the 1920s, some Canadian Mennonites had been active in politics. But the arrival of the new immigrants increased this involvement, first in local government and provincial affairs and later on the national level as well. Some immigrants, especially during the 1930s, turned their backs on democracy, viewing Germany's National Socialism with sympathy and even dreaming of establishing a separate "Mennostaat." As James Urry argues in this book, while Mennonites have, no doubt, always been committed to their faith values, they have been equally concerned with remaining in control of their communities, their economic system and educational institutions so crucial for the futures of their young people. To achieve these goals, Mennonites have negotiated with the representatives of those in political power, and have sought to extract concessions from rulers and political systems that often in principle were diametrically opposed to their own values and way of life. Urry is not suggesting that faith issues have been unimportant, but instead he indicates that much church-oriented Mennonite historiography has been onesided and hence failed to see the wider involvement of Mennonites in the world. To understand Mennonites, especially in the Russian and Canadian situations, he argues that we need to see them not as isolated and withdrawn religious communities, but as people who, influenced by political events and aware of the political issues involved, sought to use political institutions and processes to preserve their identity and control their established way of life. In certain situations Mennonites might have failed politically as the wider world around them changed beyond their limited ability to control even local events. This occurred in tsarist Russia as the state collapsed into revolution and anarchy. During the early Soviet period they XI

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

attempted to renegotiate their independence with the new political regime, only to see their communities destroyed under Stalinism. In Canada, Urry suggests, however, that Mennonites adapted to the democratic system and some have succeeded, at least partially, in entering and participating in democratic politics while preserving their faith. James Urry is, no doubt, one of the most knowledgeable historians of the Russian Mennonites today. His Oxford University doctoral dissertation, his book None but Saints, and his numerous articles and lectures have earned him the respect of Mennonite and non-Mennonite scholars. Moreover, on his many visits to Canada, where he continues to research aspects of Mennonite history and life, he has won many friends. Wherever he is invited to speak on Mennonite subjects, be it in academic or more informal settings, Urry draws large crowds and goodwill. People are attracted to him by his extensive knowledge, his personable ways, his sense of humour, and above all his passionate love of his subject. This book grew out of a series of three lectures delivered on 3 and 4 November 1994, at the University of Winnipeg, sponsored by the Chair in Mennonite Studies and supported by Menno Simons College, Mennonite Heritage Centre, and the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies. At the end of the second lecture, a prominent businessperson from Winnipeg declared that it was a most refreshing lecture and that he had never heard Mennonite historians dealing with the issue of politics and power among Mennonites. He announced, "I see things more clearly now." Indeed, readers of this book will come to understand aspects of Mennonite history, especially that of the Russian Mennonites, as never before. It is an honour and my privilege to recommend this book highly to readers who are interested in and love Mennonite history. —Harry Loewen Professor Emeritus, University of Winnipeg

xn

PREFACE

T

he primary instigation for this book came from an invitation to give a series of lectures in Winnipeg in 1994 in association with the Chair of Mennonite Studies by the then holder of the chair, Professor Harry Loewen. At the time I was working on an account of Mennonite immigration to Canada from the Soviet Union in the 1920s with special reference to the area around Grunthal in southeastern Manitoba—a work still in progress. To understand the world of the immigrants, I had been forced to look more closely than I had expected at political issues in late imperial Russia, the early years of Soviet control in Russia, and the new immigrant's reactions to Canadian democracy. So I decided to give the lectures based on the theme of "Mennonites, Power, and Politics." The lectures were presented at the University of Winnipeg; later I was invited by Hildi Tiessen-Epp to repeat them at Conrad Grebel College of the University of Waterloo in Ontario. As there was considerable interest in the lectures, Roy Loewen, who succeeded Harry Loewen as Chair of Mennonite Studies, suggested I add additional chapters on Mennonites and Canadian politics, especially on Winnipeg, in order to extend the account and make it more substantial. I had, by this time, carried out more research for my study of Grunthal on Mennonites and rural politics in Manitoba from the 1930s onwards. I uncovered evidence of earlier nineteenthcentury Mennonite involvement in Manitoba politics during further research in

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Canada in 1998. With the addition of a chapter on Winnipeg, this research resulted in not two, but three new chapters (8-10). By now the entire enterprise was getting out of hand. An attempt to rewrite the introduction in light of the new chapters forced me to rethink the exact relationship of various Mennonite communities with politics, the state, and legal systems since their formation. The introduction grew into a new chapter, which in turn grew into three chapters (1-3). I discovered that one of the advantages of this process of writing a book backwards was that many of the themes I had been dealing with became much clearer. But this also forced a revision of the existing chapters. The Russian chapter, which had served as a general overview to the lectures, now became two chapters as I dealt with issues of privilege and constitutionalism in the RussianMennonite experience. At this point I began to have nightmares that the book might take on the appearance of the Firth of Forth bridge in Scotland, which every British schoolboy knows requires such constant maintenance that once the painters finish repainting at one end of the structure, they need to start again at the other. While an author claims singular ownership of a book, they are but the inheritors of the research and knowledge of earlier generations of scholars and in their research are dependent on their peers. No one but a hermit can ever lay claim to total ownership of a text. I could not have finished this book without the help of a large number of people who have assisted me in finding material, supplied me with sources unavailable in New Zealand, answered numerous queries, and who have been willing to read chapter drafts, offering helpful criticism and advice. Among the many who have helped me directly and indirectly over the years, I would like to thank Roger Bartlett, Brigitte Bonisch-Brednich, Vic and Marge Doerksen, Leonard Doell, Colin Dowsett, Michael Driedger, Abe Dueck, the late John Dyck, Ernie, Harry, and Siegfried Enns, Kevin Enns-Rempel, Adolf Ens, Peter and Vera Fast, Jacob J. Fehr, R.D. Francis, Abe Friesen, Gerald Friesen, John J. Friesen, Rudy and Edith Friesen, Ted Friesen, David Giesbrecht, Reg Good, Louise Grenside, Titus Guenther, Mark Jantzen, Jake and Helen Janzen, Lawrence Klippenstein, Frank Konersmann, Karl Koop, Peter Letkemann, Harry and Gertrude Loewen, Heinrich Loewen, Royden Loewen, Terry Martin, Katy Miller, John Morrow, Colin Neufeld, Gundolf Niebuhr, David Norton, Glyn Parry, Peter and Justina Penner, the late Delbert Plett, Gerhard Ratzlaff, Ken Reddig, Alf Redekopp, Ted Regehr, Al and Joan Reimer, Gerhard Rempel, Ingrid Riesen, John D. Roth, Theresa Sawicka, Theron Schlabach, David Schroeder, Sam Steiner, Denis Stoesz, John Thiesen, Jack Thiessen, Paul Toews, Col Trompetter, Matthew Trundle, Roy and Ruth Vogt, Gary Waltner, Robert Ward, Paul Werth, Bernie Wiebe, Irme Wiebe, and Gwyn Williams. I apologize to any who provided me with assistance and advice but whom I have failed to mention. xiv

PREFACE

I take final responsibility for the book and any errors in the sure and certain knowledge that only God is perfect. Research and study leave to conduct research was granted by the Leave Committee of the Victoria University of Wellington, and I am grateful to the university librarians for their help in securing sources. The original lectures were in part drafted during my time as a visitor at the Centre for the Humanities at the University of Calgary, and I am very grateful to the centre for providing an atmosphere so conducive to scholarship. I am also grateful to Harry Loewen and his successor Royden Loewen for attachments to the Chair of Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg during my periods of leaves in Manitoba, Roy Vogt for arranging connections with the University of Manitoba in 1995, and his widow Ruth, for lending her apartment during my research in 1998. A special thanks is also due to the careful reading of the final draft by Harry Loewen, and especially to Al Reimer for his very careful copy-editing of the final manuscript; over the years, Al's fine editorial pen has helped to establish new standards of literary excellence in many a work on Mennonites, often without proper acknowledgement. I acknowledge it here. I have dedicated this book to David G. Rempel and Roy Vogt, two friends and colleagues, both committed liberals who have passed beyond the world of earthly politics—Mennonite and other.

xv

This page intentionally left blank

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

This page intentionally left blank

INTRODUCTION

THE QUIET IN THE LAND

A

popular view of Mennonites is that they have been a largely apolitical people since the time of their formation in the Anabaptist movement of the Reformation.1 Along with related groups such as the Amish and Hutterites, Mennonites are sometimes referred to as "the Quiet in the Land" (die Stillen im Lande). As a people of faith Mennonites have often withdrawn from secular concerns, including political involvements, the holding of government office, membership of political parties, and voting in elections. Such activities are certainly still considered "worldly" by some Mennonite congregations. To these groups Christ required his followers to concentrate on otherworldly pursuits and remain separate from the world in order to hope for salvation on the day of judgement. Association with politics and government is not just worldly but also is contrary to Christ's teachings on nonresistance, as in the final instance political power is based on the exercise of force. Mennonites also know that often in the past their ancestors' commitment to these faith principles resulted in persecution, suffering, and even death, sanctioned by governments and rulers; while separated from worldly politics their ancestors became its victims. This view of the Mennonite past has also developed into a self-sustaining folk tradition for many Mennonites. It is just one example of a number of "paradoxical rhetorical strategies" where Mennonites present "separatist arguments derived

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

from their faith's tragic orientation" and "assimilative arguments derived from the comic orientation of their yearning to be good citizens."2 A closer examination of the many historical contexts in which Mennonites have lived soon reveals a rather more complex picture than simple images of a separated, apolitical religious minority. Since their Anabaptist foundations during the Reformation, Mennonites have never been far from politics and not all have been unwilling participants in the power plays of the "world." The aim of this book is to examine a selection of these historical contexts and to relate Mennonite reactions to developments in social and political forms and processes in different areas of the world. The aim is not to examine all Mennonite reactions in all historical contexts but instead to concentrate mainly on the experiences of particular groups of Mennonites and their descendants who are interconnected in time and space. These are the Mennonites who originated mainly in northwestern Europe, some of whose members spread eastwards, first to the lands of the Vistula delta region close to the Baltic Sea and then from the end of the eighteenth century onwards to southern Russia. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries different waves of migration brought large numbers of these "Russian" Mennonites to North America, many of whom settled in Canada, particularly in the province of Manitoba. It was during the long period from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries and in different lands that Mennonites encountered a variety of different political systems: city states, republics, autocratic rulers, and eventually democratic governments associated with modern nation-states. They also lived through a number of different political situations, including war and revolution. Anabaptism emerged when European society was still predominantly agrarian in character and the majority of the population were subjects of rulers and possessed few rights, but, instead, numerous duties and obligations. Later Mennonites, however, had to come to terms with the social and political realities of the modern industrial age and added a degree of rights to the duties and obligations of citizenship. Part of my aim, therefore, is also to trace this increasing involvement with the modern world in terms of the very different social, political, and economic environments in which Mennonites lived. As a consequence, this book is not intended to reduce this variety to a single form or to either construct a Mennonite theology of politics or establish a Mennonite political ideology. The first part of the book examines the European background of Anabaptist and Mennonite rejection of politics and government office, and the involvement of various groups with political regimes and politics in different circumstances with an emphasis on the Dutch, north German, and Polish-Prussian communities. The book then focusses on the experiences of Russian Mennonites and their 4

INTRODUCTION

involvement with politics in Russia, the Soviet Union, and later in Canada, particularly in Manitoba. The Russian Mennonites are not "Russian" in the sense that they were long-term inhabitants of the Russian lands or of Slav descent. Instead, they were descendants of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century emigrants to Russia from Prussia, and the term refers primarily to the territory in which they settled.3 The term "Russian," however, is also involved with a complex identification and in Canada it has maintained a high degree of currency even among Mennonites whose ancestors lived in Russia often more than one generation ago.4 Given the multicultural focus of the modern Canadian state, this continued identification does not necessarily conflict with a strong identification with Canada or of being Canadian. In equally complex ways, many of the descendants of these Russian Mennonites have "renewed" their links with Russia through historical study and, in an age of mass tourism, by visits to the old "homeland." The Russian Mennonites, perhaps uniquely among Mennonites, combined a sense of congregational community with central features of the modern, industrial age: capitalism, nationalism, state building, and bureaucratic organization. In Russia their attempts to ensure the viability of their communities witnessed the establishment of a political economy that extended far beyond the requirements of mere self-sustenance or the needs of religious fellowship. They were granted special privileges by the Russian state, including for a time the right to govern their own affairs. This led to the pursuit of cultural autonomy and ultimately to a sense of a political community, creating almost a state within a state. At the same time Mennonites increasingly participated in Russian life as loyal subjects of the tsar and later as useful citizens. Mennonites ceased to be passive actors in the Russian Empire's affairs and politics and power became intimately interwoven with their sense of being a distinct people. The consequences of this experience continued after the end of the Empire and were played out in a number of different situations during the twentieth century as Mennonites migrated to new locations, voluntarily as emigrant pioneers but also as refugees. I examine some aspects of the Canadian experience of these immigrants in detail, particularly with regard to Manitoba, although I am well aware that in other places where Mennonites settled from Russia, both in Canada and elsewhere, their engagement with local politics took different forms.5 Throughout this book I use the term "politics" to cover a wide range of political ideas, institutions, events, and actions. I will be dealing with a long period of time and a number of different political situations involving a variety of principles, rulers, governmental structures, and forms of political activity that are impossible to reduce to a single definition of the political. While the Anabaptist founders of 5

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Mennonitism provided religious justifications for not partaking in government and rejected involvement with politics, their own survival as functioning religious communities forced them to come to terms with external sources of power and administration. Often this involved obtaining some kind of protection from local lords or city councils and later, as European states became more centralized, the support of powerful rulers. The favoured way of achieving this was to secure some kind of privilege that provided protection and, increasingly, special rights. But with the emergence of popular forms of government, often following revolutionary activity, and later through the mobilization of populations in the formation of nation-states, Mennonites saw their privileges removed. Worse, their attempts to maintain separate, distinct identities were threatened by the creation of new national identities, the imposition of a single legal code often backed by a constitution, and their subordination to mass, popular democracy. This book examines many of these changes and this makes a single definition of politics difficult, if not impossible, to impose upon the complex historical situations. It should also be remembered that politics was not only external to the Mennonite world, but also existed within their communities. Mennonites established institutions of discipline and control and these often caused conflicts between sections of the community and the pursuit of power by religious leaders. The Mennonite sense of peoplehood also shifted in response to changes in the political environment. By "peoplehood" I mean the particular Mennonite sense of identity based on their faith and sense of being and belonging. Core features of what it means to be a people of faith are often expressed in their confessions of faith and include adult baptism, nonresistance, and remaining separated from "the world." There is, however, less agreement among Mennonites on other religious matters, including ritual and practice. But throughout history this core proved remarkably persistent. Belonging is centred on a strong sense of social community founded on the interconnections of people through descent, both from founding ancestors and the historical experiences of the people of faith and often also through the genealogical descent of the community's members. The popular concept of "ethnicity" does not quite capture this sense of being and belonging, which is informed by a culture of faith rather than faith in culture. The choice of the term "peoplehood" is intended to reflect this aspect of identity.6 Mennonite scholarship on politics and its place in the development of their communities and identities is varied.7 The original Mennonite Encyclopedia, first published in four volumes in 1959, has no entry under "Politics."8 It does, however, have a general overview of Mennonite attitudes towards the state, written by the noted American Mennonite scholar Harold S. Bender with supplementary details

6

INTRODUCTION

on the Netherlands by the Dutch scholar Nanne van der Zijpp.9 It is only with the addition of a new fifth volume in 1990 that entries under "Political attitudes" by James C. Juhnke and "Politics" and "Government" by John H. Redekop appear.10 Volume five also includes an updated entry on church-state relations by Theodore Koontz and a new entry under "Sociopolitical activism."11 The omission of any detailed account of politics and related themes in the first volumes of the Encyclopedia and their appearance in the later volume five in part reflects changing general Mennonite attitudes to political matters and also scholarship in the field. But while later entries refer in passing to the early Anabaptists, all emphasize the "modern" nature of Mennonite involvement with politics. As a consequence, studies of earlier Mennonite involvement after the Reformation remain neglected. This point can be illustrated again by reference to the Encyclopedia. Remarkably, in neither the original edition, nor in the new, is there an entry under "toleration," in spite of its importance in history and a considerable scholarly literature on the topic. 12 The closest the first edition gets to the topic is an entry, again by Bender, on "Religious liberty."13 One could suggest that this reflects a very Mennonite-centred view, in which Mennonites were less concerned with being tolerated and more eager to secure the freedom to worship as they wished, and this reflected a very passive concern with liberty.14 At the same time the favouring of the idea of "liberty" over "toleration" also suggests a particularly North American political rhetoric. 15 In terms of the later edition, there is no entry under "confessionalism," again in spite of its importance in scholarship in the relationship between! religious groups and political states in early modern Europe. 16 In recent years studies have begun to draw on these ideas, but they have still to inform much Mennonite scholarship. 17 The Mennonite literature often stresses the importance of the granting of privileges by rulers and the severe consequences that followed the threat or actual removal of these established "rights" and "privileges." Considered in context, the removal of privilege is associated with the creation of nation-states and involved all sections of society as subjects were transformed into citizens, often during a process of governmental reform involving the granting of constitutions, the extension of legal rights, and the establishment of democratic institutions. This involved the emancipation of populations from old restrictions and the granting of greater freedom and civil rights.18 Once again, however, the term "emancipation" is absent from editions of the Mennonite Encyclopedia and only recently have some Mennonite scholars related the Mennonite experience to established scholarship in the field. 19 7

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Since the end of the nineteenth century Mennonites have contributed extensively to Reformation studies through studies of Anabaptism. As studies of Anabaptism were emancipated from the denunciations of leaders of the magisterial Reformation, who characterized Anabaptists as dangerous extremists (Schwdrmer), Anabaptists often acquired new identities drawn from discussions of more modern political movements. In 1941 the noted church historian Roland H. Bainton included Anabaptists among what he called the "left wing" of the Reformation.20 Even before the term appeared in print, Bainton's use of "left wing" was discussed favourably by Robert Friedman, a German refugee scholar working within the Mennonite community.21 A few years later, however, Harold S. Bender, in his seminal essay "The Anabaptist Vision," mentioned Bainton's usage only in passing, without citing its source, and linking it with an earlier Presbyterian historian's characterization of the Anabaptists as the "Bolsheviks of the Reformation."22 Bender obviously felt uneasy with the political implications of such terms; in 1929, in a letter to the New York Times, he had refuted a suggestion made in an earlier article in the newspaper that Mennonites had been revolutionaries from their origins and therefore the Mennonites still in Russia "once were Bolsheviks."23 The term "left wing" was first coined to describe politically polarized groups after the French Revolution. Although the distinction between left and right forms the basis of a widespread classificatory dichotomy among humankind, by the twentieth century its political usage had acquired considerable potency. At the time Bainton blessed Anabaptists with leftist tendencies, the right-wing fascist regime of Nazi Germany was at war with the left-wing Marxist/socialist regime of the Soviet Union. The Western democracies, including the United States and Canada, were also at war with Germany and allied with the Soviet Union. Just a few years earlier such an alliance would have been unthinkable. And any attempt to link the roots of Mennonitism to left-wing politics would have been anathema to the Russian Mennonites who had settled in Canada from the Soviet Union during the 1920s, if many had been aware of its existence. The term, however, was adopted by some Mennonite scholars. In his essay Friedman had recognized that use of the term "left wing" was linked to the idea of radicalism and in one place he uses the phrase "radical reformation." With the emergence of the Cold War, the concept of a "radical Reformation" joined the term "left wing" and in time superseded it. Its usage was again promoted by a non-Mennonite scholar, George H. Williams, who again applied the term to a wide selection of religious movements that included the Anabaptists.24 Williams contrasted radical reformers with magisterial reformers who were supported by established rulers. Membership of their ancestors in a "Radical Reformation" was 8

INTRODUCTION

soon acknowledged by Mennonite scholars, who adopted the term, and its usage continues to the present. Technically, Williams intended "radical" to refer to those who attempted to "return to the roots [radix] of Christianity," rather than to indicate revolutionary ideas or actions. But the latter meaning acquired a certain degree of currency and soon escaped the confines of scholarly debates.25 During the late 1960s and early 1970s a younger generation of Mennonites sought to "rediscover" the Anabaptist vision of their ancestors and apply it to their lives as they joined others of the post-war generation in rejecting the ideas and values of their parents.26 Studies of political issues have tended to remain implicit rather than explicit in Mennonite writings on Anabaptism. As well as producing historical studies and scholarly editions of early Anabaptist writing, many Mennonite scholars attempt to link their historical investigations with theological insights to be applied to current issues in their communities.27 This has included theological discussion on the nature of power, the state, and the church, which in part draws on Anabaptist teachings.28 Research therefore has involved a search for a "usable past" as a guide for the future.29 This emphasis, not uncommon among church historians, necessarily involves a concentration on religious ideas and practices rather than on social or political issues. This is not to suggest that Mennonite scholarship is second-rate, as their work on Anabaptism is highly sophisticated and recognized internationally.30 Not all Mennonites agree with this use of the past in the present, and even those who do often disagree on methods and ends, so the issue has led to healthy discussion and debate.31 Recent discussions have involved questions on the value of applying postmodern methods to privilege theological principles over historical interpretation based on principles of historiography.32 Thomas Heilke has also treated Anabaptist religious ideas as a set of coherent principles that present an alternative to established political science approaches to theory.33 The emphasis on ideas means that any discussion of politics in the Mennonite literature tends to stress the importance of a limited set of issues. Two issues stand out: Anabaptist ideas on nonresistance, and their attitude to the state, although three non-Mennonites have provided perhaps the most comprehensive overviews of the issues. Almost fifty years ago Hans J. Hillerbrand provided a detailed examination of Anabaptist views of the state.34 Later, Glaus-Peter Clasen's Anabaptism: A Social History examined the social and political bases of early Anabaptism, and James Stayer's Anabaptists and the Sword provoked considerable debate on the development of ideas on nonresistance among early Anabaptists.35 Stayer's book in particular has also encouraged further research as it touched on ideas highly relevant to modern Mennonites as modern nation-states have emphasized the duties of citizens to include military service and Mennonite nonresistant

9

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

principles have been severely tested. In this environment Mennonite concerns have widened from their biblical and historical foundations to address wider social and political issues.36 Except for studies of Hutterites, the emphasis on ideas rather than practice in Mennonite studies of Anabaptism has meant that accounts of the formation and continuance of communities in later generations have received little emphasis.37 While Mennonites have acknowledged the extensive research, carried out in recent years, into the social history of the Reformation—including its links to political change—this has not resulted in many Mennonite contributions to the field.38 And while the establishment of Mennonite polities is implicit from the very formation of their communities, considerations of such polities are usually treated as a modern phenomenon.39 Studies of the governance structures of congregations, the election and forms of leadership, succession to office in particular families, and the inevitable politicking that occurs in congregational and community life, are few in number.40 Discussions of schisms are usually attributed to differences in faith; while internal power struggles and conflict between social groupings are recognized, they are usually seen as secondary factors.41 Mennonite scholars tend to consider that the core ideas and principles of their faith were largely formed during the early period of the Reformation and all later developments either built upon that core or deviated from it. As a consequence, in Mennonite studies there exists a strange, dark age between the period of Anabaptist ferment and the nineteenth century, when the rise of nation-states presented new challenges to the continuance of Mennonite life. Recent research has begun to close this gap but there are few studies on Mennonite reactions to post-Reformation political ideas and government such as absolutism, autocracy, revolution, constitutionalism, and proto-democracy.42 This account touches upon some of these issues but more detailed research is needed. The Mennonite confrontation with emergent nation-states and industrialization in nineteenth-century Europe and America gave rise to several historical investigations by Mennonites. Much of the writing appealed to government for the continuation of specific rights and privileges and stressed that Mennonites had always been loyal, peace-loving, and obedient subjects. In marked contrast to more recent Mennonite scholarship with its heavy emphasis on Anabaptism, these accounts concentrated on the more recent past. Up to this period much of the literature on Anabaptism had been written by non-Mennonites, churchmen, and historians of the established churches and, as a consequence, was largely negative. With their founding ancestors marked as political extremists, separatists, and enemies of the

10

INTRODUCTION

state, Mennonite writers tend to play down issues of origins and stress instead recent achievements. Such emphases can be seen in Wilhelm Mannhardt's defence of Mennonite privileges in a period of intense Prussian nation building.43 It is also apparent in much of the work of the Russian Mennonites written in the very early twentieth century when faced with similar pressures.44 In their own way all these works were highly political in their purpose and arguments but stimulated more professional and critical studies by Prussian/German and Russian Mennonites prior to World War I. Such scholarship could not be sustained in Europe as war and revolution destroyed the bases of the communities while the establishment of totalitarian regimes—Nazism in Germany and Communism in the Soviet Union—corrupted much of the scholarship and left a legacy that continues to this day. Studies of the German Mennonites and the Nazi regime are still few in number.45 The influence of the Nazis reached outside Europe into Mennonite communities in Canada and South America, especially among those who had recently emigrated from the Soviet Union. The sensitive issues surrounding this period and Mennonite political activities are gradually being addressed.46 An analysis of Mennonite involvement in, rather than just reaction to, the Soviet system, however, still has to begin. In the United States Mennonite historical studies also began during the late nineteenth century but from two different backgrounds. One was connected mainly with those of a south German and Swiss background, the other from the Dutch, north German, Prussian, and Russian traditions. The former is best represented in the writings of John Horsch and the latter by Cornelius H. Wedel.47 Both were immigrants to the United States, Wedel from Russia and Horsch from Germany. Horsch connected himself with established Mennonite and related groups in the eastern states, and Wedel wrote from the post-1870 pioneer Mennonite settlements in Kansas. In part Horsch's work reflected the experiences of the eastern Mennonites who settled in a political environment that emphasized the separation of church and state and freedom of belief that permitted them to maintain other worldly traditions and to remain withdrawn from political affairs. If there was ever a time and place when Mennonites were truly the quiet in the land, then it was among these groups in nineteenth-century North America. But even these Mennonites were concerned to find a place in American society and Protestant denominations, and eventually this gave rise to a flowering of Anabaptist research, led by Bender and his associates.48 Most of these developments occurred after World War II and, during the same period, academic studies of American Mennonites dealing with political issues began in earnest. James Juhnke's account of the history of Mennonite politicization in Kansas is an outstanding study but has not stimulated further studies.49 Of the four-volume

11

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

history of Mennonites in America, only one deals in detail with political issues in terms of the relationship between American nationalism and civil religion.50 In the three-volume history Mennonites in Canada, the ideas of politics and nationalism are implicit rather than the subject of critical examination. T.D. Regehr's final volume in the series has no entry in the index under "politics" in spite of increasing Mennonite participation in Canadian politics and government.51 However, Regehr subsequently published a separate study on the topic.52 Adolf Ens's important study of the relationship between Canadian governments and Mennonites who emigrated from Russia to Canada after 1870 deals mainly with state-church relations, rather than Mennonite involvement in politics at the local level.53 Historical research and writing on North American Mennonites developed slowly, often in conjunction with social scientists in the fields of anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology. Donald Kraybill's study of the relationship between the conservative Amish and the state includes essays by historians and social scientists.54 John H. Redekop, a political scientist, reviewed Mennonite involvement in North American politics in numerous academic and popular articles.55 Issues of power and authority have also been addressed in an interdisciplinary manner in a recent volume edited by Benjamin Redekop and Calvin Redekop.56 There are numerous studies of Mennonite alternative service, particularly in World War II, that touch upon Mennonite-state relations in both Canada and the United States.57 But there is little on the role of Mennonites in the civil service, especially during the war when several of them played important roles. A study of Mennonite political lobbyists in post-war Washington reveals an interesting new facet of political activity in modern America,58 connected to the role of the Mennonite Central Committee, originally founded as an agency to aid Mennonites in need; in terms of its numerous programs worldwide, it has grown to be the Mennonite equivalent of the United Nations. The impact of post-World War II political events on Mennonites, including the Cold War and conflicts associated with the confrontation between the West and communist states, has not so far received detailed scholarly attention.59 Finally, there is the interesting issue of Mennonites and the law, an important factor as modern states increasingly were based upon, and drew authority from, a complex legal system. Mennonites discovered that aspects of their faith brought them into confrontation with not just states but, in the first instance, with the legal requirements of citizens imposed by states. While individual court cases have been discussed and a consideration given to such issues in general studies, William Janzen's comparative study of aspects of the Canadian system stands out as a major study linking law, government, and politics.60 The issue of Mennonite 12

INTRODUCTION

use of the courts in dealing with government, business corporations, and other Mennonites has not been widely studied.61 Most studies of Mennonite identity have been dominated by discussions of Mennonites as an ethnic group in the context of modern industrial settler societies, particularly in Canada and the United States. Some of the pioneering work in this area was carried out by non-Mennonites in Canada, C.A. Dawson and E.K. Francis. Francis also went on to make general theoretical contributions to the concept of ethnicity.62 By profession Francis was a sociologist, and it is mainly sociologists, anthropologists, and folklorists who have written on ethnic identity among Mennonites and related groups, either focussing on particular groups or placing them in a wider comparative and theoretical framework.63 This work is only rarely linked to wider political issues, including the politics of ethnicity itself both within and beyond the Mennonite world. The political scientist John H. Redekop, however, has challenged the use of ethnicity as a focus of self-identity among some Mennonites, arguing that it is an impediment to an identity founded on faith.64 Although rich in details of contemporary social and cultural life, and built around a burgeoning "theoretical" literature on "ethnicity," many recent studies of Mennonite ethnicity and identity lack historical depth. Questions of Mennonite peoplehood cannot be restricted by concepts such as ethnicity as they are linked to larger ideas of being and belonging, identification with lands, regions, rulers, and states spread over a long period of time. Throughout their history, in areas where Mennonites settled, those in power and their officials have insisted that they subject themselves to identities other than those of their own choosing. Mennonites have never been permitted to be just "Mennonite," as they have had to accommodate themselves to the demands of rulers, churchmen, city councils, and, in more recent times, nationalism. In time Mennonites have added aspects of these other identities to their own sense of being and belonging and, as a consequence, have adapted their ideas of peoplehood to the demands of the political states in which they lived. Aspects of these complex mixtures of being and belonging are often reflected in contemporary concerns with identity, including those that today encompass concepts such as the term "ethnicity." Of all these mixtures, the political implications that have been most profound are those associated with the development of nation-states and the associated ideas of nationalism, patriotism, and citizenship. These emerged as agrarian societies were replaced by modern industrialized states from the late eighteenth century onwards. Recent studies of the Mennonite experiences in Europe and North America have begun to investigate some of these matters.65 The fact remains, however, that there is no real mention of these themes in the first edition of the

13

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Mennonite Encyclopedia, although in the fifth volume there are entries under "Nationalism" and "Patriotism."66 In part this book is intended as a contribution to the study of these larger issues of being and belonging linking the experiences of Mennonites in different worlds—Europe, Russia, and Canada—with changing political circumstances and shifting ideas of peoplehood.

14

PARTI

EUROPE

O highly renowned, noble lords, believe Christ's Word, fear God's wrath, love righteousness, do justice to widows and orphans, judge rightly between a man and his neighbor, fear no man's highness, despise no man's littleness, hate all avarice, punish with reason, allow the Word of God to be taught freely, hinder no one from walking in the truth, bow to the scepter of him who called you to this high service. Then shall your throne stand firm forever. —Menno Simons, 1539

This page intentionally left blank

1 CONFESSIONS AND MAGISTRATES (1525-1790)

T

he Reformation, as its name suggests, began with calls for the reform of the existing church rather than for the establishment of new religious groupings. Among the demands for reform were calls for the separation of church and state. In one of his earliest essays, Secular Authority: To what extent it should be Obeyed? (1523), Martin Luther argued for a strict separation of state and church, a fact later Anabaptists liked to remind Protestants of in debates over the proper Christian stance toward government and magistrates.1 However, as Walter Klaassen has noted, "no one so severely limited the parameters of the government's responsibility as did the Anabaptists." In the view of many early Anabaptists, the establishment of the universal church under the Emperor Constantine had corrupted both church and state: Government had been established by God to restrain evil and reward good in those matters relating to man's physical life. But since Constantine, governments had laid claims to priestly functions. Especially they had accepted from the church the role of imposing church discipline. Anabaptists charged the governments of their time with attempting to prevent people from making the choices God had given them a right to make, and, when they had made the choices in spite of the prohibition, they were subject to persecution, torture, deprivation of livelihood, exile and death. This was a total perversion of the government's God-given

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

function. Instead of preserving order by granting protection and justice to the pious, they were creating chaos by persecuting and punishing those whom they were obligated to protect. They had inverted the divinely established order. Anabaptists disputed any sacral claims made by the governments of their time. All agreed that taxes should be paid without resistance and that governments should be obeyed in all that pertained to their appointed function. But Anabaptists denied them the right to claim obedience in anything relating to faith or the church. Theirs was a purely custodial function. 2 In spite of their insistence that believers recognize a strict separation of church and state, the early Anabaptists were highly political in their teachings and actions. By proclaiming and propagating their faith, they confronted and challenged the power and authority of the established orders of church and state in many areas of sixteenth-century Europe. Their insistence on adult baptism questioned how subjects were incorporated into social-political communities and how their allegiance to secular and sacred authorities was secured. Their refusal to swear an oath was viewed as seditious, a threat to the legitimacy of rulers and the loyalty of their subjects, by a people who, in matters of conscience, would accept only the final authority of the Word of God as revealed in the Bible. The teaching of nonresistance questioned the duties and obligations of subjects to defend earthly powers, obey their authority, and to punish and kill upon their command. The insistence on following God's word and basing their society and practices on those of the early church countered the rights of kings and priests founded on customary rights, privileges, and powers. Their refusal to accept the right of magistrates to discipline and punish people and to serve as magistrates threatened the foundations of authority and order in pre-modern states.3 In the early, confused period of the Reformation some supporters of Anabaptism went beyond criticism of the existing political and religious order and attempted to create new social and political communities. The early Swiss and south German Anabaptists were connected with incidents of peasant protest and revolt, which culminated in the Peasants' War of 1525.4 Following the failure of the war, Anabaptists had to deal anew with issues concerning the use of force, whether they should participate as magistrates and be involved in politics. In 1527 Michael Sattler addressed this issue in article six of the influential Schleitheim Articles:5 The sword is an ordering of God outside the perfection of Christ. It punishes and kills the wicked, and guards and protects the good. In the law [i.e., the Old Testament] the sword is established over the wicked for punishment and for death, and the secular rulers are established to wield 18

CONFESSIONS AND MAGISTRATES

the same. But within the perfection of Christ [i.e., according to New Testament teachings] only the ban is used [W]hether the Christian should be a magistrate if he is chosen thereto . . . is answered thus: Christ was to be made king, but He fled and did not discern the ordinance of His Father.6 Thus we should also do as He did and follow after Him, and we shall not walk in darkness [I]t does not befit a Christian to be a magistrate: the rule of the government is according to the flesh, that of the Christians according to the spirit. Their houses and dwelling remain in this world, that of the Christians is in heaven. Their citizenship is in this world, that of the Christians is in heaven (Phil. 3:20). The weapons of their battle and warfare are carnal and only against the flesh, but the weapons of Christians are spiritual, against the fortification of the devil. The worldly are armed with steel and iron,7 but Christians are armed with the armor of God, with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and with the Word of God. In sum: as Christ our Head is minded, so also must be minded the members of the body of Christ through Him, so that there be no division in the body, through which it would be destroyed.8 As one interpreter has noted, the Schleitheim Articles reflect "a dialectical transformation and a theological reinterpretation" of "the themes of authority, obedience and political involvement."9 Because the end of the world was believed to be close, earthly rule would be swept away, and when Christ returned, those who were saved would have no need of secular authority or magistrates. Christ's injunction to his disciples to obey lawful authorities and to render unto Caesar those things that were Caesar's would become irrelevant. While in the short time left before Christ's return his followers were to obey the authorities if their demands did not conflict with Christ's teachings, Anabaptists should separate themselves from the evils of the "world" and not become involved with magistrates or politics, as such activities threatened their salvation. Shortly after the Schleitheim Articles were drawn up, Sattler was arrested and executed by the authorities. But the statements in the articles reflect the most radical articulation of a strict separation of church and state, rejection of serving as magistrates, and the idea that all forms of worldly government were evil, damned, and to be avoided. This extreme view was echoed by a Swiss Anabaptist who stated that all government is "of the Devil, not from God."10 In southern Germany, however, other Anabaptist leaders took a more conciliatory attitude to earthly government and magistrates. The most important and influential of these was Pilgram Marpeck. Marpeck had been a government employee in the Tyrol before his rebaptism and afterwards remained in the employ of governments in the cities in which he settled. Not surprisingly, he and his followers had a rather different vision of the role of government and magistrates in this

19

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

world, although many people continued to argue that several aspects of politics and authority, including the punishment of people for their faith, were inconsistent with being a Christian.11 Marpeck himself wrote in 1532: In this house of Christ there is no lord after the flesh There is no Christian magistrate except Christ himself. For men, the title lord is too great; it minimizes Christ, although that is perhaps not the intention— I admit worldly, carnal and earthly rulers as servants of God, in earthly matters but not in the kingdom of Christ; according to the words of Paul [Rom. 13.], to them rightfully belongs all carnal honor, fear, obedience, tax, toll, and tribute. However when such persons who hold authority become Christians... they may not use the aforementioned carnal force, sovereignty or ruling in the kingdom of Christ To allow the external authority to rule in the kingdom of Christ is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, who alone is Lord and Ruler without any human assistance.12 Elsewhere in southern Germany others associated with the early Anabaptist movement were also more willing to accept a role for Christian rulers and magistrates in maintaining order and good government. In northern German states and cities and in what is today the Netherlands, the attitudes of those connected with Anabaptist teachings were as varied as those in the south, although a highly influential leader, Melchior Hoffman, accepted that magistrates had a right to rule and punish people. Hoffman's apocalyptic views included a vision that in the final days a Christian theocracy would be established.13 The northern Anabaptists, influenced by Hoffman's teachings and known as Melchiorites, were soon to be viewed as dangerous political subversives. In the south the Anabaptists and those closely associated with them were seen as closely involved in the peasant uprising of 1525.14 In the north some Anabaptists were unwilling to wait peacefully for Christ's return and believed that in preparation they needed to establish a New Jerusalem, destroy the godless, and defend their new order by use of force.15 In 1534-35 supporters of Anabaptism gained control of the city of Miinster but their subsequent actions confirmed the worst fears of the established orders of the dangers of radical religious ideas. The Miinster leaders initiated a number of increasingly bizarre practices, including polygamy and a theocracy ruled by their own "king," before they were finally defeated and executed. Not surprisingly, for a long time afterwards, the political authorities and established church leaders of both the Catholic and Protestant churches associated Anabaptism with violence, disorder, dubious practices, and the promotion of subversive doctrines. Such associations, especially the debacle at Miinster, revealed to the authorities the potential danger of permitting Anabaptists to reside within the territory of any state, rural or urban.

20

CONFESSIONS AND MAGISTRATES

Following the fall of Miinster and the execution of its Anabaptist defenders, some Anabaptists in the northern regions continued to promote violence but others turned away from radical, eschatological ideas. Some followed the spiritual leader David Joris, while others gathered around the brothers Dirk and Obbe Philips, and especially an ex-Catholic priest, Menno Simons (1496-1561), who adopted a nonresistance stance playing down and eventually rejecting apocalyptic ideas. Menno himself supported the separation of religion from politics and rejected the use of force, but at first argued that his followers should recognize legitimate authorities.16 He later rejected the idea that temporal authorities could really act as true Christians and he instead encouraged his followers to separate themselves from "the world," including political affairs. 17 Under his leadership small, peaceful communities of Anabaptists were established, most of whose descendants would be known later as Mennonites. Persecution of Anabaptists continued, though, with many condemned to death as heretics and executed in horrific ways. As well as a set of common beliefs centred on adult baptism, nonresistance, refusal of oaths, and separation from the world and its politics, the heirs of the Anabaptists would add the suffering and death of their martyrs to a Mennonite sense of peoplehood for centuries to come.18 In some recent sources the Schleitheim Articles are also referred to as a "Confessional" statement, although it has been suggested that they do not constitute "a balanced catechism or creed" and "concentrated upon those points at which the brothers differed from the rest of Protestantism."19 In 1525, however, few of the various dissenting movements and their leaders had consolidated their positions into formal religious groupings backed by clearly defined creeds, confessions, or absolute statements on faith. The Lutheran Augsburg Confession was the first major Protestant statement of faith to be formulated and became a model for many later confessions, including those of the Reformed churches. It was drawn up in 1530 by Luther's close associate Philip Melanchthon, on behalf of the princes who supported Protestant ideas, to present to Charles V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The section on civil affairs in the confession upheld the rights of rulers and permitted Christians to serve as magistrates. Included in this section was also a condemnation of the Anabaptists who "forbid Christians these civil offices" and "also those that place the perfection of the Gospel, not in the fear of God, but in forsaking civil offices, inasmuch as the Gospel teacheth an everlasting righteousness of the heart."20 The emperor welcomed the section on civil affairs and praised the princes "for condemning the Anabaptists, who overthrow all civil ordinances and prohibit Christians the use of the magistracy and other civil offices, without which no state is successfully administered."21 The later Formula of Concord (1577

21

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

and 1584) clarified theological issues that had arisen after the formulation of the Augsburg Confession and returned to attacking Anabaptist errors, especially on the issues of authority, magistrates, and the power of rulers.22 Such issues also featured highly in the questions put to Anabaptists arraigned before the courts.23 The Augsburg Confession, however, did not signal reconciliation between the supporters of Catholicism and the new expressions of faith, but instead the start of a major division between what would become Protestant and Catholic Europe. In 1531 the princes and city burghers who supported reform in religious ideas and practice formed the Schmalkaldic League, a military federation intended to "defend" the new teachings. Europe was thus set on a path where religious adherence would become inseparable from the social and political allegiances of different communities. As such, religious confessions could be defended by force and war could be justified not just against heretics but also against the rulers of states who supported other confessions. In this environment confessions of faith became more than just statements of theological principle. Confessions became central features of "internally coherent and externally exclusive communities" defining "distinct institutions, membership, and belief" with important political consequences.24 In the agreement of the Peace of Augsburg, signed between the Protestant princes and the Holy Roman emperor in 1555, this was expressed as the legal principle of cuins regio, eius religio, where a ruler's choice of confession of faith became that which his or her subjects had to follow. In both Protestant and Catholic domains, people were bound by a common allegiance to the particular religious confession of their rulers. "Confessionalism" helped redefine the sense of religious peoplehood and, between about 1530 and 1650, it became a force that helped reshape early modern societies, creating social integration through increased discipline and strengthening political centralization.25 In some cases this resulted in renewed persecution of religious minorities such as Anabaptist-Mennonite groups who did not conform to the confessional beliefs of the ruler.26 Most Protestant confessional statements included a section on magistrates, authority, and political obedience. In the formulation of these, the Anabaptists had unwittingly played a part: In view of the menace of the fledgling evangelical churches from Anabaptists, from rebellious peasants who articulated their grievances in the language provided by the Reformers themselves, and from the [Holy Roman] Emperor and the Catholic states and princes, there was little choice but to insist on the duty of obedience to secular authority, and Romans 13 was the most frequently quoted text in political contexts.27

22

CONFESSIONS AND MAGISTRATES

Within communities, social and political solidarity was enhanced by a subject's conformity to a common confessional statement, creed, catechism, and ritual practice. But the insistence on such conformity increased the risk of conflict, internally with those of other beliefs and externally with political bodies that supported different confessional positions.28 The new social and political alliances between church and state, forged through confessionalism, necessarily excluded the heirs of Anabaptism as much as the Anabaptists excluded themselves through their rejection of such a connection because it was inconsistent with a Christian way of life. In the early period of the establishment of confessionalism, from roughly 1530 to the 1580s, formal disputations on confessional matters occurred between Anabaptist representatives and those of the Lutheran and the Reformed churches. Often included in these debates were issues concerned with Anabaptist attitudes to government and the authority of magistrates. The arguments advanced by Anabaptist representatives in part reflected the radical heritage of the early years of Anabaptism. This resulted in what one author has referred to as a "paradoxical" situation where Anabaptists "simultaneously [asserted] the legitimacy and illegitimacy of the state. "29 Lutheran and Reformed theologians certainly found the Anabaptist position paradoxical. To them, rulers were baptized as Christians at birth and thus were endowed with the Holy Spirit. As a consequence they exercised their powers in the spirit of Christ. Moreover, as anointed servants of God, they were permitted to assert this God-given authority with force for the good of the community. The theologians could not comprehend the Anabaptists' refusal to accept rulers, their authority, or that they governed as Christian rulers with God's blessing. But the Anabaptists insisted that no person involved in killing or violence could be considered a Christian, whether or not they were a ruler. Some radical Anabaptists claimed that everything outside the perfection of Christ must be in Satan's realm, so that magistrates could not have been instituted by God and therefore must be of the Devil.30 Other Anabaptists, like Marpeck, for instance, argued that even the authority of a non-Christian magistrate should be recognized if they acted in ways that conformed to Christian principles, as this was a sign that their authority came from God. Marpeck was aware that classical sources and the Old Testament indicated that long before Christ appeared on earth, God had equipped rulers with the wisdom to govern, even if they obviously lacked the Holy Spirit. Thus, the office of magistrate was instituted by God. It was the duty of a Christian ruler, however, to work within the limits of power and authority imposed by Christ's teachings, which reflected God's will. A south German Anabaptist, when answering questions from Nuremberg city authorities prior to his execution, accepted that government had

23

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

been instituted by God, but argued that it had "not remained in God" as rulers had "exceeded its power. "31 In the end Anabaptists were forced to come to terms with the realities of their situation. As the end times seemed increasingly less near, some form of accommodation with civil society and the rulers of states had to be found if Anabaptist communities were to survive in order that their members could seek salvation in lives lived, rather than as martyrs. This situation is clearly reflected in the sections on magistrates in statements of faith drawn up by individual brethren and Anabaptist communities in southern Germany and Switzerland. In these a variety of Anabaptist sources were used to formulate confessional statements and they indicate the development of a less dogmatic position towards a number of aspects of faith than that formulated at Schleitheim in 1527. This is particularly true in statements on Anabaptist attitudes to the legitimacy of earthly rulers and the role of magistrates. In a response to a protocol issued after a disputation between Anabaptist and Reformed representatives at Frankenthal in 1571, an anonymous south German/Swiss Anabaptist wrote: "Therefore to be a true Christian ... and to be a ruler and to wield the sword of the world are so opposed to each other, that it is very difficult for one person to manage both at one and the same time. But this is not to say the ruler is of the devil, as we are accused of saying by our detractors; they [magistrates] should remain in their office as is ordained and commanded by God."32 However, even in this response a sense of ambivalence remains towards worldly rulers and the powers of magistrates. The right of a ruler or magistrate to exercise power did not come from the office they held; God had ordained their office and a Christian holding such an office could only exercise power if they had become true Christians, anointed by the Holy Spirit. Only then would their actions be informed by love. But, as a consequence, they could not operate in the manner of most contemporary rulers and magistrates. So it was better if an Anabaptist just recognized the legitimacy of government office, and then refused to recognize or obey the dictates of office holders only if they clearly deviated from Christian principles.33 And, of course, they could not possibly hold office. What at first sight looked like an accommodation with the world, in fact was just another form of separation from it. In disputations with Anabaptists, Lutheran and Reformed representatives could refer to their publicly declared and published confessional statements. These regularly included condemnations of the Anabaptist position on magistrates and the authorities. For instance, the Second Helvetic Confession, published in 1566 by the leader of the evangelical church in Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger, includes such a statement, and Calvin's French Confession of 1559 indirectly refers to Anabaptists.34 24

CONFESSIONS AND MAGISTRATES

The Anabaptists in southern Germany and Switzerland, in order to communicate the results of these disputations to their followers, often had to rely on circulating manuscript statements, not published confessions of faith. The scattered groups of Anabaptists continued to be severely persecuted and it proved difficult to establish open congregations and maintain links among them, although some did manage to form communities. The most notable of these were those groups that pursued the community of goods, an idea included in the principles and projects of a number of early Anabaptists but not followed through by everyone into practice.35 In Moravia, an area where the earlier Hussite rebellion had established an air of toleration among some local lords, local Anabaptists and refugees established communities that later would develop into the basis of modern Hutterites.36 In doing so, they created theocratic polities with an economic system, which sustained the communities until the destructive forces of the Thirty Years War forced them to scatter, relocate, and eventually recreate their communal way of life. In the Netherlands and northern Germany, however, different forms of community, with polities centred on congregations, began to form without being based on the community of goods. The formation after 1535 of Anabaptist-Mennonite congregational communities in northwestern Europe occurred before that of most other dissenting religious groups. In Anabaptist-Mennonite communities, local congregational structures were established eventually with a hierarchy of offices, elders, servers of the word, and deacons. Moreover, strict rules of discipline and control were created, which became the envy of some other reformers who, lacking the means to produce pure congregations out of their often wayward flocks, were forced to compromise in such matters.37 So if Anabaptist-Mennonites claimed to be innocent in the ways of worldly politics, at the local congregational level they were not entirely untutored in the arts of asserting authority, governance, maintaining social discipline, and dealing with discord. While in the 1530s and 1540s there were many converts to their teachings and local congregations formed, the communities by and large kept clear of worldly affairs. In the long run, however, they could not escape the forces at work in the wider world. The development, survival, and eventual decline in the Anabaptist-Mennonite communities in this area must be seen against the background of major conflict between the Catholic Hapsburg rulers of the region and the emergence of the Protestant states of the Dutch Republic.38 As in southern and central Germany, different religious allegiances had major social and political consequences and involved wars based upon religion. The Dutch Revolt of 1573 to 1576 against their Catholic Hapsburg rulers had been preceded by an increasing religious radicalization by followers of the

25

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Reformed church.39 Their leaders were influenced by the new social and political ideas, many of which stemmed from the teachings of Jean Calvin and his followers. These questioned the legitimacy of rulers, provided justifications for resistance to, and even the overthrow of, tyrants, and the establishment of theocratic states.40 In 1574 Calvin's close associate, Theodore Beza, wrote a treatise that questioned the legitimacy of kings and justified the overthrow of tyrants and unjust rulers. Beza and other contemporary political theorists based their arguments on the Bible, ancient classical sources, and customary privileges they claimed were once enjoyed by their tribal ancestors.41 Unlike the Anabaptists, the political writings of such authors did not attempt to separate church and state but instead argued for their integration. While many such writers, including Calvin, accused Anabaptists of extremism, their own programs pointed towards the establishment of radical new social and political orders. The danger of such views was soon apparent to emergent absolute rulers, particularly in France, where the Huguenots would eventually suffer persecution, murder, and exile as a consequence. Where Calvinism managed to establish itself, it often constituted a Counter-Reformation inasmuch as it established an atmosphere of intolerance towards other believers, Catholic, Lutheran, and sectarian, while justifying the establishment of its own authority by use of force.42 The establishment and consolidation of the Dutch Republic after 1588 involved an attempt by some of its leaders to create a confessional theocracy under the control of the Reformed church. This called for the removal or suppression of other religious groupings and their removal from key institutions and political influence. The attempt to establish a total theocracy eventually failed, due in part to differences among the Reformed leaders, which divided the Calvinist churches on theological issues. Eventually the Dutch Republic became a religiously plural world with an increasing spirit of relative toleration in religious matters that even extended to an acceptance of Jewish communities.43 The development of religious toleration was driven as much by economic considerations as by any allegiance to principles of freedom of faith, although powerful intellectual arguments were advanced for such a position among members of the Dutch elite.44 As the republic entered its "Golden Age," the need to maintain social and political stability became paramount.45 The leaders of city councils and the rulers of certain regions were unwilling to expel members of their increasingly prosperous Lutheran, Mennonite, and Jewish communities. However, while toleration meant accepting the existence of such groups as subject peoples, it did not extend to sharing power with them as full members of local socio-political communities and often meant exclusion from guild membership. Such exclusions continued to be reflected in Reformed confessions of

26

CONFESSIONS AND MAGISTRATES

faith, sermons, and polemical treatises that condemned other groups and called for restrictions on religious freedom and even the expulsion of non-Calvinists from the cities and provinces of the republic. Before the Dutch Revolt in 1561, Guy de Brey, a preacher from Valenciennes, drew up a confession of faith to present to King Philip II, the Catholic Hapsburg ruler of the Low Countries. Known as the Belgic or Netherlands Confession, it was informed in part by Calvin's teachings and drew on French confessions of faith. Brey stressed the loyalty of his fellow believers, but the king responded by executing him as a heretic in 1567. The confession of faith, however, was later revised at the important Synod of Dort in 1618-19, where the conservative forces of the Reformed church attempted to enforce a common set of ideas and practices in the church in the face of more tolerant sections of the church. Although attempts to establish a theocracy in the Dutch Republic failed, the revised confession, known as the Dordrecht Confession, became the confessional basis of the Dutch Reformed church and served as "a cultural and educational tool throughout the subsequent history of Dutch Protestantism."46 It also influenced the confessional statements of other Calvinist groups; for instance, in England and Scotland. The section on government in the confession recognized the power of magistrates, justified the use of force, and, like the Augsburg, Helvetic, and French confessions of faith, damned Anabaptist teachings: We believe that our gracious God, because of the depravity of mankind, has appointed kings, princes and magistrates, willing that the world should be governed by certain laws and policies; to the end that the dissoluteness of men might be restrained, and all things carried on among them with good order and decency. For this purpose he has invested the magistracy with the sword, for the punishment of evildoers, and for the protection of them that do well. Their office is, not only to have regard unto and watch for the welfare of the civil state, but also to protect the sacred ministry.... Moreover, it is the bounden duty of every one, of whatever state, or quality, or condition he may be, to subject himself to the magistrates; to pay tribute, to show due honor and respect to them, and to obey them in all things which are not repugnant to the Word of God; to supplicate for them in their prayers, that God may rule and guide them in all their ways, and that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and gravity. Wherefore we detest the Anabaptists and other seditious people, and in general all those who reject the higher powers and magistrates and would subvert justice, introduce community of goods, and confound that decency and good order, which God has established among men.47

27

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Anabaptists were still considered dangerous people and their teachings were to be resisted at all costs. Mennonite communities differed in their reaction to the Dutch Revolt and the religious and political conflicts that followed. Having settled in rural and urban communities in different areas of the republic, they formed communities that often followed different social and cultural practices. Matters were further complicated by the fact that in some areas Mennonite refugees, forced from their homes by Catholic persecution, war, and Protestant intolerance, formed independent polities as congregational communities. Any sense of common purpose and religious practice between the established local communities and those of the new refugees often proved weak and their response to events and other faith communities also varied. Worse, endless disputes over doctrine and practice, with some focussing particularly on the use of the ban, marriage patterns, and dress codes, resulted in schisms and a proliferation of congregations. Religious plurality and toleration might have been acceptable in some sections of Dutch society, but was often unacceptable to many Mennonites even towards their own brethren. Hugo Grotius, the famous Dutch lawyer, wrote in 1616 that the Anabaptists "have so many sects among them that there is hardly anyone who knows their number, or all their names."48 Some descendants of the Anabaptists rejected the name "Mennonite," preferring the term Doopsgezinden (Baptist-minded) on the grounds that it was incorrect to name a religious group after a mortal, however important he might be in their history. One such group became known as Waterlanders, after the region in north Holland from whence many came. This group also objected to many of the stricter teachings of Menno and some of his followers and gained a reputation for a more liberal attitude to the world than many Frisian and Flemish Mennonites. They were among the first of the Dutch groups to construct confessions of faith in order to explain their faith to non-Mennonites.49 The first Waterlander confession of faith was written in Amsterdam in 1577 and involved one of their most important later leaders, Hans de Ries (1553-1638). The confession was short and contained no comment on the role of magistrates or attitudes to government.50 However, a year later Ries was briefly arrested by the town council in Middelburg and his confession of his faith prepared for the councillors contains a section "On Government." This is one of the earliest Dutch Mennonite statements on the issue: I have taught with the Apostle Paul that the state is of God, ordained as a servant of God to punish those who commit evil, to exercise authority in worldly, political affairs. This authority does not extend to the church of Christ, the heavenly city in which God himself is judge, for over spiritual things—faith and in belief, matters concerning conscience and the Word

28

CONFESSIONS AND MAGISTRATES

of God—over these things we have a single head and ruler, our only king Jesus Christ. He alone occupies this chair in His holy church. Therefore, whenever the state with her sword and judgement interferes and seeks to control the spiritual things of God and the soul of man, that is in matters of faith, she usurps the office of the Lord and shall be forced to give account thereof before the judgement seat of the Almighty. On the other hand, those authorities who rule well and pleasing to God shall receive from Him a golden award.51 Ries's statement survives only in manuscript but reflects the paradoxical inheritance of early Anabaptist teachings mixed with the political realities of his age. This is also reflected in the Waterlander Confession drawn up, again with the involvement of Ries, around 1610 in response to overtures of union by English religious exiles in Amsterdam who would later be seen as among the founders of the English Baptists.52 Citing Romans 13, it noted that "government, or secular authority, is ordained by God as necessary for the maintenance of public life, of orderly citizenship, for the protection of the good and punishment of evil" and that members were obliged to "fear, honor, and obey the secular powers in all things not contrary to the Word of God." But it denied that the "office of secular power" had been given "by the Lord Jesus in his spiritual kingdom to members of his church" and thus they rejected the idea that any member could hold secular office. "Nothing is further from this call [to a Christian life] than to rule this world with the sword." However, it hastened to conclude that "we in no way seek to despise honest government nor give it a lesser place than that given by the Holy Spirit through the writings of the Apostle Paul."53 For their part, some city councils permitted Mennonites to hold office in order to increase the representation of its community and so increase its appearance of legitimacy, especially at times of crisis.54 The growing recognition in Mennonite confessions of faith of the role of magistrates in maintaining order and the positive role of the state undoubtedly reflected a shift in thinking that had been preceded by practice. At the start of the Dutch Revolt, two Waterlander ministers travelled to the military encampment of William I, the Prince of Orange, to present him with a considerable sum of money raised by their congregations to assist with the "defence of Christians."55 The move proved beneficial. In 1577 the magistrates in Middelburg who had earlier arrested Hans Ries threatened to punish local Mennonites for refusing to take the town's oath of loyalty. The Mennonites appealed to the Prince of Orange, who wrote to the council requesting Mennonites be released from this obligation because of their contributions to the struggle against Spain.56 For their part, some Mennonites adopted a more tolerant attitude to the state. In 1581 the Amsterdam Waterlanders permitted

29

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

a member to hold office on the city council "on condition that he refrain from counselling and bloodshed or anything against his conscience."57 Outside the Waterlander community, confessions of faith could take the form of a more radical declaration of faith. One example is contained in the most extensive Dutch Mennonite confession of faith first published in a martyr book of 1617 and reprinted separately in 1620 and 1626. It had been drawn up, perhaps some years earlier, by two conservative Old Frisian preachers, Sijwaert Pietersz and Peter J. Twisck. They closely followed the teachings of Menno Simons and incorporated many of his words into their text.58 While, like the Waterlander Confession, the section on magistrates also recognizes the authority given to secular authorities by God and the duty of Christians to obey those in power, this statement is quickly qualified: But if the authorities, through Christian equity, grant liberty to practice the faith in every respect, we are under so much the greater obligation of submissive obedience to them; but so far as the authorities abuse the office imposed on them, which extends only to the temporal, bodily government of men in temporal things, and encroach on the office of Christ, who alone has power over the spirits and souls of men, seeking, through their human laws, to press and compel men to act contrary to the word of God, we may not follow them, but must obey God rather than men, seeing Christ has been set by God His Father above all authority and power, the head in His church; and to this Father of Spirits we are directed, that in all things pertaining to the faith we should obey Him. Christians, it continues, must "avoid the office of magistracy in all its departments, and not administer it, following also in this the example of Christ and His apostles." Although this confession was republished in the famous Martyrs' Mirror of Tieleman van Braght of 1660, it was not widely referred to by Mennonites either in the Dutch Republic or in German states. Instead, they favoured different confessional statements, most of which, in one way or another, were more conciliatory towards magistrates and forms of government. One indication of such confessions of faith, which found favour with the various groups of Dutch and north German Mennonites, lies in a collection of six confessions published together in Amsterdam in 1665.59 These confessions were often constructed to establish a sense of unity among Mennonites where conflict existed between different groups. The Concept of Cologne of 1591 was drawn up in an effort to link Dutch- and German-speaking Mennonites; the Olive Branch Confession of 1627 involved an effort to unite Mennonites in Holland. The latter confession has a section on the "office of magistracy," which recognizes civil authority, 30

CONFESSIONS AND MAGISTRATES

enjoins true believers to fear and obey the magistracy, and merely notes that "we do not find, that the Lord Jesus Christ has ordained this office of secular authority in His spiritual kingdom" and that, therefore, true believers cannot hold office.60 Another confession included in the 1665 collection, that of Jan Cents, produced probably in 1630, makes a similar statement.61 The most important of the confessions included in this collection, however, is the Mennonite Dordrecht Confession of faiths The Dordrecht Confession was drawn up in 1632 in response to continued bitter conflicts in some congregational communities. Although many of its statements are conservative, the section on government clearly reflects a more pragmatic attitude to the state than that of many early Anabaptists. It also reflects the influence of the Reformed Belgic/Dordrecht confession, the dominant confessional statement of the Dutch Republic. In the Mennonite Dordrecht Confession, there is only a brief qualification on the need to obey magistrates or rulers and there is no mention of Mennonites serving in secular office. Article XIII of the confession states: We also believe and confess that God instituted civil government for the punishment of evil and the protection of the good as well as to govern the world and to provide good regulations and policies in cities and countries. Therefore, we may not resist, despise, or condemn the state. We should recognize it as a minister of God. Further, we ought to honor and obey it and be ready to perform good works in its behalf insofar as it is not in conflict with God's law and commandment. Also, we should be faithful in the payment of taxes and excises, giving what is due to the state as the Son of God taught, practiced, and commanded his disciples to do. Besides, we should constantly and earnestly pray for the state and the welfare of the country that under its protection we may lead a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and honesty. And further, that the Lord may be pleased to reward them here and in eternity for all the privileges and benefits as well as the liberty we enjoy here under their laudable rule.63 The Waterlander and the Dordrecht confessions of faith became the major confessional statements recognized by many Dutch Mennonites in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The Dordrecht Confession was also translated into German and used extensively outside the Dutch Republic among German-speaking Mennonites, some of whom were linked to their Dutch brethren by family and congregational affiliations. 64 If the drawing up of confessions of faith had at first been prompted by attempts to heal conflicts between Mennonite groups and to establish unity,

31

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

between 1660 and the first decades of the eighteenth century allegiance to confessions themselves became a matter of dispute. This involved not just the favouring of one confession over another, but also whether confessional statements were appropriate for Mennonites.65 By adopting confessions of faith, Mennonites moved towards the mainstream of political confessionalism associated with the creation of a disciplined, conforming community backed by the use of force. Not surprisingly, Mennonite arguments over the need for confessional statements often centred on the way confessional statements contributed to the internal regulation and enforcement of congregational practice.66 In some cases Mennonite leaders appealed to the authorities for support against some of their own congregational members in order to enforce confessional positions. While confessional statements continued to both unite and separate Mennonites in the Dutch Republic, during the middle of the eighteenth century new confessional statements were formulated and adopted even by congregations who previously had never recognized confessions of faith.67 Among the new confessions one stands out: that formulated by the Mennonite minister in Hoorn, North Holland, Cornelis Ris. In 1747 the local Frisian and Waterlander Mennonites in Hoorn agreed to unite their separate congregations under Ris's leadership. The congregations recognized different confessions of faith: the Waterlanders that of Hans de Ries, and the Frisians, the Dordrecht Confession. The uniting congregations agreed that they would continue for the present to follow their established confessions but Ris took it upon himself to draw up a new confession. As a guide he used the 1660 Amsterdam collection, but his work was not completed until 1762 and the confession not published until 1766 after it had been approved by a number of other Mennonite congregations in the Dutch Republic.68 In Ris's confession, Article XXVIII, "Of the Office of Temporal Government," generally follows earlier Mennonite confessional statements, except in a more modern language. It notes that "although men have by nature no right to rule over one another with violence, but only in a brotherly spirit to control themselves and come to one another's assistance," humankind is corrupt and God "therefore has not only permitted but determined and ordained" the "office of government." It is the duty of all Christians to obey governments and to pay taxes and other dues, but it says nothing about the circumstances that might force a Christian to reject the dictates of government. As to serving in government, the confession states, "we would hesitate and would not dare to accept it," and an extensive commentary follows reflecting the pressures Mennonites faced in a tolerant society where rights also involved them in duties and obligations. The final section of the article states: 32

CONFESSIONS AND MAGISTRATES

we consider ourselves fortunate to be exempt from this most important and at best dangerous service (we regard it a favor not to be called or impressed into civil office) while at the same time we can live in peace and quiet under the protection of such a benign government, who, though not recognizing for themselves the difficulties mentioned (but rather seeing in their office a divine calling) have yet granted to us such great privileges and exemptions (exemption from oaths and military service) for which we can not thank God enough (I Tim. 2:1-4) and owe our government all reverence and love.69 The statement clearly reflects a very changed political situation in the Dutch Republic and in surrounding states where Mennonites, along with other sectarian groups, now enjoyed "great privileges" that recognized their freedom to worship and also granted them "exemptions " from the duties and obligations expected of other subjects. Ris's confession enjoyed greater popularity outside the Dutch Republic than within, especially after it was translated into German by a leader of the Mennonite Hamburg congregation in 1776 and used by congregations in other German states and later by German-speaking Mennonite immigrants in the United States. The Mennonite community in Hamburg was but one of a number of Dutch-Mennonite communities established outside the Dutch Republic from the sixteenth century onwards and populated mainly by refugees from Flanders and Frisia. This represented part of a widespread Mennonite diaspora, which continued throughout the next two centuries. These communities of Dutch refugees contributed agricultural expertise, craft, and business skills to their new areas of settlement. Congregational communities were formed, linked by faith, kinship, and trade to the more prosperous Mennonite communities of the Dutch Republic. Mennonite communities existed in a number of the port cities opening to the North Sea and the Baltic and in towns situated along the major rivers that serviced these ports. The settlements included those in or close to established ports such as Hamburg on the Elbe River and further east around Danzig at the mouth of the Vistula, as well as a number of newer ports and towns in the region. Anabaptists were active in Hamburg during the early Reformation but were persecuted and expelled. Later Mennonite settlers faced major restrictions in establishing themselves on account of their faith and were denied citizen rights to trade or establish industries. However, around 1600 a local noble landowner established a new port at Altona on property close to Hamburg. The settlement soon developed into a flourishing town inhabited by Mennonites, Jews, and 33

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

members of other faiths excluded from trading and working in Hamburg.70 In 1640 the Danish king took control of the new port and provided Mennonites and members of other religious groups with trading privileges. Local magnates along the Elbe established settlements at Friedrichstadt and Gliickstadt, similar to that of Altona, and these also attracted Mennonite merchants and craftsmen.71 The Mennonite congregations established in these centres were closely linked to communities in the Dutch Republic, and their confessional allegiances and internal schisms often followed those of Dutch Mennonite groups. This included disagreements over the importance of confessional statements in defining congregations and their practices. Mennonites prospered mainly through trade and industry, and businessmen became dominant in congregational affairs. In Friedrichstadt Mennonites served as magistrates from the seventeenth century onwards.72 By the mid-seventeenth century wealthy Mennonites obtained the right to reside and trade in Hamburg but membership in the Lutheran confession was required for full citizenship and to be a member of the city council. Like Lutherans and members of the Reformed Church, Mennonites in Altona/ Hamburg gradually took on the features of a confessional community and adopted confessions of faith. As in the Dutch Republic, these confessions helped resolve matters of faith within Mennonite communities, but outside the republic they also assisted in asserting Mennonite identity in regions where the political and legal status of Mennonites remained ambiguous and Mennonite attitudes to government had to appear non-threatening. Gerrit Roosen, the noted leader of the largest Altona/Hamburg Mennonite congregation, wrote in his confession of faith of 1702 that "government is from God, and those who oppose government oppose God's order" and that Mennonites are required "to be obedient to our rulers for the sake of the Lord."73 From 1791 all ministers who wished to preach before the Hamburg congregation were required to acknowledge Roosen's confession, along with the earlier confessions of Hans de Ries and Cornelis Ris. In 1803 Ris's confession became the authoritative statement and for a period new preachers and deacons were required to sign a copy upon their appointment.74 Further east in Danzig and its surrounding countryside, Mennonites developed similar strategies to their brethren in Altona/Hamburg, although in rather different political circumstances. Since mediaeval times, Hamburg and Danzig had been linked as members of the Hanseatic League, while each port city maintained a high degree of independence and self-government. Hamburg, however, was situated within the territory of the Holy Roman Empire and acknowledged the authority of its emperor, whereas Danzig lay within the territory of Royal Prussia, which, after 1454, recognized the authority of the Polish king and, since 1569, had formed part 34

CONFESSIONS AND MAGISTRATES

of the larger Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries the politics of Royal Prussia and the larger commonwealth proved to be extremely complex. External events, including wars and foreign invasions and crises over the election of new kings, created additional instability. Internally there were major differences in language, local privileges, social status, and economic factors with a widening rural-urban divide.75 An additional factor involved the role of religion in political affairs. The Catholic Church was dominant in many areas of the commonwealth but in the east the Orthodox religion in its Uniate and non-Uniate form was well established. Following the Reformation, some members of the nobility at first were attracted to Protestantism in the Lutheran and especially the Reformed tradition; there was also support for local religious reform movements such as the Czech and Polish Brethren. The burghers of cities, especially those linked by trade to the German- and Dutch-speaking areas of western Europe, were aligned to a single confession, usually Lutheranism. Followers of Arianism and anti-Trinitarian ideas, such as the Socinians, also emerged, only to face severe persecution within and outside the commonwealth. There were also large communities of Jews, although living mainly outside the territory of Royal Prussia.76 The religious diversity in the region became a source of political manoeuvring with a growing allegiance to Catholicism among the nobles and rulers, especially under the influence of the Counter-Reformation. But the importance of urban trade and industry to the prosperity of the state resulted in a degree of toleration towards the Protestant cities, and this recognition of religious plurality benefited Mennonites in the region.77 From the earliest period Anabaptism attracted followers in the Polish-Prussian region, but the arrival of Flemish and Frisian refugees in the sixteenth century saw the establishment of congregational communities, some of which would persist into the twentieth century.78 The Anabaptist-Mennonite refugees were mainly involved with draining the swampy lands of the Vistula River with its tributaries and extensive delta, so most of the communities established were rural. Some families, however, drifted towards the urban centres of Danzig, Elbing, and later Thorn, all important trading centres where they established businesses based on trade and manufacturing. Mennonites were largely excluded from membership in the local guilds and town governance, on account of their faith, and faced other restrictions, including occasional banishment. All the communities, rural and urban, maintained close links with various Dutch congregations, following many of their religious trends and benefiting from their wealth—sometimes through the provision of aid. Dutch ministers would travel to the region to preach and to help settle disputes, while Polish-Prussian Mennonites would go to the Dutch Republic in order to trade,

35

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

receive an education, and seek a marriage partner. Knowledge of Dutch was retained well into the eighteenth century and was used in worship longer than in the speech community, which adopted local dialects and eventually High German. The Mennonites of Royal Prussia, especially in rural areas, were often more conservative than many of their Dutch brethren. As a consequence, the distance between the communities gradually widened in the eighteenth century as the Dutch, particularly the large urban population, adopted new ideas including on political involvement. Although the Mennonites in Royal Prussia used Dutch books from the seventeenth century onwards, they developed their own confessions of faith. The earliest of these was published in Danzig in 1660 and, in spite of its title, was apparently connected more with the Frisian than Flemish congregations; it was reprinted many times, including in Russia, into the twentieth century.79 An important elder of the Danzig Flemish congregation—Georg Hansen—in 1678 drew up a confession of faith commissioned by the Polish king in response to an enquiry into heresy in his domains.80 A Dutch edition of Hansen's confession was published in 1696 and various German editions followed. It was often used as a basis for uniting different congregations, in 1730 in Prussia and in 1768 in the Dutch Republic. The German text was republished many times in Prussia and in Russia during the nineteenth century.81 The other major Prussian confession was that of Georg Wiebe, elder of the Flemish congregation at Elbing, which appeared in 1792.82 The statements on government in all these confessions follow the general tone of Dutch confessions; i.e., recognizing its biblical legitimacy, citing the standard verses, stressing the role of government in maintaining order, and exhorting members to obey those in authority, pay their taxes, and pray for their rulers and for peaceful times. The 1660 confession begins by pointing out that God was king of all kings and lord of all lords and later adds a single qualification on the need to obey magistrates in all matters except where this is in conflict with the Word of God.83 It is significant that of all the points made in the confession, this particular issue, using almost the same words, is singled out in the section on government in the catechism attached to the confession in 1690.84 The early Anabaptists produced guides for the instruction of youth, but in later periods, such guides and catechisms were rarely used by Dutch Mennonites, although a number were published.85 The Hamburg Mennonite Gerrit Goosen wrote a comprehensive catechism in 1702, which was widely used in Germanspeaking Mennonite communities in Germany and North America.86 However, the Polish Prussian Mennonites produced several catechisms and, in comparison with other groups, catechisms came to play an important part in the life of their congregational communities, including among those who emigrated to Russia. In 1671 36

Map 1: Mennonite Prussia

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Georg Hansen published an instructional book for youth but the Kartze Unterweisung of 1690, with its simple questions and answers, proved the most popular text and was widely used in Prussia, Russia, and North America up to the twentieth century. The Elbing catechism, first published in 1778, also proved very popular and was reprinted many times. The catechisms were often linked with particular confessions of faith and were usually printed together, with the catechisms eventually replacing the confessional statements in order of presentation. The questions and answers and political issues were often abbreviated with qualifications reduced or removed. Catechisms, like confessions of faith, were of greater significance to Protestant and Catholic churches linked with political rulers and territories than to Mennonites. The established churches' confessions may have defined legitimate beliefs but catechisms were the tools of direction and discipline that reinforced confessional ideas in practice, generation after generation. The catechism's use in instructional indoctrination was especially important in terms of children, who were the future subject peoples of both the established churches and their supportive rulers. Luther himself wrote catechisms that formed the basis of Lutheran practice, and, among the Reformed, the Heidelberg catechism written by Zacharias Ursinus became the standard text. In this way religious belief, political control, and legalistic legitimacy were combined in confessional statements and enforced in disciplinary practices through the use of catechisms.87 For many Mennonites such political legalisms made them reject both confessions of faith and catechisms. But others of a more legalistic frame of mind favoured the use of both confessions and catechisms for internal discipline and for asserting their sense of peoplehood against other Mennonites and outsiders. That this occurred so strongly among Mennonites in the Polish-Prussian lands can only be understood in terms of the way in which the relationship among religion, politics, and the law developed in different ways in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in relation to minority groups such as the Mennonites. By the end of the eighteenth century, in western Europe and in North America very different political forces had begun to develop, which eventually were to create a major divide between Mennonite communities in Europe. These included the place of Mennonites in relation to the wider social, political, and legal system of the states in which they were located. In turn, this had important influences on Mennonite attitudes towards, and involvement in, the larger political system, its processes and government.

38

2 MANDATES AND PRIVILEGIA (1650-1800)

I

n the two centuries following the Reformation, Mennonites in most European states faced major difficulties with regard to their legal status. In areas of the Holy Roman Empire, mandates passed against Anabaptists as heretics and dissident sectarians during the early days of the Reformation remained in force for a long time and new laws were enacted against them in different areas of Europe.1 Over the same period, ecclesiastical law was gradually supplemented and eventually replaced in importance by civil law, in spite of the widespread confessionalism that defined the official religion of a political territory. These changes were associated with increased secular administration, the development of centralized states, and judicial innovations. These innovations included state ordinances and instructions (Landesordnungen), as well as police regulations (Polizeiordniingeri) issued by the "variegated patchwork of states and sovereignties" that developed across Europe, especially in the German-speaking lands.2 All Mennonite communities sought to establish ongoing social communities sustained by farming and/or trade and to meet together to worship. But in many areas, mandates and local regulations, if they did not condemn Mennonites to death or ban them from residing in their territories under threat of expulsion, severely restricted their economic activities and freedom to worship. Gradually, however, negative mandates were eased by regulations that granted Mennonites a degree of protection from persecution and, in

Map 2: The Netherlands

MANDATES AND PRIVILEGIA

certain circumstances, even special rights and advantages. Formal toleration based on legal and philosophical principles of an acceptance of difference, however, took much longer. Such forms of toleration did not occur until the eighteenth or even the nineteenth century in most legal and political jurisdictions outside the Dutch Republic. For 300 years or more, many Mennonite communities in Europe lived on the fringes of legality, outside the political system, and beyond the limited jural protections provided to the confessional subjects of early modern states. Following the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, the formation of political communities based on allegiance to particular religious confessions contributed to over a century of bitter conflict between Protestant and Catholic rulers. The most prolonged of these was the Thirty Years War that ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The treaties that concluded the war contain important clauses on religious affairs in relation to the political and legal status of subjects. Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism were all recognized as established religions and their members possessed equal rights in all the states subject to the peace agreements. But, by the principle of emus regio, ems religio, a ruler could determine the confession of their realm, even if the confessional affiliations and privileges of subjects that existed as of 1 January 1624 were guaranteed. Subjects who belonged to faiths other than those recognized by the ruler were also free to emigrate. This created a limited form of toleration, as a ruler could not persecute members of the religious confessions recognized in the treaties or force them to emigrate against their will. The right to public worship, however, was guaranteed only to members of the dominant confessional group.3 In many parts of Europe these principles were interpreted and enforced in different ways.4 Where the ruler was Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed believers often "emigrated" under duress.5 In Protestant areas, given that two Protestant confessions were recognized in the treaties, an acceptance of religious plurality often developed and with it a degree of toleration. This was especially true in urban areas where an acceptance of the other confessional group could extend to religious groups not recognized in the treaties. These included dissenting Christian "sects," such as Mennonites, and, in certain cases, Jews. However, in many rural areas Mennonites were subject to renewed persecution and sometimes banished, especially when local rulers or their descendants changed their confessional allegiance.6 In some states, however, Mennonites were accepted by local lords and established themselves as peaceful, valuable subjects.7 Outside the imperial domains in the Swiss Federation, the authorities in the Canton of Bern issued numerous mandates against local "Anabaptists" and, into the eighteenth century, enforced these with arrests, enslavement, and expulsions.8

41

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

In urban areas Mennonites, like Jews, remained alien non-citizens but were tolerated because of their economic contributions. Although they competed with the city burghers who, as members of the main confessional group, possessed exclusive rights to membership of craft guilds, merchant bodies, and control of city councils, the economic success of minorities such as Mennonites and Jews benefited the city's prosperity. Gradually Mennonites and Jews received increased recognition, but rarely full rights, in the affairs of the city, including local government. While many merchant cities, not just Hamburg, celebrated the existence of such minorities as an example of enlightened tolerance, economic realities often led the way, a fact later satirized in verse by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart in 1787: Tolerance, you godly daughter bright Led by your brilliant celestial light, In princely German cities: Reigned by divinely 'spired ditties And full of truth! But mostly money's might.9 During the seventeenth century a number of Mennonites in the urban centres of Altona/Hamburg became wealthy through trade and industry and provided leadership in their communities. They favoured the adoption of confessional statements and encouraged their followers to recognize the legitimacy of rulers who "were like fathers who corrected the wrongs of disobedient sons."10 The Hamburg city burghers, Lutheran by confession, gradually granted Mennonites more rights and, although the city lay within the realm of the Holy Roman Emperor, turned a blind eye to their heretical status under imperial law. In 1662 a business dispute occurred between a Mennonite and a Lutheran merchant and was brought before the city courts. When the Lutheran lost his case he appealed to a higher court in the Empire. As a consequence the city leaders found themselves charged in the Imperial Cameral Court of the Holy Roman Empire of harbouring Anabaptists, contrary to imperial mandates that had long condemned Anabaptists as a heretical and dangerous sect.11 The legal arguments centred on the legitimacy of the evidence given before the local Hamburg court as the Mennonite defendant had not sworn an oath but instead had given his word in a manner recognized by the city court and apparently in some other jurisdictions.12 This refusal of the oath exposed the Mennonite as an Anabaptist in terms of imperial mandates and thus a heretic. In its turn the Hamburg court, by releasing the Mennonite from the oath, suggested that the council permitted Anabaptists to reside and operate in the city, contrary to imperial law. The Mennonite and city authorities defended themselves by claiming

42

MANDATES AND PRIVILEGIA

that Mennonites were not Anabaptists and instead were peaceful and law-abiding Christians. They cited as evidence passages taken from the Mennonite Olive Branch Confession of 1627.13 The prosecution lawyers countered by citing an alternative Mennonite confession, that of the strict Frisian Dutch elder, Pieter Jansz Twisck, which stated that human laws, including presumably those of the imperial courts, ultimately could not take precedence over God's commandments.14 The case remained unresolved but the Mennonites' Anabaptist past, their continued refusal to fully recognize the political and legal jurisdiction of earthly rulers, as well as the variations in their confessional statements, marked them apart from other members of Protestant political communities. The question of the legal identity of Mennonites and their place in political structures therefore remained unclear. This was especially true in rural areas of settlement controlled not by urban councils but by local lords who owed their allegiance to increasingly powerful rulers. In order to protect themselves, Mennonites in rural areas often turned to these local magnates and appealed for grants of special rights in return for particular payments. These nobles and petty rulers were often eager to gain the services of such industrious farmers and craftsmen in spite of their illegal status. But such agreements often proved temporary. Later descendants of the local magnates who had granted the rights could withdraw their protection and pressure from the imperial courts and rulers, often encouraged by local Catholic or Protestant clergy, forced an end to such agreements and led even to the expulsion of Mennonites.15 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, finding more secure forms of protection and accommodating themselves to complex and shifting political situations were major concerns for many rural and urban Mennonite communities. One way to achieve greater security and freedom to practise their faith was for Mennonites to negotiate special protections in the form of a legal charter—a Privilegium—especially when a ruler held sovereignty over a large territory that incorporated other sub-political entities. The idea of privilege was widespread in mediaeval and early modern European societies organized around social orders distinguished by status and recognized estates based primarily on birth, as well as institutionally defined corporations such as guilds. Within such systems, which in different regions of Europe often varied in form and titles, people enjoyed special rights, obligations, and duties defined by distinct privileges. Privileges established formal status rankings, influenced social mobility, restricted occupational recruitment, and impeded the free disposal of private property. Overall, privilege made it impossible to distinguish clearly in law between the political and social spheres. Privileges gave a political 43

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

cast to relationships in civil society and tinged political power with a social hue by basing public authority on property and inheritance.16 Mennonites were forced to exist largely outside this social and political system on account of their beliefs and officially mandated restrictions or exclusions. But the award of a privilegium could provide Mennonites with a degree of protection and might also gain them special advantages. In legal terms, derived from Roman law, a privilegium was a private law involving individuals or particular groups that generally conferred a special benefit or immunity. It constituted a singular right (jus singular] in contrast to a more general right (jus commune) enjoyed by all citizens.17 Although in Roman times some commentators frowned upon the award of such privileges, and such criticisms continued into early modern Europe, where special rights often conflicted with customary and confessional rights, the award of privilegia by a ruler was well suited to the forms of political absolutism that emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.18 During this period many European rulers increasingly asserted their absolute right to rule over their territories and their subjects, appealing often to ideas such as the divine rights of kings and earlier emperors. Such claims to absolutism helped to justify the creation of standing armies, the conducting of military campaigns for territorial expansion in Europe and abroad, and the establishment of social controls through increased bureaucratic and judicial systems.19 Political life was increasingly centred on the royal court, where exhibitions of pomp provided symbolic expression of the increased power of sovereigns. To sustain this system and its institutional frameworks, rulers were forced to seek larger and more reliable sources of income. These included increased taxes, levies, and other payments, the latter often achieved through the award of privileges to wealthy individuals and groups in return for economic advantages. Included in this system were religious groups otherwise excluded by laws that declared them as aliens or heretics, such as Jews, Huguenot refugees, and, of course, Mennonites, all of whom proved in one way or another economically valuable to a ruler and their state.20 Mennonites in various areas of Europe obtained special charters, letters of protection, and privilegia from local magnates and more powerful absolute rulers. These often quasi-legal documents protected Mennonites from prosecution and legitimized aspects of their faith and practice, including freedom to worship and release from swearing oaths and service in local militia, later extended to exemption from recruitment into conscript armies. The privileges sometimes extended to customary practices in terms of marriage and inheritance practices. In return, Mennonites were expected to contribute to improvements in the local economy and to live in peace with their neighbours by not proselytizing among the dominant 44

MANDATES AND PRIVILEGIA

confessional group. In some instances Mennonites could negotiate privileges to include special economic rights. Privileges as protective rights could also be extended to special rights providing economic and political advantage. Examples of such privileges, which were mainly obtained from the seventeenth century onwards, include those given by Count Rudolf in East Friesland in 1626 and King Christian IV of Denmark to Mennonites in Altona in 1641.21 Over the next century, more were issued or renewed, although as the eighteenth century advanced the granting of such privileges became less common in western Europe.22 In contrast, Mennonites in Royal and Ducal (later Hohenzollern) Prussia depended upon privilegia for much longer. They looked to such grants to secure their political and legal status and rights, to obtain economic advantages, and to define their separate identities. This emphasis on the importance of privilegia would continue after the immigration of these Mennonites to Russia from the end of the eighteenth century and later among their descendants in North and South America into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.23 The early Mennonite settlers in the eastern lands often signed local agreements granting them specific privileges and obviously received various letters of approval from earlier rulers.24 The first major privilegium in Royal Prussia, however, was awarded by King Wladislaw IV (Vasa) to Mennonites in the Marienburg lowlands in 1642. It recognized that Mennonites had been "invited" to the region, "at that time barren marsh and uncultivated," and that "through much work and with the greatest of diligence," they had "rooted out thickets and constructed drainage work to repel the waters from the marshy places" and built embankments to redirect the flow of the rivers, preventing flooding and "returning the land to useful and fruitful" uses. "Because of their industry and labour in the public interest," the privilegium noted, "the ancestors and descendants of these pioneer inhabitants were granted freedoms and conceded immunities" by the king's predecessors as a form of patronage. It was these earlier agreements that the king was recognizing, renewing, and guaranteeing: Therefore, following the supplication of the aforementioned Mennonite residents of our Marienburg Lowlands, let it be known henceforth that all the same individual rights, privileges, freedoms and immunities conceded at one time by the most serene Sigismund Augustus, our grandfather, and by the most serene Kings Stephanus [Stefan] and Sigismund, our predecessors, all these individual privileges, freedoms, immunities and customs to which they are accustomed have been confirmed by our authority in our Kingdom. We consider all of them to be approved, with

45

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

no exceptions or exclusions, and with respect to remain the same towards the aforementioned residents and that these are to be preserved and maintained ... if the Mennonites so wish ... guaranteed and confirmed in perpetuity. Since they have been faithful and obedient and have promptly paid all moneys due, all the points noted above that we have promised ... are granted to the residents of our Marienburg possessions, with the same voluntary contributions. They will be immune from other impositions for all times and not be driven from their lands without permission.25

The 1642 privilegium was renewed by the next king, Jan II Casimir, in 1650 and again in 1660. Jan III (Sobieski) in 1694 issued a new privilege but, in principle, it was not unlike Wladislaw's. August II renewed this in 1697 and issued a new privilege in 1732. This was expanded to include new Mennonite settlements by August III in 1750 and all the earlier privileges were recognized by the last Polish king, Stanislaw August (Poniatowski) in 1764.26 The awarding of privileges was well established in the Royal Prussian domain and also in other areas of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth.27 Mennonites were not the only religious minority whose existence often depended on such rights. Jews also negotiated special rights, not just with the king, but also with members of the nobility to live on and manage estates, although they were often excluded by city councils from urban settlement. However, Jewish privileges were usually more extensive than those of Mennonites, permitting them to govern their own communities under their own legal regulations and also detailing specific economic rights.28 In comparison Mennonite privileges were mainly non-specific, at least until the eighteenth century.29 The 1732 and 1750 Mennonite privilegia mention customary practices such as marriage, burial, religious worship, and, interestingly, the right to operate private schools and to employ their own teachers, but they detail no explicit economic advantages.30 However, the texts say nothing about nonresistance or the swearing of oaths, although it has been assumed that these differences from other confessional groups were implicitly recognized.31 Such matters were often subject to local regulations.32 The privilegia also fail to mention Mennonites serving in government or as magistrates, although there are indications of Mennonite involvement in local rural administrative roles such as the control of water drainage systems and later as village mayors (Sc/iuizen).33 As a personal grant of the king, these Royal Prussian privilegia reflected pre-modern forms of political power and governance, a fact reflected in both their structure and phraseology. None of the privilegia granted by Polish kings was backed by laws passed by the Polish Parliament (Sejm) and in the final instance 46

MANDATES AND PRIVILEGIA

they proved of little value in some legal disputes.34 In 1750 a local Catholic bishop even dismissed them as "rubbish."35 Lacking full legal authority, privilegia needed to be periodically renewed, usually after the payment of a large "gift" of money to the king. In spite of this, Mennonites persisted in holding privilegia in high esteem, and the need to renew them as well as the raising of funds necessary for gifts at least brought together often divided congregations as Mennonites recognized their common peoplehood in relation to the state, its ruler, and their need for protection.36 While the rule of Polish kings in Royal Prussia extended to the major cities of Danzig, Elbing, and Thorn, in practice these urban centres had their own special charters and were controlled by independent councils with the authority to pass their own regulations. These limited the king's power and that of the Polish Parliament. The privilegia awarded Mennonites also tended to specify the rural areas of settlement where most of them lived. Mennonites living within city boundaries and surrounding areas under the jurisdiction of city councils were subject to legal restrictions as "alien" outsiders, religious sectarians, and competitors in trade and industry. The nature of these restrictions and the degree to which they were enforced varied according to economic and political conditions, both within the cities and their surrounding region and relative to the political place of the towns within the larger Polish-Lithuanian Republic. During the seventeenth century the cities experienced internal conflicts between Lutheran and Calvinist councillors who wished to impose their confessional allegiance upon their town. At the same time the Catholic Counter-Reformation became increasingly influential among sections of the landed nobility and the rural peasantry. Periods of economic and political instability associated with wars and invasions also affected the situation. During the eighteenth century, diplomatic interference by Royal Prussia's powerful neighbours—Ducal Prussia, Russia, and the Hapsburg kings in Vienna—resulted in shifts in religious, ethnic, and political allegiances in an increasingly unstable state.37 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the city council of Elbing granted limited legal status to some Mennonites but also passed restrictive laws and demanded payments from Mennonites resident in the city and surrounding areas.38 It was in Danzig, however, the largest, most prosperous, and powerful city of Royal Prussia, that the Mennonites experienced the greatest difficulties. Although excluded from guilds and trade organizations, many Mennonites prospered as merchants and craftsmen. Their success, combined with their continued visibility as a people easily distinguished by their beliefs, dress, endogamous marriage practices, use of Dutch, and links with brethren in the Dutch Republic, made them easy targets for political cliques and disaffected citizens.39 This was particularly so after the city 47

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

council expelled Jews from the city in 1616, after which Mennonites became the main focus for attacks against those perceived as outsiders.40 Mennonite privileges, real and imagined, became foci for unrest, particularly in the period from 1748 to 1751 when the economy of the city experienced a severe downturn, which created internal social and political tensions.41 The trouble began with complaints over Mennonite grain traders and soon extended to the activities of Mennonite lace makers and claims that Mennonites were buying up houses in the city and trying to become citizens. The accusations came predominantly from members of the third estate, the lower orders of urban society most affected by the economic downturn. The city council, dominated by members of the first and second estates, pointed to the fact that Mennonites possessed royal privileges. Appeals to King August II led to a Royal Commission and, influenced by a political struggle between the king and the city council, the commission decided on terms favourable to the third estate. As a consequence, local Mennonites were required to pay increased levies and faced restrictions on their economic activities. Although the Mennonite lace makers submitted documentary proof of their privileges, these were dismissed as of little legal value; city ordinances and the legal decisions by the Polish parliament, it was suggested, outweighed the private decrees of kings. Even a complaint on behalf of the Mennonites over the excessive demands for payments by an envoy of the Dutch Republic at the royal court had little effect.42 Even though privilegia were now shown to be limited as a source of protection, rural Mennonites continued to place considerable faith in them. However, Mennonites and their privileges granted by Polish kings were soon to face a more serious challenge as the Polish state collapsed and its lands were partitioned between Russia, the Habsburgs, and Prussia in 1772. All Mennonites in Royal Prussia, and later Danzig, became subjects of Frederick II, who declared himself King of Prussia; Royal Prussia ceased to exist, much of its territory becoming the Province of West Prussia. During the eighteenth century, what would become known as the Kingdom of Prussia after 1807 was more a collection of states and territories accumulated by a succession of members of the House of Hohenzollern than a single political unit. The only area in which the Hohenzollerns legitimately were kings was East Prussia. Elsewhere they were Electors of Brandenburg, dukes of Pomerania, and princes and counts of numerous small states scattered across northern Germany. Beginning in the seventeenth century with the "Great Elector" of Brandenburg, Frederick William, most of the later leaders of the House of Hohenzollern proved ruthless and opportunistic rulers. They expanded their territories and gradually assumed 48

MANDATES AND PRIVILEGIA

control over the internal affairs of their domains as absolute rulers. In doing so they developed new forms of bureaucratic control, suppressing the customary rights of their subjects and producing a highly disciplined society and state infrastructure.43 To help achieve this they established large military forces and militarized society. By the close of the eighteenth century, the Hohenzollern rulers were a dominant military and political force in northern Europe. A Prussian minister around 1800 observed: "Prussia was not a country with an army, but an army with a country which served as headquarters and food magazine. "44 Given this situation, it is not surprising that relations between nonresistant Mennonites and Hohenzollern rulers proved highly problematic, even before large numbers of Mennonites fell under their rule. Followers of Anabaptism lived in the East Prussian city of Konigsberg from the 1530s and, although declared illegal, a few probably continued to live there.45 Dutch Mennonites, as part of their general move eastwards, settled in the city and were closely linked with those in Royal Prussia. In the city they took up occupations for which they were noted—especially distilling—but there was apparently no meeting house, formally organized congregation, or any special legal rights or privileges. In 1710, however, Frederick I became involved with the Dutch Mennonites in a plan to settle Bernese Mennonites, who were to be expelled from the canton in rural areas of East Prussia and lands newly acquired in Lithuania. The Bernese Mennonites mainly settled in the Dutch Republic and many later continued to North America with only a few venturing east. However, Mennonites from Royal Prussia seized the opportunities to settle new areas and, with their agricultural skill, transformed marshy areas of the lower Tilsit River into productive land, specializing in dairy production. This settlement occurred from 1710 to 1713 under a general guarantee of freedom of religion and release from military duties. However, the guarantee was not secured by a special privilegium, but, instead, by an accord signed by Frederick I in 1713, shortly before he died.46 In the early 1730s recruiting officers seized some young Mennonite men for service in the Prussian army and Mennonite leaders appealed for their release on the basis of the conditions of their accord. Frederick William I, known as the "Soldier King," reacted strongly against the Mennonite leaders' appeal and in 1732 issued an order that all Mennonites be banished from East Prussia and the rest of his domains. Most of the 600 settlers in rural areas left for Royal Prussia but a few stayed, including most of those living in Konigsberg, where their presence appears to have been tolerated.47 The king's reaction revealed the arbitrary nature of Hohenzollern rule. In 1721, the same Frederick William I awarded Mennonites living in the area of the city of Crefeld, close to the Rhine,

49

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

a privilegium permitting them freedom of faith and, in return for a payment, release from military service. His beneficence was prompted by the economic importance of certain Mennonite families in the textile industry, especially silk production. The general edict of 1732 against Mennonites was not applied in this area.48 Soon after Frederick II (the Great) succeeded his father in 1740, he rescinded the 1732 decree against Mennonite settlement in Hohenzollern domains and, in 1745, granted Mennonites in Konigsberg citizenship rights in the city. Also in 1745, he recognized the existing rights of Mennonites in the East Friesland territories, which came under Hohenzollern control.49 In 1746 he reasserted Mennonite rights in Elbing when the local Prussian governor attempted to recruit young Mennonites into the army.50 These actions were not, as has been suggested, those of a tolerant, enlightened ruler sympathetic to minority religious groups; instead, they involved a more consistent and rational application of the political and economic opportunism of previous rulers practised by a cynical and agnostic autocrat.51 In his political testament of 1752, Frederick made his position on the faiths of his subjects patently clear: Catholics, Lutherans, Reformed, Jews and other Christian sects live in this state, and live together in peace: if the sovereign, actuated by a mistaken zeal, declares himself for one religion or another, parties will spring up, heated disputes ensue, little by little persecutions will commence and, in the end, the religion persecuted will leave the fatherland, and millions of subjects will enrich our neighbors by their skill and industry. It is of no concern in politics whether the ruler has a religion or whether he has none. All religions, if one examines them, are founded on superstitious systems, more or less absurd. It is impossible for a man of good sense, who dissects their contents, not to see their error; but these prejudices, these errors and mysteries were made for men, and one must know enough to respect the public and not to outrage its faith, whatever religion be involved.52 By the latter half of the eighteenth century, attempts to conform to religious confessionalism were an unnecessary hindrance in the administration of a country and the expansion of an autocrat's power.53 Immediately following the first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic in 1772, the Prussian authorities announced that they would honour all existing rights granted by the former rulers of the region. The partition radically altered the ethnic and religious makeup of the Hohenzollern domains, as it included Poles and Catholics as well as the small communities of Mennonites. Representatives of rural Mennonite congregations that came under Prussian rule delivered tribute in the form of foodstuffs to officials and requested a reconfirmation of the privilegia granted by earlier Polish rulers. The Mennonites were assured that their existing

50

MANDATES AND PRIVILEGIA

rights would be recognized, but from the outset of Prussian rule, they were required to make annual financial contributions for the right to be exempted from military service. The Prussian authorities also undertook a census of the Mennonite population, its land holdings, and properties.54 The reasons for this soon became obvious. While the Prussians were willing to honour Mennonite rights in certain religious matters, they were unwilling to see the Mennonite population and its landholdings expand. Conscription in Prussia was based upon a system where each regional canton supplied a set number of recruits, and this system would be compromised if the Mennonite population dominated particular cantons.55 The Mennonites, however, were concerned about more than military matters. In October 1772 a deputation requested a "Royal Privilegium" authorized by "His Majesty's hand and Seal," which set out their special rights.56 In May 1773 another deputation to the Governor of Konigsberg again requested a privilegium and submitted nine points they wished considered, of which only one concerned military service. The others included freedom of religion, the right to build meeting houses, the teaching of children, the right to choose their own ministers, exemption from swearing oaths, and trade, property and burial rights.57 Mennonite ideas about a privilegium now extended beyond just religious protection and extended into appeals for special rights, even if these were still quite limited in comparison to those requested by some other groups and sections of society. The official Prussian response was evasive. On a number of points the Mennonite requests were considered in terms of existing official ordinances and the responses qualified. But the Mennonites persisted in seeking a special, single "Royal Privilegium" and finally in 1780 Frederick II issued them with a specific Gnadenprivilegium. The text is extremely brief and covers some of the issues raised in the 1773 requests but only in the most general terms. More importantly, the wording reflects the very different nature of the Prussian state from that of Royal Prussia. As befitted an "enlightened" monarch, Frederick II's privilege is awarded in the name of toleration: "We, Frederick ... grant them in the light and spirit based on tolerance freedom from conscription." The Mennonites are, however, also recognized as subjects of the state, not as alien foreigners, and the rights that were granted reflect this fact: freedom to trade, to obtain sustenance, and to enjoy protection under the law. But it was made clear that such freedoms would exist only as long as Mennonites remained loyal subjects and fulfilled their duties: We pledge and promise in the name of the Crown to those Mennonite residents and their descendants in our Kingdom of Prussia, that as long as they and their descendants will conduct themselves as faithful, obedient and industrious subjects and if they will dutifully fulfil their general

51

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

duties as required by the state, similar to our other faithful subjects, and will make payment, in lieu of conscription, the usual annual fee of 5,000 Thaler,58 at appointed and agreed upon dates at the prescribed treasury offices and will conduct themselves generally as upright, faithful and obedient subjects, they will be freed from conscription and general military service for all time and enjoy the freedom of faith and vocations (trades) in accordance with the laws and orders of our Kingdom of Prussia and enjoy such privileges undisturbed and will be protected to that end.59 The insistence that rights would be recognized only in return for full acceptance of their duties and responsibilities as loyal subjects reflected the legal and administrative structure of the Prussian state as it developed under Frederick It's rule. The state was based on a highly centralized, bureaucratic system where detailed regulations applied to all subjects irrespective of rank; indeed, even the king was subject to the state and hence its laws. Mennonites, as new subjects of the state, were likewise subordinated to the state's ordinances and treated just like everyone else before the law. However, local administrators could interpret some issues on a case-by-case basis and in this way local regulations developed that restricted Mennonite purchases of new farms. This occurred quite often in the 1780s.60 But in 1787 the regulations were tightened and, in response to Mennonite appeals, Frederick II's successor, Friedrich William II, issued a new Edikt in 1789. While this recognized existing Mennonite privileges, the text codified these local restrictions, carefully detailing strict legal restrictions on Mennonite purchases of land and demanding additional payments to compensate for their failure to fulfil their expected military duties. The edikt certainly pointed towards a change where any kind of privilege, whether based on religion or social standing, could qualify the rights of subjects. Ultimately the lives of all subjects were to be subordinated to the needs of the state and if subjects were unwilling to fulfil their duties, then they could not expect to enjoy all the rights of subjects and additional demands could be made of them. In the Mennonite case, their right to purchase more land was restricted and with it their ability to find areas to settle their expanding population. They also would have to make financial contributions above those expected of ordinary subjects. To officials, while Mennonites might prove useful subjects to the state in the short term by providing wealth, in the long term they were not required unless they were willing to abandon their peculiar ways and submit to the responsibilities expected of all subjects. The restrictions of the edikt on their religious and economic freedoms hastened the resolve of many Mennonites to seek the security 52

MANDATES AND PRIVILEGIA

of another autocrat's privilegium, this time in Russia. Prussian officials may have been unwilling to lose valuable subjects, but though they often hindered Mennonite emigration, they did not prevent it completely. The 1789 edikt reflected the development of an overarching set of legal principles that defined the rights, duties, and obligations of all subjects in an increasingly centralized state. This development of rational administration and the codification of law to assist in good government were not unique to Prussia. In other European states ruled by enlightened autocrats at this period, there were many plans for such reforms and the establishment of such codes. In Hapsburg Austria, Maria Theresa developed such policies with a legal code that separated judicial from administrative functions and this policy was taken to extreme ends by her successor, Joseph II, in his drive for rational government.61 Even in more backward Russia, Catherine the Great carried out major reforms and planned greater reforms never initiated.62 In Prussia Frederick II had begun work on drawing up such a law code and this was completed by his successor with the publication in 1794 of a set of "General Laws" to cover all the Prussian state (Allgemeines Landrecht fiir die Prenssischen Staaten). While the General Laws represented a codification of older views of society where subjects were subordinated to their rulers and masters, it also included some modernizing tendencies.63 In terms of basic rights, it recognized the existence of universal natural rights, and in this regard "each inhabitant of the state must be permitted a complete freedom of belief and conscience."64 However, such natural rights were supplemented by civil rights, duties, and obligations required by the structure of society and the laws of the state. Society was divided into a set of hierarchical estates defined by birth. The rights, duties, and responsibilities of each estate were clearly defined in the General Laws, even those of the king. Individual rights had to give way to the needs of the state and society. In this regard, established Mennonite privilege rights were viewed as particular rather than general rights, granted by the king. While the General Laws recognized the king's right to continue to grant such privileges, it also noted that these could be changed for the common good. As subjects of the king, Mennonites and their privileges were subordinate to the laws of the state. The ambiguity as to the legal status of Mennonites as full subjects within the Prussian state can be seen in its association in official minds with that of Jews. The 1789 edikt clarifying the privileges of Mennonites explicitly mentions in its preamble that as subjects Mennonites were in a similar position to the state's Jewish subjects.65 In Royal Prussia, as elsewhere in Europe, Mennonites had shared with Jews the uncomfortable status of being treated as outsiders, aliens restricted by legal mandates, and often unprotected by the local laws that operated in most

53

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

areas. On the other hand, unlike Jews, Mennonites were Christians who, in spite of their heretical past, shared the same moral order as other Christians. This point was noted in the edikt. But this mention of Jews reflects contemporary official concern that Jews needed to be incorporated into Prussian society by granting them a degree of emancipation in society. Interestingly, the strongest moves in this direction occurred in the period from 1786 to 1792, at exactly the same time as Mennonites sought to clarify their own position.66 Progress on Jewish emancipation, however, stalled after this period, to be renewed in the nineteenth century. In spite of its ruler's Enlightenment connections and the Prussian state's centralizing bureaucracy based on the principle of the rule of law (i.e., a Rechtsstaaf), the ruling elite and its officials would not grant its subjects the full and equal rights of citizenship. While the officials who drew up the General Laws believed it provided the kingdom's subjects with protections equivalent to a written constitution, this was not really so.67 There was civil law for bureaucrats to administer but no human rights. In 1790 a leading academic, advisor, and member of imperial councils, Joseph von Sonnenfels, told Emperor Leopold II, ruler of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire: "Without a constitution lawful government cannot even be thought of, because the lack of a constitution is too akin to arbitrary power and arbitrary power is not government but anarchy...."68 Only through the legal protections enshrined in a constitution could subjects be transformed into citizens where the rights of all could be protected on the basis of common human rights. This, however, would mean restraining the power of absolute rulers, restructuring a society based on estates with distinctive rights and privileges, and, in the end, creating a system of popular representation. Such ideas were beyond the imaginings of the rulers of most European absolute states, however enlightened and reformed-minded. These changes would come, however, but not from within the Prussian state. Instead, they would come from political events in the Dutch Republic and elsewhere as the eighteenth century drew to a close. Actively involved in these changes were a number of Mennonites.

54

Title page of the Brotherly Union of a Number of Children of God Concerning Seven Articles, containing the oldest surviving printed text of the 1527 Schleitheim Confession. Mennonite Encyclopedia 1, Plate I xxxii.

Coin issued by the Anabaptists of Miinster in 1534, containing Biblical references including "The Word is become flesh and dwells among us" (John 1:14) and "One God, one baptism, one Lord" (Ephesians 3:5), based on a seventeenth-century reproduction of an original coin.

Menno Simons's tract addressed to the authorities appealing for toleration, Liibeck, 1552. Reprinted in Menno Simons: places, portraits and progeny. Altona: Friesen's, 1996.

Title page of a mandate issued against Anabaptists in 1597 by the authorities of the Swiss city of Berne. (Mennonite Historical Library, Goshen College, Goshen, Ind.)

Title page Confession Mennonite Mennonite

Title page of the Mennonite Prussian catechism of 1660. (Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas)

of the Mennonite Dordrecht of Faith, 1633. Reprinted in Confession of Faith, Lancaster Historical Society, 1988.

Danzig in the seventeenth century, depicting the city with an allegory on the wealth and freedom derived from its commercial success, from Daniel Meisner's Politica politica, id est nrbium designatio, civili prudentiae parandae accomodata.... Niirnberg: Helmers, 1700.

Elbing in the seventeenth century, from Matthaus Merian's Topographia Electorates Brandenburgici et Ducatus Pomeraniae, 1652. Note the extensive fortifications to resist siege, a reflection of the political instability of this area of Royal Prussia, which, during the period, was subjected to a series of invasions and wars involving Sweden, Russia, and Prussia.

Contemporary cartoon of the Dutch Mennonite preacher Francis Adriaan van der Kemp, dressed in his minister's robes and a military uniform as an officer in the local militia during the Patriot's Revolt in the 1870s. Symbols and references in the cartoon suggest disapproval of van der Kemp's involvement in political affairs. Reprinted in The Dutch Republic and American Independence. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.

Title page of Wilhelm Mannhardt's study of Polish/Prussian Mennonite privileges, Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreussischen Mennoniten.... Marienburg: Altpreussischen Mennonitengemeinden, 1863. (Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas)

Tsar Paul II. The Mennonites received the Privilegium of 1800 during his brief reign. From Charles Masson (1762-1897), Memoirs of Catherine II and the Court of St. Petersburg During Her Reign and That of Paul I, by One of Her Courtiers. London: The Grolier Society, 1904.

Official seals of the Ohrloff and Lichtenau congregations, Molochna, in the nineteenth century, from congregational transfer documents. (Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas)

Johann Cornies (1789-1848). From David Epp, Johann Comies: Ztige aus seinem Leben und Wirken Jekaterinoslaw: Der Botschafter, 1909. (Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas)

Seal of the Mennonite Brethren congregation in the Kuban, Caucasus, region. The Biblical reference is from Revelation 13 v9-10. From a congregational transfer document. (Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas)

Title page of David H. Epp's catechism, 1899. (Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas)

Title page of Mennonite Brethren Confession of Faith, 1902. (Copy in the author's possession)

Hermann Bergmann, c. 1903, as a member of the Ekaterinoslav zemstvo; Bergmann was later elected to the Imperial Russian Duma. (Photo courtesy: Irme Wiebe, Winnipeg)

Secular symbols in the Soviet Ukraine, 1922-1925: the letterhead of the Verband der Burger Holldndishcher Herkunft showing a closed wagon (the date refers to the first Mennonite emigration to Russia) and the official seal of the Verband. (Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas)

Title page of an edition of The Practical Farmer, organ of the Allrussischer Mennonitischer Landwirtschaftlicher Verein, published in Moscow.

3 REVOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS (1750-1874)

T

he prosperity and relative tolerance of the Dutch Republic from the seventeenth century onwards permitted Mennonite communities to consolidate their position in many urban and rural areas of the republic's provinces. In some cities a Mennonite elite accumulated great wealth and congregations flourished. In this environment individuals and groups were able to express a wider range of ideas and opinions than in the past, at first in religious matters and then including other fields of knowledge. This was particularly true in urban centres, where people of faiths other than the Reformed Church were tolerated; in most places, though, such people were treated as outsiders and denied a role in political affairs.1 The most tolerant city was undoubtedly Amsterdam, where a variety of faith communities flourished, including Mennonite congregations ranging from the liberal to the conservative, and Jewish groups.2 Many in these communities were involved in trade. Among such groups new ideas developed outside the confines of established religious confessionalism and, at the same time, political ideas developed rapidly, including radical notions concerning representation and human rights that moved beyond just religious concerns.3 Mennonite involvement with groups such as the Collegiants, where they met with members of other confessions to discuss religious ideas free of confessional restraints, extended these intellectual interests to fields of knowledge other than

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

religion.4 These included the sciences, such as astronomy, medicine, and natural history, as well as interests in jurisprudence and even creative literature. Such wider concerns developed in conjunction with the promotion of new philosophical ideas, including those of Descartes and Spinoza.5 Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise, which championed toleration and the idea of republican, constitutional democracy, was first published in 1669-70 by the Amsterdam Mennonite printer and bookshop owner Jan Rieuwertsz, a personal friend of the author.6 Another Mennonite, Jan Hendrik Glazemaker, translated Spinoza's text from Latin into Dutch, thereby increasing its audience.7 Mennonites, or at least people of Mennonite descent, were also particularly prominent in the development of science and philosophy, either directly through participation in intellectual activities, or indirectly through their support for scholarship and the dissemination of new ideas.8 The increasing participation of Dutch Mennonites in intellectual activities was a reflection of improvements in the educational level of many urban Mennonites. In 1735 a Mennonite theological seminary was established in Amsterdam to train ministers and, from its foundation, science was taught as part of the curriculum.9 From the early eighteenth century onwards, events within and beyond the republic saw a gradual decline in its economic prosperity, which in turn began to have an impact on domestic politics. The cost of endless wars during the seventeenth century had exhausted the financial reserves of the republic, and so the balance of power between independent cities and provinces and the centralized institutions responsible for the defence of the republic also changed. Although city and provincial councils remained in control of local affairs, by the middle of the eighteenth century it was feared that an elite group of families would dominate affairs of state. Their members adopted the manners of other European nobility and the head of the House of Orange assumed the style of European absolute rulers by holding court with the nobles in The Hague. Such changes proved deeply unpopular with many in the republic, especially with members of the middle and lower social estates who controlled urban councils. They feared the erosion of their rights and privileges guaranteed under the Union of Utrecht, which had established the republic in 1579. Throughout the period of the Dutch Republic, Mennonites remained largely excluded from political affairs in many towns and were denied access to office and the institutional guild structures, even though many were wealthy and prosperous businessmen who contributed much to society. In the main urban centres and especially in the rural provinces, control of local affairs and membership of key guilds were almost exclusively in the hands of members of the Reformed Church. Mennonites continued to face restrictions on account of their faith and occasionally 56

REVOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS

were reminded of their subordinate status. One such case in the 1740s involved the issue of religious freedom. A Mennonite minister, Johannes Stinstra, was forbidden to preach by the authorities in the province of Frisia on charges of holding heretical views. In the debate that followed, it is clear that Stinstra believed that the civil authorities did not possess the right to interfere in the religious beliefs or practices of individuals. However, unlike his Anabaptist ancestors, Stinstra based his arguments not so much on biblical authority, but on more modern concepts of universal human reason and the "natural right" to freedom of religious expression and practice.10 His arguments in part were grounded in the language of the emergent European Enlightenment, whose influence was increasingly felt in sections of Dutch society, including among educated Mennonites.11 By the eighteenth century some urban Mennonites were active in private discussion groups that met regularly to consider new developments in the sciences and arts; among the philosophical ideas discussed were those concerned with the "rights of man," including political rights.12 As well as abstract notions, more immediate political issues concerned with current affairs entered these discussions, particularly among Mennonite businessmen and entrepreneurs excluded from guild membership and economic decision making. Some Mennonite booksellers and publishers were involved in the dissemination of new ideas in science and politics in the new literary journals; others contributed to journals and even edited them.13 Gradually, in this new public sphere of egalitarian discourse, a political consciousness developed that questioned the existing order and proposed radical new solutions.14 During the early 1780s, discontent over the corrupt patronage system centred on the House of Orange's ruler William V, and his conservative, aristocratic supporters developed into what has become known as the Patriot Movement. The opposition to the Stadtholder and his followers came primarily from members of the urban elite and the emergent urban middle class who wished to defend the rights of the cities and regions that made up the Dutch Republic. Domestic tensions associated with what was seen as the decline of the economic power of the republic added to popular unrest. Some members of the Patriot Movement from the ranks of the lesser aristocracy also called for a restitution of historical rights and political arrangements, which they claimed had existed in the original formation of the republic.15 More radical supporters called for greater change and their political language clearly reflected the influence of Enlightenment thought. 16 The appeal to patriotism, therefore, involved "a highly confusing political label for a temporary coalition" of two factions, one wanting the restitution of an old order and the other demanding a new political system.17 The program of the radicals included support

57

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

for policies of toleration founded on the idea of universal human rights and the abolition of privileges enjoyed by only certain groups in society. In the Dutch context, this was translated into a more inclusive view of citizenship than just membership of an urban area and was built upon the increasing sense of national identity that developed during the eighteenth century across large areas of Europe.18 Such ideas presumed that all citizens of the nation should enjoy religious and civil equality, regardless of confessional affiliation.19 Ideas were transformed into action most noticeably in attempts to reform urban, provincial, and central government by removing privileges and restrictions. At the same time there was a call to form local militia, representing the people, who would defend their rights against reactionary forces. The Patriot Movement, with its emphasis on direct political action and its martial emphasis, at first sight would appear unattractive to most Mennonites. In fact, the movement received widespread support among minority religious groups, Catholics, Jews, and particularly Mennonites.20 Several Mennonite ministers as well as laymen were active Patriots, as they saw it as a means by which they could achieve religious freedom through citizenship and the right to full participation in society.21 Among sections of the Mennonite business community, there were also economic reasons for supporting change, most strongly among Mennonite entrepreneurs in the developing textile industries.22 The form of Mennonite involvement varied, however, ranging from general sympathy to direct action, up to, and including, the use of force. Among the early active participants was a Mennonite minister from Leiden, Francis Adriaan van der Kemp, who had been born into a Reformed family in 1752 but joined the Mennonites, trained as a minister in the Amsterdam seminary, and served Mennonite congregations in Huizen and Leiden.23 In 1781 van der Kemp was responsible for the distribution of an anonymous pamphlet entitled To the Netherlands People, written by his close friend, Baron van der Capellen, which called for the overthrow of the ruling House of Orange and the reconstitution of the old republic on democratic grounds. The writing and distribution of this pamphlet is seen as a crucial moment in the outbreak of the movement.24 Van der Kemp might be dismissed as not really representative of other Mennonites; he was not Mennonite by birth and became an officer in the local militia while remaining a Mennonite minister.25 But the participation of other Mennonite ministers in the movement, including militia involvement, cannot be so easily explained away. For instance, between 1785 and 1787 Mennonite supporters of the Patriots in the Friesland town of Workum joined the local militia in an attempt to overthrow the town's government. Included in this action was the minister of the local congregation, Sybren Hofstra, who later was removed from his 58

REVOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS

position by the authorities following the failure of the military takeover.26 As the revolt spread, similar patterns were repeated in other urban areas with Mennonite populations.27 Such active involvement in politics, particularly in militia activities, was not well received by the members of certain congregations, and in some cases those involved were forced to resign their office or to voluntarily stand down for a period. Some congregations, especially conservative rural congregations, appear to have remained largely aloof from events.28 A central aspect of the Patriot Movement involved a call for a "restoration" of the "Dutch constitution" and the establishment of a liberal democracy in the republic.29 According to some people, the ancient and historical rights of citizenship, threatened by supporters of the House of Orange, needed to be restored to all the inhabitants of the republic. But the rights of citizens were often inadequately codified; since their formation, individual cities and provinces had established their own local laws and regulations that protected the rights of some citizens, but excluded others, including most Mennonites. During the 1780s the notion that a constitution should be more than just a codification of local customary practices was widely discussed but rarely agreed upon. What the radicals desired was a single document covering the entire republic, a set of articles that would clearly define, in legal language, the rights of citizens and the limitations of the state. Rights, informed by universal natural laws, were to be inclusive and were to be extended to groups previously excluded on the grounds of their religious convictions. In the city of Deventer, for instance, a draft constitution, aimed at including previously excluded Mennonites and Catholics, was framed in the new language of human rights.30 Such ideas came from a number of sources including legal writers and philosophers. The idea of a constitution and of constitutional rights is found in the works of Greek and Roman writers in antiquity, well known to Dutch scholars. The Latin term constitutio suggested checks and balances on the exercise of political power, especially by elites. This gradually was seen as involving some kind of legal system, a code that enshrined rules according to a set of written precepts that reflected both customary practices and a set of directives logically conceived to guide both government and the governed. In turn, this involved a separation of executive and judicial power and the creation of representative institutions that defined individual and collective rights, duties, and obligations. Power was to be exercised within the limits of these established, written codes while the institutions regulated and guided the practice of power.31 Although constitutional ideas might be developed in the abstract and made implicit in legal terms, they need not necessarily be formulated into a single constitutional document. The political bases of the Dutch

59

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Republic and the local mandates that regulated its provinces and cities were examples of such generally understood constitutional principles. Another was the 1689 English Bill of Rights. A clear connection can be seen between republican governments, constitutions, and economic prosperity in the case not only of the Dutch Republic after 1570 and England after 1666, but also of city states in northern and southern Europe founded since the Middle Ages.32 By the end of the eighteenth century, the idea of common rights and freedoms, protected by a written constitution in a republican system based on democratic principles, was most powerfully advanced by the newly founded United States of America. Here there was not only a central constitution but also separate state constitutions within a federal system of government. The model of the United States appears to have influenced thought and action in the Dutch Republic before and during the Patriot Movement. When the American colonists rebelled against the British in the 1770s, there was widespread sympathy in the Dutch Republic towards their cause and open support for the rebels.33 As a result, the republic was dragged into a war with Britain, which proved disastrous for the Dutch economy and contributed to the crisis of the 1780s. The influence of American ideas in the Dutch Republic, however, was considerable. In the late 1770s and early 1780s, John Adams, later president of the United States, was an official envoy of the American confederation to the republic. He developed contacts and made friends with a number of radicals later active in the Patriot Movement. These included Mennonites such as van der Kemp, Pieter Vreede, a textile factory owner from Leiden, and Wijbo Fijnje, an ordained minister, radical democrat, and editor of a highly political newspaper in Delft who had been central to the local Patriot militia's seizure of the city in 1787.34 Fijnje was married to the sister of an important newspaper publisher in Leiden, Jean Luzac, also a close friend of Adams. Members of the Luzac family were of French Huguenot descent and were the owners and publishers of a number of newspapers, including one of the most respected and influential papers in Europe, the Gazette de Leyde. The Gazette carried important political news and commentary and was widely distributed beyond the Dutch Republic.35 Adams, who earlier had played a central role in the drafting of the Massachusetts Constitution, provided a copy to Luzac, who published it in its first French translation, and van Capellen paid for a Dutch translation.36 In 1785 a young lawyer of Mennonite descent and Patriot sympathies, Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck, defended a thesis at Leiden University on the theme of democratic representation. Although based on a consideration of Cicero's De Republica, it also contained a close examination of the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution.37 The opening statement of the Deventer city's draft constitution of 1786 resembles that of the 1776 constitution of the State of Pennsylvania.38 Given that a

60

REVOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS

Dutch collection of American constitutional documents was published in Amsterdam in 1782 and that Fijnje and Schimmelpenninck had close connections with Deventer, this resemblance may be more than a coincidence.39 The connection between Mennonite Patriots and the formulation of constitutional statements inclusive of all citizens, no matter what their faith, is also apparent in the so-called Leiden Draft (Leidse Ontwerp). This is a constitutional statement intended for the entire republic and consists of twenty sections that define the inalienable rights of citizens and basic democratic freedoms, and, in its draft, freedom of religion.40 First published in Leiden in early 1785, interpretations vary as to the conservatism or radicalism of the document's intent.41 Although a number of Patriots may have been involved in its construction, the text, or at least its editing, is generally attributed to two Mennonites, Pieter Vreede and Wijbo Fijnje.42 Unlike their Prussian-Mennonite cousins, who at this period sought distinct and separate privileges, many Dutch Mennonites wished to see all privileges abolished and replaced by a single constitutional declaration that guaranteed Mennonites and non-Mennonites equal rights in the name of a commonly shared citizenship. Ironically for Mennonites it was Prussian troops who ended the Patriot Movement. In 1787 the Prussian king, Frederick William II, came to the aid of his sister, the wife of William V, who had been captured and held by Patriot militia. The House of Orange was restored and many Patriots forced to flee the republic. Van der Kemp resigned his Mennonite ministry and settled in the United States. Other Mennonites involved in the Patriot Movement, like Fijnje and Vreede, sought refuge in French-controlled areas of Flanders. Their radical ideas and hopes for a democratic constitution seemed lost, but just two years later, in 1789, the outbreak of the French Revolution was to change the face of European politics. The formation of the American republic, the drawing up of state constitutions, and events in the Dutch Republic played a part in the formulation of French revolutionary ideas and forms of government. The text of the Leiden Draft, for instance, was translated into French, and, along with other documents, it has been claimed that it played a part in the drafting of the 1789 French Declaration of Human Rights.43 The revolution in France and subsequent events saw the abolition of old institutions and corporate groups associated with the established system of orders and estates based on privilege. New structures and concepts of the person replaced the old as individual citizens with uniform rights were protected by a constitution that aimed to create a new social and political order. The state was secularized and the privileged rights of the Catholic Church removed. The radical ideas of revolution and a new social and political order spread beyond France's borders. In 1795

61

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

French troops invaded the Dutch Republic, overthrew the Orangeist regime, and established a new Batavian Republic based on revolutionary principles similar to that in France.44 The state of Holland quickly issued a Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, which clearly announced "each man has the right to serve God in such a manner as he pleases, without being in this respect in any way restrained."45 A number of Mennonites, including those once active in the Patriot Movement, again became active in politics.46 Some promoted new radical ideas, such as Adriaan Loosjes, who in 1795 translated an abbreviated version of Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man into Dutch.47 Loosjes, like other Mennonites, also took direct action and he entered the provisional government of Holland in 1796.48 At the local level some Mennonites became aldermen on city councils where previously they had often been excluded on the grounds of religion. More significantly others, like Loosjes, served in provincial assemblies and central government, a number assuming important offices of state. Wijbo Fijnje returned from exile and became one of the first two presidents of the Revolutionary Committee formed in January 1795; the other was Schimmelpenninck, who served twice more as president of the National Assembly (1796 and 1797). Schimmelpenninck, like the Mennonites Fijnje and Pieter Vreede, was elected to the assembly by democratic vote. Fijnje and Vreede headed an executive directory following a coup engineered by the French in January 1798.49 For a brief moment two Mennonites in principle controlled the revolutionary government of the Batavian Republic. However, in June 1798, after only six months in office, Fijnje, Vreede, and those around them were removed from office by the French authorities following an attempted coup by radical elements in Paris. These dramatic events of 1798 were closely connected with attempts to draw up and obtain public approval for a new Dutch constitution covering the entire republic.50 Among those centrally involved was Peter Paulus, who in 1793 had published an influential, if controversial, essay on the rights of citizens.51 His essay had been written in response to a question set by the Teyler Foundation, an institution established by a wealthy Mennonite in 1778 to further knowledge and learning.52 The foundation awarded prizes for essays written in response to set questions, a strategy adopted by a number of learned societies in the Dutch Republic and elsewhere in Enlightenment Europe. Mennonites were involved in the administration of the Teyler Foundation and some entered the competitions. In 1790, in the wake of the French Revolution, the foundation's essay topic, as the title of Paulus's essay indicates, was: "In what sense can we say that men have been born equal, and what are the rights and privileges that flow from this equality?" This was undoubtedly a provocative question posed in the wake of the Patriot Movement and at the

62

REVOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS

height of the Terror in France. Paulus's essay, however, attempted to link the idea of a social contract and democracy with the teachings of Christ, so much so that it has been described as "Jacobinism in Christian dress."53 In 1795 Paulus was involved in the formulation of a constitutional statement for the province of Holland and then was active in drafting a constitution for the new republic. The committee appointed to the latter task faced disagreements about the degree to which the established rights and privileges of provinces and cities were to be preserved or subordinated to a single set of rights covering all citizens of the republic.54 Many of those who, as members of minority groups, had suffered under the old republic, such as Mennonites, preferred a constitution that defined a single set of rights and a common idea of citizenship that covered the entire republic. The rejection of the constitutional draft by entrenched interests of the old order, who preferred a decentralized republic, prompted the coup of January 1798.55 Fijnje and Vreede, who in 1785 had been centrally involved with the Leiden Draft, now were again involved in the drafting of the new constitution that would abolish most of the privileges of the old order. This included removing the central role of the Reformed Church, a move that would guarantee freedom of religion and establish a common sense of citizenship. In spite of the fact that radicals lost control of the republic in June 1798, most of the principles in the new constitution survived and, in spite of continued disputes between supporters of a federal system and those of a unified state, it formed the basis of later Dutch constitutions. One reason for this acceptance is that, unlike in revolutionary France, no attempt was made by the leaders of the Batavian Republic to de-Christianize the state or to enforce a totally secular citizenship. In this way "popular support" was mobilized "through absorption rather [than by] the repudiation of popular religion."56 Whether the Mennonite background of some people centrally involved in the constitutional drafting was a factor in this open approach is at present unclear.57 Another Mennonite minister closely involved in the constitutional reforms of the Batavian Republic and a champion of religious freedom was Jacob Henrik Floh. A former Patriot, Floh was elected to the first National Assembly in 1796 and two years later was appointed its secretary.58 He belonged to a leading Mennonite family in Crefeld, a city on the left side of the lower Rhine that had become part of Hohenzollern Prussia during the eighteenth century. The Mennonites maintained close connections with their Dutch brethren and Floh had come to the Dutch Republic to study at the Amsterdam Mennonite seminary. Like their Dutch brethren, Crefeld Mennonites were excluded from holding political office and from membership of the city's established trades and businesses controlled by guilds whose 63

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

members were Lutheran. During the eighteenth century several Mennonite families built successful businesses mainly through manufacturing fine cloths, particularly silk. They founded factories outside the city, beyond the control of guilds, based on what some scholars describe as proto-industrial production systems.59 The Prussian kings had granted them privileges to protect the prosperity of their trade, and also ennobled one of their leading families, the von der Leyens.60 But their political power remained limited. Political events following the French Revolution at first had a negative impact on their businesses. French armies invaded the Rhineland in 1792 and devastated the region. Although driven out, the French returned as occupiers in 1794 and dismantled the old social structures, abolished the guilds, removed the ruling elite, and established a new political structure under their control. In 1797 the Holy Roman Emperor ceded the lands on the left bank to France. Crefeld was incorporated into the French Republic and in 1801, as the French Department of Roer, its inhabitants became full French citizens. The wealthy Crefeld Mennonites quickly learned how to take advantage of the new political situation and from 1797 played a major role in local government under French control. The two mayors who held office between 1800 and 1814 were leading Mennonite silk manufacturers: Friedrich Heinrich von der Leyen (1800-1804/05) and Gottschalk Floh (1804/05-1814). They were assisted on council by a number of other Mennonite businessmen. During this period Crefeld was mostly under Mennonite control.61 The new situation required a rather sudden shift in Mennonite allegiances from Prussia to France that even involved swearing an oath of loyalty to their new masters. The influence of Crefeld's Mennonites expanded into regional affairs and reached to Paris, where the government was eager to encourage manufacturers.62 The introduction of a blockade on English imports favoured textile manufacturers and Mennonite businesses prospered. Napoleon's seizure of power and the military expansion of his Grand Empire across the European continent did not appear to concern the Crefeld Mennonite elite. They accepted hereditary titles as he re-established autocratic and semi-aristocratic rule; Friedrich Heinrich von der Leyen became a baron in 1813. The Crefeld Mennonite elite were more interested in power, wealth, status, and titles than in constitutional government and democracy. In the Batavian Republic, Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck, associate of Mennonite Patriots and of Mennonite descent, also held positions of importance under various French regimes. These included Grand Pensionary of the Council (1805-1806), a position he held prior to the French dissolution of the republic and the creation of a Dutch Kingdom with Napoleon's brother as king. The centralization of the Dutch state progressed further under French rule until 1810, when it was incorporated directly 64

REVOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS

into the Napoleonic Empire. Schimmelpenninck shifted his position in order to serve his new masters, gaining hereditary titles in the process. But as the constitutional, democratic freedoms for which Dutch Patriots had struggled were thwarted by autocratic French rule, most Mennonites withdrew from politics. The Dutch and Crefeld Mennonites involved in political events before, during, and after the French Revolution were largely urban bourgeoisie. Urban Mennonites in Danzig achieved citizen rights in 1800 after Prussian annexation in 1793, but then became subject to the restrictions and payments required by the Prussian Edikt of 1789.63 The situation in Hamburg was more complicated. The city was occupied by the French between 1811 and 1814 but citizen rights were only granted in 1814, just before the French were driven out and the city regained its independence; full rights were subsequently granted only in 1860 when Hamburg adopted a constitution.64 In rural areas Mennonites exhibited more conservative attitudes. The number of Mennonites under French control increased markedly as German states along the Rhine were seized early in the revolution. Their scattered communities of rural Mennonites and Amish came under increasing pressure to justify their new citizen status by serving the state, especially as soldiers. Their representatives in Paris successfully negotiated exemptions from military service or arranged for alternative service, as well as a release from swearing oaths. Under Napoleon's rule, matters became more difficult. 65 Further French expansion into southern German states caused similar problems for their Mennonite communities. Most preferred to remain distant from political events, to keep themselves separate from "worldly" concerns and to hold onto their established principles of faith. But before such principles could be upheld, they needed to be reasserted. In 1803 and again in 1805, the religious leaders of the rural Mennonite communities of southern Germany met at Ibersheim to discuss matters of common concern. On both occasions they issued a set of resolutions. In 1803 this included a restatement of nonresistance and the 1805 resolutions included a statement reasserting the principle that Mennonites should not serve in government.66 The rejection of government service might have been a response to the reorganization in local administration but it might also have been a reaction to reports of Mennonite involvement in holding office elsewhere in the German or Dutch lands.67 Their concern with military service, however, related to the imposition of compulsory military conscription by the French. Following earlier "citizen" call-ups during the early days of the republic, Napoleon in 1801 introduced a regular system of military conscription, which would become the model for other states.68 Not only were previous exemptions from military service removed, but also it was now clearly

65

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

stated that military service was a condition of citizenship, backed by the law and to be enforced by police. The ministers meeting at Ibersheim contacted their Dutch and Prussian brethren to share their concerns. In Prussia the endless years of war, periods of peace, and renewed conflict directly and indirectly affected the Mennonite communities. They were subjected to the quartering of troops, destruction, robbery, and unceasing demands for money and resources. Young men were forced into the service of various armies. As a sign of loyalty, congregational communities made voluntary contributions on a number of occasions to the King of Prussia between 1806 and 1814 of money, horses, and produce; the contributions, it appears, were intended to keep their young men out of the army.69 But they resisted further involvement in military and civil affairs. The struggle for territory, power, and control between the leaders of European states during this period was increasingly framed in the new language of liberation, people's rights, patriotism, and nationalism. New allegiances between rulers and the ruled were expressed in these terms, with promises of constitutions and democracy in return for loyalty and service. In early February 1813, following the French lead, universal military conscription was introduced in Prussia "for the duration of the war." A month later Frederick William III issued an appeal to his "people" (An mein Volk), not his subjects, to rally against the French: "Whatever sacrifices are demanded of individuals they are outweighed by the holy cause for which we make them, for which we fight and must win, if we do not wish to cease being Prussian and German."70 In response to their objection to the removal of all previous exemptions from military service, the Mennonites were at first informed that as citizens of the state (Staatsbiirger), it was their obligatory duty to serve the fatherland. Later they were permitted an exemption.71 But even some Mennonites began to speak in the new language of nationalism; a young Mennonite minister in Danzig preached on the subject of duty to the fatherland as early as 1801.72 The defeat of Napoleon did not result in a re-establishment of either the political states or the forms of government that had existed before the French Revolution and Napoleon's rise to power. The face of European society and politics had changed beyond recognition. In the German-speaking lands, new political entities emerged. The Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist with the abdication of Francis II in 1806. The patchwork of its 300 or so small princely and ducal states, imperial cities, and lands belonging to religious orders was reformed into over forty sovereign states and confederations, many directly or indirectly aligned with the French.73 The most significant of these was the Confederation of the Rhine (1806 to 1815). Baden, a

66

REVOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS

small state in the Holy Roman Empire, increased its territory by 750 percent and its population by 960 percent, while other political units vanished. Baden became a Grand Duchy ruled by a duke and the rulers of other states, such as Bavaria, became kings.74 Most rulers and their new territorial domains survived by joining the alliance of Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain that defeated Napoleon. In 1815 a German Confederation of just thirty-eight states was established, each preserving its sovereign status but dominated by Prussia and Austria.75 Calls for citizenship rights in these states centred on appeals for constitutions that many educated Germans of liberal views hoped would provide them with legal guarantees and a voice in political affairs. A number of the new states established by Napoleon were given written constitutions and this helped strengthen the idea of modern constitutionalism in the German-speaking lands.76 Some rulers involved in Napoleon's defeat had encouraged the people to think that constitutionalism might continue. In 1815, during the mobilization of "the people" for the "liberation" of "Germany" from French rule, Frederick William III promised his subjects a constitution and representative government. This did not eventuate, as the rulers of Prussia, Austria, and Russia formed a Holy Alliance in part to counter revolutionary and democratic tendencies. Within the confederation, Austrian and Prussian officials opposed the spread of constitutions and popular, representative institutions. The south German-speaking states within the German Confederation, including Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Wiirttemberg, and Bavaria, however, adopted written constitutions and established representative chambers, in part to establish their claims to political legitimacy as sovereign states.77 The extent of the franchise, however, remained extremely limited and constitutional freedoms were restricted sometimes by decrees issued in the name of the German Confederation, but under the influence of the dominant states. Liberals who, in 1815, had hoped for a new constitutionally based political state, instead faced a return of old ruling elites and government by enlarged bureaucracies.78 Before the French Revolution and the development of the Napoleonic system, significant government and administrative reforms had increased the power of bureaucratic elites in many European states. Further changes followed the French Revolution and especially the wide-ranging administrative reforms and innovations of the Napoleonic Code. In spite of Napoleon's defeat and the collapse of the Empire, the victors found many useful features in the Napoleonic Code, so it was not totally abandoned. In the Rhineland the French system of electing town councils, mayors, and legal codes remained in place. This was so in Crefeld well into the nineteenth century in spite of the region's return to Prussian rule, and Mennonites continued to play a role in local affairs, although now as part of the established

67

Map 3: The German Confederation, 1815-1866

REVOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS

elite.79 Elsewhere, even reactionary rulers saw merit in the code's rational system of administration and the organization of the police, so these features were adopted and adapted to new needs. For the subject-citizens of the German states, this proved what has been described as the "ambiguous legacy" of Napoleon's system.80 One interesting aspect of bureaucratic control involved efforts to rationalize religious organizations and practices by subordinating them to state control in the name of good governance. During the 1780s, Hapsburg Emperor Joseph II attempted to subordinate the Catholic Church to the state through administrative reform and the rationalization of its structure and practices.81 Napoleon went even further. The anti-clerical and rationalist aspects of the French Revolution brought its leaders into conflict with the Catholic Church and, although personally indifferent to religious belief, Napoleon understood its power; he had enemies enough without antagonizing the churches and the religious sensibilities of the general population. He therefore negotiated a concordat with the Catholic authorities and made similar agreements with other religious groups such as Protestants and Jews.82 The quest for a uniform administrative system, however, resulted in policies that promoted the unification of disparate confessional groups that had developed since the Reformation. Once the Dutch lands had been integrated into the French Empire in 1810, the authorities attempted to unite all the Protestant churches into a single Protestant church, which was to include Mennonites.83 This proved futile, but Mennonites were encouraged to unite their varied congregations and, indeed, in 1811 they established a General Conference, which included most groups.84 Similar policies to reform religious groups were pursued in other areas of Napoleon's empire and included attempts to modernize Jewish communities.85 The defeat of Napoleon did not see an end to such policies. Church unions of Lutheran and Reformed churches were attempted in Nassau, Waldeck, Rhein-Hessen, and Baden. Baden was renowned in the first half of the nineteenth century for its rational, modernizing bureaucracy.86 A union of the Lutheran and Reformed churches began in the Napoleonic era and the legal establishment of a combined Evangelical Protestant Church was achieved by 1821. Like many south German states, Baden had a majority Catholic population, so a single Christian state church was impossible to achieve, but this did prevent certain aspects of its organization and practice, including an opposition to mixed marriages, being subjected to legal regulation. Jewish groups in Baden were granted voting rights in 1818. By the 1830s the government fostered plans for the reorganization of Jewish religious bodies along the lines of the reformed Christian churches, and it was even suggested that certain customs, such as dietary restrictions, be regulated and rationalized as a 69

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

precursor to emancipation and full citizenship.87 Even in conservative Prussia, Frederick William III, inspired by pietist principles and a desire for bureaucratic uniformity, united the Lutheran and Reformed churches into a single Protestant group in 1817 and a common liturgy was introduced in 1821.88 It was in this environment in 1830 that Abraham Hunzinger, a Mennonite employed in the state bureaucracy of Hesse-Darmstadt, published a book calling for a radical reform of Mennonite religious organization and practice with the aim of having them integrate into the community as good citizens.89 In 1829 Hunzinger obtained the permission of the ruling Grand Duke of Baden to dedicate his book to him, no doubt in recognition of Baden's efforts at religious reform. Hunzinger's book is a model of rational bureaucratic thought. After providing an analysis of Mennonite confessions of faith, he focusses on the main ideas and practices that separate Mennonites from the established churches: adult baptism, the oath, divorce, military service, serving in government, and marriage with outsiders. Carefully considering Menno's writings, as well as legal documents and biblical passages, he decides the first two need reform and the last four should be abandoned. But Hunzinger goes further and suggests that Mennonites need to improve themselves, especially through better education. 90 By adopting these reforms, Mennonites would become worthy citizens and enjoy full legal rights instead of depending on special privileges and regulations that make them secondclass citizens. What Hunzinger proposed was the emancipation of the Mennonite community. By the nineteenth century the idea of "emancipation" involved the removal not so much of old customary privileges, most of which the French had swept away, but more the removal of legal constraints on social and religious groups. The emancipation of the peasantry from their feudal duties and legal restrictions occurred in most western European states before or after 1789.91 In Prussia, for instance, peasant emancipation occurred in 1806, although it took another forty-three years to end all legal restrictions, obligations, and restrictive tenures on the peasantry. As the largest social group in agrarian Europe, the freeing of the peasants had a profound effect on the social and political structure. The other major area of emancipation involved the freeing of religious groups from the mandates and laws that restricted their freedom to worship, live in certain areas, or partake in government, and that forced them to make payments and offer services not demanded from those of the officially recognized faiths. The emancipation included Catholics in Protestant states and Protestants in Catholic states, as well as sects and other religious groups.92 Such changes were not always welcomed by certain sections in society and the politicization of confessional groups continued to be a problem in 70

REVOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS

many German states, where it affected local administration, efforts at state building, and the creation of national identities.93 Nowhere was this more apparent than in attitudes towards Jewish populations, as any general emancipation of religious groups in principle had to include the Jewish communities scattered through the German states. In four of Prussia's provinces, for instance, an emancipation decree had been issued in 1812 that granted the Jewish population equal citizen rights with Christians. This occurred during a time of political crisis with the French, and in practice Jewish rights remained restricted in most areas of the kingdom. Elsewhere, after 1815, Jews in the German-speaking lands faced continued restrictions with regard to citizenship, and attempts to grant them the same rights as members of the dominant Christian groups provoked violent riots.94 The rulers and officials of the German states, however, did not view all Christian groups as citizens.95 While by the nineteenth century, the strict confessionalism of earlier times had been replaced by a degree of toleration, members of what were viewed as sectarian groups were often restricted in their rights and encouraged either to join the state-approved churches or to emigrate. Sectarian groups included well-established religious communities such as Mennonites and newer groups who rejected the reforms and rationalization of church practices in a spirit of conservatism (Old Reformed/Old Lutherans, Old Catholics), pietist communities, and any influenced by religious ideas from abroad: Methodists, Baptists, and American apostolic and revivalist groups.96 Members of these groups, like Jews, were liable to be placed under police surveillance and, where necessary, their activities were regulated, restricted, or banned. For instance, the orders issued to Prussian police officials in 1817 included the instruction that they pay special attention to "Jewish and Mennonite matters."97 The linking in official thinking of Mennonites and Jews continued a long-established association; later in the century, Mennonites were also listed in official Prussian documents with Quakers and a sect of Russian Old Believers in Lithuania who also rejected military service. During the reign of Frederick William III, officials were ordered to gather information on Mennonites and reports were filed in 1817 and 1819. In 1826 the heads of all Mennonite families in Prussia's western provinces were questioned on their support for nonresistance and a surprisingly large number indicated a willingness to accept military service. Those who refused were not granted full citizen rights, although in 1826 they were freed from a requirement to swear oaths. In 1830 a law was formulated that placed a 3 percent tax on the families who persisted in refusing service in the army; they also were forbidden to acquire additional property or found new settlements, and denied access to official state positions, although they could hold administrative posts in their local communes. At the same time, Mennonites, along with

71

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

members of other sectarian groups, were required to register with the local Evangelical minister all births, deaths, and marriages, which were then entered in the official church books. They also continued to pay taxes for the upkeep of the Evangelical minister and his church.98 Similar restrictions based on the 1789 edikt remained in force in the West and East Prussian provinces. Mennonite religious leaders in this area of Prussia obviously were concerned about their legal position in relation to the state and the official Evangelical Church. In 1835 the Mennonite elders seized a newly printed edition of Menno Simons's writings, which Peter von Riesen, a Mennonite near Danzig, had translated into German largely to meet a demand for Menno's writings among Mennonites in Russia. Von Riesen was the brother of one of the leaders of the Kleine Gemeinde, a group that had broken away from the main Flemish congregation in the Russian colony of Molochna. Although von Riesen had cleared the printing of the book with the local government censor, the elders were concerned that Menno's attacks on the Lutheran and Reformed church, written almost 300 years earlier, might still offend members of the Evangelical Church. To avoid any political problems, the seized books were hidden for the next twenty years before an Evangelical clergyman assured the Mennonites that they were acceptable." In the year Hunzinger's pamphlet was published, Europe was shaken by renewed revolutions. In France, where revolutionary activities began, the king was overthrown and from France popular disturbances spread across Europe. Belgium was created as a Catholic kingdom from the southern parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the Poles failed in their uprising against Russian rule to establish a separate nation state. In the German states there were popular movements and renewed calls for reform, representative assemblies, and constitutions, most of which were unsuccessful. During the 1830s and 1840s, however, a spirit of liberalism continued to develop especially among the increasing number of educated Germans. In spite of restrictions on press freedom, suppression of the universities, and police harassment, there was increased political activity in many sections of society. As the political debates continued, interest groups were formed among liberal and conservative Catholics. It is perhaps not surprising that during this period the Prussian Mennonite elders felt nervous about any offence that might be taken from Menno's writings. In Prussia, while the rulers Frederick William III and his successor Frederick William IV remained opposed to the idea of a constitution and central representative body, there were changes in the political system. In 1823-24 local provincial diets were established with representatives of the different social estates. Some of

72

REVOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS

these, including those of West Prussia, and especially East Prussia, which had a reputation for liberalism, called for further reforms in the kingdom.100 During the 1840s Frederick William IV established committees to investigate the possibility of calling a national United Diet. Eventually the diet met in 1847, but its work was soon overtaken by the outbreak of renewed revolutionary activity. In an open letter addressed to Metternich in 1847, a French political commentator, Alexandre Thomas, provided a sense of the public opinion in the German states he had recently visited: There is a feeling that in the matter of royal promises, the ones that have been written down are more reliable than those that have not; and charmed though they may be by the master orations of these fine crowned parlavarers, they still would prefer to see the eloquence put in contract form and inscribed on paper [i.e., in a constitution]. That is more vulgar, but it is more sure. In short, they are convinced that the governed are competent enough in their own affairs for the governors to take their advice at least sometimes, and they think they have the right advice.101 In Paris the government established in 1830 collapsed in February 1848 and soon all across the German states were renewed calls for civil rights, popular assemblies, trial by jury, and written constitutions. In Berlin a new Prussian assembly met when the king granted freedom of assembly and of the press. The major event, however, was the establishment of a parliament of elected representatives of the German people, which assembled in Frankfurt in May 1848. Among those elected were two Mennonites, Isaak Brons, a merchant from Emden, and Hermann von Beckerath, a banker and member of the Mennonite business elite from Crefeld, who had already served on the Prussian Diet a year earlier.102 Members of the parliament spent a great deal of their time debating the text for a constitution that would include a clear statement of the rights, duties, and obligations for citizens in a new German state. Mennonites were eager to have their religious principles protected. Those in Baden submitted a petition on nonresistance and use of the oath. The local representative for West Prussia, not himself a Mennonite, proposed that conscientious objectors such as the Mennonites be exempted from military service.103 To the surprise of many Mennonites, von Beckerath objected, stating he considered that such a proposal was based on "political concepts which no longer exist." He pointed out that when Mennonites in Prussia had earlier received exemption from military service, they had accepted restrictions on their citizen rights, but since the early years of the nineteenth century, when all citizens had to serve in the military, the "Mennonite exemption 73

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

constituted an abnormality." In any new German state, he argued, the rights of citizens "rests upon the equality of its citizens in rights and duties, [so] such a special privilege becomes utterly untenable." Noting that another speaker had reported that Mennonites in Rhenish Prussia, with "few exceptions," rendered military service and that such service "is in no sense considered as an integral part of Mennonite doctrine," von Beckerath stated that "in other parts of Germany the heightened appreciation of the state will result in the performance ... [by Mennonites] of this first duty of the citizen." Finally he declared: "it is contrary to the welfare of the Fatherland to provide for any exception in the fulfilment of citizenship duties, no matter on what ground."104 Although the West Prussian representative submitted a petition objecting to von Beckerath's views, the final text of the constitution issued in 1849 stated: "All citizens are subject equally to military service; there shall be no draft substitutions."105 While "complete freedom of religion and conscience" was guaranteed to every German, the constitution also stated that "no religious community shall enjoy privileges granted by the State over others."106 Obviously, if the constitution came into effect in Prussia, the Mennonite privilegium permitting freedom from military service would end. A number of the smaller states agreed to adopt the constitution, but not Prussia. In December 1848 Frederick William IV dissolved the Prussian assembly in Berlin and regained absolute control of the kingdom. Although the Frankfurt Parliament offered him the imperial crown of a new German Reich under the proposed constitution, the king refused.107 Meanwhile, in other German states, there were uprisings and mutinies, which were suppressed, often with the help of Prussian troops; the Russian Tsar Nicholas I invaded Hungary to crush the uprising that threatened Austria's rule. The members of the Frankfurt Parliament fled to Wiirttemberg in December but it no longer had any authority; von Beckerath had already resigned. The Prussian king, however, did not reinstate the old order. Instead, he ordered his officials to continue with formulating a constitution for Prussia, in spite of his own dislike of any curtailment of his powers. In 1850 he swore an oath to a Prussian constitution, and a new representative body, consisting of three chambers elected by a complex system, was established.108 Like the Frankfurt constitution, the Prussian constitution required all Prussians to be "bound to military service" but noted that the "extent and character of this duty shall be determined by law." The constitution granted "Freedom of religious confession" and noted that "civil and political rights" were not "dependent upon religious belief." It added, however, that "religious liberty shall not be permitted to interfere with the civil or political duties of the citizens."109 This was much more vague than the articles of the 74

REVOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS

Frankfurt constitution and, for a time, permitted Mennonite privileges to continue.110 At the same time, however, it opened the way for changes to be made to such privileges by the representative bodies that could redefine or remove these rights, especially when defining the universal duties of citizens. In his open letter of 1847 to Metternich, Alexandre Thomas had noted that Germans demanding constitutional reform were not radicals or secret conspirators living on the margins of society, but instead "people of firm disposition, with tame habits, merchants and proprietors . . . the true bourgeois of constitutional society."111 Von Beckerath and Brons both fit this description well. Since the end of the eighteenth century, many Mennonites had increasingly joined the ranks of bourgeois society, a trend begun by Dutch burghers that spread, directly and indirectly, to other urban centres with Mennonite populations—Friedrichstadt, Altona/ Hamburg, Crefeld—and moved steadily eastwards to reach Danzig and Konigsberg by the early nineteenth century. The Mennonites in these areas often possessed a more advanced education than most in rural areas. They were involved in trade, industry, and commerce, and were eager to enter polite society and play a role in civic affairs. This meant assuming positions of influence in commercial organizations, city councils, professional bodies, and even the courts. Many of the restrictions on entry to such positions on grounds of religious faith had been removed by the nineteenth century, although certain prejudices remained. The changes in urban Mennonite society also affected the organization of congregations and religious practices. Such change is clearly chronicled in H.G. Mannhardt's account of the Mennonite Danzig congregation in the first half of the nineteenth century.112 Following the restoration of the city in 1815, the congregation constructed a new church and hospital, which were opened in 1819, thereby uniting the Frisian and Flemish congregations, which had both lost their meeting houses during the war. The lay leadership of the congregation was growing elderly and a new generation of educated members was eager for change. But as the leading members were often busy businessmen or career professionals with additional responsibilities in society, they were unwilling to assume the heavy responsibilities of lay congregational ministers and especially that of an elder. In 1824 Jacob van der Smissen, a member of the Altona Mennonite elite and minister in the city of Friedrichstadt, wrote to the Danzig congregation, offering his services as a preacher. After considering his suitability, in 1826 the congregation employed its first salaried minister. Van der Smissen served for ten years and was replaced by Jakob Mannhardt (1801-1885), who had studied theology at Tubingen and also came from Friedrichstadt, with strong Altona connections. The events of 1848 caused considerable political debate in the congregation, and also involved the

75

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

rural congregations; this Mannhardt describes as something previously foreign to congregational affairs.113 The discussions concentrated on issues of freedom from military service, citizen rights, and emancipation from the restrictions placed on Mennonites by the edikt of 1789. By 1848 a new generation of Mennonites had grown to maturity in a world full of new political ideas. In Konigsberg a young Mennonite born in 1820, Karl Harder, was educated at the expense of a rich Mennonite merchant and the Danzig congregation and attended the University of Halle.114 Here he took courses in theology and in 1845 made a triumphant return home, preaching in Danzig and Elbing on the way. He accepted a position in the Konigsberg congregation, but he had made such an impression in Elbing that a group broke away from the city congregation and affiliated with the Konigsberg congregation, and after 1852 Harder preached to them every two weeks.115 From 1846 Harder published a journal, the Monatsschrift fiir die evangelischen Mennoniten, but in June 1848 renamed it the Mittheilungen aus dem religiosen Leben. In the first edition of the renamed journal, he announced that he now wished to write for all Christian groups, not just Mennonites whose attachment to tradition, including nonresistance, he ridiculed.116 The change in name corresponds with the most intense period of political unrest in Berlin; the journal ceased publication in December when the government reasserted its control and reintroduced press censorship. Harder obviously was active in politics and, not surprisingly, he came under police surveillance.117 Not all Mennonites in Prussia agreed with his activities and in 1857 he left Konigsberg and for over a decade served a Mennonite congregation in Neuwied, safely within the territory of the liberal Rhine-Palatinate and under the influence of Dutch Mennonites. By 1850 a gap had emerged between urban and rural Mennonites. Urban Mennonites increasingly were integrated into the new, larger industrial society, while rural Mennonites held on longer to the agrarian values of a passing age. These differences were reflected in congregational practices and authority structures. The urban congregations employed trained, salaried ministers, while rural groups retained lay preachers under the control of an elder. Not surprisingly, other differences emerged. These included calls by urban Mennonites to recognize marriages with non-Mennonites, differences over the transfer of members without formal restrictions, and links with other religious groups.118 In their attitudes to government, politics, and the state, both urban and rural groups shared a common legacy of dependence on special, protective privileges that set them apart from their neighbours. But the contradiction of being more involved in civil society without the full rights of citizenship worried people in the urban congregations. Events during the 1860s and 1870s were to bring the differences between urban and rural Mennonites and those of different generations into sharp relief. 76

REVOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS

The 1849 constitution aimed to define citizenship, provide legal guarantees, and establish universal suffrage for the entire German people. Most members of the Frankfurt Parliament, however, viewed their work as the basis for the establishment of a new, united, federal German state whose people's sense of a German identity stood above their attachment to local identities and religious confessions. While a united Germany did not eventuate, attempts continued to establish a greater Germany and a sense of common Germanness. Liberals wanted a federal system united by a parliament elected by a common franchise under a single constitution. The rulers of various states wanted closer political alliances and treaties but also wished to preserve their independence and the hierarchy of social estates that supported them. These political agendas were very different, but sometimes they overlapped, and in economic affairs the development of a customs union (Zollvereiri), which reduced or removed trade restrictions, was supported by most groups. This movement had existed since the 1830s but by the 1850s, the industrialization of German society had begun and closer economic cooperation was essential to its development. The fact remained, however, that the German lands were still politically divided, with a very unequal distribution of power internally between social estates and, externally, territorial states. In terms of territory, the largest players were Prussia and Austria, with a number of middle-sized states (Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Baden, etc.) either insisting on independence or aligning themselves with Austria or Prussia in the German confederation. Different visions of a united Germany were mooted under either Prussian or Austrian leadership, or in a more loosely federal arrangement. Differences between German speakers on the basis of religion—especially between the northern Protestant and southern Catholic-dominated states—contributed to considerations of either a larger or smaller united "Germany." During the 1850s events outside the German lands forced internal debates over political unity and identity into matters for strategic consideration. These included the increasing power of France under Napoleon III and changes in military organization and technologies, which became obvious when Britain and France defeated Russia in the Crimean War (1854-55) and Austrian military campaigns in Italy faced difficulties during the period of Italian unification. In Prussia, calls for major military reform found a supporter in Prince William (later King William I), who became regent in 1858 when Frederick William IV fell ill and became incapable of ruling. William immediately set about reforming the Prussian military structure with plans to replace locally recruited militia units with a centralized army professionally trained and led and armed with new weaponry. These reforms, however, met with considerable resistance in the elected Prussian chambers.119 The liberal members preferred a people's army, but William and his advisors wanted a

77

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

professional army where the "soldier must be completely removed from civilian life, must become a soldier with body and soul, must make discipline, blind obedience and the military spirit an integral part of his personality" so the monarch could "rely on the army in every situation—including the fight against revolution."120 The struggle over the military reforms lasted from 1859 to 1865. In 1862 Otto von Bismarck was appointed as minister-president and for periods he ruled without the consent of the elected chambers, but even so, some of the legislation regarding military reform, including sections concerned with conscription, continued to be rejected by elected members.121 Mennonites in Prussia were well aware that the military reforms, if fully implemented, would threaten their position on nonresistance and their existing rights of exemption from service. Their preferred approach was to petition the king and government officials, arguing for exemption on religious grounds, referring to the provisions of religious freedom in the constitution while also stressing their historic privileges. In terms of the latter, in 1862 they commissioned Wilhelm Mannhardt (1830-1881), son of the Danzig elder and university-trained professor, to research in Berlin and in congregational archives to write a history of the Mennonites' position on nonresistance, with particular reference to their relations with rulers of the Prussian lands.122 These passive approaches were matched by political action. In 1863 they became involved for the first time in the election of representatives to the Prussian chambers. In the Elbing-Marienburg district, the liberals put up a Mennonite candidate from Kb'nigsberg, but Mennonite voters, under the influence of the elder of Heubuden, Gerhard Penner (1805-1878), voted conservative, as they had greater faith in the dictates of kings than in the decisions of commoner representatives.123 Political events soon overtook any Mennonite hopes of negotiating total exemption from the military duties to be imposed on all citizens. The Polish uprising in Russian Poland brought Prussian support for Russia as the French supported the Poles; Bismarck warned that an independent Poland would result in a "French encampment on the Vistula River."124 Prussia now entered a period of daring political and military adventures in order to expand its power and influence in the German lands and in Europe. In 1864 war with Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein was followed in 1866 by armed conflict with some other members of the German confederation and Austria. All were defeated in a swift campaign. The Prussians, with their reorganized army, now became the dominant force in the German lands. The confederation was dissolved and in 1867 a north German confederation was established under Prussian control and with Austria and most of the southern Catholic states excluded. An elected diet was established for the new confederation and a constitution was 78

REVOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS

drawn up, which included provisions for compulsory military obligations through conscription.125 In an atmosphere of military victories and an increasing sense of patriotism, the Prussian Mennonites faced a more difficult situation than just a few years earlier when they had argued for special concessions. A direct appeal to the king resulted in a Royal Cabinet Order of 1868, which, although it did not exempt Mennonites from service, permitted young Mennonites on grounds of religious conscience to serve in non-combatant roles such as clerks, hospital orderlies etc.126 This provision, however, divided the Mennonites. There were those who still wanted total exemption but also those willing to accept that as citizens they had a duty to serve the state.127 Each side developed arguments in defence of their respective positions. Those who accepted the situation accused leaders of conservative congregations of acting dictatorially in order to maintain their authority and refusing to recognize that the age of privilege and Mennonite separation from society had ended. Conservative religious leaders such as Gerhard Penner, however, stressed less the historic rights enshrined in privilegia and instead emphasized that the Mennonite confession of faith and their catechism bound congregational members and their leaders to maintaining the essential principles of their faith, including nonresistance.128 Those who favoured the new conditions, such as Jakob Mannhardt of Danzig, countered that many Mennonite confessions of faith and catechisms in other areas of Europe had abandoned objections to military service. He also proposed new interpretations of key biblical passages to justify involvement in military service. Most of all, however, he stressed the duties of citizenship, which he also justified by scripture: "Our Lord Christ did not release his followers from duties to worldly government and earthly authorities, even to the sacrifice and surrender of one's own life and body, since he said: 'Give to Caesar what is Caesar's' (Mt. 22:21) and: 'No one has greater love than one who lays down his life for his friends' (Jn. 15:13). Also Rom. 13:1-7 leads us to a correct understanding of what the Christian owes as a member of the earthly state and the authority constituted in it."129 The disagreement between the representatives of conservative rural congregations and progressive urban congregations was rapidly overtaken by the outbreak of another war, this time against France in 1870. The rapid defeat of Napoleon Ill's armies confirmed the value of military reform and united other German states behind Prussia's leadership. After careful negotiation with other German states, a new German Reich was declared in Versailles on 18 January 1871 with William I of Prussia proclaimed as German emperor. The new Reich required a constitution and elected representatives.130 Military affairs were now a Reich matter although the military units remained localized. The constitution declared that every citizen was

79

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

"liable to military service" and no substitutes were permitted. Germans "capable of service" were enlisted for seven years, three in the army and four in the reserves.131 This time there could be no new Mennonite concessions, although Mennonites in Prussia still remained under the 1868 law. Jakob Mannhardt, minister of the Danzig congregation, announced peace with France and thanked the "heroic German soldiers" who had defended "the German Rhine against wanton and rapacious attack" by the French, who had been meted a "terrible judgment"; Alsace and Lorraine had been liberated "from foreign rule" and returned to the fatherland.132 In a later article Mannhardt argued that while war stemmed from sin, "such a fight as our nation fought is not displeasing to God" as the "whole nation" had been united in the struggle, which was "quite grand and noble, and no sin before God."133 This was the strident new voice of German nationalism. Wilhelm Ewert (1827-1889), elder of the Thorn congregation, answered Mannhardt. He asked rhetorically if the French enemy were not also of God's creation, how duty to God's commandments—including the injunction not to kill—could be overridden by earthly state authority. Turning to Mennonite motives, he asked if the acquisition of legal equality with other religious groups and security of property were worth the lives of so many killed on the battlefield. Mannhardt chose not to respond directly to Ewert's points but instead focussed on the issue of a Christian's duty to the fatherland. He later returned to this point. As Ewert had suggested that earthly rulers engaged in war could not be Christians, Mannhardt claimed he had denied Prussia's noble kings and loyal servants a "Christian inclination and faith."134 This amounted to disloyalty to the kaiser, the fatherland, and the Christian faith. The Cabinet Order of 1868, permitting Mennonites on grounds of conscience to fulfil their citizenship duties in non-combatant roles, was soon followed by the removal of the special taxes and civil restrictions applying to Mennonites since 1789. This was welcomed by many, especially by urban Mennonites, as an indication of their final emancipation into civil society. Individually Mennonites now enjoyed all the rights, duties, and obligations of citizens. But recognition of their congregations would only be achieved when their religious organizations were legally incorporated. Article 13 of the 1850 Prussian Constitution stated that religious and ecclesiastical associations that had "no corporate rights" could only acquire the civil and political rights "by special laws."135 Mennonite religious congregations lacked such a corporate identity in law until 1874, when a special law was passed, granting them formal recognition. They were now precluded from promoting ideas that contradicted other legal provisions in the constitution, including the duty to perform military service.136 Probably connected with this change in 80

REVOLUTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONS

status was the court case brought against Elder Gerhard Penner in 1874 for refusing to give communion to a congregational member who had served in the army.137 By now, however, Elder Penner, like other Mennonites opposed to military service, was planning to emigrate; many had already left either for Russia or for North America. As the nineteenth century advanced, emigration became increasingly a political act for many Prussian Mennonites. Since the late 1780s, they had responded to the restrictions and demands of the Prussian state by exercising the option of emigration, driven at first more by economic needs and the promise of opportunities than by just religious principles. Year by year, groups and individuals left Prussia for Russia in search of land as well as the right to practise their faith free of restrictions. The promise of being able to settle under a favourable privilegium guaranteed by an autocrat was also an additional attraction. In 1818 Friedrich von Gentz, advisor to Metternich on European political affairs, noted that "none of the obstacles that restrain and thwart the other sovereigns [of Europe]—divided authority, constitutional forms, public opinion etc." existed for the autocratic emperor of Russia: "[w]hat he dreams of at night he can carry out in the morning."138 Increasingly in Prussia, constitutional laws and subjection to elected bodies were seen as threats to Mennonite principles, rights, and privileges; the attractive pull of economic opportunities in Russia was combined with the negative push of unwelcome changes in Prussia. The events of 1848 and moves towards establishing a constitution and representative assemblies in Prussia acted as an impetus for the last major group to migrate to Russia and settle in the Volga River area during the 1850s.139 The leaders of this group were two ministers, Johann Wall and Claas Epp (1838-1913). Wall had visited the southern Russian Mennonites in 1850 in preparation for the emigration and, in a letter addressed to the Molochna Mennonites in Russia, he had praised the Mennonite privilegium and the benevolence of the Russian tsar and authorities.140 Similar sentiments are to be found in the writings of one of the new immigrants to Russia, Martin Klaassen (d. 1881). In his "history" of the Mennonites, he praises the kings of Prussia who awarded Mennonites their privileges, and blames the French Revolution, constitutional reforms, and democracy for destroying the power of absolute rulers and removing Mennonite privileges.141 But Klaassen's book is more than just a chronicle of past events; it is also an exegesis of the future. The revolution of 1848 and the reforms that followed in Prussia were signs that the "hour of tribulation" had begun; Russia was a place of refuge not just for Mennonites escaping constitutional reform, but for all God's elect as the end times

81

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

were "immanent." Klaassen, and a number of these late Prussian emigrants, would, in the 1880s, embark on a strange search for a place of refuge in central Asia.142 In Russia the tsar's privilegium had failed to protect Mennonites from the advance of new political ideas and laws defining the duties of citizens. Salvation was not to be found in the protective embrace of Christian autocrats and their privileges, but following the day of judgement when God would rule a new heaven and a new earth.

82

PART 2

RUSSIA

As long as we are in Russia, we fear, in the final analysis, only God and the tsar, and likewise we only trust in God and the tsar. We also believe that as subjects, citizens and Christians we will not only be able to live in Russia with an untroubled conscience, but that we will also be able to stand as a patriotic, culturally useful, small member in the large family of Russia (into which we have been adopted by Divine Providence), and will learn to do this more and more as a total body. If individuals among us [Mennonites] at times should act contrary to the general interest and to the law, then we as a fellowship of believers confess "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities." —Peter M. Friesen, 1911

This page intentionally left blank

4 POWER AND PRIVILEGE (1790-1905)

I

n 1763 Catherine the Great of Russia issued a manifesto promising extensive privileges to any foreign settlers who would agree to settle in her expanding empire.1 The original appeal was renewed in the 1780s following the conquest by her favourite, Prince Potemkin, of the southern steppe region bordering the Black Sea and the Azov Sea. New agricultural settlers were required for the territory—then named New Russia, today part of Ukraine. Mennonites in Danzig and Prussia were attracted to the offer of land, special privileges, and guarantees of freedom of faith and exemption from military service. Two Mennonite delegates, Johann Bartsch and Jacob Hoppner, were selected to travel to southern Russia to select possible settlement sites and to enter into negotiations with government officials for possible migration. So began a process whereby, over the next sixty years, thousands of Mennonites would migrate from Prussia and settle as colonists in southern and later other areas of imperial Russia. The first Mennonites to settle in New Russia in 1789 did so under the conditions of an agreement made in 1785 between the two delegates and Prince Potemkin in the name of Catherine the Great.2 However, the Mennonites were eager to secure their own privilegium from the tsarina and, after lengthy negotiations, her son and successor Tsar Paul issued one in 1800. Most of the rights given in the original 1785 agreement and in the 1800 privilegium were similar to those offered all colonists

Map 4: New Russia, 1802

POWER AND

PRIVILEGE

in the original 1763 manifesto addressed to potential foreign settlers. Two features of great significance to Mennonites were also included in the 1763 manifesto and the 1800 Mennonite privilegium: freedom of religion and exemption from military service.3 In terms of freedom of religion, the 1763 manifesto states: "All such Comers into our Empire for settlement may enjoy the free Exercise of their Religion conformable to their Rites and Ceremonies, without any hindrance or molestation; and that those, which are desirous to settle themselves not in the City's or Towns, but separately in the open Fields, in Colonys ... may build themselves up Churches with Steeples for Bells, and keep as many Parsons and Clergy-men as will be needfull, excluding only building up Monastery's...."4 The Mennonite privilegium, however, includes a statement on the oath, not a subject touched upon in the 1763 manifesto: "We confirm the liberty to practise their religion according to their tenets and customs as promised them and their descendants and most graciously permit them, when occasion demands it, to render the oath in courts according to their custom, consisting in a simple affirmation of the truth." Although freedom from military service was a matter of major concern for the Mennonites, it is a freedom offered to all foreign colonists in the 1763 manifesto: Such Foreigners, as come for settlement to Russia, shall be exempt ... of all ordinary and extraordinary services or Duties, as likewise of giving Quarter to Soldiers Such Foreigners, that have settled themselves in Russia, as long as they remain in the empire, shall not be appointed to any Military or Civil-Duty against their will, except Land Dutys All the above said Advantages and Ordinance are to be enjoyed not only by those, who have settled themselves in Our Empire, but even by their Children after them and their Posterity, though they might be born in Russia, reckoning the said Years from the Day of their Ancestors coming into Russia. The Mennonite privilegium is more detailed on this issue than the manifesto, no doubt reflecting the Mennonites' recent unhappy experiences in Prussia. We assure them with Our Imperial word that none of the Menonists, now settled and those which may settle in the future, nor their children and descendants will ever be taken and entered into military service without their own desire to do so We exempt all their villages and houses from all sorts of quartering, except when the troops march through, in which case they will observe the rules of quartering. We also discharge them from all crown labours, with the condition, however, that they properly maintain the bridges, ferries and roads on their lands and also participate in the general maintenance of the mails.

87

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

For Mennonites who settled in Russia it was the privilegium, not the earlier manifesto or later rules relating to foreign colonists, that defined their special relationship with the Russian state and its imperial rulers.5 The privilegium was seen as a personal agreement between the Mennonites as a distinct people of faith and the tsar as the autocratic ruler of the Russian state. If, in the hope of salvation, Mennonites believed they possessed a special covenant with God, the Lord's anointed tsar had provided an earthly covenant in the form of the privilegium. Under the protection of God and the tsar, Mennonites and their descendants were free to seek heavenly salvation in peace and security. Beyond the confirmation of core principles of faith, which protected their congregational communities, the privilegium of 1800 also includes the right to continue customary practices in relation to property inheritance. Also included are special economic rights and privileges intended to ensure the community's future prosperity. Again there is nothing in this that in principle is not promised in the 1763 manifesto; prospective settlers are permitted to negotiate special rights and conditions if they agree to settle in Russia. In view of later claims it is perhaps significant that two matters are not referred to anywhere in the 1800 privilegium, indicating that at this period they were not major matters of concern. First, there is no mention of education in general or specific provision for a separate Mennonite school system. Secondly, there is no reference to any right to self-government other than that their privileges allowed for a degree of independence in social and economic affairs. It was the 1763 manifesto, not the privilegium, that promised foreign settlers independence and self-government. The manifesto offered those who settled "in separate Colonys and Places" control of "their inner lurisdiction [jurisdiction] to their own good disposition, so that Our Commanders shall no ways concern themselves with the Management of their Affairs." But, the manifesto added, "in the rest they must submit themselves to Our Civil Law."6 At this period, however, Russia possessed very little "civil law," although, as empress, Catherine had worked on a number of schemes to reform the administration of her state, reorganizing the nobility into a service elite and introducing a number of bureaucratic regulations and reforms to improve the functioning of the state and enhance her own status and power. As befitted an "enlightened autocratic" in touch with leading figures of the Enlightenment, these reforms were planned according to rational principles, at least in principle, even if they proved less rational in practice.7 Catherine's successors continued her efforts to build a more modern, bureaucratic state in spite of Russia's reputation for abject backwardness in comparison to western European states.

88

POWER AND PRIVILEGE

In order to deal with the foreign colonists attracted to Russia by the 1763 manifesto, a Chancellery of Guardianship was established. By the time Mennonites began to settle in New Russia, the authorities had developed new ways to deal with colonists, none of which were particularly efficient, and many officials employed to administer the state's orders at the local level proved inefficient and/or corrupt.8 Major reforms were introduced during the brief reign of Tsar Paul, the most significant of which involved the establishment of a separate, regional Guardian's Office for Foreign Colonists. In New Russia, its headquarters initially were in Ekaterinoslav and, later, Odessa. Eventually the office came under the control of the Ministry of Interior as Paul's successor, Alexander I, established separate ministries of state. At the local level in the colonies, a system of secular administrative offices was created consistent with reforms in other areas of Russian local government.9 Foreign colonists were designated as State Peasants and local village assemblies were headed by a village mayor (Schultze) linked to the regional colony administration through a district office (Gebietsamt), in turn headed by a district mayor (Vorsteher or Oberschnltze). Each district office had an incipient bureaucracy with a secretary and clerks to deal with the mountain of paperwork. Village landowners elected their local mayor and the district mayor, but the secretary was usually appointed by Russian officials. All members of the local community could attend open meetings and discuss matters of common concern. The colonists were responsible for local law enforcement and punishment. Deputies were elected to act as constables and ensure that the colonists maintained roads and bridges and followed government directives on farming, tree planting, building regulations, and other matters. This system of administration was designed, initiated, and enforced on Mennonites by Russian authorities, and, as the nineteenth century advanced, the system became increasingly bureaucratic and intrusive in Mennonite affairs.10 The first Mennonite colony was founded from 1789 onwards at Khortitsa on the Dnieper River, and, after 1804, a larger colony was established at Molochna on open steppe lands to the south. In both colonies there was some initial tension between the government-approved Mennonite civil authorities and religious leaders of the newly formed congregations.11 Around 1812 a Molochna congregation later known as the Kleine Gemeinde separated from the main Flemish congregation and further exposed these conflicts between Mennonite religious principles and civil authority. One factor involved was an objection to "voluntary" Mennonite financial contributions paid at the request of the Russian government to aid in the struggle against Napoleon's invasion.12 The leaders of the Kleine Gemeinde viewed this as inconsistent with basic Mennonite principles of nonresistance. In their later dealings with government officials and local civil authorities, leaders of the Kleine

89

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Gemeinde picked a careful path between their allegiance to fundamental Mennonite principles and their recognition that the tsar and biblical injunctions stipulated that government was to be obeyed. As one Kleine Gemeinde elder carefully expressed himself: "we believe that we should be obedient in all things which are not contrary to the word of God."13 Members of the Kleine Gemeinde therefore refused on the grounds of nonresistance to act as constables to arrest, imprison, and punish offenders as required of colonists by official regulations.14 Their ministers also declined the right of clergy to be exempted from the labour required of all colonists to maintain roads and bridges.15 By the 1820s a working compromise had been established in most colonies between the religious and civil leaders over areas of authority. Religious leaders continued to hold great sway over the community and as long as there was no obvious conflict between religious principles and administrative practices, there were few problems. Indeed, at the local level there was probably more political activity in the area of religious affairs than in civil government. The arrival between 1818 and the early 1820s of new congregations in Molochna from Prussia and Poland, belonging to different religious and social backgrounds, caused friction. At the same time, connections with non-Mennonite evangelicals and the Russian Bible Society, both ultimately linked with Tsar Alexander I and members of his ruling elite, added to the difficulties. This resulted in another division within the founding Flemish congregation and revealed the conservative thinking of many Molochna Mennonites and their leaders.16 None of these divisions, disagreements, or reassertions of fundamental principles of faith as yet involved wider political issues or a confrontation between religious ideas and official government policies. However, this was to change in the 1830s and the resulting disagreements involved different interpretations of Mennonite rights in the 1800 Mennonite privilegium. In 1818, during his visit to the Molochna, Tsar Alexander I was asked to reaffirm the terms of the Mennonite privilegium issued by his father Paul in 1800. The request noted that new Mennonite immigrants were coming to Russia and that it had been the normal practice in their old homeland for rulers to reconfirm the privileges previously granted to their subjects.17 The Molochna Mennonites might also have wanted to confirm that the privileges given to their Khortitsa brethren before their own migration also applied to them. In 1826 the religious leaders in the two colonies requested that the newly crowned tsar, Nicholas I, again reconfirm the provisions of the privilegium. The 1826 request followed the political instability of the previous year when, during the confused events surrounding the accession of Tsar Nicholas, an attempt was made to overthrow the autocracy and establish 90

POWER AND PRIVILEGE

a constitutional form of government.18 The Mennonite leaders, in humble tones, claimed that as "orphaned strangers" they were "deeply and overwhelmingly perturbed" in their minds and spirits," for if they looked "into the distant future" they feared "the complete invalidation and elimination" of their special privileges.19 The request was dealt with by ministry officials who refused to forward the petition to the tsar, as it was deemed unnecessary for him to reconfirm the privilegium, which remained a legal document. The petition reveals a lack of Mennonite awareness of the privilegium's status as a legal document (ukase) and the structure of the increasingly complex and bureaucratic Russian state. The Mennonites' own copy of the privilegium was kept safely in Khortitsa and treated almost as a sacred document. Before the building of a special room in the district office, the document apparently was held by leaders of the Flemish congregation.20 In April 1837, Jacob Warkentin, elder of the large Molochna Flemish congregation, and two of his ministers travelled to Khortitsa to examine the privilegium with the elder of the Khortitsa Flemish congregation, Jacob Dyck.21 The meeting is noted in the diary of a minister in Khortitsa, David Epp, but he gives no reason for the visit. Later entries in Dyck's diary, and subsequent events, hint at some of the political factors that, in fact, were involved.22 Warkentin was eager to check the exact wording of the privilegium, as the Mennonites' version contained both a Russian and a German text. He was particularly interested in Mennonite rights in relation to their alleged duties. The preamble to the 1800 privilegium refers to the recent investigations carried out by Russian officials as to the condition and administration of foreign colonists in southern Russia, which found many faults and resulted in major changes in the management of the colonies.23 Compared with many other foreign colonists, the Mennonites, in spite of many hardships and corrupt government officials, were considered a successful example of colonization. The preamble to the privilegium noted that the Mennonites' "excellent industry and morality may, according to the testimony of the authorities, be held up as a model to the foreigners settled there and thereby deserves special consideration," and that the privilegium not only confirmed the existing negotiated rights and privileges but also aimed "to stimulate their industry and concern in agriculture even more" by granting them "other advantages." The key word here is "model" and the idea that Mennonite rights carried with them explicit duties to improve not just their own agriculture and industry but also the lives of non-Mennonites living around them.24 After 1800 the Russian government, through the Guardian's Office, did indeed provide Mennonites with considerable assistance in improving their agriculture and industry: fostering sheep flocks with improved stock, improving cultivars,

91

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

especially trees, supporting industries, and other activities. For their part, most Mennonites responded well to this aid and the colonies flourished. But the idea that foreign colonists were to act as models to their neighbours was not spelled out in the 1763 manifesto and the wording of the 1800 privilegium reflected favourable recent reports and realities, rather than being aimed at placing specific duties and obligations on Mennonites.25 In time, however, both officials and certain Mennonites came to see that this was their specific role. This meant Mennonites were singled out for special government attention and a few progressive Mennonites took it upon themselves to lead Mennonites on the road to economic and social improvement. No one exemplified this role more than the Molochna Mennonite entrepreneur Johann Cornies (1789-1848).26 With the support of officials, Cornies became increasingly involved in the economic improvement of the Molochna colony during the 1820s. In 1830, with government support, he established an Agricultural Society, which began to issue instructions on a range of agricultural improvements. After 1836 he received increased support when control of colonist affairs was transferred from the Ministry of the Interior to a new Ministry of State Domains. The new ministry was created to plan the reforms of state peasants as a prelude to wider reforms of privately owned serfs.27 Mennonites, as state peasants, had often been singled out as an example of successful settlement and economic development; now they were to act as leaders in the reform process.28 Instructions to the colonists on how to improve themselves now became formal orders as Cornies planned for a large-scale rationalization of Mennonite economic activities, settlement structures, the improvement of local government, and eventually the upgrading and modernization of the Mennonite school system. It appeared no area of Mennonite life would escape his scrutiny. His agricultural society became the bureaucratic arm of his reforming zeal; even the district office eventually would be subordinated to its purposes. Although a "servitor of the state," in his own world Cornies became a Mennonite tsar, autocratic and increasingly authoritarian.29 Elder Warkentin intended to check on the privilegium's exact wording concerning religious freedom in relation to Mennonite duties and obligations. In earlier correspondence with government officials over his congregation's claim to sole rights to use a meeting house built with government money before the schism of the 1820s, Warkentin had referred to the right of religious freedom granted by the tsar.30 It appears that Warkentin's new interest in the privilegium and Mennonite rights stemmed from a conflict with the district head over the extent of his authority, according to one source, because the local officials had introduced physical punishment to enforce their authority.31 But Warkentin's concerns extended to the 92

POWER AND PRIVILEGE

increasing claims to power by not just the district office but also Cornies and his agricultural society. Mennonite duties and obligations, rather than their rights, were now being stressed by people not holding religious office. The exact wording of the privilegium was now critical in any protest planned against Cornies and the district office. But Warkentin was not the only person interested in using the privilegium as a justification for action. It appears that Cornies and his supporters viewed the preamble as a clear statement of Mennonite duties and obligations. In this view Mennonites were required by the terms of the privilegium to improve themselves and act as model farmers (Mustenuirten) to neighbouring non-Mennonite colonists—Nogai Tatars, peasants, Jewish agricultural settlers, and any other group the government desired. In October 1837, Cornies, the Molochna district mayor, and the elders of the other, more progressive, Molochna congregations petitioned Tsar Nicholas I, then holidaying in the Crimea, with a request that he reconfirm the privilegium. Although the petition indicated that it came from the leaders of Mennonites in the provinces of Ekaterinoslav and Tavrida, neither Elder Warkentin in Molochna nor any of the Khortitsa religious leaders had been consulted. David Epp reveals that Elder Dyck in Khortitsa was "incensed" by the actions of the Molochna petitioners. Elder Warkentin returned to Khortitsa and re-examined the privilegium, while Dyck complained to officials in Odessa.32 This time the government dealt more seriously with the request for reconfirmation than they had done in 1826. Officials noted that nothing in the provisions of the privilegium contradicted "the current laws and regulations of the state." The petition reached the tsar, who personally reconfirmed the 1800 privilegium, and in early 1838 officials ordered that its reconfirmation be announced publicly in all Mennonite colonies.33 A struggle now ensued between Elder Warkentin and Cornies in which the conservative elder would receive a harsh lesson in the power of the Russian state and the limitations of his understanding of the privilegium. In 1842 the new head of the Guardian's Office, Eduard von Hahn, removed Warkentin as an elder on account of his "political" interference in the administrative affairs of Molochna and his opposition to Cornies's reform programs. This move was unprecedented but von Hahn went further and ordered that the ministers of Warkentin's large congregation divide it into first two, and then three separate congregations, each with its own elder. This would result in the establishment of smaller, more politically manageable congregations; authority to see that this was done was given to Cornies.34 Four years later, in 1846, the senior elder of one of the new congregations, Heinrich Wiens, again questioned the authority of the district office over its right to use physical force to punish offenders. As a consequence von Hahn also removed him as elder and he was banished from Russia. As this matter involved the

93

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Mennonite principle of nonresistance, Wiens defended his views by again appealing to the provisions of religious freedom enshrined in the privilegium.35 In response von Hahn circulated a statement to other religious leaders stating that if the privilegium continued to be cited as a justification to frustrate the will of government, then he would request that the central authorities rescind the document.36 There was no public opposition from the other elders to von Hahn's extraordinary actions in dismissing and banishing an elder of a congregation for defending basic Mennonite principles.37 It is obvious that during the first half of the nineteenth century, the Mennonite privilegium came to be interpreted in different ways by different groups. To conservative religious leaders, the privilegium's role was primarily protective, preserving the rights of Mennonites and limiting government action over crucial aspects of Mennonite life and faith. To progressives like Cornies and progressive religious leaders, as well as officials, the document was a contract between Mennonites and the state, in which the granting of rights necessarily involved defined duties and responsibilities. The events of the 1830s and 1840s confirmed the latter interpretation. In 1850 a Prussian Mennonite minister, Johann Wall, inspected the Russian Mennonite colonies with a view of further Mennonite migration to Russia. Upon his return to Prussia, he wrote a letter to his Russian Mennonite hosts, pleading with them to find peace among themselves and to appreciate the protection and opportunities they enjoyed under the Russian state.38 He addressed the conflict over the interpretation of the privilegium in the colony in great detail and offered his own opinion. Unlike in Prussia, he noted, Mennonites in Russia were protected by a benevolent ruler and state, adding, "I am not familiar with any people with a Charter of Privileges like the one given our fellow believers in southern Russia." He claimed a number of Russian Mennonites misunderstood the meaning of their privilegium, and specifically quoted its preamble and stressed that this implied an "obligation of being a model not only to their immediate neighbours but also to the other colonists in their diligence as well as in their conduct generally." These obligations were to be fulfilled by "establishing villages, roads, gardens, and wood lots, by constructing buildings and by tilling the ground." All this, he suggested, required leadership and such leadership could not come from religious ministers who were to restrict themselves to spiritual, not earthly matters. The religious ministers who had opposed the secular leadership had opposed the contractual conditions of the privilegium and, in turn, the authority of the state. "Where one enjoys extraordinary privileges," he reminded the Russian Mennonites, "extraordinary accomplishments should likewise follow. "39 Viewed from a Prussian perspective, even by a person who would eventually settle in Russia to escape his own modernizing state, the idea that a

94

POWER AND P R I V I L E G E

privilegium implied rights without corresponding duties and obligations did not make any sense. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Mennonites in Russia had witnessed considerable changes in their way of life, not least in the development of governmental structures within their own communities that went far beyond the old congregational forms of communal organization. Although the system of selfgovernment had been imposed from outside, Mennonites had made it their own and, through it, established links with the external state. Yet, in spite of this, as Russian subjects, Mennonites were not well integrated into Russian society and culture. As one scholar has noted, the decision by authorities in the early nineteenth century not to administer the colonists in the Russian language "permanently hindered [their] integration with their surroundings," while "the changes introduced, confirming the colonists' separate civic status, their special financial arrangements, different language and administrative system, all strengthened their separation from their Russian environment."40 This situation was consistent with the multi-ethnic nature of the Empire and an agrarian society consisting of distinct social estates ruled autocratically by a tsar with a minimum of government. By mid-century a shift in self-identity was underway in the Mennonite world. Mennonites had always viewed themselves as a distinct people of faith, separated from their neighbours and usually excluded or greatly restricted from participation in the larger society. In Russia Mennonites were permitted by their privilegium and government policy to sustain distinct communities, recognized by officials as different from other "colonists" who were usually identified by their place of origin, as Mecklenburgers, Wiirttembergers, and so on. Far from being excluded and restricted, Mennonites enjoyed special rights and privileges that set them apart and often above their neighbours in terms of wealth and status. Their adoption of the role of model colonists expanded their sense of identity from being small, quiet, internally focussed religious communities into successful colonists recognized by government officials and distinguished foreign visitors.41 If they were to remain models, they had to be both separate from, and superior to, others in terms of their society and culture. The privilegium that protected the religious rights of Mennonites had been supplemented by institutional privileges not directly related to their religious identity but which in time would also become part of their sense of personhood. Mennonites were not just a community protected by a special charter, but were also a superior and privileged people. Indeed, Mennonites began to speak of themselves as a distinct people, using the diminutive term "Volklein," a word that linked them clearly with the emergent nationalist concept of Volk, but

95

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

which also preserved the appropriate sense of humility in terms of the latter's association with politics and the "world."42 Johann Cornies, born in the year of the French Revolution—1789—died suddenly in 1848, the major year of revolutionary activity in nineteenth-century Europe. Nicholas I, deeply disturbed by the events of 1848, halted further plans for the reform of state peasants and Russian society. In the Mennonite colonies, particularly Molochna, a counter-reaction to many of Cornies's policies also set in. This culminated in the 1860s in disturbances over control of the district office and over land ownership for the growing number of landless Mennonites, a situation in part exacerbated by Cornies's progressive policies, which increased the population of the colony and favoured a small elite of successful farmers. During the same period, there was also religious turmoil as a new generation, better educated than their parents and exposed to ideas from outside the established traditions, sought new forms of spiritual fulfilment. 43 Repeatedly, Russian officials became embroiled in these internal Mennonite disputes as competing groups demanded that the government punish and even banish other Mennonites from their community. The oppressed also sought official protection from rapacious landowners, corrupt local officials, and stubborn, uncompromising religious leaders. It is not surprising that a Minister of the Interior in St. Petersburg would later point to voluminous files that chronicled the sad tale of these Mennonite internal disorders and question the moral basis of a religious community established on Christian love.44 Earlier, in the 1850s, the Crimean War had been fought close to the Mennonite settlements; troops were quartered in the colonies and Mennonites transported supplies right into the war zone and provided medical assistance for the wounded. For these services they received official praise and recognition.45 Following Russia's humiliating defeat in the war, Nicholas's successor, Alexander II, developed new programs for the reform but on a scale and at a pace previously unimagined in his father's hesitant plans. This period, known as the Great Reforms, began in the early 1860s and fundamentally altered the structure of Russian society by redefining the nature of the state and the duties and responsibilities of subjects.46 The reforms began with the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and ended in 1881 with Alexander's assassination. By this time almost all aspects of life had been changed and Russia had embarked on the path of a more modern state with a proper legal code, reorganized government, and a shift towards the idea of citizenship of the tsar's subjects. Mennonite accounts of this period mainly discuss just one feature of the reforms: the government's plans to introduce compulsory, universal military service and the loss of their right to exemption from military service as detailed in their privilegium. The wider reforms, however, affected a broad range of 96

POWER AND PRIVILEGE

Mennonite rights and the special relationship with government developed since the time of first settlement. But the issue of military service undoubtedly presented the most immediate challenge and eventually had the greatest effect, as it divided the Mennonite community, resulting in the emigration to North America of a large number of congregational communities. Mennonites first heard of plans for military reform in the early 1870s and when it was confirmed that the government was planning a new law that would result in universal, compulsory conscription, this was immediately seen as a direct challenge to the principle of nonresistance, a core aspect of Mennonite faith. At the same time it generated a view that the privilegium—so central to Mennonite identity and existence—would be removed in its entirety. Some feared this would result in rapid assimilation of Mennonites into Russian society and the subsequent loss of their faith.47 The government's intention to introduce military conscription was also seen as breaking the covenant established between the tsar and Mennonites, as the "promise" had been that the privilegium would exist for "all time."48 Some Mennonites were slightly more realistic. When news of the proposed law became known, the Mennonite minister Jacob Epp recalled in his diary that earlier he had been involved in a discussion on the privilegium with other Mennonites: Most everyone thought it had been given to us in perpetuity and that the promised freedoms were guaranteed for all time. But I suggested things could change rapidly if there were a major transformation in the country and in the central administration. The discussion became heated, one person saying our charter was irrevocable as long as a descendant of blessed Emperor Paul I sat on the Russian throne. I replied that nothing in this world would last forever, except the Word of God. It alone would endure in all eternity. The Charter of Privileges had been given to us and could as easily be taken away. Only the Charter of Privileges of the Lord Jesus, sealed with his blood and with the New Testament, was irrevocable and would remain valid through all upheavals. And though heaven and Earth would pass away, the Word of God would remain forever.49 Epp continued by stating that Mennonites had placed too much "trust" in the privilegium, "even as Jews had placed theirs in the temple of the Lord," and that its loss was due to Mennonite sins, although he does not name any specific failures. In reality, one clause in the privilegium was revoked by the new law, while the privilegium remained in the collected laws of the Empire. The wider Mennonite response to the news of the military reforms reflects not only their experience of dealing with officials and government developed in Russia, but also their naivete.50 A number of delegations were sent to St.

97

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Petersburg, but at first these only revealed how little understanding the Mennonites possessed of the structure of authority, the changing nature of the state, and the political discord the reforms had created among ruling elites and bureaucrats.51 The first delegations consisted of senior religious leaders with some local Mennonite officials. Their petitions provided summaries of their faith position on nonresistance based on established confessions of faith and also mentioned the rights enshrined in their privilegium. But the older religious leaders often knew little or no Russian, a situation that had not been helped by the fact that German had been the language of administration with government. On one occasion this failure to speak the major language of state led to negative comments from a senior Russian official.52 Later delegations contained Russian speakers, often younger men who were schoolteachers. Many of the issues were of a legal nature as officials were in the process of drafting legislation on the new military system. Again this required Mennonites with knowledge of legal issues and these were few in number. On the other hand, Mennonites proved adept at exploiting links with officials established in the 1830s and 1840s. These included von Hahn and also some who had worked with Mennonites as junior bureaucrats in the Ministry of State Domains, and who now held important posts in the key ministries and committees involved in the general reform process.53 With the help of such people and Protestant ministers in St. Petersburg, the Mennonites eventually mastered the intricacies of drawing up more sophisticated petitions, delivering them to the right people, and gaining audiences with key officials. For instance, in February 1873 they obtained an audience with the tsar's brother, the liberal Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich, president of the Imperial Council, who was directly involved in military reforms and who could "exert considerable influence on legislative drafts."54 This occurred just as the new law reached its final drafting stage.55 How aware Mennonites were of the controversies involved in the idea of a general conscription of all social estates and ethnic groups, including Jews, is unclear.56 At first officials stressed that as the legislation was still being formulated, it was impossible to answer Mennonite concerns. For their part, the Russian government does not appear to have impeded the Mennonite delegates and, in some quarters, one senses a genuine sympathy with the Mennonites' faith position. From the outset it was made clear that as a matter of principle any new law would apply to all subjects, including Mennonites. It was intended that all members of Russia's social estates—nobles, peasants, and others—would be included within a single legal framework. The age of privilege and special exemptions was over, as the duty of all subjects was to serve the state.

98

POWER AND PRIVILEGE

The crisis required Mennonites from different colonies and often very different congregational backgrounds to cooperate and present a united face to government. But divisions soon appeared.57 At one of the first meetings with officials in St. Petersburg, Elder Leonhard Sudermann of the urban congregation of the port of Berdiansk, who had emigrated from Prussia in 1841, appeared to suggest that Mennonites would accept no form of government service, military or otherwise. Although such a position was perfectly consistent with existing Mennonite confessions of faith, the official's negative reaction resulted in a number of different responses. Some argued that Sudermann had "misunderstood" the question and others denied that Mennonites were unwilling to serve the state as loyal subjects.58 In fact, Sudermann's position reflected the views of many conservative congregations who, true to their confessions of faith, which recognized the authority of government but rejected the role of magistrates, wished to remain within the protection of the existing privilegium and resisted any attempt to further extend their duties. The group that articulated such views most clearly was the Kleine Gemeinde.59 The authorities made it quite clear that such a view was untenable: Mennonites were subjects of the tsar and as such would have to provide some kind of service to the state. This service might be within the military but in non-combatant roles like those they had provided during the Crimean War. But their negative experience of the war added to the conservative rejection of such an idea. It also resembled the compromise the Prussian Mennonites had recently accepted with the Prussian/ German state and this was equally unacceptable. At this juncture the Mennonites became divided between those who wished to continue to negotiate for some kind of compromise with government and those who rejected this and instead looked at the possibility of emigration from Russia, particularly to North America. In fact, Russian officials had indicated that if the Mennonites rejected the idea of service, they would have to leave the tsar's domains. The Mennonites now sent delegates to view suitable land and negotiate conditions for settlement in North America. The new military law came into effect on 1 January 1874 but as the emigration movement gathered momentum, the government decided to find a way to resolve the issue.60 Eventually an envoy of the tsar, General Todleben, who had commanded the defence of Sebastopol in the Crimean War, was sent to the Mennonites to assess their needs and with the authority to negotiate special exemptions. Although the absolute principles of the privilegium had indeed been lost, eventually special clauses were added to the legislation, which permitted Mennonites to serve the state. This service, however, was not as non-combatants or under military command. Instead, Mennonites were permitted to develop an alternative system of service in which young men were conscripted in the same manner as military recruits but then

99

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

could serve in forestry camps under their own control. This was, in terms of the overall principles of the Great Reforms, a major concession by the government and, in a sense, the special privileges afforded to the Mennonites reflected the respect they had achieved over the previous half century as useful subjects of the tsar. Up until the end of the tsarist regime, Mennonites came to view their special privileges not just in terms of the privilegium but also increasingly in terms of the privilege of being exempted from military conscription and the permission to run "their" system of alternative service. As such, the preservation of this privilege took precedence over all others, many of which were already weakened or irrelevant in the post-reform political environment. The military reforms were not the only feature of the larger process of reform process that disturbed Mennonites in the period between 1860 and 1880 and contributed to their desire to emigrate from Russia during the 1870s.61 The other reforms also viewed as a direct challenge to the continuity of Mennonite life and faith included attempts to subordinate Mennonite institutions, even if these had first been established in Russia, to new structures of the reform process. A major area of concern involved changes to local and regional administration with the creation of zemstva in 1864, the establishment of a judicial system with trial by jury, and the use of Russian instead of German as the language of official communication. In 1871 the special status of the Mennonites and other foreign colonists was abolished and with it the Guardian's Office. Mennonites and other colonists were now subordinated to the provincial governments in which they were located and their settlements were included in the new zemstvo administrations responsible for education, health, prisons, roads, and agricultural development.62 At the local level in the established colonies of Khortitsa and Molochna, the district offices (Gebietsaemter) were replaced by volosti (cantons), and district and village mayors gained Russian titles. In terms of everyday administration, however, change occurred more gradually. Volosti heads were still voted into office by landowners, as were village heads. But the most powerful figure in local government was now the volost secretary, an appointed official with the necessary skills in Russian and in bureaucratic procedures to provide efficient links between central and regional government.63 A few Mennonites were sufficiently competent in Russian or bureaucratic procedures to fill these positions. From the start of the new system in the 1870s, Khortitsa was served by Mennonite secretaries, but in Molochna the volosti secretaries for many years were Lutheran colonists from settlements near Odessa.64 In established colonies the territorial units of local government districts did not change, except in Molochna, where the previous single colony district was 100

POWER AND P R I V I L E G E

divided into two cantons, one based in the old district centre of Halbstadt and the other in Gnadenfeld. In some newer settlements, such as in the Khortitsa-linked Baratov-Shlachtin settlement, Mennonites were grouped with non-Mennonites in a new canton.65 This did not appear to concern the Mennonites, but in other areas, through fair means or foul, Mennonites established exclusive cantons under their own control, often to the disadvantage of neighbouring non-Mennonites. One example of this was the Mennonite volost of Schonfeld, a wealthy area of privately owned land settled by mainly Molochna people.66 In other settlements, such as the Molochna daughter colony of Memrik, founded in the 1880s, later attempts to establish exclusive Mennonite administrations failed.67 Closely involved with the introduction of military service and administrative reforms during the 1870s was the future of education. At the time of first settlement in Russia, Mennonite "education" consisted of little more than the learning of basic literacy and numeracy skills; "schools" consisted of classes of children overseen by a village craftsman where the emphasis was on rote learning based on the Bible, the catechism, and little else.68 The Russian government encouraged improvements in education as the colonists were required to communicate with officialdom in High German, which required a greater proficiency in the language. Up to this time, Mennonite Low German had been used in everyday speech; High German was mainly a language of religion. The vocabulary required to express religious ideas was not the same as that for bureaucratic affairs. As Mennonites increasingly accepted the role of model settlers and became involved with government agencies and officials, it became imperative that they increase their language and numeracy skills.69 An important aspect of Cornies's reforms involved better trained teachers, expanded curricula, and improved buildings and administration, and this work was continued in Molochna by his successor, his brother-in-law Philipp Wiebe.70 In 1869 the Ministry of State Domains helped establish a School Board in Molochna with the assistance of progressive religious and secular leaders.71 This was part of a wider effort by the ministry intended to prepare the colonists for the administrative reforms and to increase competency in Russian, now the language of administration.72 Progressive forces in Molochna and Khortitsa were eager to improve educational standards, particularly by expanding higher education and teacher training. The ministry wanted to rationalize centres for instruction and in 1875 suggested that the centre be located in Prischib, in Molochna German colonists' settlement close to the Mennonites in Molochna. At first Mennonites seemed to go along with the idea but soon changed their minds.73 The Mennonite leadership suggested to the authorities that such an arrangement was not "in their best

101

Map 5: Molochna, 1870s

POWER AND P R I V I L E G E

interests" as the purpose of higher education was to "train not only school teachers who were also religion teachers of our children, but also our future preachers and spiritual councillors."74 This connection among religion, education, and the further development of the Mennonites as a separate people became a defining feature of the close cooperation that developed between Mennonite religious and secular leaders after the 1870s. Congregational officials, particularly the elders, provided an important link between their religious communities and government officials. Local congregations continued as autonomous entities but ministers met in "church" councils, at first within colony areas and later regionally, to discuss issues of common concern. These issues came to include a wide range of social and cultural matters. By the 1880s most elders and ministers were drawn from the ranks of the educated and an increasing number of congregational leaders had trained as schoolteachers. These people came to form what might be termed a clerisy, a powerful group of educated individuals holding religious office and sharing a common concern with the intellectual and moral improvement of all members of their communities.75 Noted examples of such leaders are Heinrich Epp (1827-1896), the Khortitsa elder, and later his son David H. Epp (1861-1934), while the outstanding figure in Molochna was Elder Abraham Gorz (1840-1911); all these leaders were fluent in Russian and experienced in negotiating with government officials.76 By 1880 Russia's major reforms had been completed and were soon to be implemented. Mennonites had been integrated into the system of local and provincial government, their schools were soon to come under the oversight of the Ministry of Education, and the first young men were about to be conscripted into the Forestry Service.77 In March 1881 Alexander II was assassinated in St. Petersburg by members of a radical group, the People's Will, who were demanding a constituent assembly elected by universal suffrage. Ironically, he was killed on the very day when he was to discuss proposals for introducing representational government.78 His successor, Alexander III, immediately issued a manifesto reasserting the inviolability of the autocracy, followed by emergency measures to maintain order and suppress dissent.79 An era of reaction and repression thus began that would last for the next twenty-five years, into the reign of the next tsar, Nicholas II. By the mid-1880s the crisis within the Mennonite world caused by the Great Reforms appeared to have passed. Those religiously conservative congregations seemingly unable to compromise with the state and social progress had separated themselves through emigration. During this time Mennonites gained a breathing space in which their leaders could consolidate their position in Russian society and

103

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

develop a range of institutional structures to retain Mennonite control over their affairs. These were intended to preserve their distinctive identity and also their privileged economic, social, and cultural position in relation to their neighbours. All this involved considerable organization and internal management, and large sums of money. It also involved the creation of what has been called the Russian-Mennonite commonwealth, involving the establishment of community organizations well beyond the congregational forms of earlier Mennonite history. The congregations became more rationally organized, although they still depended on lay service. Larger religious groupings were formed, which initially linked different congregations within colonies and later extended this between colonies. The wider commonwealth also required even more complex forms of organization and funding, including the development of secular institutions and bureaucratic systems. In 1866, following the freeing of privately owned serfs four years previously, state peasants were "emancipated" and granted possession of their land, subject to tax payments, with communal control of their settlements.80 As state peasants, Mennonites maintained the right to exclusive, common ownership of their corporate colonies and could exclude non-Mennonites from acquiring or owning land, in spite of an increasing number of non-Mennonites living and working in the colonies. Thus they could effectively exclude and disenfranchise non-Mennonite residents, denying such "outsiders" basic rights of property and a voice in local affairs, a fact that caused ill-feeling among many long-term, non-Mennonite residents.81 In principle, if not always in practice, the landless disputes that had generated a great deal of political activity in the colonies during the 1860s, especially in Molochna, had been resolved by 1870.82 Members were forced to take corporate responsibility for the landless within their settlement areas, reinforcing congregational and kinship solidarity with regulations and management structures controlled by an emergent Mennonite bureaucracy that acted outside the limited interests of family relationships and individual congregational affiliations. While the system adopted to deal with this issue varied from colony to colony, in Molochna areas were set aside for rent, and taxes were levied to raise sufficient capital to purchase new land elsewhere in Russia and to found "daughter" colonies. These daughter colonies also set aside land and levied taxes, the income from which at first was used to repay the "mother" colony for the cost of the new settlement and later to support their own landless.83 In one instance, the founding of the Orenburg colony, officials of the Khortitsa and Molochna colonies bought land together.84 The Mennonite alternative state service system required the establishment of forestry camps, and the responsibility for much of the cost involved in their building, maintenance, and running fell upon the Mennonites. These costs were covered by

104

POWER AND PRIVILEGE

a levy on Mennonite private property, which required the periodic valuation of property, local collection of taxes by district men, and careful management of the funds involved. Education was another area of considerable reorganization and investment after 1880. While Mennonites accepted Russian as the language of instruction in schools, they maintained the right to teach and hold religious instruction in German, the language seen as essential for the continuation of the faith and their identity. To achieve control of schooling, Mennonites established centres to train Mennonite teachers, although the high schools needed the help of Russian teachers for some time. In the period of reaction after 1881, there was little official enthusiasm for extending education to the masses and Mennonite leaders were often frustrated in their attempts to expand their educational system.85 Mennonite customary practices of land owning and inheritance, as well as of community institutions, such as provision for orphans and fire insurance, continued after the Great Reforms and eventually were restructured to comply with Russian legal requirements.86 Over the years additional social welfare institutions were developed, including a school for the deaf, hospitals, an orphanage, an old people's home, and even a mental institution.87 Although the economic structures established in the Mennonite colonies during the first half of the nineteenth century provided a prosperous base to maintain a high degree of Mennonite autonomy, it was insufficient to fully fund the range of activities needed to maintain the commonwealth. The additional funding came from Mennonite entrepreneurs, mainly estate owners, millers, industrialists, and businessmen who prospered as the Russian economy began to industrialize in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.88 As well as providing funds through taxes and gifts, these wealthy Mennonites were also consulted by colony leaders and increasingly included in official delegations sent to negotiate with government officials. For instance, in 1885 a Molochna delegation to St. Petersburg to discuss a number of issues included Elder Abraham Gorz and the merchant and owner of the Yushanlee estate, Heinrich Reimer.89 Such people had expertise in new legal procedures involving contracts, mortgages, and banking, and had established contact with the Russian landed and industrial elites as well as with government officials. They knew how to appeal to provincial and central governments to build a rail link or a bridge, alleviate taxes, and amend official regulations. If official procedures failed, they also knew how to achieve what they wanted by other means, as corruption was commonplace among poorly paid bureaucrats. Within the colony world, however, Mennonites operated within an established system of semi-democratic structures in congregations, local government,

105

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

the Forestry Service, school boards, and other institutional structures. Bureaucratic practices associated with municipal offices and businesses were adopted and gave Mennonite organizations an added air of authority and legitimacy. Elections to boards and committees were held with representation by different sections of the community; minutes were dutifully recorded of meetings and accounts carefully kept and in some instances published. Steadily the Mennonite commonwealth began to take the shape of what would be spoken of as "a state within a state."90 This self-perception of a separate Mennonite political order within the Russian state was shared—but in an increasingly negative sense—by conservative sections of Russian society and contributed to the sustained political attacks on Mennonites and other colonists from the late 1880s onwards. The new crises in Mennonite identity and its place in Russia's society were fuelled by developments in Russian nationalism and pan-Slavism, which had begun before the reactionary regime of Alexander III but which received official support during his reign and that of his successor. Conservative forces had been increasingly concerned with the negative influence of non-Russian, non-Slavic, and non-Orthodox elements in the Empire's affairs, and such concerns also generated increased antiSemitism against the Empire's Jewish populations.91 Russian subjects of apparent German descent were singled out for attack in the Russian journals and press. This was related to the rise of Germany and Austro-Hungary as potential enemy states on Russia's western borders from the late 1870s onwards. "German" constituted a rather general category that included Baltic Germans, who often held influential positions in the Empire's government, and descendants of foreign colonists such as Mennonites.92 From the late 1880s onwards, articles attacking "Germans" in Russia as a threat to the security of state and society began to appear in the leading conservative Russian press. Their authors pointed to the failure of the colonists to integrate into Russian society and accused the government of favouring them through the granting of special rights and privileges.93 Wild accusations of disloyalty were made that insinuated that although they were Russian subjects, the colonists secretly pledged allegiance to the German Kaiser and Reich. The most infamous of these was a series of articles in the conservative journal Russkii Vestnik by A.A. Paltov, who wrote under the pseudonym A.A. Velitsyn. These were republished as a book in 1893.94 Provincial newspapers took up the campaign against the colonists while the German-language press in St. Petersburg and Odessa attempted to counter the accusations. Mennonites featured strongly in many of these attacks. Velitsyn, for instance, claimed that the majority of colonists knew no Russian and that Mennonite homes 106

POWER AND P R I V I L E G E

frequently displayed pictures of the German Kaiser and of Bismarck.95 He especially indicted Mennonites for being involved in the foundation and development of the Russian Stundo Baptist movement.96 The Russian Baptists were accused of adopting German customs as well as their "Protestant" faith, so alien to Orthodoxy. Conservative nationalists and churchmen saw new evangelical groups such as the Baptists as a threat to the Orthodox Church and the state. As a consequence, German colonists were accused of inciting the sectarians to change their faith in order to weaken their political allegiance to the tsar and the Russian state.97 Velitsyn also claimed that colonists such as the Mennonites had only succeeded in acquiring wealth and land because they had been "showered with privileges" by earlier Russian governments in return for providing models to the larger population. But they had failed in this task and instead lived "secluded and isolated lives" and only advantaged themselves.98 Representatives of the Mennonite establishment were forced to counter these and other accusations of disloyalty. Among the most active was the noted Khortitsa schoolteacher Abraham Neufeld, a frequent contributor to the Odessaer Zeitung and to Russian newspapers.99 In 1895 P.V. Kamensky, a Russian landowner and leading member of the Ekaterinoslav nobility, published a major defence of the colonists with special reference to the Mennonites, stressing their contributions to the Empire.100 By this time the attacks had begun to ease, no doubt a change influenced by the accession of the new tsar, Nicholas II.101 These political attacks forced Mennonites to reconsider their position in society. Peoplehood became politicized in new ways. The Mennonite sense of identity had to be reassessed and reasserted in new ways in the context of Russian nationalism and in terms of loyalty to the tsar. Mennonites had been "rossified"; that is, they had come to accept their role as subjects of the tsar in the multi-ethnic Russian Empire.102 In this regard the Mennonite clerisy increasingly stressed their people's positive historical relationships with the state as model farmers who had contributed much to the Empire's development. Most of all they stressed their continued loyalty to the tsar. Nowhere can this be better seen than in the section on "Government" in an extensive commentary on the Elbing catechism first published in 1896 by one of the leading members of the Mennonite clerisy, David H. Epp. In his emphasis on loyalty to the tsar and the autocratic system of government in Russia, Epp goes well beyond any statement on government in earlier Mennonite catechisms: [As] the emperor [tsar] is 'the anointed of the Lord' [a] true Christian and sincere member of the [Mennonite] congregation will be a loyal, obedient and honest subject who will never support the instigators of, or make common cause with, any who attempt to overthrow the God-ordained civil order installed for our welfare. Insubordination and

107

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Christianity simply do not go together ... we have a Christian government that would never burden the conscience of its subjects, even the humblest, with demands contrary to their faith and confession. A true subject and honest follower of Jesus will always ... promote the prosperity of his fatherland and contribute to its general welfare.... Every true Christian feels himself tightly bound to his earthly fatherland and to the hereditary imperial [Romanov] family; and a sublime, pure love binds him to the land where father, grandfather and great-grandfather lived and worked and also died, where he himself was born and has enjoyed such endless bliss and goodness.... [This] land ... has nurtured you like a loving mother and protected and shielded you like a strong, devoted father. In addition ... we experience the great emotion and sacred obligation of gratitude that unites us with our dear Russian fatherland. When, in the dim and distant past, there was apparently no ... place for our ancestors in Prussia; when persecution, oppression and restrictions of all civil rights and freedoms struck our ancestors there and at the same time their faith was impugned, the Russian empress [Catherine II] offered our fathers a refuge; and for over a hundred years now we have enjoyed the noble blessing of freedom of faith and confession in this, our dear fatherland.... [All] our hearts beat in loyal submission to our imperial family ... [so] we should pray both in our public services and in our private chambers for our fatherland and our emperor....103 [We], along with all true subjects young and old, wish to gather in spirit around the throne and our imperial house, and with spiritual weapons fight so that the power and might of the evil enemy cannot shake the throne of our anointed one nor come near its battlements. [We should also pray so] that the compassionate ones in our land can preserve peace and protect the welfare of its citizens, and help us to lead a quiet and peaceful life in piety and worthiness. But whoever of us is not to be found on this watch-tower, no matter how much he has achieved or otherwise done as a citizen, has failed in his Christian civic duties and is therefore guilty before the Lord of all Lords.104 Every candidate for baptism into the general Mennonite church would have read these words. In addition, schoolchildren received similar messages in their readers, no doubt reinforced by their teachers.105 During religious services there were prayers for the tsar and the imperial family and later, when Mennonites created an order of service, a selection of set prayers was included and addresses for occasions recognizing the tsar and imperial family.106 In all these examples, the

108

POWER AND PRIVILEGE

emphasis was on tsar and motherland/fatherland, on Mennonite duty, and obedience as loyal Russian subjects. The celebrations for the centenary of the award of the Mennonite privilegium were more muted than the marking of the centenary of the first Mennonite settlement in Russia back in 1889.107 It was perhaps unwise to emphasize Mennonite privileges, given the tone of press reports, although even in 1889 the Mennonite elite had stressed the patriotism and loyalty of the colonists. The centenary celebration of the founding of the Molochna colony in 1904 was also understated in comparison to that in Khortitsa, although this was probably because it occurred during the Russo-Japanese War.108 The press of the time was full of reports on the financial contributions made by the Mennonites to the needy and the service of Mennonite volunteers in the hospitals of the East. The immediate national duties of patriotic citizens took precedence over a celebration of the past privileges of the tsar's subjects, however loyal they might appear. In spite of these political attacks, the Mennonite world at the turn of the twentieth century was prosperous and expanding. According to the first census of the peoples of the Empire, conducted in 1897, the Mennonite population had more than doubled since 1860 to over 66,000 people in spite of the loss of 15,000-odd through emigration to North America in the 1870s and early 1880s.109 The original colony system had been "cloned" in daughter colonies across southern Russia and on into other areas of the Empire.110 Not all Mennonites lived in colonies; some had purchased private land, and a few lived on large estates like Russian nobles and others as wealthy farmers. Agriculture continued to be the mainstay of the economic wealth, either directly through cultivation, especially for wheat, or through related activities as producers of farm machinery or through milling. A scattered Mennonite world was increasingly diverse and although a sense of unity was still maintained, this was to be severely tested in the first decade of the twentieth century. The Mennonite world was still built upon and sustained by privilege, but no longer in the form of a privilegium. Instead, as the noted Mennonite scholar David G. Rempel once observed, the Mennonite commonwealth "was partly a product of heritage, of custom and tradition, and in large measure of rights and privileges once guaranteed to them by the highest authority of the State." Rempel continued: Except for one major amendment during the 1870s in regard to military service, the czarist government ... scrupulously kept its pledge for about one century. Toward the end of the nineteenth century it had begun to nibble away, at first ever so lightly, at these liberties. ... During the first decade of the ... [twentieth] century, as the course of the government

109

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

became more nationalistic, public sentiment became more revolutionary, and the demands for some form of constitutional government, with greater freedom of conscience and fairer social and economic legislation became more insistent, the government was forced to heed demands for the abolition of all distinctive treatment of the colonists.111 The crucial reference is to constitutional government. As earlier in western Europe, political changes forced by the outbreak of a popular revolution were to challenge Mennonite ideas of personhood and faith. In Russia, however, the leaders of the Mennonite commonwealth were to deal with these challenges in rather different ways from their western European brethren, as the privileges they wished to protect and maintain were extensive and wide-ranging.

110

5 CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOLIDARITY (1905-1918)

T

he Great Reforms were intended to establish a modern state and society in Russia. This necessarily implied a greater involvement of Russia's people in the country's affairs and, as a consequence, a reconsideration of the position and power of the tsar and his government. The establishment of zemstva (rural counties) in rural areas after 1864 and the reform of urban councils after 1870 established elected, representative bodies in which political issues could be discussed at the local level.1 Plans intended to further widen and extend representation were stalled as radical calls for greater representation were overtaken by terrorist acts, which culminated in 1881 in the assassination of Alexander II. Although the tsar had been willing to discuss proposals to establish a consultative body, his death put an end to such thinking in the immediate future. In spite, however, of Alexander Ill's attempts to restrict the already limited powers of the local government bodies established by the Great Reforms, zemstva boards and urban councils continued to develop and eventually their members called for further reform of the country's political structure.2 The exact relationship between Mennonites and regional zemstva is unclear.3 In their colonies Mennonites relied on their own services rather than on those provided by the zemstvo.4 Those with the correct qualifications could vote in zemstva elections and zemstva taxes had to be paid. A number of noted Mennonite estate

Map 6: Southern Russia, 1914

CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOLIDARITY

owners and businessmen were members of provincial and regional zemstva boards and some acted as honourary justices of the peace.5 Mennonite estate owners were particularly prominent in their districts, often situated away from the colonies.6 One, Jakob Dick, was elected president of the Melitopol district zemstvo.7 Those with estates in different districts, like Johann Philipp Wiebe, served on different district boards as well as the provincial zemstvo.8 The Mennonite estate owner Hermann Bergmann served on the Ekaterinoslav provincial board from 1890 and later the Ekaterinoslav city council.9 In urban areas where town councils were elected from the merchant estate, Mennonite traders, millers, and industrialists were active in urban affairs.10 The miller J. Thiessen, in the provincial capital of Ekaterinoslav, served on both the city council and the provincial zemstvo.11 In the port of Berdiansk on the Sea of Azov, another miller, Isbrand Friesen, served on the city council at least from the mid-1860s and later served as a magistrate for eighteen years.12 Other urban centres had Mennonite settlers such as Orekhov, Nikopol, and Simpferopol.13 After 1900 at least three Mennonites were elected as mayors or deputy mayors of major cities.14 On a limited scale some Mennonites, therefore, were active in district and regional politics well before 1900. The reactionary policies of Alexander III and his successor Nicholas II did not halt calls for constitutional reform and greater representation in central government. These calls for reform became more strident from the 1890s onwards, especially after disastrous crop failures and famines revealed the failures of earlier peasant land reforms.15 The opposition to government by members of some zemstva and city boards became better organized with calls for a greater say in the country's affairs.16 The zemstva in particular contained a number of members from Russia's new, educated middle class. These were professional people—statisticians, teachers, veterinarians, doctors, and agricultural experts—who wanted to play a larger role in society. The cities also contained increasing numbers of professional people, some associated with the new industries, which required special skills, training, and qualifications. These educated professionals, which included some Mennonites, represented a new "third element" in Russian society previously dominated by the landed nobility. They and leaders in zemstva called for liberal reform, including greater representation and a constitution. As Sergei Witte, who earlier as Minister of Finance had been responsible for promoting Russia's industrialization and later served as the country's first "prime minister," recalled in his memoirs: "Zemstvo and municipal leaders had long declared that 'the only salvation [for Russia] is a constitution.'"17

113

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

The importance of constitutions in the formation of the American and some western European nation-states did not go unnoticed in Russia. Advisors to successive tsars drew up plans for what might be considered constitutional-like reforms, although none proceeded far beyond the stage of memoranda written by enlightened bureaucrats.18 During the reign of Alexander II two ministers of the interior presented proposals with constitutional implications, as they involved the establishment of limited forms of representation in central government. Count P.A. Valuev made the first proposal in 1863 during the early days of the Great Reforms; the second was the memorandum drawn up by Count M.T. Loris-Melikov that Alexander was on his way to discuss when he was assassinated. The new tsar, Alexander III, quickly dismissed Loris-Melikov's proposal as a "criminal and hasty step" and thanked God it had not progressed further.19 In more blunt language, he is reported to have asked rhetorically: "Constitution? That a Russian tsar would swear allegiance to some sort of herd of cattle?"20 It took another failed war, this time with Japan in 1904-05, and increasing instability in rural and urban Russia to force concessions from the autocratic government of Nicholas II. This began a new round of reforms that had been stalled by the assassination of Alexander II. Widespread disturbances in rural and urban Russia, particularly in the capital St. Petersburg, forced the tsar to promise basic civil freedoms. These included the establishment of an elected body or Duma to assist in formulating legislation and governing the country with the tsar and appointed state council. In his first manifesto announcing the change, a rather reluctant Nicholas II agreed to share power with his subjects: The Russian state was created and grew strong through the indissoluble union of the tsar with the people and of the people with the tsar.... Now the time has come ... to summon elected men from the entire Russian land to permanent and active participation in drafting legislation, by including for this purpose ... a consultative legislative body.... [W]hile preserving the inviolability of the fundamental law of the Russian Empire on the substance of autocratic power, we have deemed it beneficial to establish a State Duma [Parliament]....21 Once embarked on this path, the tsar was forced to clarify the rights to be transferred to his subjects. In the famous manifesto of 17 October 1905, he undertook to "grant to the population unshakable foundations of civil liberty on the principles of true inviolability of person, freedom of conscience, speech, assembly, and association."22 A complex electoral system was drawn up and elections to the Duma occurred early in 1906. Two days before the Duma met, as if to prevent the new body's 114

CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOLIDARITY

discussing a new constitution, the government released a major revision of the Empire's Fundamental State Laws. In drawing up the changes, Nicholas II and his ministers had devoted much time to the opening section, which dealt with the powers of the tsar.23 Again, only very reluctantly, the tsar agreed to a wording that in effect qualified his absolute authority: "(4) Supreme autocratic power belongs to the emperor of all Russia.... (7) The sovereign emperor exercises legislative authority jointly with the State Council and the State Duma."24 As the tsar continued to hold almost absolute power, the famous German sociologist Max Weber noted at the time that the laws represented a "caricature of the powerful idea of constitutionalism" and referred to them as a "profoundly false pseudo-constitutionalism."25 The Russian people were new to parliamentary democracy and it was some time before the rudiments of political parties formed. Prominent among these were the centre-left liberals who eventually became known as the Kadets (Constitutional Democrats) and left-wing socialist groups. The forces of the right, not expecting parliamentary democracy and remaining opposed to it in principle, formed rather fragile and disorganized associations. Eventually a centre-right grouping formed, which became known as the Octobrists after their desire to uphold the principles of the October 17 manifesto. The Kadets and parties of the left demanded more radical reform than the government was willing to support. They wanted the Duma to have real power, a wider franchise, and to enact peasant land reforms that would involve widespread redistribution of land. The Kadets, who formed a majority in the first Duma, insisted on such a redistribution and also a proper, written constitution. As a consequence the tsar soon dismissed the first Duma. The second Duma proved equally unacceptable and was also dismissed. The tsar and his ministers now faced a major problem. Unable to go back on the tsar's promise of greater representation, the electoral system had to be manipulated to ensure conservative, compliant representatives loyal to the tsar and his ministers. The third Duma elected in 1907 in the short term satisfied the government, as it restricted the number of representatives of parties of the centre and the left and created more places for conservatives. In reality the Octobrists held the balance of power and presidency of the Duma. This third Duma was to last its full term until new elections in 1912. The momentous events of 1905 had a profound impact on Mennonite life, an impact that later events following the 1917 revolution have tended to eclipse in Mennonite accounts. The violence that had been a feature of 1905 continued for some years and was more a feature in urban areas and in rural areas with large estates than in the Mennonite colonies. Estates owned by large landowners, both Mennonite and non-Mennonite, suffered attacks by peasants who burned haystacks and buildings,

115

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

and occasionally killed their owners. The countryside remained unstable even after the government had regained control of the major cities and owners of estates employed armed guards for protection or employed managers to run their estates and moved to the colonies or towns for safety.26 In cities with major industrial plants, strikes by workers sometimes resulted in violent confrontations among workers, police, and soldiers. Where Mennonites owned factories, such as in Alexandrovsk, close to Khortitsa, in Melitopol and in Ekaterinoslav, their workers were sometimes involved.27 In many cities there were also vicious pogroms against Jews, which resulted in numerous deaths and widespread destruction of property. Unlike those on the Jews, however, the attacks involving Mennonites were based more on their perceived class than on their ethnicity or faith. After the October 1905 manifesto was announced, the Khortitsa Mennonites sent the tsar a message of thanks and established two student stipends to mark the event.28 The relaxing of press censorship saw a rapid expansion in the number of Mennonite publishing ventures, most noticeably newspapers. Abraham Kroeker and his brother Jakob had published calendars in Russia since 1897, but since its foundation in 1903 their semi-monthly newspaper Die Friedensstimme (The Voice of Peace) had been printed abroad. Within months of the declaration of press freedom, its production was moved to Halbstadt in Molochna. From August 1905 another Mennonite newspaper, Der Botschafter (The Messenger), was published in Ekaterinoslav under the editorship of David H. Epp, a leading member of the clerisy. Epp belonged to the larger grouping of Mennonite congregations and the wealthy miller J. Thiessen financed the paper.29 Both newspapers carried political reports and opinions, as did the more established non-Mennonite Odessaer Zeitang, also widely read by Mennonites.30 Contemporary reports reveal that Mennonites were clearly divided on the political changes. After 1905 the Mennonite press reported extensively on political affairs in Russia and abroad, but direct involvement in political matters was primarily the concern of the Mennonite landed and business elites and informed members of the clerisy and intelligentsia. The average Mennonite colonist remained extremely conservative and loyal to the tsar, the absolute monarch and protector. As P.M. Friesen noted in 1910-11, "ninety-nine out of one hundred Mennonites considered such words as 'democrat,' [and] 'democratic' with suspicion, foreboding ill and from democracy only evil was expected."31 The issue of the maintenance of Mennonite privileges was a theme repeated in many Mennonite newspaper reports. Some Mennonites suggested that a representative on the Duma was needed to protect their privileges; others rejected this because they might be seen as "the representative of a privileged caste," favoured by an unpopular government. One

116

CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOLIDARITY

correspondent noted that it was "about time that we [Mennonites] get used to the idea that in the future we will have to live in a constitutional state alongside citizens with equal rights, and that in such a state it will hardly be possible to preserve our privileged position."32 Subjects of the tsar received privileges and protection that, in an estate-based society, enhanced their position and separate identity; a citizen of a democratic state was subordinated to the rule of the majority and shared rights in common with everyone else, Mennonite and non-Mennonite, rich and poor.33 A leading member of the clerisy, Peter M. Friesen, who had spent time away from Mennonite settlements working with other religious groups, tried to organize a Christian-based political grouping in his hometown of Sebastopol in the Crimea.34 The unlikely name of this grouping was The Union of Freedom, Truth and Peace: Foes of all Violence, Proponents of Unceasing Civil, Economic and Moral Spiritual Progress. Locally it was known as the "Friesen Party." This venture did not survive long, although an attempt was made to merge it with the Kadets and later the Octobrists.35 Other Mennonites attempted to combine with other German-speaking colonists to achieve some kind of representation in the new Duma. Most Mennonites, however, remained suspicious of other Russian-German colonists, most of whom were Lutherans or Catholics, and whose background, dialects, and customs were different from those of the Mennonites. In the first Duma elections, RussianGerman representatives were elected but no Mennonite, even though Mennonites had selected representatives and voted.36 As a consequence, Mennonites were more active in the elections to the second Duma, but again no Mennonite was elected.37 The new electoral law of 1907 for the third Duma favoured large landowners and, as a consequence, Hermann Bergmann, a wealthy Mennonite estate owner active in zemstvo politics in Ekaterinoslav province, was elected as a member of the Octobrist grouping. He was elected mainly through the political support of sections of the local landed elite and influential urban groups in the province, rather than by Mennonite votes.38 In time, however, Mennonites viewed Bergmann as "their" representative and he certainly kept in close touch with the leaders of the community on issues that concerned them.39 Mennonites were aware that the programs of many of the new political groupings called for a reform of the existing order and that the government also had a program of reforms planned. Following their earlier experiences of the Great Reforms, Mennonites were cautious about reform. A contemporary view of some was that when "reforms and liberties are provided for others in Russia, we Mennonites are always short-changed."40 The major concern of Mennonite leaders centred on any attempt to reform the military conscription laws, which would mean the loss of their 117

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

alternative service privilege. Such a loss would threaten not just Mennonite religious principles, but also their distinctive identity and control of their young men. In December 1905, before the first Duma had been elected, one Mennonite correspondent suggested that "scarcely anyone who knows the times will believe that in a free state, privileges for one political confession can exist."41 When military reform became part of the reform agenda of the Duma and government, Mennonites responded by sending delegations of religious and civic leaders to St. Petersburg.42 The sending of delegations to government was a well-established Mennonite strategy and had been used extensively during the Great Reforms. After 1880 numerous delegations continued to be sent to St. Petersburg to petition ministers and discuss a range of issues with officials of major concern to Mennonite identity, especially their control and development of schooling. As the political situation changed after 1905, Mennonites gradually moved beyond simple appeals to the privilegium and petitions delivered by religious elders to high officials in St. Petersburg. They began to lobby members of the Duma and state council as well as ministry officials, and employed lawyers, including young Mennonite professionals qualified in jurisprudence, to examine the legal implications of any proposed change to their status. Statements outlining Mennonite positions on issues were formulated into written submissions quoting existing laws and regulations and often supplying a potted history of the Mennonites and their religious convictions. Several of these were printed and distributed to interested and influential people as well as within the Mennonite community.43 In April 1905 Tsar Nicholas II issued a manifesto intended to "strengthen" the basis of religious toleration in the Empire. The manifesto clarified the legal standing of religious groups and had been preceded by other manifestos on religion in 1903 and 1904, aimed at maintaining public order.44 The April manifesto permitted Christians to join other Christian groups and for the first time Orthodox members could change faith without risking criminal persecution. The October 1905 manifesto extended civil rights by granting "freedom of conscience," but not specifically religious toleration. In principle, individual citizen rights under the law were now recognized, as opposed to earlier approaches that had provided official recognition to religious groups within administrative processes. In reality, the state sought to maintain its administrative oversight of religious groups. While the Fundamental State Laws of April 1906 guaranteed freedom of religion (articles 66/67) and the Orthodox Church lost its earlier "pre-eminent and predominant" status as the established church, the tsar could profess no religion other than Orthodoxy (article 118

CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOLIDARITY

63) and remained the "defender and protector" of what was termed the "dominant" religion. The same wording was used in the article on religious freedom, where it stated that all "subjects of the Russian state" who did "not belong to the dominant church" were everywhere "free to profess their religion, and to worship in accordance with its ritual."45 The dominance of Orthodoxy, essential for the authority of the state, was retained and, among conservatives, the Orthodox Church was increasingly seen as central to Russian identity and the future of the Russian state. The October manifesto and the brief references on religion in the fundamental laws obviously required legal clarification and presented the bureaucracy with administrative challenges. Between 1906 and 1911 various legislative drafts concerned with religious reform and the regulation of religious groups were introduced by the government and discussed in committees of the Duma. None, however, was finalized and passed into law. Sections of the proposed legislation attempted to clarify the new situation created by granting freedom of religion and conscience. Others attempted to define the legal status of the Empire's diverse religious groups on the basis of "association." Far from clarifying the situation, opposition from conservative forces and Orthodox leaders resulted in the addition of restrictive clauses on religious groups and their activities. In spite of the failure to pass new laws at the government level, considerable administrative changes for dealing with religious groups were introduced, some positive, others negative. Primary responsibility for the administration of religious affairs of "foreign confessions" lay with a special section of the Ministry of the Interior. Its officials were faced with a number of challenges. These included the classification of different religious groups, Christian and non-Christian, how they were to be regulated, how believers could transfer membership from one religion to another, including from a Christian to a non-Christian faith, mixed marriages, how to deal with new religious groups, Catholics in the western borderlands, and, finally, the perennial issue for tsarist government: the "problem" of the Jews.46 Over the years the laws and statutes of the Empire had established different categorizations of religious groups and regulations on religious matters. This had been achieved in a rather haphazard and often contradictory manner. These now had to be rethought in light of the granting of freedom of religion and conscience. It was in their dealings with officialdom rather than directly with the Duma that Mennonites were forced to face the consequences of political reform in terms of their faith, religious organization, and sense of being Mennonite. Following the announcement of the April 1905 manifesto on religious toleration, Mennonites sent a message of thanks to the tsar.47 To Mennonites their privilegium of 1800 had granted them religious freedom and this had been honoured

119

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

by the Russian authorities. Mennonites were comfortable with their position as a legally recognized "foreign confession" (innostmnnoe ispovedanie) along with other "Protestant" confessions. Mennonite congregations of different historical backgrounds with different confessions of faith and practices had emigrated to Russia and settled as separate congregational communities (Gemeinderi), but by 1900 most of these differences had declined in importance, especially after the emigration in the 1870s to the Americas of a number of the more conservative congregations. By 1905 congregations had taken on the form of independent local parishes and Mennonite elders and ministers met in local, regional, and national conferences to discuss matters of common concern. One group, however, stood apart: the Mennonite Brethren. The Mennonite Brethren sought their origins in religious disturbances that occurred in both Khortitsa and Molochna during the 1860s. At that time some new sectarian groups received government recognition in spite of considerable opposition from sections of the established Mennonite congregations.48 During the 1870s, as the military reforms required these sectarians to assert their Mennonite credentials, the scattered new groups established a more unified identity and organizational structure. In their early period some of the sectarians had evangelized, often illegally, among non-Mennonites, but from the mid-1880s the now-united Brethren acquired a more inward-looking focus, which resulted in renewed evangelization among fellow Mennonites.49 These activities did not always endear them to other Mennonites as families often became divided by religious differences. While most members of established Mennonite congregations recognized the baptism of other congregations when people transferred from one congregation to another, and they permitted outsiders to partake in communion, the Mennonite Brethren would not. The Mennonite Brethren had adopted baptism by immersion and all who joined them, including already baptized Mennonites, were required to undergo rebaptism. Other Mennonites were also excluded from communion. An exception was made, however, for non-Mennonite Baptists, as they used the "correct" form of baptism. For this reason, and because of the close association between the first Khortitsa Mennonite Brethren and German Baptist missionaries, the Mennonite Brethren faced repeated accusations by Mennonites and non-Mennonites that they were not really Mennonites but Baptists.50 This corresponded with the intense period of anti-colonist articles in the Russian press and official suppression of the Russian Baptists. For legal purposes, however, the government continued to recognize the Mennonite Brethren as Mennonites and they enjoyed the same rights as other Mennonites, particularly with regard to the alternative service law.51 The relationship between the leaders of the established congregations and the Mennonite Brethren varied from colony to colony. By 1900 a working 120

CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOLIDARITY

relationship had been established between the leadership of both groups in areas of the Molochna, especially around Halbstadt. In Khortitsa and elsewhere, however, the old divisions became entrenched. In 1908 a Heinrich Epp republished in Odessa the appendix to the 1876 Khortitsa Mennonite Brethren confession of faith that detailed differences among Mennonite Brethren, Baptists, and other Mennonites.52 The latter were accused of tolerating "godless, drunkards and scoffers" and only temporarily excommunicating drunks and "harlots." The reprinting of this statement as a separate pamphlet did little to ease relations between the Mennonite Brethren and other Mennonites, especially in Khortitsa. After 1905 the Mennonite Brethren felt free to proselytize more openly among other Christians, including members of the Orthodox Church, and to openly associate with Russian Baptist and other evangelical groups who had long been subject to official restrictions. The minutes of the Mennonite Brethren congress of May 1907 contain enthusiastic reports of evangelical work among Russians in Kharkov, Samara, and Saratov, and plans to work among "Persians" on Russia's borders. Attending the conference was a representative from the German Baptists in Neu Danzig and a "Brother Rosenberg" from the Jewish Baptist Mission in Odessa.53 Other evidence suggests that Mennonite Brethren preachers, with the tacit if not open approval of the leadership, were active in such wider "mission" work.54 In 1907 Mennonite religious leaders in Khortitsa and Molochna received reports from Hermann Bergmann in St. Petersburg that the government had submitted new legislation concerning religious groups for consideration by the Duma.55 In fact, the Ministry of the Interior had been working on legislative drafts since 1906 in an attempt to clarify what "freedom of conscience" meant and formulating new regulations for religious groups.56 The Mennonites were concerned about a number of matters in the proposed law and in February 1908 leaders of all the Molochna congregations met in Alexanderwohl to discuss the situation. They issued a general statement signed by all the leaders, including Mennonite Brethren, on "the position of the Mennonites with regard to the freedom of conscience and propaganda."57 This was published in the newspapers and circulated to other Mennonite congregations to gain their approval.58 Representatives were then sent to St. Petersburg to consult with Bergmann and officials on the religious laws and related issues concerned with the Forestry Service.59 The statement noted that in terms of "the question of freedom of conscience," nothing more needed to be done as Mennonites desired no other freedom "than that which we have enjoyed in Russia for more than 100 years." The term "propaganda" referred to evangelical activities, technically permissible in the new Russia. But Mennonites carefully noted that the proposed bill had qualified this freedom

121

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

by stating that the right was "not to be used to attack the established Orthodox Church."60 So the Mennonite statement, while at first acknowledging that Christ's command had been to spread the faith to all nations, continued: "However, we abstain from any active propaganda among members of other Christian denominations, whether this is understood as imposing our distinctive teachings on others (in order to lure such into our fellowship), or as agitating by extolling our teaching at the expense of other Christian teachings, coupled with a defamation of the latter. "61 In a sense Mennonites voluntarily agreed to return to the old legal situation, which did not permit them to evangelize among members of other Christian groups. The statement ended with a profession of loyalty to the tsar ordained as ruler by God. There was, however, another matter of concern in the proposed legislation, which was also addressed in the Mennonite statement. The projected legislation designated Mennonites as a "sect" and not as a "confession," which, as the religious leaders noted, was how in law they had always been classified with other Protestant groups. This change was seen as a risk to their established rights and the leaders noted that any "restriction of the rights hitherto granted unto us would inhibit the sound development of spiritual, moral and congregational life."62 In fact, the term "sect" had been applied to Mennonites in other laws and regulations, most noticeably in the 1874 alternative service legislation. But in 1908 the Mennonites had reason to be concerned. From their earlier experience they knew that the term "sect" could designate dangerous groups outside the established political order. In Russia negative classifications of non-Orthodox Russian religious groups had included older schismatics (raskol), such as the Old Believers, Doukhobors, and Molokans, and new sects (sekf), such as the Russian Baptists.63 All these had seceded from the Orthodox Church and, as a consequence, had been subjected to official restrictions and even persecution. As the Mennonites pointed out, they had never been members of the Orthodox faith and thus could not be thought to have seceded. This, combined with the establishment of "freedom" of conscience and religion for all Russians, raised concerns about why the government now wished to reclassify them. The answer in part was that in the new political environment, officials had to reconsider the structure and practices of the numerous religious groups in Russia's vast, multi-ethnic Empire and establish new administrative procedures to deal with them. The Empire contained a number of Christian groups and also Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and pagan communities. Among Christian groups were those with well-established identities, recognized hierarchies of ordained bishops, priests, and ministers, who met regularly in synods, and possessed confessions of faith, a 122

CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOLIDARITY

tradition of record keeping, and even their own canon law. By comparison, Mennonites looked a rather amorphous collection of religious groups, poorly organized, lacking a centralized structure of government, with different confessions and without a central hierarchy or trained priesthood. In a word, they looked more like a sect than a mainline confessional group. This issue had long had potential political implications for the Russian Mennonites. In the 1860s, following official investigations into the sectarian groups, including what would become the Mennonite Brethren, the Minister of the Interior and his deputy drew up a memorandum on the possible threat of such groups to social order. The memorandum noted that the "very core" of Protestantism involved a disregard for authority, "an authority recognized by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church." Protestantism permitted "every believer to interpret religious truths of the Holy Scriptures" as they wished, and the memorandum suggested "such a notion contains within itself the seed of religious difference." While the Lutherans possessed a central authority in their General Consistory and Synod, "Mennonites do not have any authority of this kind" and schisms, such as that of the Mennonite Brethren, were therefore inevitable: The Mennonites do not have a supreme spiritual authority, held in honor by all, who could restore unity among the congregations in case of dispute. Our government provided the Mennonites with freedom of their religion and had no reason to intervene in their internal quarrels. But now, because of the emergence of new interpretations and because of the trend towards conversions of Orthodox believers and of other believers, we had to intervene. The new interpretations make them hostile to the state and to public morality.64 In spite of these official concerns, in the late 1860s the government accepted the Mennonite Brethren as a Mennonite group. Over the next forty years, however, officials continued to receive complaints—many from Mennonites—that not all Mennonites should be identified as members of a single religious community or even as "Mennonite." Such complaints were mostly directed against the Mennonite Brethren. The proposal after 1905 to reclassify all Mennonites as a sect had major implications. In the past, sects and schismatics with Orthodoxy had been identified as potential centres of deviancy and breeding grounds for dissent against the state. These resurrected old accusations from the previous century and, in the new era of political instability, terrorism, and threats of revolution, such groups were worth keeping under close observation.65 The Mennonite delegation to St. Petersburg was reassured that there was nothing to fear from the proposals. In the Duma their old friend Kamensky chaired the

123

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

committee considering the religious laws. So Mennonites bided their time. The religious bills, however, became the subject of fierce debate within and outside the Duma. Right-wing elements, assisted by some Orthodox clergy, reasserted the connection between Orthodoxy, Russian nationalism, and the autocracy, and attacked any attempt to extend recognition and rights to non-Orthodox groups. By the spring of 1909, Prime Minister Peter Stolypin's larger plans for reform, particularly those concerned with peasant land ownership, came under increasing attack and, in order to placate his opponents, he was willing to make concessions on religious issues.66 In the autumn of 1909 he withdrew the most contentious aspects of the religious legislation and the Ministry of the Interior drew up regulations to restrict non-Orthodox groups. Over the next twelve months these included restrictions on changing faiths, and on the organization of religious meetings, holding congresses, preaching, and the distribution of religious literature.67 In December 1909 Russian Baptists were banned from holding open-air baptisms without official permission, a ruling from which the Mennonite Brethren—who baptized by immersion in rivers—gained official exemption. The Mennonite Brethren, however, were also forced to abandon their annual conference in 1909 when government officials turned delegates away. Even after gaining the "required" permission to hold their congress in 1910, two officials from the Ministry of the Interior acted as observers of its proceedings and their presence prevented open discussion.68 In the face of these continuing problems, a meeting of religious congregations in Schb'nwiese in 1909 appointed the leading elders of Molochna and Khortitsa, Abraham Gorz and Isaak Dyck, and the Molochna Mennonite Brethren minister and publisher Heinrich Braun, to draw up a response to recent legislative and administrative changes to be presented to the wider Mennonite community.69 Early in 1910 they published a pamphlet that examined issues such as classification as a sect, the status of their religious leadership, worship, propaganda, the keeping of church registers, and religious education in Mennonite schools. It also included a reprint of the earlier 1908 declaration along with a short "history" of the Mennonites. The leaders travelled to St. Petersburg to consult with officials and members of the Duma, to whom they presented copies of the pamphlet.70 Copies were also distributed to delegates of the annual General Conference of Federated Mennonite Congregations (Allgemeine Bnndeskonferenz des Mennonitengemeinden), which met in Schonsee in Molochna in October 1910.71 The General Conference had been established in 1883 and represented the majority of Mennonite congregations, but did not include members of the Mennonite Brethren, who had their own conferences.72 In 1906 it suggested that representatives of the Mennonite Brethren be invited to its meetings, but they first attended 124

CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOLIDARITY

in 1910.73 At the conference the recommendations of the ad hoc committee were approved with minor changes and the committee's members were formed into a permanent executive called the Commission for Religious Affairs (Kommission fur Glaubensangelegenheiten). They were to negotiate with government, liaise with officials, and draw up further statements on issues of faith. The commission met regularly and consulted with Bergmann and other sympathetic Duma members on developments in the capital.74 At the end of 1911 the commission had to deal with a new issue when the military laws came under review in the Duma. Once more documents were prepared on the Mennonite faith and its position, then published and distributed; delegations were sent and influential people consulted.75 At the 1912 meeting of the General Conference, the name of the executive was changed to the Commission for Church Affairs (Kommission fiir Kirchenangelegenheiten or KfK). But the Mennonite faith community and commonwealth itself needed to be protected and preserved, and this required Mennonites to conceive of themselves as a united people and to establish a common position on religious fundamentals. This was to prove difficult to achieve. In March 1910 a high-ranking delegation that included the Vice-Governor of the Tavrida Province, the director of schools, and police descended on the administrative centre of Halbstadt in Molochna.76 Acting on orders from St. Petersburg, they were to investigate the activities of the Mennonite Brethren in Halbstadt. Located in Halbstadt was the printery and publishing house of Raduga, partly owned by Heinrich J. Braun. The press had expanded greatly since it was purchased in 1904, and it now printed religious material in Russian as well as Mennonite books and pamphlets.77 In 1908, following an agreement with the evangelical leader Ivan Prokhanov, the publishing house expanded into the capital, St. Petersburg. In Halbstadt the Mennonite Brethren had constructed a study centre (Vereinhaus] used by Russian evangelical Christians that the authorities suspected of being a seminary training them to convert Orthodox Church members.78 Accounts of the outcome of the enquiry vary. The officials, while expressing concern, discovered little they could act upon in the new legal environment, although the visit undoubtedly was intended as a warning. Braun was questioned by the officials and he was disturbed both by the investigation and also because once again the issue of whether members of the Mennonite Brethren were really Mennonites or instead Baptists had been raised, apparently at the instigation of some Mennonites hostile to the Brethren. Braun responded to this issue in an "historical" essay published in the Mennonite press.79 Here he argued that the Mennonite Brethren were Mennonite by their descent, faith, ritual practices, and

125

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

legal status. He admitted that they were close to the Baptists in terms of immersion baptism and the "profession of a personal living faith." For this reason, Baptists were admitted to their communion and cooperated in organizational matters. Clear differences, such as nonresistance and refusal of the oath, however, kept them separate. But Mennonite Brethren, while sharing the latter "Mennonite" principles with other Mennonites, felt free to exclude them from communion because they did not baptize by immersion following a spiritual rebirth. Braun rejected the idea that Mennonite Brethren wished to remain Mennonite merely for "practical" reasons associated with the special Mennonite privileges, especially the alternative service provisions. He ended by noting that tensions between Mennonites existed on both sides but that the time had come to recognize and accept these differences and to act together: "Jointly we are strong, but working against each other we will fail." The editor of the Botschafter and fellow member of the commission, David H. Epp, responded.80 While he accepted that Mennonite Brethren were Mennonites and not Baptists, he objected strongly to Braun's use of the term "Church Mennonites" (kirchliche Mennoniten) to characterize non-Brethren congregations. The term he suggested had no historical basis and Mennonites had always made "a sharp distinction" between state "churches" and the "spiritual common body" of their own congregations. Historically, Mennonites established "brotherhoods" and this had been continued in Russia, where they had "accepted no ecclesiastical accommodations or constitutions that could exclude ... [them] from the scope of the brotherhood." He accused the Mennonite Brethren of calling the larger congregations a "church" in order to establish themselves as the "antithesis" of the larger brotherhood. A brotherhood implied a common kinship, but it was the Mennonite Brethren who had broken its ties with the larger family of Mennonites, even if they continued to use the family's name and follow some of its traditions. As a consequence, Mennonites had become "strangers to each other." He expressed his sorrow that while the Mennonite Brethren accepted and had fellowship with Baptists, they were unwilling to recognize and accept other Mennonites as fellow family members, except through attempts to proselytize them, actions he considered inappropriate. The Mennonite Brethren, he suggested, "desires rights and concessions for itself, but is unwilling to concede anything." P.M. Friesen, in his history of the Russian Mennonites published the following year, made a similar point. While extolling the positive contributions of the Mennonite Brethren—of which he was a member—he accused them of "a lack of humility and unsparing self-judgement" as well as "a certain reluctance to acknowledge the good aspects, both old and new, in the [other] Mennonite churches."81 Friesen himself used the term "Old Evangelical Mennonite Brotherhood" 126

CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOLIDARITY

(Alt-Evangelische Mennonitische Briiderschaft) to include all Mennonites.82 The term "Old Mennonites," though, also had a degree of currency among some congregations for non-Mennonite Brethren, who were sometimes called "New Mennonites."83 Friesen ended his book with an appeal not just for religious unity, but also for the mobilization of the entire community: "teachers, ministers, spiritual and civil communities and institutions, wealthy benefactors and the educated in society to work unitedly and untiringly on behalf of the cradle of our [Mennonite] culture and our religion." As a "teacher-preacher," he argued that the future of the Mennonites lay in the elementary school, the "Volksschule," as he called it, "since our fellowship (Gemeinschaft] ... is thoroughly a 'people's church'" (Volkskirche).84 In the same year a Molochna minister suggested Mennonites already were a Volkskirche and that it was time they accepted the fact that a Mennonite was born a Mennonite, rather than became one only after baptism. As such, it would be better if congregations dedicated children to the Volkskirche and later baptized them on confession of faith. Another Mennonite, however, objected to the idea of a Volkskirche, suggesting that it "alienated" Mennonites from their original Mennonitism. He admitted, however, that Mennonites had "defected" from the ideal of a pure, believer's church.85 This idea of a Volkskirche was consistent with the concepts of Volklein and a Mennonite state-within-a-state, in which their faith constituted the official religion.86 But it also implied a Constantinian-type church, much like that opposed by the Mennonites' own Anabaptist ancestors.87 By 1910 the Mennonite leadership had already progressed a long way towards establishing a single confessional religious structure that encompassed their scattered congregations and resolved their internal differences. Discussions were renewed on the possibility of founding theological seminaries to produce a better-trained, even professional clergy.88 In 1910-11, in response to demands by the Ministry of the Interior, the status of ministers, meeting processes, and congregational record keeping were all improved, while the teaching of religion in schools was more clearly defined. A Mennonite service "Handbook" for religious services was published.89 In 1913 the General Conference printed a listing of all Mennonite congregations, including the Mennonite Brethren, and their secretaries, and the following year the conference published the minutes of its annual meetings dating back to 1879.90 These moves towards unity on the religious front, however, had been preceded by the creation of secular pan-Mennonite bodies such as the Forestry Service and in general approaches to government on educational matters. Underlying any attempt at unity, however, were powerful social and geographic forces that pulled Mennonites apart.

127

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

By 1912-13 Mennonites had enjoyed a period of almost unprecedented economic prosperity, which had been translated into the cultural development of their settlements. Since 1906 good crops and high prices for wheat had increased the incomes of colony farmers and estate owners, while millers, industrialists, and business people generally prospered. Wealth flowed into Mennonite communities now scattered across the Empire from the founding colonies in southern Russia to Central Asia and Siberia. By 1914 almost 20 percent of the Mennonite population lived outside European Russia.91 This geographical spread, combined with a population of probably over 104,000, placed strains on efforts to maintain unity in the Mennonite commonwealth. Differences in wealth, occupation, and education translated into class differences and further contributed to the centrifugal forces on the Mennonite community.92 To counter these forces, new social welfare institutions were established: new hospitals, a mental institution, an orphanage, and a home for the aged were added to the school for the deaf and existing hospitals.93 Education received special attention with the founding of new secondary schools and other centres of higher education.94 Scholarships, often funded by wealthy landowners and industrialists, were offered to further educate young men and women—in Russia, Germany, and Switzerland. Some trained as teachers, others as ministers, and an increasing number entered professions such as law and medicine. Those who received stipends were expected to return and serve their communities, thereby providing the Mennonite commonwealth with people skilled and able to meet the challenges of the new political and social order. These challenges were to be most apparent after the election of the new Duma in 1912. The election process signalled an increasing political sophistication among Mennonites but also a polarization of opinion.95 The intelligentsia were generally more liberal than many businessmen and estate owners, who increasingly looked to their own interests that would see them aligned with conservatives.96 After a close contest Bergmann was re-elected as an Octobrist in Ekaterinoslav, although conservative landowners opposed Mennonites. Another Mennonite, Peter Schroeder, was elected in Tavrida province, where Mennonites were better appreciated.97 Although Schroeder was an estate owner like Bergmann, he was aligned with the Progressives, a group close to the Kadets. Conservative forces, however, dominated the new Duma, and the Octobrists, although still holding the presidency of the Duma, were ideologically divided. As a consequence, new legislation was proposed that again threatened Mennonite interests and privileges, not just those concerned with religious matters and military exemption but also those involved with placing restrictions on "German" landholding in the western "border" provinces. Similar legislation had been rejected by the third Duma in 1910, but in 1913 128

CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOLIDARITY

it was reintroduced and covered more provinces.98 Restrictions on language use in official conferences were also enforced and in 1913 Mennonites had to get special permission to hold their religious conferences and forestry conferences in German. They were warned, however, that the situation would not be tolerated again. The legal status of Mennonites as a religious group also remained unresolved. In order to be registered as a confession, ministry regulations required religious groups to have a constitution. To maintain their rights under the alternative service provisions, all Mennonite groups had to be included within a constitution that in time would inevitably lead to the adoption of a single confessional statement. Meetings in March and April 1914 succeeded in producing a draft constitution but in the process old wounds were reopened. In Neu Halbstadt in April the Khortitsa Flemish congregation, led by the teacher of German and religion in the Khortitsa High School, Peter J. Penner, argued that any approach to government with a constitution that included Mennonite Brethren was impossible. He accused the Mennonite Brethren of breaking Russian law through their evangelical work among members of the "state" Orthodox Church and of causing dissension; for 125 years the majority of Mennonites had honoured their promise not to evangelize and the Khortitsa congregation did not wish to be associated with any document that included the Mennonite Brethren." Earlier, a correspondent in a newspaper published close to Khortitsa claimed that any attempt to include Mennonite Brethren in a constitution would result in the Mennonite privilegium's being "carried to the grave."100 After the meeting P.M. Friesen published a pamphlet refuting many of Penner's arguments and calling for unity, although he expressed his anger, sadness, and pessimism at continued divisions in the Mennonite world.101 He described how Penner's words acted like an "explosive bomb" at the conference. Although Mennonite Brethren and some other congregational representatives threatened to leave, the meeting continued and finally a draft constitution was agreed upon.102 It proposed that the "Evangelical-Mennonite Confession in Russia" should consist of distinct congregations "fully independent" in their "internal governance, organization and administration" (1). The constitution then detailed the administrative bodies and powers of congregations based around brotherhood meetings, an elected elder, ministers, and other offices, including a "church secretary" (2-6). Congregations could unite to form regional councils but a central "Synod shall be the organ that represents the entire ... Confession," uniting "all congregations" (7), and the membership and meeting schedule of the synod were detailed (7-9) and its functions described (10-11): The Synod, as representative of all Mennonites (of the EvangelicalMennonite Confession) to the government, shall make final decisions

129

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

on issues concerning the relationships of the entire Confession to the government. These include the keeping of church records; petitions on general matters of the Confession that the congregations have previously dealt with supervision of the religious and ethical life of those drafted for forestry service; and the administration of the welfare and educational institutions supported by the entire Confession according to the statutes of the same (10). Furthermore, a special "Commission" was to be elected for three years "from a list of delegates" that would include a "legal advisor" and act as an executive. The "chairman of the Synod shall immediately inform the Minister of the Interior" of the results of the election (12) and the minister was also to be informed of any changes to the administrative arrangements of the synod (13). Finally, existing congregations might join the "Confession" by a decision of their congregational brotherhood (14) and the synod should "accept and register as members of the union" congregations that separate from their "original Mennonite communities ... who do not depart significantly from the Confession" at the congregation's request (15). Although David Epp explained in Botschafter that the word "synod" had been chosen instead of "conference" because it was the most appropriate term to use in Russia, the reaction of many congregations to the draft constitution was negative. Some feared the loss of their autonomy; others suggested that the document overemphasized differences among groups. Still others expressed concern over the inclusion of the Mennonite Brethren and feared the final clauses allowing the admission of other Mennonite groups might result in membership's being granted to similar dubious sectarians. The influential Ohrloff congregation in Molochna echoed the concerns of their Khortitsa brethren and stressed the political risks of being associated with the Mennonite Brethren's continued evangelical activities.103 From reactions to the draft it seemed as if Friesen's worst fears were to be realized: the constitution would be rejected and, with the Mennonite Brethren excluded, Mennonite privileges and their future status in Russia would be placed at risk. But the Mennonite failure to establish a constitution matched the failure of the democratic process to establish a written constitution for the country. By 1914 constitutionalism on all fronts looked as if it had failed. In July 1914, World War I broke out; Russia was at war with Germany, AustroHungary, and Turkey. At first Mennonites were keen to express their loyalty to tsar and country. Young Mennonite men volunteered for service in various organizations established to aid wounded troops, while others were mobilized into the Forestry Service.104 This initial patriotism was soon replaced by an increasing alienation

130

CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOLIDARITY

from the government and eventually the tsar, as an ugly nationalism and a hatred of all things "German" developed.105 As "Germans," Mennonites were categorized as persons of "enemy descent" and their civil rights curtailed. Use of the German language was forbidden in public and ministers even found themselves arrested and fined for preaching in German. Most seriously, legislation was enacted that permitted the expropriation of the land and property of any person deemed to be of "enemy descent."106 Peasants began to eye Mennonite land that they hoped to receive while corrupt officials began to enact the legislation in various areas. Mennonites also faced other forms of harassment from local and regional officials. By official order, Mennonite German-language newspapers and journals were forced to close and for a time the Raduga Press was prevented from printing even in Russian.107 The governor of Ekaterinoslav required the Khortitsa volost to surrender the Mennonites' most prized document, their copy of the original 1800 privilegium, in the mistaken belief that this would nullify its contents. When he realized that the privileges were incorporated in law, the document was returned.108 Officials, members of the Duma, and the press suggested that links between German colonists and Russian sectarians in southern Russia were part of a conspiracy to convert peasants to Protestantism in order to prepare the region for German conquest. The fact that some Baptists and Evangelicals, along with Doukhobors and Molokans, had expounded nonresistance on religious grounds and sought exemption from military service appeared to confirm a connection with Mennonites.109 Sections of the press launched vicious attacks on the "enemy within" and "hate" literature appeared in print, often with official approval. Accusations that Mennonites were disloyal and a threat to the security of the country were not new, as anti-German press reports directed against the colonists had remerged after 1905, following a period of relative quiet after the attacks of the 1890s.110 During the war, however, it became much harder for Mennonites and other colonists to defend themselves. Although at one level Mennonites cooperated with other colonists in resisting the expropriation decrees directed against "Russian-Germans," they also sought to assert an identity separate from them.111 This involved the construction of an alternative history for themselves and different from the other colonists. A concern with the past developed rapidly among Mennonites in Russia after 1905 and resulted in an increase in historical research and writing, promoted in part by the clerisy. Some Mennonite historical accounts contained a subtext that portrayed them as loyal subjects of the tsar, who had made important contributions to the development of the country.112 After 1905 a number of the Mennonite responses to legislative proposals cited historical documents and provided a sketch of Mennonite history.113 Sketches on Russian and colonist history were included in

131

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

school texts and a short biography of Menno Simons appeared in 1913.114 The latter was a response to a decision at the 1912 General Conference to support the publication of more works on Mennonite history as a means of enhancing Mennonite selfidentity, especially among the young.115 This stimulated a debate on historiography among members of the rising intelligentsia.116 During the war, as Mennonites faced threats to deprive them of their land and property, the strategy of turning to the past became more urgent. David H. Epp and Hermann Bergmann produced a new collection of documents for Duma members and officials.117 The Molochna schoolteacher Peter Braun, however, published the most sophisticated collection with interpretation, in two editions.118 The central argument that Mennonites presented in these works was that they were a people of Dutch, not German, descent, a convenient choice as the Netherlands remained a neutral state during the war. To assume a Dutch identity Mennonites had not just to convince Russian officials, but also many of their own members. Mennonite leaders had long insisted on the importance of maintaining proficiency in High German through schooling as a core aspect of their faith. In schools Mennonites gained an appreciation of the German language, its literature, and culture. Nearly all their publications were in German and many future leaders had been sent to Germany for their higher education. Mennonites knew that their ancestors had emigrated from areas that were now part of Germany and some still had relatives there. While they could point to historical connections with the Netherlands, and the link between their Low German patois and Dutch, there was little evidence of any detailed identification prior to the war.119 The closest the Mennonites came to making such a linkage was through a rather odd identification with Boer settlers in South Africa.120 Secretly, many Mennonites remained unconvinced of the Dutch argument, but said little at the time.121 Not surprisingly, a degree of skepticism was also expressed among Russian officials and in the Russian press.122 To counter the threats to the future of the Mennonite community, the Mennonite leadership again sent delegations to the capital, now renamed Petrograd. They lobbied ministers and Duma members, and delivered copies of Dutch books and ancient documents collected in the colonies to prove their Dutch ancestry.123 This community-led response was matched by separate action as wealthy Mennonites sought to have their families specially excluded from the laws expropriating their properties by changing their status and identity. The situation worsened and limited expropriations began. At this point bribery was resorted to and evidence suggests that large sums of money were involved and that those who received "gifts" were not petty officials, but included the Minister of Justice and even the President of the Duma.124 Early in 1917 the Mennonites appeared to have succeeded 132

CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOLIDARITY

in having their claims to a Dutch identity accepted and thereby excluded from the expropriation decrees. By this time the Mennonite commonwealth was facing an economic crisis.125 Thousands of its young men were serving in the medical or forestry services and the cost of their maintenance fell largely on the Mennonite community. By early 1917 these costs were running at 100,000 rubles a month. Meanwhile, incomes had fallen dramatically; wheat could not be exported, horses had been requisitioned, spare parts for farm machinery proved impossible to obtain, and the costs of labour were high because so many peasants had been called into service. Officials had expropriated the reserves of some key institutions that were struggling to maintain services. A few industrialists prospered with war contracts, even helping to produce parts for armaments, but for most Mennonites the future looked bleak as the war dragged on. In many ways the Mennonite situation mirrored the larger Russian world. Military defeats had forced the army to retreat; millions of men were dead or wounded and, as western provinces were lost, refugees placed a strain on resources. Among the population unrest was growing, especially in the cities where peasants had been forced into the factories to increase war production. More seriously, harvests were poor, communications disrupted, and food supplies to the urban areas began to fail as foodstuffs were withheld. In February 1917 there was industrial unrest in Petrograd due to a lack of food, inflation, and poor working conditions. As the unrest spread to troops, the tsar and his government faced revolution and Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. A provisional government was established, headed by members of the Duma, in order to lead the country. Their aim was to call elections for a new assembly, which would draw up a constitution for the country. Mennonites, like many other Russians, responded enthusiastically to the fall of the old regime and the promise of a new order. The provisional government soon removed the threat to Mennonite property as part of a widespread reconsideration of discriminatory tsarist law.125 In the months following the February revolution, various other Russian-German groups in different areas of the country met to plan their political future.127 Many favoured the program of the Kadets for a political order based on the rule of law, and the meetings indicated a shift to the left among participants, although conservative opinions were still strongly held. Mennonites often attended these meetings and even provided leadership. In April 1917 Mennonite representatives met with other German-speaking colonists in Moscow to discuss the future, but they were clearly differentiated in the title of the organizing committee: Citizens of German Nationality and Mennonites.128 It was also made clear by one representative that Mennonites were lukewarm about joining with

133

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

other "Germans." In spite of Mennonite solidarity with Russian-German groups during the long and bitter campaigns against the wartime policies of the tsarist government, the promotion of the idea of a Dutch ancestry had made the issue of the Mennonites' German identity problematic. Mennonite alternative service rights also had to be addressed and there was continued suspicion of any association with colonists of other religious persuasions. The representatives indicated that while Mennonites were willing to cooperate with other groups, they wished to retain their own identity and political autonomy.129 Similar problems were experienced with the organization of other all-Russian German groupings in Odessa and regionally in Alexandrovsk in May and June.130 Eventually, the Mennonite response was to attempt to establish a separate political organization. In June 1917 the first General Conference since 1913 was held at Neuhalbstadt in Molochna and in July another local meeting in Grigorievka.131 It was agreed that a more secular all-Mennonite congress would meet in Ohrloff in August. Representatives attended the congress from all across Russia and the delegates set to work to address the leading social, cultural, political, and judicial issues facing Mennonites. The delegates included members of the newly emergent educated elite, teachers, and members of the professions, many still quite young. They joined members of the clerisy, young and old, so the views expressed during the congress on the future of the Mennonite commonwealth combined religious and secular opinion. There were debates on nonresistance and the need to oppose war instead of being passive bystanders hiding behind privileges.132 The implications of a free press were aired, including what might be interpreted by government as disloyal, as well as the problem of appearing neutral in an environment that encouraged the expression of different political opinions.133 Other radical ideas were also debated. As in the Odessa German congress, there was extensive discussion of the issue of land ownership and peasant needs and a recognition that Mennonites would have to accept major land reforms in the new political environment.134 Socialist ideas were openly discussed, perhaps for the first time in the Mennonite world. One delegate, Peter Froese, even suggested that the connection between socialism and Christ's teachings was closer than the connection between Christianity and capitalism.135 Such radical thinking often came from younger, educated Mennonites, especially those serving in the medical services. Those stationed in cities such as Moscow, Petrograd, and Ekaterinoslav often worked in the central administrative offices of the services and, for their age, held positions of considerable responsibility. In the pre-war Mennonite world, younger, educated men had already begun to challenge the authority of the older clerisy, where status came with age, not necessarily ability.136 The experience of war politicized many servicemen: they met 134

CONSTITUTIONALISM AND SOLIDARITY

Russians from all walks of life and, as the revolution spread, were attracted by the promise of change. After the fall of the tsar some formed their own Soviets (political committees) and discussed radical ideas.137 Representatives of the servicemen attended the Mennonite General Conference meeting in June and called for major reforms.138 They were also well represented at the Ohrloff Congress in August, where they again called for change. What they demanded was social justice within the Mennonite community and beyond, a demand that challenged the tradition of special privileges and the autonomy and separation of Mennonites from their neighbours.139 The congress, while endorsing the independence of religious congregations, planned a centralized civil authority founded on democratic principles that would unite all Mennonites. In the meantime an executive was established, a Mennonite Central Bureau for Community Affairs, in the spirit of the times named the Mennozentmm, to organize further meetings and to deal with immediate political and administrative issues. One source, written a few years afterwards, described the congress as a kind of Mennonite parliament and the Mennozentrum as resembling a Ministry of Mennonite Affairs. 140 Religious matters, however, remained central to the older clerisy. In June 1917 the Commission for Church Affairs met in Berdiansk to respond to reports that the provisional government was drafting a new religious law. Representatives were sent to Petrograd, where they were assured that Mennonites would have the same status as other Protestant groups and that they were invited to assist in the drafting of the new law.141 The commission then revisited the constitutional issues left unresolved in 1914 and drew up a new statement. Obviously the Mennonite leadership had continued to work on the issue. In 1916 Heinrich Braun drew a statement that emphasized the core religious ideas shared by all Mennonites.142 The "Constitution of the Evangelical Mennonite Confession" of 1917 was a carefully constructed document declaring the Mennonites to be a legal entity enjoying the same rights as other Protestant confessions and its members guaranteed freedom of conscience and "the same civil and political rights as all other Russian citizens."143 This use of the concept of "citizenship" pointed towards the new political status the Mennonites hoped for, and while in other aspects the document resembled the 1914 statement, there was no longer any reference to a "synod," only to a General Conference. In a true constitutional democracy, Mennonites obviously believed, the Orthodox Church would no longer hold its once dominant position; and its link with the autocracy had ended with the fall of the tsar. But other political forces were in the ascendency, which in the end would prove far more dangerous to Mennonites than the loss of privilege or being subjected to a democratic constitution.

135

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

By the late summer of 1917 the provisional government's attempt to maintain the war failed; in July the Bolsheviks attempted a coup that failed and in August the army head attempted a putsch but also failed. Besieged by anti-democratic forces on the left and the right, the provisional government continued to call for elections for a national assembly. As their representative for a national selection committee that would choose "Russian-German" candidates for the National Assembly, the Mennonites chose a teacher with a university degree from Basel, Benjamin H. Unruh.144 In most parts of the country the elections in November proceeded and Unruh apparently stood for election as a candidate, possibly for the German parties.145 The assembly, however, was never constituted, as the Bolsheviks who had seized power in a coup in October 1917 dispersed those members who did reach Moscow in January 1918. Shortly afterwards, as frontline troops deserted and the Bolsheviks negotiated a separate peace with the Germans, the country began to fall into chaos and in many areas civil order collapsed. The Mennonite constitution, like other plans for a democratic Russian constitution, became meaningless.

136

Erdman Penner, the Mennonite merchant and early political candidate for the Manitoba Legislature, outside his house in Gretna, Manitoba, c. 1900. (Photo: Mennonite Heritage Centre Archives Photo Collection 247.01)

Election advertisement for Cornelius Bergmann addressed "To the German Voters of Rhineland," in which he claims he will represent the people of Rhineland better than the current sitting member. From the special campaign issue of the Rhineland-Bote der Germania supplement to the newspaper Germania, February 1907.

William Hespeler, German Consul in Winnipeg and MLA for Rosenfield, c. 1903. (Archives of Manitoba, N1998 7)

Valentine Winkler, c. 1915, who represented the West Reserve as a member of the Manitoba Legislature. His son Howard was the Member for Lisgar between 1935 and 1953. (Archives of Manitoba, N22218)

Dietrich H. Epp, schoolteacher, printer, and publisher, as well as head of ZMIK in his old age. (Mennonite Heritage Centre, Winnipeg)

J.J. Hildebrand, who, in the 1930s, championed the idea of a separate Mennonite state. (Mennonite Heritage Centre, Winnipeg)

"The Liberals fight Communism for you": an advertisement exhorting readers to vote Liberal, and explaining that although the party was opposed to Communism, it aimed to repeal as "anti-democratic" Section 92 of criminal law, which had been used mainly to convict and deport communists. From the Mennonitische Rundschau, October 1935.

A woodcut of Menno Simons's printery and the lime tree associated with him, juxtaposed with Hitler's call to German youth to support the Nazi regime. From the Mennonitische Warte, February 1938, published in Winnipeg by Arnold Dyck, who probably also drew the woodcut.

Election advertisement for Peter Biickert in the Mennonitische Rundschau (June 1927), addressed "To All German-speakers of the Electoral District of Morden-Reinland."

Election advertisement for C.W. Wiebe, stressing his Mennonite ancestry and connections, from Mennonitische Rundschau, June 1932.

Albert Prefontaine, c. 1930, and Edmond Prefontaine, 1957. As father and son, they represented the area that included the Mennonite East Reserve in the Manitoba Legislature for several periods between 1903 and 1962. (Archives of Manitoba)

Loyal address presented by the Conference of Mennonites meeting in Winkler, Manitoba, to King George VI on his visit to the province in May 1939. (Mennonite Heritage Centre, Winnipeg)

Advertisement in Mennonitische Warte (October 1938), asking readers if they subscribe to the Nazi-backed Deutsche Zeitung fur Canada, described as the "leading organ of German Canadians," and offering a free copy on request.

Advertisement for Redekopp Lumber and Supply in North Winnipeg, illustrating the expansion of the business between 1937 and 1953. From 25 Jahre Mennonitische Ansiedlung Nord Kildonan, 1928-1953. North Kildonan: Publications Committee of the Mennonite Brethren Congregation and Mennonite Congregation of North Kildonan, 1953.

Jake Froese (facing) and W.A.C. Bennett (premier of BC), June 1973. (University of Manitoba Archives and Special Collections, Winnipeg Tribune Collection, PC18/18-10169-003)

George K. Epp, c. 1975. (Photo courtesy: Werner Epp)

Jake Epp, Member for Provencher, July 1979. (University of Manitoba Archives and Special Collections, Winnipeg Tribune Collection, PC 18/18-10140-06)

6 AUTONOMY AND IDEOLOGY (1918-1929)

A

s civil order collapsed in Russia after 1917, Mennonites were exposed to violent attacks, theft, and destruction or seizure of property. The reasons for this varied. In areas such as the daughter settlement of Terek in the Caucasus, local tribesman attacked the Mennonites, robbing and killing them as part of a larger assault on Russian colonialism. This forced the Terek Mennonites to abandon their settlement and to seek sanctuary, mainly in the southern Russian colonies. Here they joined other refugees, mostly wealthy Mennonites from private farms and estates forced off their land by local peasants. Sometimes the peasants killed Mennonites in revenge for alleged former insults and injuries, but such events were localized and specific. Much more dangerous were the bands of deserting troops moving east from the now collapsed front and criminals released from prisons. These robbed, raped, and killed, often in a random fashion. More ideologically driven were urban workers who seized control of factories, and groups of soldiers and sailors influenced by left-wing radical ideas bent on establishing a new order through the removal of old elites. While the "German" identity of Mennonites and their religion sometimes played a part in these attacks, the social status of Mennonites, their material wealth, and continued separation from their neighbours were undoubtedly more significant factors in the terror of the period. At first the colonies proved relatively safe havens, although people in border villages were increasingly attacked and robbed. Then in February 1918 Molochna

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

was occupied by sailors from the Black Sea fleet and other armed revolutionaries with left-wing and anarchist sympathies. These groups established local Soviets, sometimes with help from the Mennonite underclass, arrested estate owners and other members of the community, and subsequently executed some in Halbstadt. The reign of terror ended in April when these people were forced from the colony by German and Austrian troops who occupied southern Russia. This followed the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty between the Bolsheviks and the Germans, which took Russia out of the war. Under the Germans a degree of order was soon restored with martial law, although this resulted in the execution of some involved in the earlier Soviets, including Mennonites. The troops also helped restore Mennonite property, much to the resentment of local peasants when this involved estates and private farms. Under German control the political opinion of the leadership of the Mennozentrum, and that of many of the colonists, shifted to the right as Mennonite conservatism reasserted itself against earlier appeals to liberal democracy and socialist ideals. At a meeting in Prischib—close to Halbstadt—the colonists agreed to request the German government to grant them German citizenship and it was even suggested that a German state under German control be established in Tavrida province.1 In May 1918 representatives, which included Mennonites from Molochna and later Khortitsa, were sent to Berlin to negotiate with the German government.2 The Mennonites also faced the option of becoming citizens of the new Ukrainian state based around the puppet government established by the German occupation forces. The Mennozentrum debated whether they should be part of any new Ukrainian or independent Crimean state.3 The Germans, however, had not come to rescue the colonists but instead to seize the harvest and other resources essential to what would prove to be their final offensive on the Western Front. When the offensive failed and the Germans were forced to sign an armistice with the Western powers, the troops were withdrawn in November 1918. Mennonites were now left totally exposed to a situation where there was no government, no law and order, and where many sections of society were enraged by their association with the Germans. Robbery, rape, and murder became commonplace. Worse was to come as southern Russia became a battlefield fought over by opposing forces between 1918 and 1921. These consisted mainly of the Bolshevik Red Army, local anarchist bands, the most organized of which was that led by Nestor Makhno, and reactionary forces of the White Army, consisting mostly of army officers of the former tsarist regime. The leaders of the White Army had only weak political programs and practically no support among the peasantry.4 Some Mennonites, including leaders, established dubious links with the White Army. The Whites received the support of conservative Mennonite

138

AUTONOMY AND IDEOLOGY

landowners and businessmen who had seen their rights to property and power removed by Bolsheviks, anarchists, and the passionate desires of the peasants for land. Many sons and relatives of members of the wealthier social groups formed the backbone of the Mennonite self-defence units first established as local militia in 1917 and given training by the Germans during their brief occupation.5 A number of its members joined or were conscripted into the White Army. Some new leaders of the Mennonite clerisy with conservative views, such as B.H. Unruh, added legitimacy to the actions of these units.6 In spite of assertions of nonresistance, privilege, wealth, and power were to be defended with the sword. Through the actions of such people and their supporters, the entire Mennonite community, and any claim to special Mennonite rights and privileges in the name of religion, were to be hopelessly compromised in the eyes of their peasant neighbours and the Bolshevik victors of the civil war. In revolution and war the Mennonite pursuit of power and privilege had met its nemesis. Following the Bolshevik victory, however, the Mennonite leadership and the Mennonite people were to face new political challenges to their sense of peoplehood and their quest for continued autonomy. For three years between 1918 and 1921 most local, regional, and central Mennonite institutions were prevented from operating properly.7 But, however much they tried, Mennonites could not withdraw from involvement in the military and political struggles of the period. At various times, and in different ways, Mennonites attempted to cooperate with, negotiate with, and even to confront through armed resistance the wide range of groups who claimed power and authority in the land. The experience revealed the general powerlessness of Mennonite institutions and individuals to deal with the forces unleashed by revolution and war. Their own lack of unity, often based upon differences in age, education, and social status, also made it difficult to agree upon and defend their common interests. During intense debates on the self-defence units in 1918, one Molochna diarist noted, "our people are extremely egotistic. Each is intent only on the benefits he himself can derive from the situation. No one is willing to contribute to the general good."8 Finally, after years of conflict, it was the forces of the Bolshevik Red Army that gained the upper hand. From the end of 1920 onwards, the Soviets controlled most areas of Mennonite settlement. For the majority of Mennonites, the Bolsheviks were not the preferred choice of victors, but, in spite of the initial harshness of Bolshevik military rule, they promised an end to the random acts of violence and anarchy that had terrorized the land since 1917. The legacies of the years of war, revolution, and civil war persisted for some time and included general lawlessness, banditry, and intimidation, and, more seriously, disease and famine, the latter caused by a shortage of

139

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

draught animals and seed, and the seizure of foodstuffs by officials, as well as drought, which caused meagre crops to fail. After 1921, however, the Bolsheviks succeeded in establishing a sense of order and security in the countryside and permitted aid from North American Mennonites to reach their Russian brethren. But there were many features of Soviet government policy, action, and rhetoric that Mennonites quickly learned to fear and distrust. For their part, the Soviet authorities also distrusted Mennonites on account of the pre-revolutionary social status of many, their past actions and allegiances, and their continued assertion of their right to particular privileges on the basis of religion and tradition. But in the new order, Mennonites and the Soviets had to find ways to coexist. In terms of ideology, Mennonites and the Soviets appeared diametrically opposed. In principle, the Soviet vision celebrated the rights of all people to live in a new social order, which would abolish inequalities based on birth, occupation, and wealth. In doing so they claimed power in the name of the proletariat, the industrial labouring masses who would form the basis of the new society; in the short term, the Communist Party was to be based on a dictatorship of the proletariat, which would lead the way to a new order in which social distinctions and even politics and the state itself would cease to exist. This vision of a classless proletarian utopia, in which the bourgeois social forms such as the family and the state eventually would fade away, was an extreme form of socialism that, during the early years of Soviet rule, spawned many radical ideas and new cultural movements.9 Much of this radicalism was anathema to Mennonites. They believed in the family and patriarchy, they respected individual property rights, and they were willing to accept inequalities within their communities and especially between themselves and nonMennonites, the majority of whom they looked down upon as inferior. In the early 1920s most Mennonites hoped that the Soviet regime might not last and would soon be replaced by a new regime. If, however, the Soviets retained control of the country, they hoped at least it would become more benign and be more tolerant of such things as private business, landholding, and religion. There were also, of course, Mennonites who hoped that the Soviet governments would be overthrown by more conservative forces and a few who were nostalgic for the re-establishment of the old order, even for the return of an autocratic tsar. A small minority of Mennonites, however, was more sympathetic to the Soviets and willing to work with the new rulers. Mennonite radicalism in Russia can be traced back to Abraham Thiessen, who had defended the rights of the landless in the 1870s, was arrested by the government, and escaped from his place of banishment to North America.10 Two young Mennonites were executed by military tribunals, most likely for their involvement in revolutionary activities in the years 140

AUTONOMY AND IDEOLOGY

after 1905.11 In the initial stages of the revolution, poor, landless Mennonites and those who laboured in factories saw an opportunity to improve their conditions and power.12 During the civil war a small number of discontented and alienated Mennonites became involved in the anarchist and revolutionary movements.13 With the establishment of Soviet power, poor and disenfranchised Mennonites used their previous status in Mennonite society to gain power and positions of influence. Most infamous were those involved in the Committees of Poor Peasants (Kombedy), who often requisitioned the property and land of Mennonite farmers and denounced them as kulaks (wealthy landowners) with dire consequences for those concerned. There were also a few young and educated Mennonites who were sympathetic to revolutionary ideas. The Mennonites who can be clearly identified as holding such socialist views were often teachers who had been exposed to such ideas prior to the revolution, often when attending Russian higher educational institutions. This is unsurprising, given the political views of many Russian teachers. A report of the imperial secret police, the Okhrana, on the First Congress of Teachers held in December 1913, stated that although 40 percent of the delegates were non-political, of the remaining 60 percent, 45 percent held socialist views.14 The most famous Mennonite teacher with such leanings was Heinrich H. Epp, who headed the Khortitsa teachers' training centre and who was reputed to have been exposed to radical ideas while training in Moscow. In the 1920s he was awarded the honourary title of "professor" by the Ukrainian communist government before disappearing in the purges of the 1930s.15 Another leading socialist teacher was Heinrich J. Andres, head of the Zentralschule in Nikolaipol in Yasykovo.16 In Molochna the secondary schoolteacher P.P Sawatzky held similar sympathies.17 During World War I, some Mennonites serving in the medical services had been radicalized by their experiences and political events and this resulted in their support for socialist ideas in 1917, as well as an opposition to capitalism.18 The immediate concern of both Mennonites and Soviet governments following the civil war was not, however, ideology but the practical problems of reconstruction. It was not just the Mennonite world that had suffered in the years of conflict, but the entire country: millions had died in the fighting or from disease and starvation, while millions more were homeless, widowed, and orphaned. Agriculture was in disarray; livestock and the horses needed to farm had been stolen or killed; farm equipment was old or destroyed; seed had been stolen or consumed. Famine and disease stalked the land. The cities were depopulated and factories and businesses no longer functioned. The transport system was in chaos. Social order had all but collapsed; local government and local social institutions barely functioned. The

141

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

policies of the Soviet governments during the civil war, particularly their clumsy attempts to seize food, nationalize land and industries, and their persecution of the previous leaders of government, business, and the churches, had only worsened the situation. If the country was to recover from years of war, changes were required in policy and practical necessities needed to take preference over ideological considerations. The problem was not just the destruction caused by recent events, but also the very backwardness of Russia; according to Marxist theory the new order was supposed to evolve through a set of established stages, which had not yet occurred. The compromise of ideology by practical reason resulted in the establishment in 1921 of what became known as the New Economic Policy (NEP), which permitted some commercial activity to coexist within a generally party-statecontrolled economy. The aim was to allow a degree of freedom in economic activity to permit the economy to recover; in the long term some of the Soviet governments hoped that a mixed economy would slowly allow their social and economic policies to dominate life and that the promised Utopia eventually would be achieved. Not all Bolsheviks were happy with the policies pursued under NEP. The issue of whether it was the correct path to follow, how long such a compromise should last, and whether the "natural" stages of socio-economic evolution could be hastened were matters of considerable debate and disagreement in the years that followed.19 Mennonites also began the process of economic and social reconstruction. This activity required them to establish contact with the new regime at the local, regional, and central levels. While the Soviets welcomed efforts intended to promote economic improvement, they were less sympathetic to the Mennonites' desire to discuss a wider range of issues. These included official recognition of religious rights, control of schooling and the teaching of religion, the re-establishment of welfare institutions, alternative forms of service to military conscription, the possibility of emigration, and the reconstruction of Mennonite self-government. From the outset religious affairs were to be a political issue for both the Soviets and the Mennonite leadership. In January 1918 the Soviets decreed that henceforth the church would be separate from both state and school, religious oaths would be abolished, and, although religion would be permitted outside schools, the teaching of disbelief would be given equal status in propaganda campaigns. Mennonites welcomed this separation of church and state, as in late Imperial Russia the relationship between the state and Orthodoxy had become a matter of increasing concern to them. The apparent separation of religion from politics and the abolition of the political oath appeared at first to conform to Mennonite religious principles. A resolution of a meeting of the Kommission fur Kirchenangelegenheiten

142

AUTONOMY AND IDEOLOGY

(KfK), called to discuss the Soviet state's attitude to religion and religious instruction in Khortitsa in July 1922, stated: "We welcome the separation of church from state as it speaks to our basic congregational principles."20 But the Bolsheviks actually wanted to "free" all people from what they saw as the shackles of religious belief and eventually to abolish religion as an institutional and organized activity. In the same January 1918 decree, all property belonging to religious organizations was nationalized, a move directed more at the extensive property of the Orthodox Church than at groups like the Mennonites. The same decree permitted religious groups to use some property for worship free of charge after first seeking permission through the proper channels, so at first this was not an issue for Mennonites.21 In Ukraine, few changes to religious worship actually occurred before 1923, when congregational property was reregistered. But press attacks against religion increased and a general anti-religious tone began to intrude into everyday life.22 The Soviets began a campaign for mass literacy and schooling was to be available for all. They also wanted to remove the restrictions of access to higher education that had existed in Imperial Russia for certain social and ethnic groups. Mennonites could not object in principle to these aims and a new system that permitted them to expand access to higher education. But the separation of schooling from religion was more problematic, as for Mennonites the connection among control of their schools, the teaching of religion in German, and the continuance of their faith were seen as essential to the maintenance of their identity. The new regime, though, wished to ban religion from the classroom as part of their campaign against religion and their desire to found a universal, secular, state education system. The separation of religion and schooling, however, was consistent with the general principle of the separation of church and state, which Mennonites had welcomed. This created a dilemma for the Mennonite leadership, which rapidly became a matter of serious concern. In 1923 Soviet governments introduced penalties into the criminal code of the republics for any violation of the principle of a strict separation of church and state. These included forced labour for anyone imparting religious instruction to children and minors in an educational institution.23 In response, Mennonite religious leaders of the KfK sent a memorandum to the Soviet authorities in January 1924, signed by its chairman Elder J. Rempel from Griinfeld and other leading ministers. Among other things they accepted the secularization of schools but requested that schools be constituted as a "neutral" ground where neither religion nor communist propaganda could be taught.24 This, however, proved a meaningless request as schools were a key part of the Soviet government's strategy of producing a new generation of committed, socialist revolutionaries.25

143

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

The memorandum from the religious leaders also contained several other demands, a number of which were quite political: 1.

unrestricted religious assemblies, choir practices, religious instruction, and catechism, particularly for children and youth;

2.

the establishment of Mennonite orphanages providing a Christian education;

3.

meeting houses and spiritual leaders be exempt from special taxes and the establishment of new meetinghouses be permitted;

4.

the shortage of books in congregations be rectified by ensuring that Bibles, pamphlets, and all Christian literature are allowed to be distributed;

5.

courses of theology (Bibelkurse) for the preparation and higher education of ministers of the Lord's word be permitted;

6.

schools be recognized as neutral zones where neither religious nor antireligious teaching occurs;

7.

the Mennonites be exempted from military service and military training in exchange for alternative service useful to the state. Also, on the grounds of the same religious convictions, the oath be amended and the affirmation of loyalty be made through the simple giving of one's word.

The list of points was accompanied by a bold statement that declared: "Under no circumstances can we put a price on the evangelical truth, which is essential to the lives of both children and adults in our congregations. For the maintenance and development of our lives, we need to keep our institutions and customs. In exchange, we would be upstanding citizens of the larger society, good farmers for the state and punctual taxpayers. Our society would then have a morally upright youth, free of alcoholism and venereal diseases." The memorandum would become a key document for the Mennonites, and the points a list of fundamental demands. In this regard later Soviet officials would view it in a negative light and a communist Mennonite, David Penner, would describe it as an ultimatum.26 The memorandum's reference to exemption from military service reflected a major concern to the Mennonite leadership. After 1917 the Forestry Service system collapsed and all "privileges" granted by the tsarist regime had been removed, including Mennonite rights to alternative service. The difficulty in upholding nonresistant principles was in locating the right authorities to negotiate with, since in many areas during the civil war, men had been indiscriminately enlisted into various warring forces. After the Soviet victory, men were called into the Red Army on the basis of their birth years as in former imperial times, but there were

144

AUTONOMY AND IDEOLOGY

grounds for arguing exemption, including religious grounds. Even during the civil war, Leon Trotsky, the head of the Red Army, had authorized such exemptions.27 Between 1918 and the early 1920s, two former Mennonite members of the hospital units who had remained in Moscow—now the centre of Soviet power—joined with other nonresistant groups to obtain Mennonite exemptions from military service.28 Some early Soviet leaders were sympathetic towards religious groups that had been oppressed under the old regime, and this assisted in religion's being included in exemptions on the grounds of conscience. But in areas where Mennonites had been involved in the civil war, local Soviet officials were well aware that some Mennonites had abandoned their nonresistant principles and, indeed, some had fought against the Red Army. This fact was to haunt Mennonites in their attempts to gain exemption from military service as a religious community, and in other attempts to convince Soviet officials of the non-political basis of "requests" made in the name of their faith. Although exemption for young Mennonites called to military service remained problematic during the early 1920s, Mennonite youths continued to be permitted to take up alternative forms of service.29 Eventually in 1925, a new military law was enacted that permitted exemptions on the basis of conscience, including religious belief, along with alternative service options. In their dealings with Soviet officials it became quite clear to the Mennonite leadership that it was futile to argue for a collective privilege granting all Mennonites military exemption or to request an alternative form of service just for themselves under Mennonite control. The age of such privileges had truly passed. But Soviet authorities were willing to grant individuals the right to exemption from military service as a citizen right, although each recruit would have to appear before a court and argue his case. The major issue facing Mennonites after the civil war involved economic and social reconstruction and this was the major issue on the agenda in discussions between Mennonites and Soviet governments. Of immediate concern was the possibility of permitting the emigration of the numerous Mennonite refugees who had fled to the main south Russian colonies of Molochna and Khortitsa during the civil war. These refugees established themselves in the homes of friends and relatives, crowding into houses and sometimes taking over the summer kitchens as living quarters. They were extra mouths to feed during times of food shortages and there was little work for many to do. By the early 1920s the refugees were hindering economic recovery and the re-establishment of Mennonite institutions. Other economic issues of concern involved the size of farm plots after land had been redistributed in rather small parcels, the restocking and re-equipping of farms, and the production and

145

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

distribution of new crops and produce now that external markets for Mennonite goods had collapsed. In terms of social issues, the re-establishment and control of Mennonite hospitals and welfare institutions also had to be discussed with officials of the new regime. The first thing to achieve was Soviet recognition of new Mennonite organizations, and to find Mennonite leaders who were acceptable to the new order to represent Mennonite interests through these new organizations. The early Soviet period witnessed major changes in the leadership and organization of the Mennonite communities. The initial problem for Mennonites was that their previous organizations for negotiating with the authorities, and most of their leaders, were unacceptable to the new regime. Religious organizations and their ministers were anathema to the new order; religion was the opiate of the masses, keeping people in ignorance and fear, while the church and its leaders represented the reactionary forces of the old order. The Mennonite clerisy, consisting of those who had combined religious office with teaching and political leadership, was equally unacceptable. Not only did their allegiance to religion disqualify them from office in a secular state, but many were also members of the former bourgeois classes or at least closely associated with them. Former estate owners, industrialists, and businessmen were excluded from office on the grounds of their class and their leading roles in the old order. But under the new regime, a person's wealth, landownership, and inherited status no longer had political or social relevance. This was not only because the Soviets viewed such people as bourgeois representatives of the old order, but also because of the massive levelling that had occurred in Mennonite society after 1917. With their loss of land and property, wealthy estate owners, industrialists, and businessmen were faced with a life of poverty and powerlessness. Some were later reduced to such a situation. Many, however, decided on emigration, and so the reordering of Mennonite society in the early years of the Soviet Union was not shaped just by official policy and attitudes towards certain class members of pre-revolutionary Mennonite Russia.30 The dramatic shift in power brought about by the revolution, civil war, and the arrival of the new regime saw the removal from direct participation, in any of the new organizations established in the early Soviet period, of many of the older leaders of the Mennonite Commonwealth. Many of the younger leaders who had come to prominence immediately before, during, and after World War I had also been so compromised by their involvement with counter-revolutionary forces during the revolution and civil war that they too were unacceptable to the Soviet governments. This is not to say that behind the scenes at the local level such people did not still possess influence.31 Given the pre-war educational reforms, however, there was no shortage of 146

AUTONOMY AND IDEOLOGY

potential new leaders available from the ranks of the educated, professional sections of Mennonite society. These men, however, often faced problems within the Mennonite world as they lacked the authority that came with age and links with religious office, while their social origins often made them suspect in Soviet eyes. The end of the civil war also brought about a fundamental change in the political geography of what had been the Russian Empire and the regional distribution of power in the Mennonite world. In response to pre-revolutionary ideological formulations on the rights of national minorities, and on the "freedoms" promised various national groups during the civil war, when the old tsarist order had collapsed along a number of lines including nationalism, the Soviets created a new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) based in Moscow. While overall control lay in Moscow, the establishment of the USSR also saw the formation of a variety of autonomous levels of government in the new state, based upon ethnic and national claims. The majority of Mennonites of the old tsarist Empire were now faced with two "centres" of government: a Russian Soviet federal socialist republic based in Moscow, and a Ukrainian government in Kharkov. In response to this new situation, the Mennonites formed two, major, new central organizations: the Ukrainebased Verband der Mennoniten Siidrnsslands, later renamed the Verband der Burger Holldndischer Herkunft (from now on referred to as the Verband), established in 1921 and officially registered in 1922; and the Moscow-based Allrussischer Mennonitischer Landwirtschaftlicher Verein (from now on referred to as the Verein), formed in 1922 and registered in 1923, which served Mennonite communities in the Russian republic, including, at this time, the Crimea.32 There were also subtle shifts in power within the Mennonite communities. At the local level in Ukraine, the political dominance of Khortitsa, devastated by the civil war and by the loss of its wealthy industrialists and landowners, had ended. In contrast, Molochna, a prosperous rural area, rose in importance as Mennonite society was reagrarianized, like much of the Soviet Union following the destruction of urban areas, commercial activity, and industry in the civil war. Although both these new organizations had a predominantly secular mandate, they were involved in religious affairs and maintained links with Mennonite religious leaders. The Verein was run by men with previous experience in dealing with administrative matters, having been involved in the Sanitdtsdienst in Moscow before the revolution. During and after the civil war, they had petitioned Soviet officials over a number of issues concerning nonresistance and freedom of religion rather than economic matters. The Verband, though primarily concerned with a range of economic and social issues, had been formed at a meeting called by the religious leaders of Molochna. While later commentators have claimed the secular

147

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

appearance of these organizations was an outcome of the unwillingness of Soviet officials to deal with a religious organization, it is clear that there were earlier precedents in Russian-Mennonite history for the formation of secular institutions. A degree of separation of religious from secular affairs had already occurred in the late imperial period of the Mennonite commonwealth, of which the "secular" Mennonite Congress of 1917 was probably the most significant. Compared to the Verein, the Verband appears to have been more closely identified with religious leaders and organizations, while, in terms of leadership, the Moscow Verein also appears more "secular" in character and its leaders more radical than those of the Verband. Peter Frose, who with C.F. Klassen headed the Moscow office, had spoken in support of socialist ideas at the pre-civil war Mennonite Congress.33 In the Verband Philip Cornies also appears to have been a more secular-minded Mennonite, but, unlike in Moscow, the major figure involved in negotiations with Ukrainian Soviet officials was the Mennonite Brethren minister and former teacher B.B. Janz.34 There were also differences in the respective constituencies of the two organizations, with more conservative and reactionary Mennonite communities being located in Ukraine than in the Russian republic. The latter contained a number of poorer, pioneer settler societies such as those established on the Volga, at Orenburg, and especially in Siberia.35 In these communities, even prior to the revolution, there had been more support than in Ukraine for cooperatives and credit union forms of organization, which in the early Soviet period received official support. The Verein was more active than the Verband in such activities and more connected with the political life of the early Soviet regime. Frose and Klassen kept abreast of political events in Moscow, had contacts even in the Kremlin, and sent political reports to other Mennonites, including those in Germany through the diplomatic bag of the German embassy.36 Finally, the Verein, located in Moscow and distant from any Mennonite settlement, was also less subject to the constant overview and influence of local Mennonite interest groups, the old clerisy, and members of the congregational communities who in Ukraine had more direct contacts with the Verband. From the outset, both the Verein and Verband dealt with more than just the economic issues with which the Mennonites had justified their establishment. Both organizations were active in assisting Mennonites to emigrate, but as Mennonite emigration became a more widespread movement than just the movement of refugees to improve the economic status of local communities, many Soviet officials began to question the real aims of the organizations. How could organizations intended to assist with economic and social reconstruction fulfil their function when skilled labour was lost through emigration? Emigration became an issue of increasing conflict

148

AUTONOMY AND IDEOLOGY

between the Soviets and the leaders of the Mennonite organizations. The Mennonite leadership appeared to be promoting emigration in order to force concessions from the government in the colonies. This was a dangerous game, as the Soviets viewed both the promotion of emigration and the use of the threat of further emigration to demand special rights as a sign of counter-revolutionary and class-oriented activity by representatives of the old order.37 Soviet officials believed that many of the concerns raised by the leaders of the Mennonite organizations exceeded their economic mandate and became involved with political issues and matters of party policy. These included matters concerned with Mennonite nonresistance and alternative service, as well as the re-establishment of Mennonite control of their previous socio-cultural organizations and welfare institutions such as hospitals, orphanages, the school for the deaf and others.38 The Mennonites soon came to understand that in economic matters they could make demands on the new government, but that in social and cultural affairs, things were more difficult. Through their actions the leaders of the Verein and Verband were seen by Soviet officials to be attempting to re-establish Mennonite social distinctiveness and to be appealing for official recognition of particular Mennonite rights. Worse, it was obvious that Mennonite religious leaders were increasingly involved with the work of the two organizations. Early attempts by religious leaders to deal directly with Soviet officials had been rebuffed, so it is not surprising that they turned for assistance to the Verein and the Verband, which did have contacts with officialdom. While many ministers, especially teacher-preachers, unable to find suitable employment in the Soviet Union, emigrated during the 1920s, new congregational leaders came forward to fill their place. During the 1920s most of these new ministers were harassed and made to pay additional taxes, but religious worship was tolerated and in all communities religious life continued and even flourished. In some settlements there was a general revival in religion, especially among the young, who were often attracted by a youthful ministry that concentrated their efforts on saving the coming generation in the face of Soviet propaganda, rather than pandering to the older elites as in imperial times. Soviet anti-religious teaching, the official ban on providing religious instruction to young people under eighteen, and the removal of religion from schools provided a challenge to the new ministry. They responded by stressing the crucial role of the family in imparting religion and encouraging parents to work with their children.39 They also strengthened Mennonite youth groups (Jugendvereine], which had first been established prior to World War I. Another strategy that proved highly effective was to use Mennonite choirs to create a greater sense of social and religious solidarity among young people and adults.40

149

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

The leaders of the various congregations also began to meet on regularly at local and regional levels, growing bolder as the 1920s advanced. With the help of the Verein, a religious periodical, Unser Blatt, was published in Moscow to unite and inform all Mennonites scattered across the Soviet Union. Obviously, improving economic conditions in 1924 and official encouragement of national groups made Mennonites think they could re-establish more open links between their religious and secular institutions. In 1925 the Moscow Verein helped organize the first major religious general conference of Mennonites since the civil war. Following the conference, the representatives of religious congregations from across the Soviet Union had the temerity to directly petition the Soviet government on several issues.41 It was a bold reassertion of Mennonite religious identity, but, in hindsight, proved mistimed. A year later in Siberia, the Mennonites of the Slavgorod region petitioned the local administration to regularize the relationship between their "confession" and the state in order that religious life could continue. They argued that throughout their history Mennonites had never opposed the power of states and that Mennonites were completely apolitical. Phrasing their petition in Soviet rhetoric, they stated their confession had never been a dominant church (vorherrschen.de Kirche), each congregation was autonomous, and so their religious organization was non-hierarchical and had no political agenda.42 But the petition itself was, in Soviet eyes, a political act. It was clear that the Mennonite leadership, religious and secular, was intent on reasserting the high degree of communal autonomy that had existed in tsarist times. This was clear not only in Mennonite religious affairs, but also in Mennonite economic activities. These included the establishment of efficient, independent organizations that wished to negotiate with central government as non-party-based organizations, and the promotion of emigration now for purposes other than economic reconstruction. The Mennonites' wish to exercise power and control over their own affairs was interpreted as a clear challenge to Soviet power. To some Soviet officials this looked increasingly like counter-revolutionary activity. When they examined who was involved, it was obvious that it included sections of the former classdominated leadership who were trying to re-establish aspects of the old social order and so frustrate Soviet policies.43 The Verband and the Verein did not deal just with the centres of Soviet government in Moscow and Kharkov, but there were also local affiliates that acted as credit agencies, as well as a number of cooperatives and other socio-economic groupings. Such syndicates were concerned with seed and crop cultivation, livestock improvement and dairying, and the introduction of farm mechanization. There were also consumer cooperatives. Some of these organizations were not entirely new to

150

AUTONOMY AND IDEOLOGY

Mennonites. Credit institutions such as the orphan's funds had long been a feature of community life and other credit organizations, including banks, had been established in the late imperial era. Cooperatives had existed since the 1890s and before the revolution were extremely popular in some colonies. But with the reduction in the size of farms following the Soviet's redistribution of land, combined with the loss of commercial markets for grain, the new Mennonite organizations were crucial to their adaptation to the new economic situation.44 Extensive grain production was replaced by more mixed farming, including the development of extensive dairying in certain areas. Mennonite mills and factories, now state property but often run by their former owners, were sometimes converted to process agricultural produce. In making these changes, Mennonites were aided by Soviet economic, technical, and agronomic advisers. In fact, outside Siberia, Mennonite agriculture and other areas of economic life recovered quickly under NEP and Mennonite membership in the new economic organizations increased rapidly.45 The local affiliates of the Verein and the Verband, while having an immediate economic function, often also dealt with other social and cultural concerns of local Mennonites. The affiliates were organized on a regional basis, which, in the colonies, often followed the pre-revolutionary canton divisions (renamed raions], and their offices were located in the old local administration centres. Increasingly, they were viewed by Mennonites as a replacement for the system of local selfgovernment they had enjoyed before the revolution. This was clearly unacceptable to the Soviets, as was the growing range of functions, powers, and responsibilities assumed by the Verein and the Verband. The support these organizations received from local Mennonites often seemed designed to counter the influence and authority of the local Communist Party and its officials. Given Soviet antagonism to non-party organizations, the continued independence of Mennonite organizations became increasingly untenable. The cooperative movement in general attracted Soviet suspicion, and cooperatives and their leaders were placed under increased scrutiny. To counter such organizations, communist officials attempted to improve the numbers of rural party members in order to increase their power and authority in local Soviets and cantons.46 To Soviet officials, the work of Mennonite organizations would be better carried out by other organs of the government, more closely tied to party control. By 1925 the signs of official opposition to autonomous Mennonite organizations were clear. While Mennonites still hoped that their organizations could be reconstituted along lines more acceptable to officials, the Verband held its last conference in 1926 and the Verein ceased operation in 1928. The fate of the Verein and the Verband, however, was also sealed by a sudden change in policy as attention shifted from agricultural reconstruction to the rapid development of heavy industry.

151

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Ultimately these changes would see the end of not just Mennonite, but also peasant, autonomy in the countryside through the rapid, forced collectivization of all agricultural production. If the Mennonite organizations were threatened by changes in policy at the centre, the Soviets were also concerned to reorganize local government according to the Communist Party's principles of class representation. This reorganization was intended to extend the power of the party, still largely urban-based, into the countryside. In terms of Mennonite "self-government," the threat of change had long been on the agenda. Even if the Soviets had not seized power in October and November 1917, the degree of local control Mennonites had enjoyed in tsarist times would probably have been challenged. The provisional government, as part of its larger reform program, planned to democratize local and regional government.47 The Soviets were also eager for change but as their power in many parts of the countryside following the civil war was weak, they had to implement reforms carefully. In the countryside, following the fall of the tsarist regime and the collapse of the old system of authority, peasant communes had often been strengthened by the peasants' seizure of land.48 In many areas peasant land societies based on the communes were established in an attempt to regulate land distribution. But with the arrival of Soviet power these societies soon came into conflict with the system of rural Soviets established in rural areas in order to extend the authority of the new regime. Unlike the old village councils, which had been dominated by prosperous, landowning farmers, the new Soviets the Bolsheviks established gave prominence to poorer villages. Key positions in the new Soviets—the secretary and other officials—were often taken by outsiders, members of the party from urban areas or, in national areas, foreign members of the party. Some of these had emigrated to the new Soviet state in preparation for the spread of revolution to their own homelands. In Mennonite rural communities, especially in Ukraine, land societies had been formed during the process of land redistribution. While the new Soviets appeared better organized than the often chaotic land societies, Mennonites hoped that the previous village and regional assemblies would be re-established. Under the Soviets, however, a wide range of social groups was also excluded from direct involvement in local affairs. In Mennonite areas this meant that in principle, though perhaps less so in practice, leading village farmers, businessmen, and teachers had no voice in local affairs. Positions of power were assumed by non-Mennonite outsiders, and at first it was largely the poor and uneducated, Mennonite and non-Mennonite, who had a major influence in local affairs. The non-Mennonites included long-time residents who previously had been excluded from Mennonite 152

AUTONOMY AND IDEOLOGY

village and colony affairs and also new non-Mennonite settlers, including representatives from the new settlements established on what the Mennonites had always seen as their own exclusive territory. The redistribution of land ended the exclusive Mennonite colony system and the right to exclude non-Mennonites from land ownership. In Molochna several Ukrainian villages and even a Lutheran settlement were established on previous estate land and on the rent land used in tsarist times to raise capital to resettle the colony landless elsewhere.49 By 1929 almost 13 percent of the population of the Molochansk district were settlers from outside the area.50 Many Mennonites were disturbed by these developments, which meant a loss of control over their own territorial polity. But it was not just at the village level that the Mennonites lost power. In many areas the new Soviets were at first dominated by the rural masses that preferred to conduct business on the basis of the old commune. Soviet officials attempted to limit the power of the peasant communes and the spontaneous mass meetings called to discuss matters of common concern. Instead, they formed local centralized executives in rural Soviets, appointing educated people and "specialists" (agricultural researchers, statisticians, etc.), often outsiders, to the top posts. In 1921 in Molochna the village Soviets were elected but there was often continuity between those who held positions in pre-revolutionary local government and the new organizations.51 It would be a long time before party representation could be strengthened, and the secretaries appointed to run local administrative offices, swamped with bureaucratic demands from the centres, were often those who held similar positions prior to the revolution. The intention of the Soviets in the long term, however, was not just to achieve political control, but also to provide leadership for economic development since most peasants were viewed as extremely backward. To further this aim the Soviets also began to form larger administrative districts and regional governments.52 First the number of provinces (guberniia), regions (uezdy), and cantons (volosti) was increased, while rural counties (zemstva) were abolished. In the area of major Mennonite settlement in Ukraine, the Molochna Mennonites who in tsarist times had been located in Tavrida province were placed within a reconstructed province of Ekaterinoslav. Eventually these provinces too were abolished. In 1923 the old system of regions and cantons was reorganized with the establishment of a new system of region (oblasf), area (okrug), and district (raion). In subsequent years a number of territorial readjustments were made; in 1923 in Soviet Ukraine, for instance, 706 districts replaced the previous 1989 cantons and there were 9307 rural Soviets; in 1925 the number of districts was reduced to 680 but the number of Soviets was increased to 10,314. Further changes were made in subsequent years prior to collectivization in the

153

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

1930s, when the system was changed yet again.53 Mennonites, like much of the population, were confused and alienated by these frequent changes in the name, forms, and extent of local administration. What particularly concerned Mennonites were changes at the district level, the highest point at which they had maintained administrative and governmental control in tsarist times. Despite the reforms, the local Soviet administration often remained weak and ineffective, and at first this was also true of Mennonite areas. Realizing that reforms were being planned, the Molochna Mennonites proposed to the government early in 1924 that it establish a regional Mennonite Verband in Ohrloff, incorporating the old tsarist cantons of Halbstadt and Gnadenfeld. This new organ of local government would be directly responsible to the regional authorities in Melitopol.54 Party officials, however, interpreted this as an attempt by the central Verband to separate local government from the Soviet system and to re-establish an autonomous local system of government. Indeed, following its annual meeting in 1924, a representative from Molochna reported back to local people that the Verband "wants to take over all schools."55 To counter these moves, the government incorporated Gnadenfeld into a new raion based on Halbstadt/Molochansk, but which also included the neighbouring non-Mennonite German district centred on Prischib, a separate canton in tsarist times. Although this was one of the earliest "German" national raions founded in Ukraine, in their own reports of the activities on the Verband, Mennonites continued to refer to the districts of "Halbstadt" and "Gnadenfeld" as if they remained separate administrative units.56 Perhaps this was because Mennonites were not in control, as local affairs were headed by a Russian-German from the neighbouring Lutheran settlement of Prischib, assisted by Polish, German, and Austrian communists.57 In Khortitsa Mennonites were reorganized during the mid-1920s into a raion of mixed ethnic groups in which "Germans"—at least in 1926—constituted only 29 percent of the population.58 The area was not recognized at this time as a German raion and Mennonites were administered by non-Mennonites even if, as in Molochna, some officials were foreign, German-speaking, communists. A similar situation probably existed in most other areas of Mennonite settlement at the local level. In some areas, however, Mennonites, although rarely members of the Communist Party, became involved in administrative positions as secretaries to Soviets and raions, or as specialists attached to such bodies. This was mainly because they were literate or possessed particular skills useful for economic and social reconstruction. The more skilled Mennonite farmers, unable to assert their control over what they saw as a system of local government imposed dictatorially by the communists, at first had as little to do with the new organs of local government as

154

AUTONOMY AND IDEOLOGY

possible. But as the importance of local government in supplying essential services to rural communities increased during the 1920s, and as the role of the Verein and the Verband became more restricted, Mennonites began to pay more attention to Soviet reforms of local government. Noting that the process of raion formation often involved plans to establish distinct "national" regions and areas, and that in the Volga a separate German Soviet republic already existed, Mennonites argued that distinct "national" administrative areas be established in their areas of settlement. The Soviets were not unsympathetic to Mennonite desire, as a "national" minority, for a degree of administrative self-determination. In fact, Soviet nationality policy clearly recognized the rights of ethnic groups to such self-determination in government at a number of levels of administration, as long as this involved primary allegiance to the Soviet state and the Communist Party.59 Such support, however, did not extend to the encouragement of autonomous separatism or bourgeois nationalism, as these were features of capitalist countries. However, considerable effort was expended during the 1920s by Soviet planners to support national and ethnic aspirations through the redistribution of populations and the redrawing of territorial boundaries. These included the formation of new "national" raions (natsional'noe mionirovanie] and other forms of "national" administration in various other regions.60 In Ukraine, especially, local communists worked hard for the indigenization or nativization (korenizatsiia) of the areas under their control. Their efforts were part of a wider attempt to strengthen Ukrainianization in order to counter the possibility of future Great Russian domination from Moscow.61 As such, other ethnic minorities living within the territory of Ukraine were encouraged to achieve a degree of self-determination. By 1926 there were eight "German" raions in Ukraine.62 The difficulty for Mennonites in taking advantage of this new situation was to discover an "approved" national identity. This problem had first emerged during the establishment of the Verband. The term "Mennonite" was unacceptable to the Ukrainian communist officials, as it designated not a national but a religious identity. Drawing on the earlier attempts by the Mennonite leadership, particularly during World War I, to establish a Dutch identity, the Verband adopted the name "Hollander."63 Interestingly, the term "Mennonite" was not challenged in Russia when the Verein was established, probably because of different sensitivities compared with Ukraine over such "national identities."64 The difference may also reflect the fact that in its title the Moscow-based Verein was specifically identified as an economic body concerned with agriculture, whereas the Ukrainian Verband appeared more as a general social and cultural body. Whatever the reason for the differences, the "Dutch" identification did not sit easily either with the Soviets

155

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

or with ordinary Mennonites, both of whom would have preferred a "German" identity, but for very different reasons. The problem in the new Soviet era was that Mennonites wanted to be "Mennonite," but could no longer be simply "Russian Mennonites." Russia was a separate federation in the Soviet Union, so potentially there were now both "Russian" and "Ukrainian" Mennonites. But the "Russian" in Russian Mennonites had indicated not just their place of origin, but also their primary political allegiance as subjects of the tsar, emperor of the Russian Empire. That empire had ceased to exist, but Mennonites and the land remained. In a sense, Mennonites were now faced with the fact that they had to become either "Soviet Mennonites," "Russian-Soviet Mennonites," or "Ukrainian-Soviet Mennonites." At this period all these options seemed to involve a contradiction in terms, and the assertion of peoplehood in relation to the state had become even more problematic than it had been in tsarist times.65 The Soviets had an active German section in the Soviet Communist Party, backed by keen communists and communist sympathizers from Germany and the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. As part of their nationalist program they wished to create a degree of solidarity among the Russian/Ukrainian-Germans. They did not have a "Dutch" section, and if they created a separate organization, it would have probably only included Mennonites and been of dubious value. The Soviets thus insisted on calling the Mennonites "German" and, when applying policies concerned, for instance, with administration and education, grouped them with other Germans. Under the nationality policies operating in Russia and Ukraine, "national" groups were permitted to receive schooling in their own language. For the Mennonites this meant, of course, not in Dutch but in German. While some Mennonites welcomed the opportunity to use German in their schools, they found the structure of education and the curriculum largely unacceptable to their cultural and religious sensitivities.66 But if the authorities were willing to attempt to create separate administrative districts on the basis of nationality, and to allow education in German, then Mennonites decided to assist them with the process. However, the Mennonites were unwilling to be dominated by non-Mennonite Germans and Ukrainians in this process, least of all to be administered by foreigners, however German they might be. In Ukraine, after numerous investigations by officials, plans for the extension and rationalization of German national districts were drawn up in 1926. For the Mennonites the most important implication of this was that Khortitsa now was to have a separate "German" raion, although this meant that Ukrainians and other non"Germans" included in the area were to come under Mennonite, or at least "German," control. This, however, did not appear to be of concern to the planning officials. At this

156

AUTONOMY AND IDEOLOGY

period the Ukrainian culture being encouraged by officials was an urban culture, not the rustic peasant ways of the rural masses.67 However much officials may have been suspicious of Mennonite religious and bourgeois leanings, they admired the fact that they were skilled, educated farmers, ideal to further agricultural development in backward rural areas. Mennonites were sometimes considered to be one of the "cultured nationalities" to be encouraged and developed by the new state.68 The process of drawing up plans for reform were so long drawn out, however, that one Mennonite, no doubt echoing the opinion of others, complained that the process of establishing new district government areas, or "Rayonierung" (from the Russian mionirovanie), was more akin to "Ruinierung.69 In Molochna a new Molochansk district was established in mid-1928, incorporating the neighbouring area of Prischib, which in tsarist times had been a separate canton with non-Mennonite German colonists. Of the 154 settlements in the district, 105 were "German" and the population of the district was 72 percent "German," 18 percent Ukrainian, and 9 percent Russian. It is difficult to calculate the exact Mennonite proportion of the German population, but it must have still formed a majority.70 It took until 1929 for Khortitsa actually to be allowed to establish, but as a German raion and it only officially existed until 1930.71 Although it was much smaller than the Molochansk raion, eight of the twelve villages in the short-lived Khortitsa raion were "German" and four were Ukrainian; 67 percent of its population were "German," most of whom, unlike in Molochansk, were Mennonite.72 As these new districts were established, the entire structure of rural society underwent a radical transformation as the Soviets began to collectivize agriculture. The established systems of land distribution, settlement, and agriculture were overthrown. The entire political system in the countryside underwent change. The political and economic rhetoric of a union (smychka] between peasantsand proletarian workers was abandoned as the drive towards industrialization was forced through. The existing structure of local, district, and regional government changed and the "German" Khortitsa raion ended. In Molochna the Molochansk raion continued until it was liquidated in 1939 as the Nazis invaded western Europe. The remaining "German" raions and the Volga German Republic were liquidated in 1941 when the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union.73 Those Mennonites who in the early to mid-1920s had reacted so favourably to calls for economic reconstruction and who had established profitable farming enterprises discovered they were now often classified as kulaks. As a class the kulaks were being liquidated as a social group, removed from the countryside, and sent into exile. The campaign against the kulaks also saw a tightening of control over other groups who had played major leadership roles in Mennonite society during the 1920s. Teachers and administrators, however sympathetic to the new regime or at least willing to 157

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

accommodate themselves to its demands, found they too were removed from their jobs, persecuted, and arrested. Ministers were singled out for special treatment, their taxes were dramatically increased, and eventually many were arrested. The remaining church buildings were closed or converted into movie theatres or barns. As the 1930s advanced the Mennonites were left without any special institutions, without fully functioning congregations, and increasingly leaderless. Any political illusions as to special rights, continued control, or autonomy had long since vanished. The real problem for the Mennonites in their dealings with the early Soviet government was that they wished to continue with the system of special rights and political control they had enjoyed under the old regime.74 The attempts to secure Soviet recognition of Mennonites as a distinct group involved an assertion of these rights. Ultimately they aimed to regain control over their own affairs and a degree of autonomy in political and administrative matters within what they saw as their distinctive areas of settlement. While the Soviets were obviously impressed by the Mennonites' abilities as farmers and, for the sake of rural reconstruction, were willing in the short term to grant them considerable administrative and economic advantages, in the long term they wanted to integrate them into the new social and political order, not to permit them to remain apart from it. In the Soviets' view of the world, everything was subordinated to issues of class. The Communist Party's power was based on its claim to represent the interests of the working classes. The triumph of socialism could be achieved only if the workers would recognize the true forces of oppression and fight against them. The promotion of this struggle involved a strategy of opposition: opposition to the social groups and leaders of the old order—landowners, businessmen, bureaucrats, churchmen. It also involved establishing oppositions based on age and gender. The generation raised in the old order was to be replaced by a new generation raised after the revolution and schooled in the teachings of the party. Children were therefore to be alienated from their parents; women were to be freed from the tyranny of patriarchal authority. Soviet strategies were thus predicated on establishing discontinuities, creating oppositions, forcing divisions, and on the destruction of old ways: the phoenix of the new communist order could rise only from the ashes of the old. Mennonite peoplehood emphasized cohesion and continuity. It emphasized that a unity based upon religion, established tradition, and the German language, combined with the solidarity of family, community, and congregation, was more important than any divisions that existed based upon class, education, and wealth. In hindsight Mennonite and Soviet views of society, politics, and ideology were so diametrically opposed that the feeble attempts during the early 1920s, on both sides, at reconciliation and accommodation were doomed to failure.

158

PART 3

CANADA

Many a person ... looking back and reflecting on the past, will recall how we pledged in prayer and supplication on our knees, that we would walk in His commandments if He would protect us and our children in the long journey ...to America ...so that they [our children] and their children, would have freedom of religion in schools and churches, as was promised to us by the British Government, guaranteed and sealed by Her Majesty the Queen.... Lord Dufferin [the Governor General of Canada assured us in his] welcoming address ... that... if we remained the people we profess to be, and had intimated in our writing to her Majesty, namely peaceful agricultural people ... things [would] go well with [us] as long as the red flag flies over England. When we look back, from where we have come to the present, where we have gone already, we wonder what misfortune still awaits us. Only the Lord God knows that, but it has become evening in the Christian world. —Gerhard Wiebe, 1900

This page intentionally left blank

7 PARTY AND PATRONAGE! MANITOBA (1890-1920)

I

n the early 1870s the delegates of the Russian Mennonites sent to investigate the possibility of moving to North America not only examined land and transport systems, but also considered the systems of government in the United States of America and Canada. Some questioned the system they discovered in the United States. There appeared to be no supreme, dynastic ruler; as a republic with an elected president and representatives voted into office for a limited period, the United States lacked the essential security and continuity of the old European orders that Mennonites and their ancestors had always known. To Mennonites, coming from a land ruled by an autocrat whose ministers had endlessly warned against the dangers of republicanism and popular government, the United States appeared a risky place in which to settle. A government based on the vote, subject to the will of the masses, lacked the essential protections the Mennonites were seeking. There was fear that agreements with a republican government could not be guaranteed for eternity, or at least until the day of judgement. Any agreement made with the immigrants might be altered by the political whims of a largely "worldly" voting populace. Such fears were strengthened when the American Senate rejected a bill that sought to permit Mennonites to settle in exclusive communities with privileges like they enjoyed in Russia.1 In contrast, the Canadians were willing to set aside areas of land for Mennonite settlement and grant what appeared to be

Map 7: West Reserve, Manitoba

PARTY AND PATRONAGE! MANITOBA

privileges. For the leaders of the majority of conservative Mennonite congregational communities, the decision was clear: they chose Canada over the United States and settled accordingly.2 While Canada was part of an empire whose constitutional head was a crowned monarch, the conservative Mennonite leaders could little comprehend the complexities of the new political system they were about to encounter. They were settling in a land where popular democratic traditions derived in part from Britain were bound by a common legal system where people possessed the right to exercise political freedoms. This was quite unlike any political system they, or their ancestors, had previously experienced. They were pleased, though, that Queen Victoria had apparently guaranteed the privileges offered to them by the Canadian authorities. As such a guarantee corresponded with their earlier experience of dealing with rulers in Poland, Prussia, and Russia, they believed they had just exchanged one system for another.3 In 1876, an American newspaper reported that stories were circulating among the newly settled Manitoba Mennonites that the Canadian government had collapsed and, as a consequence, their carefully negotiated agreements on military service were no more. In part, the report suggested, this was due to news reaching the settlers of a change in government in Britain due to a general election, as the Mennonites "seem to have no idea that a promise made by one English Government will be kept by the next."4 Later, in the 1890s, when the Russian Prince Golitsyn visited the Mennonites on the Canadian prairies, their religious leaders asked him to convey their greetings to the tsar and tell him the Mennonites were now quite happy living under Queen Victoria.5 But by this period some Mennonites possessed a more sophisticated understanding of the complex Canadian political system and were willing to exploit it to their personal advantage. At the time the first Mennonites settled in Manitoba, provincial government was undeveloped, there was no properly organized system of local municipal government, and political activity by individuals and groups was still in its infancy. The first provincial election had been held in December 1870 and a number of elections followed—in all, seven before 1890. Gradually, political parties developed and their supporters attempted to secure the votes of the populace through developing specific and distinct policies and promises.6 At first the new Mennonite settlers appear to have taken little notice of provincial politics, which were largely the concern of the "English," most of whom were immigrants from Ontario attracted by economic opportunities in the West. These settlers brought their political views with them from the East but gradually local concerns developed, often in contrast to federal policies directed from Ottawa, which were concerned with the whole of Canada, or at least favoured the more populous electorates in the East.

163

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Most newly immigrated Mennonites were far too busy adapting to their new lands and re-establishing their economic, social, and religious institutions to be concerned with provincial or federal politics. Political election campaigns were conducted in a foreign language and were obviously concerned with "worldly" issues, which Mennonite religious leadership continued to condemn. For many years the major involvement of Mennonite religious leaders with politicians was limited to government leaders and bureaucrats, specifically those at the federal level in Ottawa. Outsiders often mediated these contacts with government. The Ontario Mennonite Jacob Y. Shantz, who had assisted their settlement in the 1870s, continued to provide help through to the 1890s.7 Non-Mennonites such as William Hespeler, as an official immigration agent and later as German consul in Winnipeg, provided links between Mennonites and federal and provincial governments.8 The issues involved were often complex, concerned with matters of land ownership, the status of the East Reserve and West Reserve, the areas of land initially set aside for Mennonites on either side of the Red River, and the loans they had received to assist settlement.9 These issues, however, were more bureaucratic and legalistic than directly involved with the political processes associated with party functions.10 More political, however, from both a Mennonite and outsider point of view, were matters increasingly within the jurisdiction of Manitoba provincial governments from the 1880s onwards. These included Mennonite involvement in the public school system as it gradually developed, and the continuation of separate "denominational" Mennonite schools. Such matters increasingly became muddled in complex and controversial issues concerned with the status of French and Catholic education in Manitoba that were, during the 1890s, of national as well as provincial significance. The first direct Mennonite involvement with the provincial government and the Canadian political system occurred with the introduction of municipal selfgovernment in Manitoba. Municipal local government, both rural and urban, had a long history in Canada, dating back to the 1830s. Although a Municipal Act had been established in Manitoba in 1873, it was not until the 1880s that regulations and territorial boundaries for local municipalities became more systematized.11 In the meantime the Mennonites had re-established the structures of village and regional government they had known in Russia, in which the regional head (Oberschulze or Vorstehef) was the most important figure. Unlike in Russia, however, the authority of the congregational leader, the elder or bishop (Aeltester), was no longer clearly separated from the "civil" local leaders, and the power of the religious leaders in secular affairs reasserted itself in Manitoba at an early period. Although this did not lead to any major conflicts, the integration of the Mennonite system into the municipal system during the 1880s did cause friction, more in the West Reserve area

164

PARTY AND PATRONAGE! MANITOBA

than in the East Reserve.12 In time most Mennonites accepted the system of local government required by law. They elected members to serve in local government and enforced the regulations and statutory requirements decided by the provincial government. The duties of local council members brought them into regular contact with external authorities, not only with officials in government departments but also with provincial politicians. As the Mennonites had settled in concentrated "reserved" communities, potentially they became the dominant electors within specific electoral districts. The key word here is "potential," as there existed for many years, more apparent and long lasting in certain areas than in others, an opposition to voting, at least in the political affairs outside their own immediate concern.13 This unwillingness to vote was consistent with a reading of certain biblical texts and an understanding of established Mennonite principles that extended to a ban on any involvement in politics as affairs of the "world." In certain congregations, this ban was made explicit and in some cases eventually became enshrined in confessions or statements of faith, in principle made binding on congregational members. In other congregations, however, while members were told that voting and involvement in worldly politics were inconsistent with the traditions of the faith and true Christian practice, statements against involvement in politics were not always enforced through sanctions. The differences between groups were more marked on the East than on the West Reserve. On the East Reserve, most members of the major Kleine Gemeinde, Holdeman, and Chortitzer congregations refused to become involved in politics and this is clearly reflected in early voting returns. In federal elections held between 1887 and 1911 in the area covering the East Reserve, only 12 percent of registered voters, most of them non-Mennonites, actually voted; it has been estimated that only 3 percent of Chortitzer congregation members cast a vote.14 Since at least 1899 the religious leadership of the Kleine Gemeinde (later the Evangelical Mennonite Church, or EMC) had instructed its members not to vote in political elections.15 The low level of involvement of East Reserve Mennonites in political activities beyond their own municipal affairs was to continue well after some Mennonites on the West Reserve had become active in provincial and federal politics.16 From the late 1880s onwards, however, an increasing number of Manitoba Mennonites on both reserves registered as voters in order to have their say in local municipal affairs. Although registered as voters, however, at first few Mennonites voted in either provincial or federal elections. This fact did not go unnoticed by politicians who viewed Mennonites as a potential political force because in certain electoral ridings, if they voted, they could influence the outcome of elections.17 As a consequence, Mennonites were a people to be wooed or at least not

165

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

alienated by politicians and their political organizations. From the Mennonite point of view, politicians holding office, particularly in government, might prove helpful in particular circumstances. For congregational leaders, politicians, such as local members of the provincial or federal parliaments, were useful in order to reassert privileges and confirm basic principles. Such links, though, were usually restricted to times of crises. While non-Mennonites such as Hespeler continued to be useful in acting as go-betweens between government and Mennonites, from the late 1880s onwards those Mennonites who had developed contacts with the outside world increasingly carried out these negotiations. As the Mennonite settlements prospered, especially on the West Reserve, Mennonite businessmen emerged who established trading enterprises to link their communities to the wider world.18 These men soon discovered that political connections were crucial to business success. While the majority of the 1870s settlers from Russia were farmers, there were also a few trained teachers and, more significantly, people with entrepreneurial skills or ambitions. The latter in particular looked beyond the Mennonite world of the rural congregational communities to build their fortunes by serving the settlers, while also exploiting the advantages of the new country. A good example of this was Erdman Penner, who, instead of settling in a Mennonite farming village, worked for a general supply outlet in Winnipeg and founded his own stores in the East Reserve and in the nearby rail township of Niverville. Later, as the West Reserve opened up, he moved to the settlement of Gretna, located on the new rail link connecting Winnipeg with the United States.19 Penner was not alone in his commercial interests and other Mennonites founded businesses in the new towns established on the edge of, or just within, Mennonite rural settlements. Often these were connected to new rail branch lines, which did so much to assist agricultural expansion and boost townships across western Canada. In and around the West Reserve, the most significant township developments occurred in the late 1880s and early 1890s to the north in Winkler and Morden and to the southeast in Gretna, Altona, and Plum Coulee. In time these towns often contained mixed populations of Mennonites and non-Mennonites and became the focus of political activity as the inhabitants sought government assistance and political patronage to expand their businesses, support educational and other ventures, or just personally to secure government posts and privileges. In their turn, politicians looked to the leading figures in the towns for support, especially at election time. From the late 1880s through the 1890s, Gretna was the major centre of such activity, although it was later overtaken by other centres. The prosperity of Gretna coincided in Manitoba with the period of the provincial Liberal government of Thomas Greenway and a period of general economic prosperity. A year after 166

PARTY AND PATRONAGE! MANITOBA

assuming office in 1888, Greenway requested information on the Mennonites concerning their rights and land ownership, and received replies from the Dominion Land Commissioner and Hespeler.20 The Mennonites formed a large proportion of the rural population of one of the richest areas of agricultural land in the province and were concentrated enough to be potential political supporters of the Liberal Party. The question obviously was how to mobilize the Mennonites into an economic and political force. Essential to this was their integration into the development of the province. Schooling was a crucial issue and in 1890, after replacing the Department of Education with a new ministry, the government passed legislation to establish a system of public education that would replace the denominational schools that had existed up to then. Although since settlement Mennonites had established private denominational schools, some groups had registered as Protestant schools in order to receive government funding. As such, they were subject to inspection and required to teach in English as well as German. Some Mennonite congregational communities had rejected this association with government; others had not. Progressive elements, including some religious leaders on the West Reserve, but especially among the merchants and entrepreneurs, favoured the association and a general improvement in the standard of schooling. To assist with this, the Mennonite Educational Institute was established in Gretna in 1889 with the major aim of training teachers for schools.21 When, in 1890, the Mennonite backers struck problems in securing a suitable teacher to run the institute, the Department of Education stepped in to help. A Mennonite from Minnesota, Julius Siemens, who, with his brother, had settled in Gretna in 1887 and established a bank, put the department in contact with Mennonite educators in Kansas and, as a result, a Mennonite of Prussian background with suitable qualifications, H.H. Ewert, accepted the position.22 These connections may have increased the awareness of Canadian Mennonites of the benefits of establishing political connections and participating in the political process, a pattern already established among some Mennonites from Russia in the USA.23 Shortly after his appointment in 1891, Ewert visited the minister responsible for education in Winnipeg to seek support and advice.24 It appears that part of the deal was that the department would support Ewert by appointing him inspector of Mennonite district schools, thus covering half his Gretna institute salary. In this way the government could promote district schools rather than denominational schools in Mennonite districts while also improving educational standards among Mennonites through the Gretna institute. From the department's point of view, Ewert was both a practical and a political appointment. It illustrated that the Liberals would support bilingual education associated with a religious minority as

167

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

long as it occurred within the public, district school system; as such the government could claim that its opposition to the continuation of separate, private, French Catholic schools was not based upon prejudice towards either the French minority or Catholics.25 The minister responsible for education, whom Ewert visited in 1891, was none other than the Attorney General, Clifford Sifton, member for Brandon in the provincial assembly and later Dominion Minister of the Interior in the Laurier government. During the 1890s and early years of the twentieth century, Sifton was one of the most powerful Liberal politicians in Canada, especially in western Canada. He was highly skilled in politics, including the allocation of patronage, and principal organizer of the Liberal Party machine at election time. As Minister of the Interior he was to have other contacts with Mennonites, including new settlement on Saskatchewan land. He was also the minister responsible for the government's immigration policies that brought masses of new settlers to western Canada, including Mennonites.26 By 1880 Mennonite immigration from Russia had mostly ceased. A few of the 1870s settlers moved from Manitoba to the United States, often to join relatives, while others moved from the United States to Canada. Contact was maintained with Russia but the possibility of a further movement of congregational communities on the scale of the 1870s appeared remote. In 1886, when Jacob Y. Shantz appeared before a parliamentary enquiry in Ottawa and was asked if there was a possibility of further Mennonite immigration to Canada from Russia, he thought further movement unlikely.27 However, encouraged by new provincial and federal policies, more Mennonite immigration from Russia had in fact already begun and there was also movement of settlers from the United States. Immigration was to become an important area of Mennonite involvement with government officials and politicians, and some of the new immigrants were later to become involved in political activities in prominent ways.28 Unlike the movement of congregational communities in the 1870s, this new Mennonite movement from Russia, which began in the early 1880s and continued until World War I, consisted of small, often kinship-based groups. The Mennonites in Gretna were to play an important role in the movement, especially in the 1890s, and many of the immigrants passed through the town on their way elsewhere.29 As early as 1891 a group of Gretna Mennonites asked the federal Ministry of Agriculture to appoint an immigration agent and grant loans to encourage further emigration from Russia.30 During the 1890s several Mennonites approached government officials and local politicians to be appointed as "return men"—agents who went back to their old lands in order to encourage further emigration to Canada. 168

PARTY AND PATRONAGE: MANITOBA

Among these were the entrepreneur Klaas Peters and other merchants and business people.31 In 1895, for instance, W. Esau and Isaac Loewen of Gretna, associates of Klaas Peters, approached Premier Greenway and the Minister of Agriculture and Immigration in Ottawa for funds to assist their visit to Russia, where they volunteered to act as immigration agents. Their request was supported by their local member in the provincial legislature, Enoch Winkler, who informed the premier that all three men had "worked well and done all they could in our favour during the [last election] Campaign so do for them all that can be done and oblige. "32 While the applicants obviously sought patronage in respect to their earlier political support, there were also business advantages involved. Encouraging immigration was only one of the motives for the trip to Russia, as Loewen and Esau used the opportunity of their journey across Europe to purchase new stock, which they prominently advertised for sale upon their return.33 The encouragement of often educated and progressive Mennonites from Russia to move to Canada was obviously of advantage to local businessmen, as it furthered economic growth. In November 1899, in the midst of a stormy provincial election campaign, a deputation of Mennonites, consisting of the reeve and councillors of the Municipality of Rhineland, accompanied their local member, Enoch Winkler, to Crystal City to discuss with Clifford Sifton the "possibility of securing the immigration of a large number of their friends" from Russia. They stressed that Mennonites made "excellent settlers" and they were reported to be well pleased with Sifton's response. The newspaper reported that the Mennonite delegates "attended the political meeting during the evening and joined in the hearty applause which greeted the speeches of the Dominion ministers and Hon., Mr Greenway [the Liberal Premier]."34 It is obvious that by the turn of the century some Mennonites had become extremely involved in Canadian party politics. With Liberals in power in Manitoba since 1888 and in Ottawa since 1896, some Mennonites had realized that it was prudent to deal with the members of the party in power. But the political game was about to change. It is difficult to document exactly any direct Mennonite political involvement before 1890, although it appears that Julius Siemens, the American Mennonite involved in banking and land deals, had connections with the Manitoba Liberals since 1887.3S In 1892 a Mennonite first became involved directly in provincial elections when Erdman Penner was persuaded to stand for the Conservatives in Rosenfeldt, a seat that included the southern parts of the West Reserve. Penner stood against the sitting Liberal member, Enoch Winkler. According to comments made many years after the events by his daughter, Penner had long been an admirer of the earlier

169

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Prime Minister John A. MacDonald, hence his support for the Conservatives, but he was a little naive in the practice of electioneering.36 Whatever the truth, the Liberals mounted a concerted campaign against Penner by claiming he was not registered or entitled to vote, that he had sent his daughter to a Catholic high school in St. Boniface, and that he had separated from the Mennonite faith, so no Mennonite should vote for him.37 At the same time the returning officer, the former teacher of the Gretna institute, Wilhelm Rempel, after requesting and receiving the post of returning officer from Premier Greenway, advised voters to support the government's candidate, Winkler.38 However, while Penner did receive support from some Mennonites, it obviously was not enough.39 Winkler beat Penner by forty-one votes, although of the 738 registered voters, only 303 actually voted; at least Penner had the satisfaction of knowing that he had a majority in Gretna, if nowhere else.40 Penner's opponent, Enoch Winkler, probably received some of the few Mennonite votes cast in spite of not being a Mennonite. Winkler had been associated with the Mennonites since their emigration from Russia in 1874.41 A native of Waterloo County in Ontario, he was of German descent and had acted as interpreter for the Mennonites during their settlement while working with Shantz. Recognizing the economic possibilities of the new province, he established a lumber business in Emerson in 1877, no doubt dealing with Mennonite customers, and moved to Gretna in 1883. He entered local politics as reeve of the new Municipality of Douglas, became mayor of Gretna, and first was elected as the Liberal member for Rosenfeldt in 1888. Enoch Winkler's younger brother Valentine was also active in politics associated with Mennonite areas of settlement. He joined his brother in business, but in 1888 founded his own lumber and grain business in Morden on the northwest borders of the Mennonite Reserve. Here he too entered politics, becoming the reeve of Stanley (1890 to 1892) before standing for and winning the new provincial electorate of Rhineland in 1892. Like his brother Enoch, Valentine maintained close connections with Mennonites. Indeed, the site of the town named after him, Winkler, was established in 1892 on land previously in Mennonite ownership, to where Valentine had moved his business with the building of a rail connection. Throughout much of the 1890s, therefore, most of the West Reserve and its Mennonites, whether or not they voted in elections, were represented by the Winklers in the provincial assembly where the Liberal Party was in power.42 By the end of 1899 the situation had changed as the Greenway government, which had been in power for over a decade, faced a new election. The decision of when to call the election was complicated by increasing opposition to the provincial Liberal Party and to the policies of the Liberal Dominion government in western Canada. Against the advice of the principal organizer of the party in the West,

170

PARTY AND PATRONAGE! MANITOBA

Clifford Sifton, Greenway called an election for December 7. The Conservatives, however, were better organized than the Liberals and the leaders of the national party in Ottawa threw their weight behind any candidate they considered could unseat a sitting Liberal member and bring down the government. In Rosenfeldt Enoch Winkler faced none other than William Hespeler. Two German-speaking candidates with a record of assisting Mennonites since their emigration were thus competing for whatever Mennonite votes might be available. Hespeler, though, declared himself an "independent" rather than a Conservative and declined to be called an "opposition" candidate; Sifton's Free Press "confidently expected" Winkler to be returned.43 According to a report by Klaas Peters in the newspaper Nordwesten, at a wellattended meeting in Altona, Johann Hiebert, Erdman Penner's son-in-law, introduced Hespeler as "our candidate," while Hespeler played on his long association with the Mennonites and his role in their immigration.44 In a letter to the same paper, David Friesen, also of Altona, stressed the need for a "German" in the legislature and suggested that as Hespeler had been a friend of "us" Mennonites, it was our "duty" (Pflicht) to elect him.45 Winkler, realizing the threat to his position, wrote a letter to the newspapers suggesting that Hespeler was presenting himself as an opposition candidate and not just as an "independent," and that he had stated at Altona and Rosenfeld that he would not attend election meetings at which Winkler and his "Greenway band" were present.46 Ahead of the 1899 campaign some sections of the conservative Mennonite leadership expressed renewed doubts on the correctness of Mennonites being involved in politics. The Bergthal elder Gerhard Wiebe criticized Mennonites who allowed "themselves to be nominated for secular office," and the leaders of the conservative Kleine Gemeinde forbade members from nominating themselves for office and voting.47 The results also revealed divisions among Mennonite voters. Whereas in 1896, less than 32 percent of registered voters in Rosenfeldt actually voted, in 1899, almost 51 percent exercised their rights. In Gretna Winkler beat Hespeler by nine votes (sixty-five to fifty-six) but in Altona the result was reversed in favour of Hespeler (sixty-four to fifty-six). In identifiable Mennonite centres, Bergfeld, Neuhoffnung, and Rosenfeld, Hespeler carried the day with only Rosenheim giving Winkler a clear advantage. To the shock of the Liberals and their many Mennonite supporters, Hespeler defeated Winkler by just seventeen votes (258 votes to 241). The Liberals immediately accused Hespeler of acting improperly, of presenting himself to Mennonites during the campaign as a supporter of the government, when in fact he supported the opposition.48 There may be some support for a charge of confusion as Valentine Winkler, who regained Rhineland with a healthy

171

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

majority over his Conservative rival, secured a majority in Plum Coulee, Winkler, and Schanzenfeld, all of which contained Mennonite voters.49 A recount was called in Rosenfeldt and a formal electoral petition in the names of Jacob Reimer of Gretna and Dietrich Klaassen of Neuanlage was filed with the courts.50 Hespeler's conduct was further questioned when shortly after the election he declared that he was now an "Independent Conservative" and intended to support the newly elected Conservative government.51 The entire affair spilled over into the Mennonitische Rundschau when "A Mennonite" provided readers with a detailed account of the election, Hespeler's deception, and the dubious support he had received from certain Mennonites.52 In the face of the debacle of 1899, the Manitoba Liberals in Rosenfeldt reorganized themselves. In early August 1900, Enoch Winkler called a meeting in the Altona School to organize a "Rosenfeldt Liberal Association." Thomas Greenway was elected honourary president and J.J. Loewen of Altona became president of the association. The newspaper report of the meeting lists almost thirty members of the association, nearly all of whom were local Mennonites. Those present indicated their support for the trade policies of the Liberal Dominion government and rejected those of the Conservatives; they also selected representatives to attend the Manitou Liberal convention just a few days away where a candidate for the Dominion election was to be selected. The meeting also denounced Hespeler for his actions in the previous election when he had "solicited and received many votes among our people by representing himself to be the candidate favourable to the Hon. Thomas Greenway, when in truth he was opposed to him." Addresses were made in English and German and the meeting "closed with three cheers for the Queen." The report concluded that the "Germans and Mennonites are for the Liberals."53 While the Liberals might have lost control of the Manitoba legislature, Laurier's Liberal government in Ottawa was determined to retain power in the West in the November 1900 elections. The higher turnout in the provincial Rhineland and Rosenfeldt electorates, the fallout from the Rosenfeldt election in 1899, and the organization of the new Liberal association gave the Liberals the false hope that they could expect Mennonite support in the federal seat of Lisgar, which included the West Reserve. The member for Lisgar was R.L. Richardson, a former Liberal who stood as an independent. Clifford Sifton's bete noire, Richardson had been instrumental with others in the disorganization of the Liberal Party in Manitoba, and, through his opposition to Sifton and his policies, an important factor in the Liberals' loss of the 1899 provincial elections. Sifton was determined to see Richardson defeated in Lisgar and convinced Valentine Winkler to resign his seat in Rhineland and contest the federal seat, hoping his links with the local voters, especially 172

PARTY AND PATRONAGE! MANITOBA

Mennonites, would ensure a Liberal victory.54 This view is confirmed by surviving examples of Winkler's campaign literature, which stressed that Richardson was an Anglo-Canadian in contrast to Winkler, the "German," and that the new provincial Conservative government "hated" ethnic voters, including Germans.55 Liberal hopes for a large Mennonite turnout proved unfounded and Richardson retained his seat.56 Certainly Mennonites voted, but not in large enough numbers to greatly influence the result, and this probably reflected not only the continued unwillingness to vote of most rural Mennonites, but also a lower interest in federal, compared to provincial, political affairs.57 This is perhaps also indicated in Winkler's success in winning back Rhineland in the by-election for the post he had only recently vacated, although by a narrower margin than in 1899. The Conservative government in Winnipeg clearly viewed the electorates in which Mennonites constituted a large percentage of potential voters as being more Liberal than Conservative in their sympathies. With this in mind, the Conservatives revised the electoral boundaries for the following election, abolishing the Liberal-dominated Rosenfeldt in favour of a single Rhineland constituency.58 It also removed the favours and patronage associated with the Liberals, most signify cantly for Mennonites by removing H.H. Ewert from his post as inspector of district schools. This occurred as the 1903 election drew near and was, as a later writer noted, "an attempt to gain political advantage by pandering to the wishes of the least progressive element amongst the Mennonites" in the hope that they would vote Conservative.59 The reasons for this involved Mennonite disputes about the control of higher education. The establishment of the Gretna institute had been one of the factors behind a major schism in the largest religious congregation on the West Reserve when in 1892-93 the majority of members of the largest Bergthaler congregation formed a new congregation, which became known as the Sommerfelder.60 On the West Reserve the Sommerfelder, along with the Reinlander (Old Colony) congregation and the Kleine Gemeinde, all opposed becoming too involved with "the world," including with political elections; only the now minority Bergthalers and members of the newly formed evangelical Mennonite Brethren remained more open to government, but the religious leaders of these groups also did not publicly endorse voting and political involvement.61 The support given by some Mennonites to Hespeler in the 1899 campaign had polarized Mennonite voters; the actions of the Conservatives confused matters further. Erdman Penner, disgusted with the government's dismissal of Ewert, changed his support from the Conservatives to the Liberals. But others, sensing that Conservatives might remain in power and that they now controlled patronage, switched

173

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

their allegiance from the Liberals. In the lead-up to the 1903 election, the divisions over provincial politics in the Mennonite community spilled over into the American Mennonite press, with one correspondent suggesting that a state of "Mennonite War" existed.62 Three candidates competed for the new Rhineland seat: Valentine Winkler for the Liberals, Hanson for the Conservatives, and Herman Dirks stood as an independent. Dirks, an impressive figure almost two metres in height, had arrived with the Siemens family from Chicago in 1892, had married Julius Siemens's sister, and became Erdman Penner's bookkeeper when Siemens declared bankruptcy in 1893 during a financial crisis in the USA. Although he was well connected in Gretna, Dirk's support base appeared to be Altona. In 1899 he had been involved in disputed school board elections in Gretna and this issue became caught up in the 1899 provincial election. Ultimately, in 1906 he achieved infamy when he abandoned his wife and children and disappeared after his illegal speculation in grain, which lost Erdman Penner over $200,000, was discovered.63 During the election campaign the Liberals, who claimed that he was really a Conservative candidate brought into the campaign to split the Mennonite Liberal vote, fiercely opposed Dirks. Winkler and his agent claimed that in fact Dirks had earlier attempted to obtain the Conservative nomination at Plum Coulee but had failed and only then stood as an independent. They also claimed that he was backed by Altona merchants who were Conservatives, and certainly the merchant Johann Hiebert, who assisted Dirks, had supported Hespeler and later the Conservatives in the federal election.64 The Conservatives also seemed unwilling to oppose Dirks, although powerful Conservative politicians visited Mennonite villages, promising government aid for improvements.65 Dirks himself claimed that he was not a Conservative; in fact, he had been a supporter of the Liberals under Greenway but now he felt it was time that the people of Rhineland were represented by a German and a Mennonite, independent of the corruption of party machines. But during the election he spent most of his time opposing Winkler and the Liberals.66 Despite Dirks's claim during the campaign that as a Mennonite he expected to secure the entire Mennonite vote, on election day the Mennonite vote remained divided. The Liberal candidate Valentine Winkler was re-elected with a majority of seventy-one, better than his majority of ten in 1900, while Dirks received 20 percent of the vote.67 Far from dividing the Liberal vote, Dirks seems also to have divided the Conservative vote at least in Altona, the only booth he won. At the same time, over 87 percent of those registered voted and the distribution of votes clearly indicates an increase in Mennonite voters. Dirks's true colours were revealed in the federal election held in October 1904. In the new German-language newspaper Germania—obviously financed by 174

PARTY AND PATRONAGE! MANITOBA

the Conservatives as the election began in order to counter the influence of the Nordwesten, which Sifton had acquired in 1903 as part of his wider attempt to influence ethnic voters—Dirks is reported to have declared at a political meeting in Altona that he was a Conservative.68 The reports of this election show how Altona had become the base for Conservative agitation in the Mennonite area with Klaas Peters, who had returned from Alberta to assist in the Conservatives' campaign.69 Peters's involvement also indicated that in other areas of western Canada, some Mennonites had become involved in politics. Mennonite settlers expanding out of Manitoba had taken up homesteads in the West, some in conservative group settlements, but others in new communities in which immigrants from Canada, the USA, and Prussia joined them.70 The latter groups in particular were open to progressive ideas and political involvement. The establishment of two new prairie provinces in 1905 saw Mennonite candidates standing for and being elected to the new provincial assemblies. In Saskatchewan Gerhard Ens, who had emigrated from Russia in 1890 and helped establish the town of Rosthern, was elected as a Liberal in 1905. Ens had long contacts with the Liberal Party, having acted as an official immigration agent in Russia and the USA, although he had ousted Klaas Peters from this position after the 1896 Liberal election, no doubt a factor in Peters's later support for the Conservatives.71 More directly connected with political affairs in Manitoba was Cornelius Hiebert, who in 1905 was elected to the first Alberta legislature as a Conservative. Hiebert was connected with families in Manitoba closely involved in politics; his brother, Johann, was a supporter of the Conservatives and acted as an agent for Dirks. Cornelius had settled in the Didsbury area of Alberta in 1900 and Peters was a neighbour.72 The 1903 and 1904 elections in Manitoba revealed the developing religious, social, and economic differences among Mennonites living in different townships and rural districts covered by the provincial and federal electorates. The economic prosperity of the early 1900s with its massive grain crops created greater competition between businessmen in the towns that served the rural communities. Gretna's population reached over 800 in 1902 but then started a decline, from which it never recovered, but Altona, along with Plum Coulee, prospered.73 Entrepreneurs from Gretna had founded many of the Mennonite businesses in Altona and from there Mennonites could better exploit the still underdeveloped rural hinterland of the West Reserve. But in business and other matters, rivalry between the two towns had already been apparent in the political campaigns of 1903 and 1904; from 1905 onwards it became focussed on the future location of the Mennonite teachers' college. In 1905 the need to expand the teachers' college in Gretna raised the issue of whether it should remain in the town or be relocated in either Altona or Winkler.

175

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

After a carefully arranged vote of shareholders in the society that ran the school, Altona won by a narrow margin.74 Plans were set in place to raise money for the new Altona school but in 1906 Enoch Winkler offered land for the school to remain in Gretna, which, supported by an offer of money for a building by Erdman Penner, resulted in August 1907 in a group's going ahead with building a Collegiate Institute in Gretna.75 The Altona proposal also went ahead, so by 1908 there were two competing Mennonite educational centres training teachers. While the events behind this division have been discussed in terms of the religious, social, and business issues involved, the additional impact of political allegiances has been overlooked, especially the provincial election of March 1907. Dirks's showing in the 1903 election obviously convinced the Conservatives that what they needed in Rhineland was not a Mennonite standing as an independent in order to split the Liberal vote, but a Conservative Mennonite candidate who would attract the Mennonite vote and win the seat outright. The Conservatives organized local support groups across the West Reserve, mostly among members of the Bergthaler congregation and centred on Altona. In February 1907, thirty-five representatives, almost all Mennonites from Winkler, Rosenfeld, Plum Coulee, Altona, and Gretna, met in Altona to select a candidate for Rhineland. Three Mennonites were proposed: Abraham Loeppky from Plum Coulee, Jacob Hoeppner from Lowe Farm, and Cornelius Bergmann; Bergmann won the nomination ahead of Loeppky.76 Bergmann was a farmer from the Plum Coulee area who had moved from the East Reserve to the West Reserve in 1893 and had been reeve of Rhineland in 1900 and 1902-03. He was a supporter of Altona's bid to secure the Mennonite teachers' college, was well respected in the Bergthal congregation, had contacts with Altona, where his stepson D.W. Friesen was in business, and, as a farmer, could also be expected to draw support from those rural dwellers willing to vote.77 In January, ahead of election nominations, the Conservative newspaper Germania began publishing a special section in the paper entitled the "Rhineland Herald of Germania," devoted to the "Mennonite settlers in the Municipality of Rhineland and surrounding districts."78 A correspondent from Plum Coulee argued that Rhineland was now a "German" constituency, which required a German candidate, and voters should exercise their rights in this regard; even the Liberals took up the theme, stressing as they had in the 1900 federal election that Valentine Winkler was of German descent.79 The campaign was closely fought. Winkler a ccused the Conservative government of Premier Rodmond Roblin of having "stolen" the Rosenfeldt electorate from local "Germans" and during the course of the campaign he was provided with an ideal opportunity to discredit the Conservatives and thus weaken the Conservative Party's obvious growing support among potential Mennonite voters.

176

PARTY AND PATRONAGE! MANITOBA

Late in 1906 the Conservative government had announced it would introduce new legislation requiring the Union Jack to be raised over all public schools. The intent of the policy was explained in the Conservatives' election manifesto; flying the flag would "inculcate feelings of patriotism and materially assist in blending together the various nationalities in the Province into one common citizenship irrespective of race and creed."80 Such a policy contradicted the Conservatives' alleged support for ethnic minorities such as the Mennonites. Prior to the election in late 1906, the proposed legislation had provoked considerable concern among Mennonite religious leaders, and the Bergthaler ministers' conference had suggested that any legislation would be against Mennonite belief and constitute a threat to their "privilegium" rights of freedom of religion and schooling.81 The Liberals seized on the flag issue during the election. The Free Press reported that a Jacob Wiens of Lowe Farm had sworn an affidavit before Jacob Hiebert, a notary public, that Attorney General Colin Campbell, standing in neighbouring Morris, had assured him that the flag legislation would not apply to Mennonites; Campbell denied he had stated any such thing.82 The Free Press editorialized the issue, attacking reports in Germ.an.ia and the Conservatives' policy.83 Just at the point when it looked as if the Conservatives had at last managed to secure a majority among Mennonite voters, the party's policies had defeated its carefully laid plans. In spite of the large turnout of voters (over 81 percent), Bergmann lost to Winkler by forty-three votes, thus obtaining 47 percent of the vote (321 to 364).84 A later historian of Manitoba would note that in the 1907 provincial election "both parties had practised flagrant electoral corruption" and that partisanship had reached new depths in an age when campaigns were noted for their dishonesty and corruption.85 Politics was obviously not an activity in which Mennonites should be involved as it created serious divisions in the community. Shortly after the election a Mennonite minister suggested that members should refrain from "impure" political affairs that attempted to influence people through "money, alcohol, slander and other forms of persuasion." The well-being of the country had to be put ahead of the particular interests of political parties.86 Although, in the years that followed, some Mennonites continued to vote in provincial and federal elections, the period when Mennonite candidates stood for election and openly campaigned for political parties had ended.87 The "flag issue" of 1907-08 was to prove a watershed not only in terms of Mennonite political activity, but also in Mennonite relations with the state with regard to matters of faith and peoplehood. But signs of impending trouble had long been apparent. The 1899 and 1900 elections occurred during the Boer War. Canada, like many other

177

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

areas of the British Empire, was drawn into the patriotic rhetoric of imperialism and contributed funds and troops to the South African war. In the highly charged atmosphere Mennonites felt they needed to defend their position on nonresistance and their unwillingness to contribute to "patriotic funds" raised to support the Empire's war.88 In the years that followed, Anglo-Canadian nationalism and British imperialism increased existing intolerance not just towards French Canadians, but also towards the large number of immigrants attracted to Canada by Sifton's immigration policies. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the West, where unresolved concerns over bilingual education and fear of immigrants and their ability to assimilate fuelled popular discontent, which soon was reflected in party political programs. Mennonite objections to the flag legislation of 1907 focussed on the militaristic implications of the flag but also reflected deeper concerns. For many Mennonites the flag symbolized all that was wrong with nationalism and their fear that if an allegiance to a state and empire was promoted among vulnerable children ahead of a commitment to God, then the faith of their forefathers was at risk. A "catechism" that accompanied the introduction of the start of flag raising required children to state that there was "One king, one flag, one fleet, one Empire."89 A delegation of religious leaders met with the premier to express their concerns but received no assurances that they would be exempted from the legislation.90 As the act applied only to public, district schools, a number of Mennonite schools went private, including all the East Reserve Kleine Gemeinde schools.91 In his report for 1907 the Mennonite inspector of district schools, John M. Friesen, noted the devastating effect of the legislation.92 In May 1908, in an effort to stop the Mennonite move away from district schools, the government briefly re-employed Ewert as an inspector, but as a known Liberal Ewert was again dismissed before the federal election in October.93 The next year a patronage appointment was given to Johann Hiebert, a long-time Conservative supporter in Altona, to "organize" public schools. The money, however, actually was used exclusively to support the Altona teachers' college; the next year it was given to a Gretna supporter for the Gretna school.94 It was obvious to all Mennonites that education once more had become a highly politicized issue. The Laurier-Greenway compromise of 1896, which settled the long dispute over schooling by permitting private and public bilingual schools in Manitoba, was now obviously under threat. In the increased nationalist and imperialist atmosphere after 1906, the continuance of private schools with nonEnglish teachers and of bilingual public schools came under increasing attack. In 1905 Sifton resigned from the Liberal cabinet over Laurier's attempts to permit denominational schools in the new prairie provinces. He had long supported the idea of national public schools.95 In 1913 his paper, the Manitoba Free Press, began a 178

PARTY AND PATRONAGE! MANITOBA

sustained campaign against bilingual schools by calling for their closure and a national, English-language, public school system. Although the newspaper's attacks, contained in a series of special reports by their "staff correspondent," focussed on the poor state of education in immigrant schools, especially Catholic Ruthenian (Ukrainian) and Polish schools, Mennonite schools were examined in a series of articles. The newspaper's correspondent noted that Mennonites had for "years refused even to vote" and seemed "indifferent to the political plums that made the mouths of English-speaking constituencies water even to think of," and that for Mennonites the "ordinary avenues of political approach to the foreign immigrant were ... obviously out of the question." In spite of individual and sectional Mennonite interest in politics since the 1890s, the vast majority of Mennonites under the authority of their congregational leaders still refused to play the game of patronage. Only once, the correspondent reported, had Mennonites fallen from the path of "virtue," but they had "never got a whole foot in the political trough."96 Early in 1914 the Liberal Party in Manitoba announced at its convention that, if elected in the forthcoming election, it would establish national schools where attendance would be made compulsory and the teaching of English obligatory.97 One positive effect of the increasing political isolation of the Mennonites before 1914 was that in the face of a common threat Mennonites were drawn together, including the leaders of different religious congregations. This greatly advanced a process begun earlier among progressive Mennonite congregations that had resulted in 1903 in the formation of the Conference of Mennonites in Central Canada, which united groups in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. But the delegation sent to the premier in 1907 over the flag issue included Bergthaler, Kleine Gemeinde, and Holdeman representatives, the latter two groups not part of the Conference and conservative in religious matters. The 1912 attacks on teaching German in schools united other congregations. In 1913 the Sommerfelder leaders, also not members of the Conference, suggested the Mennonites form a school commission to promote German and religion in schools, and the commission eventually included representatives of the Bergthaler, Sommerfelder, and Mennonite Brethren, with Ewert playing a major role.98 After years of religious discord and schism, political partisanship, and district and town rivalry, a sense of unity and peoplehood began to emerge, centred on the recognition of the importance of the German language for the continuation of their faith and cultural identity. The significance of the Sommerfelder lead should not be underestimated, as in many ways this reflected a drawing together of forces centred on the old, established Mennonite principles of separatism and conservatism; many once progressive Mennonites had become alienated from government and change, and this was reflected most clearly in Ewert's increasing conservatism.99

179

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

The Liberals lost the provincial election of July 1914, held as war broke out in Europe, a conflict into which Canada was quickly drawn. Winkler was again reelected but now the Liberals had been in opposition for almost fifteen years and in all that time a member in government had not represented Rhineland. The Conservatives issued legislation requiring compulsory school attendance, but in early 1915 Roblin and his government resigned over a corruption scandal associated with the building of the new legislative building. The Liberals assumed power in May, announcing they would implement their 1914 platform, but within months called an election. With clear evidence of Conservative corruption they were swept to power in a landslide; Valentine Winkler increased his majority in Morden and Rhineland from 132 to 462 votes, in spite of a fall in the overall number of those voting.100 As one of the longest-serving Liberal members, Winkler became Minister of Agriculture and Immigration. With the Liberals in power and "their member" in office, some Mennonites wrote to congratulate Winkler. H.H. Ewert told Winkler that the "days [have] ended where good citizens have to live in fear of the government"; H.H. Hamm, secretary treasurer of the Municipality of Rhineland, regretted that only Altona had failed to provide Winkler with a majority but gloated over the Conservatives' defeat.101 But Winkler's supporters were soon to be disappointed with "their member," the Liberal Party, and the Canadian political system in general. Mennonites were aware of the Liberals' election policy to enforce the use of English in schools but had received reassurances from Winkler that the policy would not affect the teaching of German in their schools. It did appear that the policy was intended only to deal with certain ethnic schools where the teaching of English was considered poor and French sensitivities to any change in policy also had to be recognized.102 But instead of dealing with specific problem areas, the Minister of Education proposed that all public schools be English schools and support for bilingual schools end. One of the first Mennonite attempts to prevent the enactment of any proposed change was to stress to Winkler the political ramifications of any government action. At a meeting with Winkler in Rosenfeld in January 1916, the school commission presented twelve points to "our member" for Rhineland, the first three of which drew attention to the "majority" of Mennonites' long support for the Liberal Party in general and Winkler in particular. They warned Winkler that Mennonites "would not like to be betrayed by the Liberal party" and that if "they were betrayed they would feel so offended that they would cease to support the Liberal government." Finally, they stated that the Liberals had no mandate to change the bilingual schools as the election that had brought them to power had been fought on the issue of "honest government," not schooling.103

180

PARTY AND PATRONAGE! MANITOBA

These blatant political threats had little effect, nor did Mennonite delegations to Winnipeg, which included not only the congregations represented in the school commission, but also the Kleine Gemeinde and Chortitzer congregations from the East Reserve area. With the bilingual schools abolished by a change in the school legislation in 1917, those Mennonites in the public school system withdrew and established private schools where German and religion could be taught. But in 1918, appealing to compulsory attendance legislation and their administrative powers, the government began to establish public school districts across areas of Mennonite settlement with an officially appointed trustee. They then required Mennonites to send their children to public schools. In many areas the Mennonites refused to send their children to these schools, persisting with their private schools; parents were being summonsed and fined for not obeying the education regulations. Further delegations and appeals failed to alter the government's attitude.104 By now Mennonites had retreated from making political threats. Following their long-standing practice of congregational leaders appealing to heads of state on the basis of earlier precedents, the religious leaders referred to the privilegium rights. These, they argued, had been offered to Mennonites by the Dominion government during the 1872 negotiations and were central to their decision to emigrate to Canada.105 But as Canada, unlike autocratic Russia, was a Rechtsstaat, this required recourse to the courts, eventually even to the highest court of appeal, the Judicial Court of the Privy Council in London. But to no avail. The Mennonites' understanding of their "rights" was not as sound as they believed and they came to realize that the power of parliaments to enact legislation was paramount. An editorial in the Free Press noted in 1920, with regard to the claims of minorities to their own separate denominational schools, that "children are the children of the state of which they are destined to be citizens; and it is the duty of the state that they are properly educated."106 Unable to accept the loss of control over their children, many Mennonites in the early 1920s sought new lands in Mexico and Paraguay where they could negotiate new privilegia to protect their faith and the education of their young.107 If the Mennonites had spurned the parliamentary process in favour of older methods of direct appeal to heads of government, during the war they were even denied their rights as members of civil society.108 The Dominion Elections Act of 1916 and the Wartime Elections Act of 1917 disenfranchised Mennonites, along with other nonresistant religious groups.109 Also denied the vote were persons born in an enemy country, or even in Europe, who had been naturalized as British subjects after 31 March 1902, and who spoke as their mother tongue a language of an enemy country. These measures, combined with others such as the Military Voters Act,

181

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

which favoured soldiers and those of British descent, were all part of a complex set of measures made in response to the political crises over conscription and the formation of a Union Government. This occurred in an atmosphere of xenophobia and political gerrymandering in which claims that Canadians were fighting for truth, liberty, and freedom appear little more than hollow rhetoric.110 Other pieces of discriminatory legislation included the Order-in-Council of September 1918, which made it "an offence to print, publish or possess any publication in an enemy language without a licence from the Secretary of State," a regulation, thankfully, overtaken by the end of the war.111 But even as much wartime legislation was repealed following the armistice, discrimination continued; in May 1919 the entry to Canada of Mennonite, Hutterite, and Doukhobor immigrants was prohibited.112 The Mennonites' loss of the right to vote had little impact among most Manitoba communities by the time the legislation was enacted. Negative experiences with governments over schools, the struggle over conscription, and the prevailing general atmosphere of popular hatred against Mennonites and "foreign" immigrants fanned by the press made most Mennonites think it was better to revert to their well-established role as the "quiet in the land."113 This included withdrawal from all political activity, including voting in plebiscites and elections.114 As the negative atmosphere towards "foreigners" continued after the war, especially in parts of western Canada, Mennonite participation in political processes remained minimal.115 If, after 1917, large numbers of Mennonites had either withdrawn from involvement in Canadian politics or emigrated, ten years later those who remained were reminded that they still were members of a civil society and that only by participating in the democratic processes could they make their mark in society. In 1927 a long letter to the Free Press from Henry Vogt, a lawyer of Mennonite descent, revisited the issue of Mennonite rights to private denominational schools on the basis of the 1872 Mennonite privilegium. He suggested that an injustice had been done and that the Dominion government should clarify and, if necessary, renegotiate Mennonite rights. An editorial in the Free Press reminded readers that such appeals to "special" treaty rights had been rejected by the courts and anyway had no place in a democracy. Education was a provincial matter, subject to laws made by the representatives of the people of the province. What Vogt had suggested was unacceptable: "the electors of Manitoba have the first and last say in everything that relates to the system of education which is to apply in this province; and it is to this Caesar that those who do not like the system we have at present must make application."116

182

PARTY A N D P A T R O N A G E ! M A N I T O B A

Mennonites could no longer just quietly render unto Caesar and occasionally send delegations of religious leaders to heads of state to appeal for the recognition and renewal of their special rights. If Mennonites wanted their voices heard, they would have to participate in the democratic processes, obtain their demands through the ballot box, or submit to the will of the majority. The kind of state the original 1870 Mennonite leaders had envisaged as existing in Canada had, in the long term, proved not to exist, while their fears of democracy, where government could be swayed by worldly public opinion, seemed justified.

183

This page intentionally left blank

8 COMMUNITIES AND IDENTITIES: THE RUSSLANDER (1923-1940)

F

ollowing the Russian Revolution of February 1917, articles appeared in the Mennonite press on how Mennonites might participate in any new government that might be formed. The Mennonite Christlicher Familienkalender provided subscribers with a list of the forms of government of the twelve states (except, of course, Russia) involved in World War I. It listed the type of head of state, number and form of representative assembly, and the various rights of citizens. This was followed by a summary of the positions of the various political parties that had emerged in Russia after the revolution and advice on issues voters should consider if they intended to support one of the parties in elections.1 The article, undoubtedly written by the editor of the calendar, Abraham Kroeker, rejected both socialist and monarchist options, but seemed oddly ambivalent about the parties of the middle ground.2 The failure of the provisional government and the constituent assembly, as well as the anarchy and terror of the civil war, hardened Mennonite political opinion in favour of asserting their own rights and rejecting the policies of particular political ideologies and parties. Mennonites still favoured a government that guaranteed their peoplehood and provided them with particular rights and privileges. They were less concerned with democratic principles or the duties and responsibilities of citizenship that subordinated their interests to those of the masses. As early as 1917 a Mennonite argued that because of their small numbers, southern Russian Mennonites might gain greater influence in politics within a separate

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Ukrainian state than if they remained part of a greater Russia.3 A correspondent to a Mennonite newspaper in 1919 appeared willing to discuss the forms of government to be considered by potential Mennonite emigrants to other countries, but was unwilling to accept any that would not guarantee a minority's national and cultural autonomy.4 Therefore, most Russlander Mennonite immigrants who settled in Canada from the Soviet Union after 1923 welcomed the "freedom" guaranteed by the Canadian government but remained suspicious of popular democracy. Some were disturbed by their first encounter with electioneering for provincial office.5 The majority also now rejected socialism as just another form of communism and anarchy, and this attitude made them favour authoritarian forms of government and conservative political parties that played down an appeal to the masses. What marked the Russlander apart from most former immigrants was a more widespread interest in politics, both within and outside their own communities. They also exhibited a greater willingness to become involved, albeit on their own terms, in politics and local government. This is not at all surprising, given their experience in Russia. However, most immigrants were unacquainted with the Canadian political system and few had much English. So at first the immigrant leadership left most of the negotiations with provincial and central government with officials of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) who had assisted their immigration and with the few Canadian Mennonites skilled at dealing with government agencies and politicians. The major body assigned to organize the immigrants and negotiate with the CPR and government officials was the Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization (CMBC), which had been established by North American Mennonites before the Russlander arrived.6 Although the new immigrants from the Soviet Union worked closely with the board and held leading positions on its executive, they never viewed it as specifically their organization, but one that linked existing Mennonites in Canada and the United States in the work of bringing over new immigrants, handling political and financial matters concerned with immigration, and assisting settlement. As an organization it included a number of leading religious ministers and to outsiders presented Mennonites as primarily a religious group, involved mainly in humanitarian work to assist fellow believers and the victims of war, revolution, and political circumstance. Shortly after their arrival, leading figures among the immigrants—mainly from Khortitsa in Soviet Ukraine—organized a meeting to discuss their future, the repayment of the immigrants' debts, land settlement, and other issues. Present at the meeting were both Canadian Mennonites and new settlers, but the meeting was conducted like a civil assembly as they had known it in Russia. The meeting decided to establish an organization to represent the interests of all new immigrants

186

COMMUNITIES AND IDENTITIES! THE RUSSLANDER

from the Soviet Union in order to promote their welfare and to maintain a sense of unity among the new arrivals. This organization adopted the rather unwieldy name of the Union of the Mennonites Who Have Emigrated Since 1923 (Vereinigung der seit 1923 eingewanderten Mennoniten) .7 All immigrants, whether they had arrived in 1923 or later, were technically affiliated with this body. An executive of the organization was soon formed as the Central Mennonite Immigrants' Committee (ZentraleMennonitische Immigmntenkomitee, or ZMIK, as it became known), based in Rosthern, Saskatchewan, and headed from 1923 until its demise in 1934 by Dietrich H. Epp.8 Epp was a member of a leading Khortitsa family that had supplied elders, ministers, and schoolteachers for the Russian colony almost since its foundation. He was a highly trained teacher but not a minister, and remained for many years, as editor of the immigrants' newspaper Der Bate, a leading figure in the Russla'nder community in Canada.9 Membership of the Board of Colonization, though it changed over the years, was dominated by educated Mennonites and included members of the younger clerisy as well as more secular Mennonites. Whereas the board was seen as a "church organization" with strong religious links to the various conferences and congregations of immigrant and non-immigrant Mennonites in Canada and North America, ZMIK was more a civil organization representing only immigrants from the Soviet Union and only immigrants served on its committee.10 Although the 1927 "constitution" of ZMIK spoke of "supporting travelling ministers and supplying books for the teaching of Sunday school and for devotional hours," it also indicated that it would "promote cultural ventures" among the immigrants. These included support for existing Mennonite schools and the establishment of scholarships and libraries.11 As the Russlander scattered across Canada, eventually settling in hundreds of settlements spread from Ontario to British Columbia, the need to keep in touch with the immigrants and to maintain a sense of common peoplehood became paramount. Areas settled by immigrants were organized into local area groups (Ortsgrupperi) headed by either a "district man" (Distriktmanri) or a regional committee (Ortskomitee) elected annually; these were to maintain communication between local immigrant communities and ZMIK.12 Eventually district men and local committees were made responsible for collecting levies charged by ZMIK to each immigrant aged sixteen to sixty, assisting the Board of Colonization with the collection of the travel debt (Reiseschuld] incurred during emigration, supplying ZMIK with information and statistics on their area, and carrying out any directives of the committee. Annual meetings of the immigrants were organized, to which local communities could send delegates who possessed voting rights proportional to the number of immigrants they represented.

187

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

The organizational structure of ZMIK was, therefore, obviously based on community institutions and practices established in pre-revolutionary and postrevolutionary Russia.13 One source of influence was the system of local government in many Mennonite settlements in Russia, although most Mennonite civil control in imperial Russia had been concerned with local administrative matters at the village and canton level and subject to Russian regulations. In Russia Mennonites had also developed their own boards to manage schools, welfare activities, and other institutions, but these were usually very specific and localized and did not link all Mennonites living in the Empire. However, before 1914 various regional teachers' organizations had been formed to further education and many of the immigrants had been members of such bodies. But the closest civil organization to ZMIK in pre-revolutionary Russia was undoubtedly the pre-revolutionary Forestry Service. The system of local committees and district men appears to have been based on the system used in Russia to collect taxes to support the Forestry Service, where in each settlement there were individuals or committees appointed to assess property values and collect dues.14 All these organizations were well known to those who emerged to lead ZMIK, many of whom had been involved in their activities before emigration. For instance, one of the last commissioners of the Forestry Service, H.B. Janz, was an active member of ZMIK. 15 A number of other members had attended teachers' conferences and meetings of church groups where they had acted as directors, participants, and secretaries. The secular Mennonite Congress formed in 1917 did not exist long enough to establish a unified system of regional and local organs, but once again some of those later involved in ZMIK had participated in that congress. The organizations established during the early Soviet period also indirectly influenced the later organization of ZMIK, as some of its members had also served with Soviet Mennonite organizations, including B.B. Janz, C.F. Klassen, F.C. Thiessen, and J.J. Thiessen. While ZMIK can be seen as a development of pre-revolutionary and even postrevolutionary Mennonite attempts to establish a unified system of centralized civil authority, in Canada it developed its own priorities, strategies, and identity. From the outset it attempted to be more democratic and more open than many of the established imperial Russian Mennonite organizations had been. Not only were delegates elected by their communities, but also the minutes of meetings, agendas, and proceedings of the annual assemblies were published and widely distributed to the new immigrants. This undoubtedly reflected the more liberal views of the majority of the leading members of ZMIK, who were educated men with a greater commitment to openness and consultation than the older farmer-preachers who 188

COMMUNITIES AND IDENTITIES! THE RUSSLANDER

had dominated Mennonite organizations in Russia before 1914.16 In later years in Canada, the leaders of ZMIK were criticized in certain quarters for not placing local representatives under the authority of religious leaders and organizations and, in effect, of having created a parallel secular organization. However, one of the organizers of the system later defended the decision to establish a secular structure, claiming that in the early years of immigration, congregations had still not been established in Canada. Surprisingly, no mention was made of the fact that a precedent for forming similar secular bodies had existed among Mennonites in Russia long before the revolution. Although it operated from 1923 and quickly established a network of local groups and district men, ZMIK was not formally organized until after the 1927 annual meeting of all the immigrants in Manitoba. Following this meeting, which made all immigrants collectively responsible for the CPR travel debt, whether or not they had taken a loan to emigrate from the Soviet Union, ZMIK's constitution was published. 17 The constitution noted that the main duties of ZMIK were to carry out the resolutions of the representatives of the annual assembly of the immigrants, to deal with the representatives of other institutions concerned with the settlement and other affairs of the immigrants, to maintain contacts with Mennonites in the "old homeland" and abroad, and to assist the Board of Colonization in its work of encouraging emigration. It also concerned itself with the naturalization of the new immigrants so they could enjoy the rights of citizenship in Canada. Before the constitution had been drawn up, however, members of ZMIK already had given considerable thought to the tasks of the committee. H.B. Janz, in a memorandum written in December 1926, noted that ZMIK faced two major tasks: to serve the intellectual and spiritual (geistigen and geistlichen) needs of the immigrants, and to support and create institutions to improve their material-economic condition.18 But Janz noted that such a program would require both strong leadership and considerable money. While the leadership was available, the financing of the proposed activities looked more uncertain. A bureaucratic structure could be constructed based upon skills brought from the old homeland, but the loss of access to the resources of the landed, industrial, and business elites, which in Russia had financed large parts of the Mennonite commonwealth, meant that most policies and plans proved difficult to finance and thus to implement. The original intent of the organization had been to develop a common sense of peoplehood through the re-establishment of those features of community life that had existed in Russia. But from the outset the leaders of ZMIK faced major problems. In Russia and the Soviet Union the development of centralized institutions had evolved only after the establishment of local communities and

189

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

organizations. In Canada the Russlander were faced with the difficulty of establishing a centre before regional and local bodies had been formed. While ZMIK might have tried to control and shape aspects of local development, in reality it was fairly powerless to do so. In the crucial area of directing patterns of settlement and controlling land distribution, ZMIK discovered it could do little. The first preference of the immigrants' leaders was that the Russlander settle in "closed communities," as many put it, in settlements consisting mainly of Mennonites from the same regional and/or religious backgrounds in Russia. This would permit community and spiritual life to be rebuilt with as few difficulties as possible.19 The reality was that immigrants had to seize whatever opportunities for settlement were presented to them. Homesteading—taking up an offer of free land to be secured by breaking it in and establishing a viable farm—provided the best basis for the re-creation of group settlement. But most areas available for homesteading were located in remote areas with a lack of basic services such as communications, stores, or power, and required a large investment of labour and money to be successful. If many immigrants lacked the experience, skills, or stamina for such a pioneering life, all immigrants lacked sufficient capital to begin farming from scratch. A limited opportunity for group settlement occurred by chance as Kanadier emigrated to Mexico and Paraguay, and Russlander were able to move onto their lands. Some even managed to move into houses and villages that seemed to resemble their old settlements in Russia. But such opportunities were available only to a small number of immigrants. The most immediate need for most immigrants, however, was to find a way quickly to repay their debts. For the vast majority this entailed settlement on existing farms, already equipped with buildings and machines. Here they could hope to prosper quickly, and consider forming more substantial and perhaps consolidated communities in the future. This mode of settlement, although it often conflicted with the desire to form areas of compact Mennonite community, was encouraged by the Mennonite Board of Colonization and CPR officials as the best means for the immigrants to prosper and clear their debts.20 The Russlander soon lost control of the organization of land settlement. A Mennonite Land Settlement Board (MLSB) had been established in 1924 at the suggestion of the CPR to work with the Canadian Colonization Association formed in 1921 and which in 1925 became a subsidiary of the CPR. The association helped to settle immigrants, Mennonite and non-Mennonite, by investigating farms and land offered for sale, standardizing contracts, and assisting in other ways to promote the long-term success of settlers.21 At first the board of the MLSB had a large membership, with representatives chosen from among the immigrants, the CMBC,

190

COMMUNITIES AND IDENTITIES! THE RUSSLANDER

and the CPR. Soon, however, this proved unwieldy and, at the suggestion of the CPR, a three-man executive ran the MLSB with a Mennonite manager located in the major provincial offices of the Canadian Colonization Association.22 The MLSB became an agency of the association and thus of the CPR. Mennonites lost any ability to control the shape or direction of immigrant settlement, and the work of ZMIK in establishing a sense of solidarity among the immigrants was made more difficult. Business realities had triumphed over the Russlander's hopes to control the pattern of land settlement for the development of distinctive communities and a sense of peoplehood. In religious matters ZMIK was not involved directly in organizing congregations or church conferences. But it did support religious activities through aiding ministers and providing religious literature for ministers and lay people. The immigrants' first concern once they had settled in a locality was to re-establish regular patterns of worship and be served by ministers and elders. Where there were established Mennonite congregations of non-Russlander, the immigrants sometimes tried to join, but in most cases they soon formed their own congregations, most of which were loosely linked with other immigrant congregations. However, ZMIK's claim to represent all immigrants by providing a link among religion, the ministry, the community, and the promotion of the German language was made more difficult by religious divisions among the Russlander themselves. In spite of attempts to continue the pre- and post-revolutionary spirit of unity and reconciliation among the various religious groupings, efforts to maintain religious unity among the immigrants in most areas of Canada failed. H.B. Janz in 1926 had argued that the immigrants needed, as a matter of urgency, to found a Commission for Church Affairs, as had existed in late imperial Russia and in the Soviet period, to complement the more secular concerns of ZMIK. 23 The reality, however, was that congregations had affiliated themselves either with existing Canadian and North American Mennonite conferences in their areas, provincial or regional, or formed their own conferences on the basis of the established divisions between Mennonite Brethren and what would become known as the General Conference churches.24 In such bodies some Russlander discovered new arenas to apply their organizational and political skills. Of more immediate concern was the increasing weakness of the centre in relation to the growing strength of provincial organizations. Canadian political geography based on provinces and regions quickly asserted itself on the immigrants' organizational life in religious as well as secular matters. In some areas provincial Mennonite religious organizations existed before the immigrants' arrival and the Russlander joined these bodies. Local organizations the immigrants formed to discuss secular issues, such as land settlement and ways to develop economic

191

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

security, existed before ZMIK decided to sanction provincially based sections of its organization late in 1928. Such developments were both logical and inevitable, given the tyranny of distance between groups and the difficulty and costs of maintaining Canada-wide communications. There was also the issue that different provinces had different legal systems and the immigrants, some of whom soon drifted towards urban centres, became conscious of the importance of provincial politics and the sources of power, economic and social, located in provincial capitals and other urban centres. At the same time, farming conditions varied from one area to another, making a single economic strategy difficult; even on the prairies there were considerable differences in climate, crops, and markets, while Ontario and British Columbia presented new challenges to accepted methods of farming learned mainly on the steppes of Russia. Soon the representatives of the provinces were demanding a share of the levies raised in their areas for ZMIK, and they also began to organize their own institutions with their own bureaucratic structures and sources of funding. Eventually the provincial assemblies replaced the Canada-wide meetings, which ceased altogether in the difficult economic years of the 1930s. However, between 1928 and 1933 the leaders of ZMIK continued their attempt to create the basis for Russlander unity and to develop institutions to serve all the immigrants. They negotiated with German and American booksellers for special deals so that the immigrants could be supplied with works of German literature, religious and secular. They also encouraged the development of youth groups and the teaching of German language and literature to the young. The committee was concerned that Mennonite history be encouraged, an archive be established, and an historical society and historical publishing series be started. Some of the more pious members of the committee questioned this encouragement of intellectual activities beyond religious instruction and spiritual edification. A few of the imported books were considered "unsuitable" and B.B. Janz objected to the promotion of drama by the committee.25 The committee was also eager to reconstitute the complex of welfare institutions that had existed in Russia. Enquiries were made concerning the possibility of refounding a central Orphan's Fund, but as such matters were subject to provincial law, the establishment of a Canada-wide fund proved impossible. Interest in other ventures, such as mutual fire insurance, funeral societies, and medical services, struck similar problems. Eventually, immigrants founded their own welfare institutions, either in their own locality or at the provincial level, including hospitals, mental institutions, and other welfare services. In 1926 H.B. Janz strongly urged the establishment of a central Mennonite cooperative organization to give commercial assistance to the immigrants and help achieve a degree of economic unity. But again the cooperative movement fell

192

COMMUNITIES AND IDENTITIES! THE RUSSLANDER

within provincial jurisdictions and, while some Mennonites welcomed such communal-economic ventures, others remained suspicious of them as signs of "socialist" tendencies that could lead to communism. As time progressed, far from directing Mennonite activities from the centre, ZMIK found itself servicing particular needs that could not be met at the local level. It increasingly became a place of last resort for the poor, the sick, and the lost; members of the committee no longer controlled events, they merely reacted to them.26 This situation was only partially a result of the increasing strength of provincial organizations and the inability of the committee to establish central institutions to assist and control the Russlander. It was also a consequence of worsening economic conditions as the Depression deepened after 1929. In the troubled economic environment, ZMIK was faced with increased demands for assistance, especially in the form of welfare support, at a time when its income was falling. The immigrants increasingly found it difficult, if not impossible, to pay all the various levies they were charged to aid the Board of Colonization and ZMIK. For many the travel debt still had to be repaid and the Board of Colonization was applying increased pressure to secure early repayment. At the same time the immigrants were faced with new demands on their limited monetary resources. The situation in the Soviet Union, where accounts of forced collectivization and arrests were soon followed by horrifying reports of famine in many Mennonite areas, drained further money from the immigrants as they struggled to support family and friends in the old country. In 1927-28 ZMIK had an income of over $8000, by 1930-31 this had fallen to under $2000, and by 1933 it was in debt.27 The time had arrived for ZMIK to reconsider its priorities. As early as 1928, H.B. Janz had warned that the committee was being diverted from its central purpose: the "intellectual-cultural" needs of the immigrants. He had suggested that ZMIK be integrated with the Board of Colonization as the immigrants' first priority should be the clearance of the travel debt in order to secure their financial well-being. This was crucial to the social and religious future of the immigrants. Dietrich Epp disagreed, saying that he believed the first priority should be to assist the immigrants to avoid the dangers of assimilation to North American culture. Most immigrants, he pointed out, lived among non-Mennonites and were at risk of losing their identity. Although Epp agreed that the committee should continue to support the board, he wished ZMIK to remain a separate body and to take a more broadly based approach to the encouragement of a sense of Mennonite peoplehood.28 Epp's attempts to keep religious matters separate from secular cultural activities can also be seen in his rejection of overtures that Der Bate be a paper

193

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

of the Mennonite Conference. In 1928 he attempted to establish an independent Mennonite Printing House funded by Mennonite shareholders. The aim of the printing house was to expand the coverage of Der Bate and to encourage the writing, publication, and distribution of books on Mennonite history and culture. Confusion over the differences between provincial and Dominion company law, combined with the Depression, saw the plans shelved.29 In 1930 the Mennonite writer and publisher Arnold Dyck, a former pupil of Epp, offered to combine Der Bate with his own newspaper Die Post, which he printed in Steinbach, Manitoba. Epp, however, refused the offer, which would have required him to relocate to Steinbach.30 Dyck later expanded the secular coverage of his own paper and from 1934 to 1938 published a journal, the Mennonitische Volkswarte, devoted to Mennonite culture written mainly by leading Russlander.31 In the 1940s, under Epp's leadership, Dyck began to produce a series of historical texts on Mennonite settlements in Russia.32 By 1933, however, financial considerations forced ZMIK to reconsider subordinating itself to the Board of Colonization dominated by religious leaders. Epp remained critical of the idea.33 Late in 1933 he reviewed the current functions of ZMIK, revealing how much it had developed since its formation: 1. The organizational work of creating provincial committees and districts in all parts of Canada inhabited by Mennonite immigrants. 2. The supplying of congregations, schools and homes with German reading material, agricultural literature and last will and testament forms; 3. The revaluation of German war loans for immigrants. 4. The creation of self-help banks in the provinces and relief committees for Russian relief. 5. The subsidizing of Mennonite students at Mennonite institutions of higher education. 6. The inception of economic and cultural projects, as funds permit. 7. The calling of periodic general assemblies etc.34

194

COMMUNITIES AND IDENTITIES! THE RUSSLANDER

By 1933, however, the political situation had radically changed for the Russlander at home and abroad. With any hope of further large-scale emigration from the Soviet Union at an end, the board also had to reconsider its own future role. Much of its efforts were now concentrated on the repayment of the outstanding debt and in covering the additional costs of sick and poor immigrants. At the same time, it was important for the board to maintain unity among the different religious conferences of the immigrants and develop stronger links between the Kanadier and Russlander. Early in 1934 the ZMIK was dissolved and its responsibilities assumed by the Board of Colonization.35 All illusions of social and cultural unity, or of economic and intellectual development for the Russlander alone, were now subordinated to immediate economic realities and the need to develop a wider Mennonite religious unity in Canada and North America.36 In the process the Russlander were to be assimilated to the Canadian and American Mennonite religious conferences, even if their own people were to play a dominant role in the process. Religion as the primary focus of identity became paramount; the clergy subsumed the clerisy and religious authority was reasserted over secular interests. Mennonites not holding religious office were excluded from positions of influence and Mennonite organizations were increasingly dominated by religious concerns. However, much of the wider sense of a separate peoplehood supported by strong bureaucratic organization was to be taken into the emergent conference structures by the immigrant leaders. But the "total" vision of the Mennonite commonwealth with its developing secular face established in Russia was not abandoned without a struggle. The years 1933 and 1934 proved to be a time of crises in the Russlander world. Indications that the board was to be reorganized, and that this would involve a loss of Russlander autonomy and control, resulted in public debates in the Mennonite press on the future of the Russlander and the best way to maintain and support the immigrant community. One writer, H.A. Peters, suggested that the basic structure of ZMIK be retained, but transformed into a central "Menno-Union" (Menno-Verband] with regional groups (Ortsgmppen), districts (Bezirkeri), and provincial committees. The Board of Colonization would be incorporated under this new umbrella organization along with an executive committee. There would also be an annual audit of the work of the Menno-Union and its use of funds. 37 This model was informed by prior Russian experience and the needs of the new land; the Menno-Verband resembled the Mennozentmm established after the 1917 Russian congress and the local groupings followed the system established in Canada on Russian models. Other writers

195

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

were less constructive. Amid contributions celebrating the tenth anniversary of the first immigrant settlement in Canada were articles and letters that openly discussed the immigrants' "problems," often in intemperate language.38 A number were highly critical of the failure of the immigrant leaders and their organizations to re-establish the pre-revolutionary Russian world and to secure a proper future for immigrants and their descendants. Central to this issue were questions of closed, autonomous Mennonite settlements, the relationship between congregations and community, and the issue of identity, especially the connection between the sense of Mennonite peoplehood and Germanness (Deutschtum). The Board of Colonization, the Land Settlement Board, and ZMIK had all been founded in Saskatchewan and largely dominated by people from the first groups of immigrants. Those Mennonites who emigrated later were often drawn into the work of the organizations, especially members of the clerisy or those who had been involved with the Soviet organizations. But others were excluded or became involved in other ventures. The most significant development in this direction involved the foundation in 1926-27 of Mennonite Immigration Aid (MIA).39 This was an organization sponsored mostly by professionals in Winnipeg of Mennonite descent who possessed few religious connections. It aimed to arrange for the emigration and settlement of further Mennonites by using the services of the Cunard shipping line and Canadian National Railways and, therefore, was obviously intended to compete with the Board of Colonization and the CPR and their land settlement policies. While the professionals involved may have been more interested in the business opportunities of the new organization, at least one of MIA's members had wider ambitions. The MIA's most active agent in the field was a new immigrant from Siberia, J.J. Hildebrand. Hildebrand had a colourful past.40 Born in Molochna and trained as a schoolteacher, he had spent some time travelling in North America in 1906, visited Japan, and had returned to southern Russia via the trans-Siberian railway. Fascinated by the potential and opportunities Siberia offered to the entrepreneur, Hildebrand returned there to settle, first acting as a salesman for American agricultural machinery and later as a businessman in the city of Omsk. Hildebrand developed contacts with the Mennonites settled on the Siberian steppe and, during World War I and the civil war, represented their interests to government and military commanders, especially over matters of alternative service. Experience in business and in negotiations with the authorities stimulated his interest in the law and the history of Mennonite legal rights and privileges, an interest he maintained throughout his long life.41 He attended the 1917 Mennonite Congress as a delegate of the Siberian Mennonites and headed the commission that examined Mennonite

196

COMMUNITIES AND IDENTITIES! THE RUSSLANDER

judicial issues.42 He emigrated to Canada in 1925 and unsuccessfully attempted to farm. But his knowledge of business, law, and English soon gave him an opportunity to use his skills. Because MIA planned to increase rapidly the numbers of immigrants coming from the Soviet Union, Hildebrand investigated possible areas of settlement. He favoured Mennonite group settlement, preferably closed settlements separate from outsiders and under Mennonite control. With this in mind, he investigated areas of homestead land situated in remote areas in Ontario and Alberta and, in contrast to the established practice of settling on existing farms, recommended these remote areas for settlement. Previous Russlander settlements, he argued, had scattered Mennonites, made central organization and community building difficult, and increased the risk of assimilation. Like Dietrich Epp, Hildebrand was as much concerned with cultural as with religious assimilation; although he accepted there was a link among religion, identity, and language, the maintenance of identity and Mennonite political autonomy was paramount for him. Although at least one such group settlement was attempted at Reesor in northern Ontario, it proved a failure.43 With the end of emigration from the Soviet Union amid chaotic circumstances in 1929-30, and the closing of Canada to further immigration except in special circumstances, MIA folded and Hildebrand was left without regular employment. But during the 1930s Hildebrand was to become one of the most vocal critics of the earlier settlement policies of the Mennonite immigrant organizations and a person with one of the clearest, if also the most extreme, ideas of an alternative future for the beleaguered Mennonites. What Hildebrand proposed was that the Mennonites form a separate Mennonite state, a "Mennostaat," where Mennonites, or, as they were termed, the "Mennovolk," could fulfil their true genius.44 The solution to the problem [facing Mennonites today] lies in the creation of a suitable place of settlement for a large number of settlers, so that Mennonites from all over the world would have enough room to establish themselves. There should be enough room to enable all of the world's Mennonites so desiring to gather together. The government [Verwaltung] of this colony should be and stay in Mennonite hands in order to keep out gambling casinos, brothels, etc. etc. There should be some kind of autonomy in territorial self-government, with Low and High German serving as official languages and guaranteed unrestricted access to the German cultural spirit [deutschen Geisteskultur] ,45

197

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

For Hildebrand, therefore, peoplehood, community, and congregation could only be achieved fully and guaranteed if the Mennonites became a fully fledged political entity, independent of other states: Assuming that we all lived on a big island or on seventeen islands ... each congregational community [Gemeinde] could occupy one; or that we had a large tract of land on a continent and that each household had a homestead of 50 hectares (120 acres), an export city and small towns in between, how would we go about governing ourselves? Every ten farmers would elect a man from their midst to a regional assembly [Bezirksversammlnng]. Every 10 homeowners or taxpayers in town would do the same thing. About 100 representatives would be sufficient for a region and a regional assembly. Thus the whole Mennonite State would be divided into regions. Every region assembly would elect about two representatives from its midst to the State Assembly [Staatsversammlung]. Every regional assembly would elect a chairman from its midst who would be called a mayor [Schulze] and the State Assembly would elect superior-mayors [Oberschultzen]. The First Officer of the State [Staatsbeamten], who would be elected directly by the people, would be responsible for all regulations, laws and orders, to be decided by absolute majority. In order to keep laws of a general nature uniform throughout the land, the functions of every deputy [Volksvertretung] chosen by the people would be clearly defined. Situated in a remote area, such a state would gather in all "German" Mennonites of the diaspora, exclude outsiders, and unite Mennonites under a single government and sense of peoplehood. This involved the founding of a United Mennonite World Society (Mennos-Sammlungs-Welt-Vereins), whose members would wear a miniature badge of "white, blue and green with a white dove carrying the palm of peace in its beak, on a blue field." On a more practical level, he drew up plans for a self-sufficient but exporting economy, with its own monetary system connected to the international exchange system: "If we were to have sufficient autonomy to warrant the creation of our own currency, it could be a guilder, based on the gold standard, with a quarter of the gold value of the existing US Dollar or equal to the German Mark. In the event that gold not be found in the Mennonite State, the value of the Menno-Guilder would be maintained through easily managed, clearly spelled out regulation of exports and imports." Although Mennonite in name, religious matters were to be separated from civil affairs: "The national church [Landeskirche] would be Mennonite and every congregation would be completely autonomous in matters of private concern. For matters of collective interest to the congregation, the General Conference would be the highest religious

198

COMMUNITIES AND IDENTITIES! THE RUSSLANDER

authority for the region. The state would not pay for matters of a religious nature; these would be left completely to the individual congregations." In a sense Hildebrand's formulation of a Mennonite state was an outcome of the Russian Mennonite experience in imperial Russia, pushing their political pretensions to the logical conclusion of independent autonomy as a nation-state. Hildebrand, as one of the Russian Mennonites' first political "philosophers," merely gave voice to the vision of a state within a state long held by many Russian Mennonites. For Hildebrand, however, the Mennostaat was to be more than a philosophy; he actually investigated the possibility of founding such a settlement in various South American countries, Angola, Dutch New Guinea, and Australia.46 But as he wrote to foreign governments, peddled his proposals through the Mennonite press, and in private promoted it to the leaders of the Russlander in violent language, its practical potential appeared increasingly fantastic. His ideas also assumed a more ominous tone. The emphasis on peoplehood (the Volk), the connection with Germanness, and the desire to exclude "foreigners" reflected the emergence of another factor of the year 1933: the coming to power in Germany of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. Hildebrand's views, in public couched in moderate language, but in private revealing the darker sides of his fantasy, were informed by Nazi ideas of political totalitarianism, the championing of strong leaders (Fuhrerprinzip,}, and racial notions stressing the need to keep those people of German descent separate and pure of degenerate peoples and cultures. But he was not alone in his attraction to Nazi ideas with their emphasis on race and culture. The Nazis' violent opposition to communism, their anti-Semitism, and their apparent support for established religion and family values added to their attraction. The established connection in Russian-Mennonite thought between German and religion, the support the Germans had given to the Mennonite emigration from the Soviet Union, especially in the final rush of 1929, and the flood of German books and magazines had increased Russlander knowledge, awareness, and sympathy for Germany. With the apparent failure of the immigrants to recreate the Mennonite commonwealth in Canada and the threat of their assimilation into the dominant English-speaking culture as second-class citizens, a "German" identity and the emergence of Nazi Germany as a political force in world affairs held a certain attraction for many Russlander. Increasingly through the 1930s, the Canadian German-language Mennonite newspapers published radical expressions of support for the Nazis accompanied by appeals for Mennonites to recognize and achieve their true German destiny in unity with Nazi principles as members of a greater Germandom.47 On the other hand, some Mennonites, including Russlander, protested vigorously over the

199

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

conflation of an appreciation of the German language in literature, music, and religion with current political movements on a European continent distant from Canada. Mennonites, they insisted, were primarily a religious grouping, and discussions of culture, identity and language should not lose sight of this essential fact.48 At the 1934 meeting of the Conference of Mennonites in Canada in Saskatchewan, the minister D.J. Loewen from Winnipeg presented a paper on Mennonites and their proper attitude to the state, a subject obviously connected with the current newspaper debates, even though he makes no direct reference to them. Loewen argued that in the past Mennonites had been largely passive in politics but as citizens they should now become active and vote in elections. He also suggested that the Conference strengthen the teaching of nonresistance. The Conference agreed, but also warned young people against joining political parties.49 The need to stress nonresistance was also connected to the debates on Mennonite political autonomy. If Mennonites were to be truly autonomous, it was obvious they would have to abandon nonresistance and defend their territory and peoplehood. It is not surprising that in his paper to the conference, Loewen chose to discuss the Mennonite self-defence units formed in the Russian civil war. After 1934 this issue, along with a questioning of Mennonite nonresistance, also emerged as a subject for debate in the Mennonite newspapers. Once again, the supporters of the new Nazi regime in Germany were among the most vocal defenders of the actions of the self-defence units and their abandonment of Mennonite nonresistance in the face of terror and the Bolsheviks.50 Nazi Germany was clearly a militant state, rearming itself, and German Mennonites had largely abandoned the principle of nonresistance in the nineteenth century. But some Mennonite religious leaders condemned the self-defence units and re-emphasized the importance of nonresistance, especially the former leader of the Ukrainian Verband, the Mennonite Brethren minister B.B. Janz.51 In spite of these efforts to strengthen core religious beliefs, there was an absence of strong leadership in many quarters; privately, some religious leaders were even sympathetic to arguments for Mennonite autonomy. Issues of peoplehood remained highly politicized, especially around the calls for a preservation of the German language and a separate identity. While there was much overheated rhetoric among proposers of a Mennonite state, there was little support to establish a Mennonite state, closed village communities, economic unions, or any of the other unlikely ventures proposed by the most vocal proponents of autonomy.52 Only a few individuals translated ideological allegiance into direct action by deciding to "return" with their families to Germany. Those making this move included the poet Gerhard J. Friesen (Fritz Senn), who moved to Germany in 1938, and the publisher Arnold Dyck, who sent his family to Germany but failed to join them before the outbreak of World War II.53 200

COMMUNITIES AND IDENTITIES! THE RUSSLANDER

Mennonite religious leaders attempted to get the editors of the Mennonite press to suppress articles by Hildebrand, Schroeder, Senn, and others of similar political views, but debates over peoplehood and politics continued in the Mennonite press up to the outbreak of World War II.54 The gap between Mennonite desires and realities, however, widened, rather than closed. The formulation of fantastic political visions and of a politicized peoplehood among Mennonite immigrants during the 1930s, views that focussed their attention away from Canada to events in Europe, reflected a widespread alienation from their new land. It also involved an implicit, if rarely stated, criticism of Canadians and the Canadian political system. But the debates over peoplehood also provoked some Mennonites to patriotic expressions of Canadianness and support for what today would be called "multiethnic" identities—Canadian and German and even Dutch—in opposition to those who wished to assert only a total, purified Germanness. The influential elder and writer J.H. Janzen wrote in 1938 that "Canada, Germanism, Mennonitism [and] Russian Mennonitism ... are conceptions which are not mutually exclusive but rather inclusive."55 During its time, ZMIK did not involve itself much with political considerations outside the Mennonite world, although its mandate included the right to represent the interests of the immigrants with the old homeland and with foreign governments. Through the committee's intervention, loans Mennonites had made to the Germans during their brief occupation of Ukraine in 1918 were repaid by the German government. In 1929 the committee addressed a letter to Prime Minister Mackenzie King on behalf of the immigrants, stressing their loyalty and gratitude for having been permitted to settle in Canada.56 This coincided with the government's change in policies towards further immigration and the debacle of the last rush of emigrants from the Soviet Union. In 1930 ZMIK submitted a statement to the Saskatchewan Royal Commission on Immigration and Settlement, again stressing the loyalty of the immigrants and their close links with the English, including drawing a connection between Low German and Old English, and their allegiance to the Canadian state.57 Again, such approaches reveal a lack of understanding of the political structure and processes in their new homeland. When they could not achieve their ends by other means, Mennonites resorted to approaching people in high office, submitting petitions and statements of loyalty, and even sending delegations with as wide a representation of congregational ministers as possible in the hope of influencing those they saw in positions of authority. Democracy was fine when Mennonites could dominate by sheer force of numbers; when not, they reverted to appeals to individuals in power as if such people possessed the autocratic power of the tsars as in their old homeland. In such circumstances, petitions

201

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

included "florid declarations of loyalty to Canada and unbounded confidence in its just government."58 The 1929 letter addressed to Prime Minister Mackenzie King by Dietrich Epp on behalf of ZMIK expressed Mennonite "gratitude to the highly esteemed Canadian government for the privilege of having been permitted to come to this country where they can live in peace and contentment," make use of the schooling system, and realize "the possibility of engaging in the work which has been their occupation for centuries past—agriculture." Individually and collectively, Mennonite endeavours were directed "to developing this occupation among their people." Realizing the "opportunities that this country gives them," the delegates also wished to recognize that "opportunity breeds obligation and duty" that included contributing to the development of agriculture and the "social upbuilding of the nation."59 The existence of the British monarchy and Canada's membership in a larger empire were seen as positive. Russia had been an empire and earlier expressions of support for the tsar were transferred to the British Royal family.60 Royalty was held in high esteem and, for the visit of King George VI to Canada in 1939, the Mennonite Conference drew up an address of loyalty in an elaborate document presented to the royal party.61 In the early years of settlement, the immigrants showed some interest in the democratic parliamentary political system of their new land. In 1926 a new immigrant compared his new land with Russia and praised Canada's political and legal system, which, he argued, provided Mennonites with more opportunity and freedom than they had known in tsarist Russia.62 The diamond jubilee of Canadian Confederation in 1927 was reported in Mennonite newspapers and Jakob P. Penner provided an overview of the Canadian constitution and an account of Canadian history.63 Questions of citizenship became crucial, as most immigrants held Soviet passports and ZMIK and the CPR were eager to see the Russlander take out Canadian citizenship as soon as they were eligible. The question of citizenship became highly politicized as various provincial governments, caught in the chaos of the Depression, restricted settlement by linking assimilation with questions of citizenship and loyalty.64 One Mennonite noted that in Russia he had been a Russian patriot, but that he was now a Canadian; another, writing against the connection between support for the German language and political allegiance to the Nazis, drew a similar parallel with the Russian experience and argued that Mennonites needed to fulfil their duty as Canadian citizens.65 What exactly being a "Canadian" entailed, however, remained problematic for many Russlander. As the immigrants gained citizenship and could vote in national elections, most are reported to have voted Liberal, supporting the politicians they saw as having allowed them to settle in Canada. But

202

COMMUNITIES AND IDENTITIES! THE RUSSLANDER

at first there was little appreciation of party politics; it was a question of continued loyalty to a party without understanding the nature of its politics. When, in 1934, a writer from Winkler praised the program of William Whittaker's fascist Canadian Nationalist Party, Dietrich Epp suggested that Canadians might not support such a party.66 In fact the leader of Whittaker's group in Winkler was of Mennonite descent, one Viktor Unruh.67 Whittaker's political tracts were printed in Winnipeg by the editor of the Mennonitische Rundschau, Hermann Neufeld; Neufeld had close links with Winkler, where he had family connections.68 In 1939, as the Mennonite religious leadership presented their document of loyalty to King George VI, Neufeld published in the Rundschau Hitler's full speech to the Reichstag, which presaged his attack on Poland and the outbreak of World War II.69 Earlier in 1939 a Mennonite schoolteacher in the district of Morden, close to Winkler, had argued that support for Hitler and the Nazis and Canadian citizenship were not incompatible; when World War II broke out, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Department of Education thought otherwise. He was dismissed from his post and his teacher's certificate revoked.70 Another Mennonite teacher from Shakespeare School at Ste. Anne suffered the same fate for holding similar views.71 Provincial politics during the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the prairie provinces, were of a different order. Some of the provincial political parties, such as the United Farmers of Alberta, were seen as not just English parties but also as organizations opposed to foreign immigrants, and in some areas to Mennonites in particular.72 But provincial politics in the 1920s and 1930s were extremely varied and extreme, especially in the different prairie provinces.73 However, Russlander interest in the wider world of politics was reborn in Canada from local-level concerns, but with more of an emphasis on democratic processes and without much of the pretension and separatism that had informed their political views in Russia. Such separatist attitudes tended to survive longer and even to receive more reinforcement from Mennonite religious organizations than from local communities. It was to such organizations that those with visions of a more integrated religious peoplehood retreated after the failure to build a more comprehensive secular organizational system and after the embarrassments of the politicization of peoplehood during the 1930s. The conferences and congregations, and their leaders, would have to wait longer to adapt to the democratic spirit of the Canadian environment and model their church structures on real representative participation.74

203

This page intentionally left blank

9 PARTY AND "ETHNICITY": MANITOBA (1927-1974)

A

lthough many Manitoba Mennonites had withdrawn from open political involvement by the end of World War I, a core of Liberal supporters remained, most established in the town of Winkler.1 Several were businessmen and members of the Mennonite Brethren church. When Valentine Winkler, the member for Morden and Rhineland, died suddenly in 1920, his son Howard, recently returned from war service, was nominated by local Liberals to stand in the resulting by-election. But he was soundly defeated, in part by a lack of Mennonite support and perhaps even by Mennonite opposition following their displeasure with the actions of the provincial Liberal government during the war.2 Throughout the 1920s the Liberals steadily rebuilt their local party organization and, by 1927, fielded a Mennonite candidate in the provincial election. Their candidate was the mayor of Winkler, Peter Biickert, a businessman and member of the Mennonite Brethren who had emigrated to Canada from Russia in 1893 with his parents.3 The Liberal campaign in Morden and Rhineland was directed at Mennonites and emphasized "tolerance and school development." It promised Mennonites not only one of their "own folk" in the legislative assembly, but also that German instruction would be permitted in their schools and the German language encouraged.4 This appeal was aimed not only at the older Kanadier Mennonites but also at the new immigrants, the Russlander. Unfortunately, the former still distrusted the Liberals and many of

Map 8: East Reserve, Manitoba

PARTY AND

ETHNICITY

! MANITOBA

the latter lacked the right to vote as they still had to obtain citizenship. Biickert lost heavily in a three-way fight with Conservative candidates, receiving only 518 of the votes cast. As a later immigrant, a Mennonite Brethren, and a resident of Winkler, Biickert was in many ways a marginal figure to many West Reserve Mennonites, even those interested in participating in the political process. In preparation for the 1932 election the Liberal Party machine strengthened its local branch organization in the Mennonite towns and districts across the electorate.5 More importantly, they selected as their candidate a descendant of the 1870s immigrants, a member of the Bergthaler Church and an educated, respected figure in the community, the Winkler physician Dr. Cornelius W. Wiebe.6 Well ahead of actually being nominated, Wiebe's intentions were approved by the Bergthaler ministerial (Lehrdiensf), who gave him their unanimous support and "God's richest blessing if he should be elected and advises him that they will remember him in their prayers and that the church will also support him if he should go into this responsible work."7 Why Wiebe received such unprecedented support is unclear, but one reason might have been concern with the effects of the Depression on the Mennonite community and the hope that having a Mennonite in the legislature in a party associated with the government might help ease the situation.8 The electorate had been represented since 1920 by Conservative candidates who, unlike many Liberals, were opposed to the "Progressive" non-partisan government of John Bracken first established in 1922. Wiebe stood as a LiberalProgressive rather than as a Liberal, a decision that probably reflected the Bergthaler's greater ease in supporting a non-partisan form of government.9 The partisan nature of the election campaign, however, reflected local divisions in the Mennonite world. During the 1932 election, a research team from Montreal, studying Mennonites on the West Reserve, reported a marked increase in political activity, attendance at meetings, and open campaigning. They also reported political rivalries and clear divisions in the community, with some Mennonites in religiously conservative areas supporting the non-Mennonite Conservative candidate.10 This may also account for the Bergthaler ministerial's later warning its members not to be involved with those who opposed the government.11 Voting was heavy and Wiebe beat the sitting candidate, an English doctor from Plum Coulee, Hugh McGavin, by 447 votes (2837 to 2390), to become the first Mennonite in Manitoba to be successfully elected to the legislature. Wiebe's impact while he was in the legislature appears to have been minimal; he did not enjoy his time in politics and decided not to stand again at the next election in 1936.12 In his place the Liberals chose another Winkler Mennonite, J.J. 207

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Enns.13 Like Biickert, Enns was a former mayor, businessman, and a member of the Mennonite Brethren, but he lacked Wiebe's broad appeal with Bergthaler voters and sections of the rural electorate, as well as a base in Altona. In the election he lost by 358 votes to the Conservative W.C. Miller from Gretna, whose ancestors were of "German descent" from Waterloo County in Ontario.14 In 1940 a nonMennonite from Winkler, John R. Walkof, was chosen to stand against Miller but, like Enns, lost; within a year, however, the Conservatives had joined Bracken's non-partisan government for the rest of the war.15 During Wiebe's 1932 campaign, advertisements in the Mennonitische Rundschau stressed his Mennonite background and qualities. The advertisement noted he was the son of an 1874 immigrant farmer with links to the soil, a graduate of the Mennonite Educational Institute in Altona, had obtained professional qualifications, possessed a good knowledge of German, and was of "German" ancestry.16 In many ways these messages were directed at different sections of the Mennonite electorate and were not necessarily read the same way by members of these sections. His farming background appealed to rural conservatives but they remained suspicious of his "higher" learning; the emphasis on German appealed to conservatives concerned with school issues, but the mention of Germanness combined with higher learning was aimed at a different audience, mainly the newly settled Russlander. From the early 1930s increasing numbers of Russlander who had arrived from the Soviet Union after 1923 became eligible to vote and most had few objections to voting or becoming involved in politics. At first the different levels of government and local municipal systems in various areas of Canada, as well as the different political parties, confused many Russlander. In 1927 in the Russlander newspaper DerBote, G. Enns of Saskatchewan responded to a number of queries on local government by explaining the structure, authority, and responsibilities of the municipal system, how district representatives were selected and elected, and who had the right to vote.17 Russlander were particularly concerned with the education of their children, essential for the transference of religious principles, their sense of peoplehood across generations, and economic success. They were eager to support public education but on their own terms, so it was important to gain a "voice" on school boards and local municipalities.18 In time, where Russlander settled in established areas of rural Kanadier settlement, their presence often increased local voter turnout.19 Russlander ministers generally did not try to prevent congregational members from voting, although some did warn against direct, public participation in partisan politics.20 A commonly held view is that most Russlander voted Liberal during the 1930s and

208

PARTY AND

ETHNICITY

: MANITOBA

1940s. This was not necessarily a reflection of heartfelt allegiance to the principles of liberalism, but more an expression of loyalty towards the leader of the Liberal Party, W. Mackenzie King, who many people believed had personally intervened to permit Mennonites to settle in Canada in the early 1920s.21 It is also suggested that some ministers, even from the pulpit, exhorted congregational members directly or indirectly to vote Liberal. In 1934 the influential Russlander leader in Ontario, Elder Jacob H. Janzen, in a private letter to the head of the Board of Colonization, David Toews, noted that his people were Liberals "down to the marrow of their bones."22 Where, due to their particular concentration of settlement, Russlander voters can be identified, there is clear evidence of strong support for the Liberals. In practice, however, support for parties sometimes varied in and between immigrant communities according to religious allegiance when important local issues were involved, and whether the election was provincial or federal. The international situation in the early 1930s, especially in the Soviet Union and Germany, also influenced political attitudes and voting preferences. Cornelius Wiebe's decision to stand for election in 1932 drew an extensive comment from the Russlander owner and editor of the Steinbach-based newspaper Die Post, Arnold Dyck.23 Although the newspaper was read on the West as well as the East Reserve, on certain issues Dyck clearly speaks as a Russlander. In his editorial Dyck betrays a common Russlander suspicion of popular democracy, but not in terms of the older Kanadier religious concerns of involvement with the "world." Instead, Dyck decries popularism and the vulgarity of party politics by hinting at the need for strong leadership in government and briefly mentioning the "autocratic forms" of European government then best represented by Mussolini's fascism; Hitler's seizure of power in Germany, which would capture the imagination of some Russlander, including Dyck himself, was still a year away. Although democracy was "imperfect," Dyck still supported voting, as he considered that Mennonites needed to assert themselves during the election and participate, become "citizens like other citizens" and strive for "full equality": Mennonites have been participating in elections for years: municipal, provincial and federal. Although Mennonites have long let themselves be voted into municipal governments, there has been little effort expended at sending our Mennonite, or at the very least, German, representatives to the provincial legislature. We vote for the English, the French, etc. We should not forget that these men are English, French, etc. first, and only secondly representatives of the Mennonites and the Germans. We are a far cry from having our representatives see it as their first duty to defend our interests as a people and as a district Thus, if we were to vote in the election to help shape the life of our people, it would only be logical

209

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

and sensible to seek to influence the building of the nation in such a way as to be advantageous both to the nation as a whole and to us as a distinct group. We can only do this, however, if we present our ideas, our wishes and our demands to the law-making body through men [chosen] from our midst and from our own people. In this light Dyck endorsed Wiebe's candidature because "he is a Mennonite, he lives among Mennonites, he knows them and all their needs, he is well-educated (a medical doctor) and would attend to the well-being of the province as a whole and not only to the special interests of the Mennonites and the Germans ... all Mennonite and German voters in the Morden-Rhineland constituency should, without exception, throw their support behind their German-Mennonite candidate." Dyck's constant reference to a common German-Mennonite sense of peoplehood hints at "race" being the most significant factor in determining political relations, a rather ominous reflection of the times. Most important in the political attitudes of Russlander during the 1930s was a hatred of communism. The advertisements for the main parties in the newspapers Mennonites read clearly reveal this rhetoric during the 1935 federal election and indicate the "international" focus aimed to appeal to Russlander rather than older conservative Mennonites.24 The Nordwesten carried advertisements for Bennett's Conservatives depicting an armed guard with hammer and sickle, a destroyed village, and a church demolition.25 Not to be outdone, the Liberal advertisements, which dominated the Mennonite newspapers and were carefully tailored for a Mennonite readership, announced in bold headlines that the party "struggled for the farmer but against Communism."26 The Post carried only Liberal advertisements, which mentioned the name of Mackenzie King under a heading stressing the Liberal Party's anti-communist stance; the issue published before the day of the election included a picture of King on the first page and photographs of members of his cabinet, as well as advertisements for the Liberals on every other page.27 The Post also published a detailed explanation on the Liberals' proposal to repeal as "un-British" (or "un-English," as another article states) Section 98 of the Criminal Code, a clause forbidding assembly, introduced in 1919 during industrial unrest in Canada, especially the Winnipeg strike. Convincing Russlander to vote for a party that wanted to repeal a law that might be used against communist subversives and that resembled laws recently passed in Nazi Germany obviously was seen as a challenge by party organizers, hence the space devoted to the issue.28 The strategy apparently worked: in Lisgar, Howard Winkler was elected as a Liberal and, where Russlander voters can be identified in the seat of Provencher in the East Reserve, the Liberals also secured their vote.29 210

P A R T Y AND

ETHNICITY I MANITOBA

When, in his editorial on Wiebe's campaign, Arnold Dyck had complained that Mennonites had only elected non-Mennonites to political office, he revealed an ignorance of earlier political activity across the Red River. But as a recent immigrant, writing from the perspective of the old East Reserve, where before the 1930s there is little evidence of any concerted Mennonite political activity beyond the municipal level, such a view of Mennonite apoliticism might be excused. As late as 1930 an elder of the Kleine Gemeinde, Peter P. Reimer, republished for the instruction of his congregation a pamphlet written by a Pennsylvania Amish minister explaining why Christians should not vote.30 Although from the 1930s onwards the number of voters in the developing town of Steinbach in the East Reserve steadily increased, in rural areas such as Blumenort members of the Kleine Gemeinde (or its later forms) only began to vote in significant numbers in the 1960s and 1970s.31 As Dyck indicated, Mennonites, by excluding themselves from voting in provincial and federal elections, left Manitoban French candidates to represent them. The provincial seat covering most of the old East Reserve, Carillon, was held almost continually from 1903 until 1935 by Albert Prefontaine, as a Conservative (1903 to 1920), a member of the United Farmers of Manitoba (1922 to 1927), and finally as a Liberal Progressive. He was succeeded by his son, Edmond Prefontaine, who was to hold the seat as a Liberal Progressive, an Independent Liberal, and finally as a Liberal until 1962.32 Federal politics followed a similar pattern with Arthur Lucien Beaubien, a farmer, holding the seat of Provencher from 1925 to 1940 either as a Liberal or Liberal Progressive; he was succeeded by the Liberal Rene Jutras, a teacher, who was re-elected four times until 1957.33 The Mennonites on the East Reserve, therefore, were almost a generation behind the West Reserve in their involvement in politics. Even then much of their involvement is invisible because they worked behind the scenes rather than up front or by standing as candidates in elections. In some communities the religious leadership remained opposed to open political involvement and their power over members of their congregations was strong. In local municipal affairs, however, political activity, which often reflected divisions between Mennonites of different faiths, emigrations, and rural/township allegiances, played its part in establishing the skills and power bases later transferred to provincial and federal politics. But it was not until after World War II that these skills were fully utilized in the East Reserve and the deeper divisions in local communities reflected in municipal politics became visible in provincial and federal elections, as they had earlier on the West Reserve.

211

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

The outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 and Canada's involvement once again presented Mennonites with many challenges. The dubious political opinions of some Russlander were largely overlooked by a bumbling Royal Canadian Mounted Police more bent on chasing suspected communists than Nazi sympathizers.34 Some Russlander scrambled to claim a Dutch rather than a German ancestry and others puzzled over what to answer to the question on "race" on manpower registration forms.35 However, there were larger issues all Mennonites had to confront, the most important of which concerned their religious principles and nonresistant status. Younger Mennonites raised in the public school system also had to deal with questions of their duties as patriotic citizens. In terms of nonresistance, alternative forms of service were devised, but a number of Mennonites asserted their patriotism by abandoning their religious principles and enlisting in the military.36 Only two elections were held early during the war, a federal election in 1940 and a provincial election the following year. In the federal election Mennonite newspapers supported mainly the Liberals, whose advertisements were more prominent than other parties.37 In the provincial elections of 1941, the number of Mennonites voting dropped, in Morden-Rhineland, from 66 percent of registered voters in 1936 to 37 percent in 1941; in Carillon, the drop was from 67 percent to 46 percent (the provincial-wide decline was from 66 percent to 50 percent). This fall in the numbers voting and an apparent general lack of interest in elections are reflected in the decline of newspaper reports and advertisements in the Mennonite press, in spite of a Mennonite's standing as an independent in Morden Rhineland.38 During the wartime years, however, politics gave way to the need for national unity and for a period this tended to remove partisan politics from the public arena. Mennonite political opinion and allegiances, real or imagined, were also hidden from public scrutiny. The 1942 plebiscite on conscription, however, provided an opportunity for Mennonites to express their opinions on the war. In many areas of older Mennonite settlement where Mennonites had participated in elections, there was little or no voting on the plebiscite; in the Waterloo area of Ontario the local Mennonites refused to vote.39 In some Russlander areas of Manitoba, however, Mennonites certainly voted. It is perhaps significant that only the electoral district of Provencher in Manitoba voted against the proposal: 60 percent rejected conscription, compared to a provincial-wide acceptance of 81 percent. According to contemporary newspaper reports, the French, Ukrainians, Poles, and "Germans" (i.e., Mennonites) were clearly opposed to conscription; figures for Grunthal, an area with a large Russlander population, show a clear rejection of the proposal.40 During the war, open partisan politics may have been suspended in the provincial and federal arenas but the reach of government increased. The total war

212

PARTY AND

ETHNICITY : MANITOBA

effort resulted in a centralization of administrative controls and the provinces surrendered certain rights to Ottawa. But at the local level the responsibilities of municipalities increased. H.H. Hamm, the secretary treasurer of the Rhineland Municipality and later mayor of Altona, noted how the war had greatly increased his work.41 Mennonites were involved not only in forms of alternative and military service, but some were also drawn into the civil service, a few even serving in Ottawa.42 As one Mennonite civil servant later was to point out, there were other ways of serving government than being involved in politics, being a party member, or standing for election.43 Overall, the war forced more Mennonites into the public arena and exposed young people to worlds beyond their local communities. The rhetoric advanced during the war—that once peace had returned, Canadians would face a world of change and progress—indicated an increased role for government in society. A new generation of Mennonites and non-Mennonites was thus prepared for a more politicized post-war environment. Ahead of the 1945 general election, pupils in the largely Mennonite school of Haskett on the old West Reserve conducted a mock election campaign, and the resulting vote mirrored the actual result in Lisgar with a Liberal victory for the sitting candidate, Howard Winkler.44 His re-election signalled, however, that in the new post-war world a break with the political allegiances of the past would be delayed until the 1950s. The Steinbach Post, under its new editor/owner, the Russlander Gerhard S. Derksen, printed advertisements for all the main parties competing in Mennonite areas. However, on the front page of the final edition before voting day, C.F. Klassen, a noted figure in the Russlander community, practically told voters to support the Liberals. His "instruction" was hidden in an article on "our prime minister," Mackenzie King, which detailed his past support for Mennonites.45 The Mennonitische Rundschau carried only Liberal adverts without editorial comment but also published Klassen's article.46 The pre-war Russlander support for the federal Liberals had not changed in the national sphere. In the federal election of June 1949, the Progressive Conservative Party fielded a Mennonite candidate in Lisgar, Diedrich Heppner, who increased the conservative Mennonite vote but did not reduce the percentage voting Liberal.47 The provincial election that followed the federal election of 1945 suggested that Mennonite support for the Liberals might be changing. By the 1940s John Bracken's "coalition" governments, which had existed since 1922 and which aimed to remove partisan politics from provincial government, had almost reduced government in Manitoba to the level of a "municipal administration" and resulted in a "negative democracy" in which politics had almost ceased to exist.48 During the war, Bracken resigned as Manitoba's premier in order to lead the national

213

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Conservatives, who were renamed at his insistence "Progressive Conservatives." However, his successor as provincial premier, S.S. Carson, continued Bracken's policies. In the November 1945 provincial elections, Carson proposed that the wartime coalition be continued, a decision that resulted in divisions among Conservatives and Liberals and between supporters and non-supporters of the coalition government. In Morden-Rhineland both the Liberal and Conservative candidates supported the coalition.49 In Carillon, the electorate covering the old East Reserve, the sitting member, Edmond Prefontaine, was returned unopposed, but, according to post-election Liberal Party reports, he had caused "considerable trouble" in neighbouring constituencies by supporting non-coalition candidates. The report indicated that possible Conservative candidates had been thinking of opposing him, including a person with a Mennonite name, Reimer, but bad roads, shortness of time, and personal factors had prevented them from standing.50 In the 1949 provincial election, when the government again asked for an extension of its coalition, Prefontaine stood as an Independent Liberal in Carillon and was re-elected, although it is clear that the Mennonite vote was divided and a majority supported the coalition Liberal Progressive candidate.51 With the defeat of supporters of the coalition and the election of a Liberal government, the long rule of coalition governments in Manitoba ended and party politics returned. During the 1930s Manitobans elected provincial and federal representatives belonging nominally to the established Liberal and Conservative parties. In the other prairie provinces, however, new and more radical political parties were formed, which, in time, came to power. In Alberta Social Credit achieved government in the 1930s and maintained control of the province into the 1960s; in Saskatchewan the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was formed in the 1930s and eventually came to power in the 1950s.52 Both parties developed political parties in other provinces and entered the federal arena. Both political parties also had religious connections, the CCF with social gospel teachings and Social Credit, through its first leader William Aberhart and his successor Ernest Manning, with fundamentalist evangelical Christianity.53 Of the two, the association of CCF with the teachings of the social gospel might appear to the uninitiated as ideally suited to the Mennonites' Anabaptist heritage.54 However, the history of Canadian Mennonite groups in Europe and North America since the Reformation made Social Credit more attractive to many Mennonite voters. The association in many Mennonite minds of the CCF with "socialism" clearly made the party unacceptable to most Russlander, who saw communist conspiracies at the slightest sign of government-promoted social programs. An article on Social 214

P A R T Y AND

ETHNICITY

I MANITOBA

Credit published in the Steinbach Post during the 1945 federal election hinted that a vote for the CCF would be a vote for socialism, a "front for Communism," and suggested that if voters could not support Social Credit, they should vote Liberal instead.55 For Kanadier the rejection of the CCF was a more complex matter. On the West Reserve, in contrast to the East, Mennonite cooperative societies had been very successful in helping the community lift itself out of the Depression.56 But support for the economic work of cooperatives did not extend to an acceptance of its broader social principles or its associated political agenda. In the 1945 provincial election, a farmer of Mennonite descent from Morden, Edward Friesen, stood for the CCF in Morden-Rhineland but received under 8 percent of the total vote and probably less from Mennonites.57 In federal elections in the same year, the CCF candidate, a non-Mennonite, reached 15 percent of the vote in Lisgar, the seat that covered roughly the same territory, but only an estimated 8 percent of the Mennonite vote; in the federal elections that followed, the Mennonite vote for CCF candidates remained negligible and in Provencher, even when CCF bothered to run candidates, they received 1 percent of the vote or lower. When the redoubtable J.J. Siemens, whose name was closely associated with the success of cooperatives on the West Reserve, stood as a CCF candidate for Provencher in the federal election of 1958, he received just 2 percent of the vote. The editor of the local newspaper, a Liberal supporter and later candidate in provincial elections, David K. Friesen, who in fact supported the cooperative movement, suggested that the movement should not be drawn into political controversy.58 Not until the 1970s, after the CCF had been transformed into the New Democratic Party (NDP), would Mennonites in any significant numbers vote for the party and then more in urban than in rural areas. The situation with Social Credit was entirely different. Although no history of the Social Credit movement in Manitoba has been written, there is little doubt that Mennonites were active supporters and members of the party from the 1940s through to the late 1960s.59 But this does not mean, as certain political commentators at the time suggested in the press, that the majority of Mennonites in Manitoba supported Social Credit due to its mix of "revealed religion ... and home bred finance."60 The "funny-money" ideas of the English founder of Social Credit's social-economic program, Major C.H. Douglas, held little appeal for Mennonites; instead, the religious connections of the leaders of Canadian Social Credit parties and the conservative, anti-socialist ideas of its post-war ideology certainly appealed to certain sections of the Mennonite community.61 In particular, Social Credit's links with evangelical fundamentalism, begun in Alberta in the 1930s, found support after 1945, even in predominantly rural Kanadier communities where a new sense of Mennonite conservatism, associated with a rejection of the rapid pace of

215

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

social change, combined with the promotion of evangelical Christianity through the activities of tent missions.62 In some Russlander communities similar religious sentiments and influences occurred; here, opposition to change and assimilation combined with older, right-wing views fuelled by a sense of the end-times, as the Cold War signalled the final confrontation between the forces of Christian good and communist evil. Therefore, even among Mennonites in Manitoba, the appeal of Social Credit varied in subtle ways from group to group and manifested itself differently in electorates and during various campaigns. Returns from both federal elections (Table 1) indicate a strong Mennonite support for Social Credit, well above average, in certain areas where Mennonites were in a majority. TABLE 1: Mennonite Support for Social Credit Federal Elections

1940

1945

1953

1957

1958

1962

1963

1965

East Reserve (avg %)

(17)

(13)

(29)

(9)

(17)

(17)

(9)

Niverville East

65

30

66

25

61

38

21

Steinbach

47

19

48

16

32

21

9

Grunmal

27

12

55

13

19

14

10

(nc)

(21)

(27)

(7)

(19)

(21)

(15)

34

62

20

45

40

36

38

17

31

23

18

West Reserve (avg %)

(7)

Mennonite vote (est.)

11

Altona

22

Mennonite support for Social Credit in federal elections on both sides of the Red River, 1940-1965 (avg % = average percent for entire electorate; est = estimated; nc = no candidate). Source: Adapted from Barry Heinrichs, "Voting trends among Mennonites of the West Reserve," 1979, and Don Harms, "Mennonite participation in federal elections," 1979.

While support for Social Credit was apparent in the 1945 provincial elections, none of the candidates were Mennonite. This situation changed dramatically in 1953, when Mennonites stood for Social Credit in both the electorates where Mennonites potentially were in a majority: Klaas T. Kroeker of Steinbach in Carillon, and in Rhineland, a Russlander schoolteacher who, before the war, had been attracted to right-wing political movements in the Winkler area, Victor Peters.63 At the same time five other candidates with identifiable Mennonite names contested 216

P A R T Y AND

ETHNICITY I MANITOBA

other electorates across Manitoba.64 In the 1953 campaign, Social Credit entered forty-two candidates in Manitoba electorates. Its most "colorful stump campaigner," the Reverend Ernest Hansell from Alberta, led the party's push to gain power and an American newspaper reported that its "political rallies have the air of religious revival meetings" aimed at attracting the votes of Mennonites and other groups.65 Although none of the Mennonite Social Credit candidates won a seat, the presence of so many candidates with Mennonite names suggests a deeper Mennonite involvement in the party above local-level organization. In 1957 a person with a Mennonite name, Bernhard H. Rempel, who had stood for Portage la Prairie in 1953, was elected president of the provincial party and his vice-presidents also had Mennonite names and connections—I.R. Dyck of Winkler and S. Toews of Steinbach.66 More research is needed on these Mennonite connections, but it is clear from voting returns from places like Niverville East (and La Broquerie), and given the support for the party in north Winnipeg, that in certain areas members of the Mennonite Brethren, many of them of Russlander background, were keen supporters.67 In the 1945 election, for instance, the votes for Social Credit in Niverville were as high as 88 percent, compared with average support of 21 percent, and voting for Social Credit in this Mennonite-dominated area remained above 50 percent for a number of subsequent elections.68 The religious attractions of evangelical fundamentalism are clear, but for these Russlander living in the shadow of the Bolshevik revolution and Stalin's terror, the right-wing, anti-communist message was also significant.69 Somewhat disturbing, however, are press accusations of anti-Semitism among members of the Manitoba party and at the national level, which hint at a sinister continuity with certain pre-war sentiments among older Russlander.70 Support for Social Credit, however, was not restricted to Mennonite Brethren or Russlander, but, particularly on the old West Reserve, included Kanadier. Here, newly developed connections with evangelical fundamentalism combined with the view that government should not interfere in individuals' lives. Such ideas began to replace the older prescription that as a religious people, Mennonites should remain separate from politics and the state. At the same time Social Credit conservatism with a religious message became embroiled in local political and socio-economic dynamics unique to the area. The result was the phenomenon of Jacob M. Froese, who would hold the seat of Rhineland for Social Credit for ten long years through four provincial elections. Froese possessed important credentials to secure the old and new conservative religious vote in the Mennonite community. His father, Jacob J. Froese, was the elder/bishop of the Old Order Mennonites, the rump of the conservative Reinlander Mennonites who had remained in Canada after many of the others had

217

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

emigrated to Mexico after World War II. As a farmer from near Winkler, Froese maintained links with the rural Mennonite farming communities, but as president of the Winkler Credit Union and as a local school trustee, he also had contacts with more progressive township communities.71 In the early 1950s, along with later political opponents in provincial election campaigns, A.J. Thiessen and David K. Friesen, Froese helped develop a local community radio station, the religious, social, and cultural programs of which became so influential in the lives of many southern Manitoba Mennonites.72 When the long-time member for Rhineland, W.C. Miller, died in 1959, Froese won the resulting by-election for Social Credit in a closerun, three-way campaign with Liberal and Progressive Conservative candidates.73 Froese became the only Social Credit member in the legislature and was fully expected to be ousted at the next election. But in 1962 he won again with a tiny majority of just 33 votes. He then went on to win both the subsequent elections in 1966 and 1969, again with small majorities, and was finally ousted in the 1973 election, by which time Social Credit in Manitoba and on the national scene was largely a spent force. Froese's success in Rhineland in part reflected divisions in the Mennonite community, which permitted an insignificant third party on the provincial and national scene to gain acceptance at a local level. The local issues reflected the longstanding differences between conservative and progressive Mennonites in religious and social matters. Rural versus township values also complicated matters, as did the emergence of evangelical revivalism in the area and the increasing general effects of prosperity and educational change. One major issue involved the continuation of private schools and of local school districts, which Froese supported, and government proposals for larger, unitary school districts and higher, state-funded education ideas supported by progressive Mennonites. The struggle centred on local communities voting for consolidated school districts where small, local schools and their boards were closed and students concentrated in major centres for reasons of efficiency in teaching and administration. Many decisions to form such schools and new districts were rejected through the 1960s into the early 1970s by older, conservative members of the communities.74 Once the opinions of these people were overturned, and the school districts unified, Froese's support disappeared.75 But his candidature had one important and lasting effect: many conservative Mennonites who once had been wary of voting entered the political arena.76 By the 1970s the old Mennonite "no voting" tradition belonged to a passing generation and political participation was widely accepted.

218

PARTY AND

ETHNICITY ! MANITOBA

Following the 1957 federal election, the vigorous young editor of the Canadian Mennonite, Frank H. Epp, noted that the Winnipeg daily newspapers had suggested that Mennonite support for Social Credit represented a "revolt" against their traditional Liberal loyalties and asked readers to explain this apparent change in voting patterns.77 Either he received no responses or any received proved unpublishable.78 The subsequent 1958 election was not covered by the newspaper; there were no advertisements, no commentary, and no editorials, this in spite of Mennonite interest in the Progressive Conservative federal leader, Diefenbaker, a man of Baptist background from Saskatchewan.79 During the 1960s, however, the level of debate on national and international issues increased in the Mennonite press. This increase reflected the tenor of the times in Canada and the Western world in general, influences from which Mennonites were far from immune.80 A new, more educated generation of Mennonites born and raised in Canada began to succeed the pre-war generation of leaders. English began to replace German as the dominant language of life and faith, while old distinctions between immigrations, such as that between Kanadier and Russlander, began to fade. The national focus concentrated on Canadian nationalism and social issues; the international focus on the Cold War, nuclear bombs, and social justice. The relationship between faith and politics became an issue for public debate, but there was less concern with continued Mennonite separation from the world and more with the forms political support and participation should take.81 In 1963 the "classic" Mennonite position on non-participation in politics was repeated by the Evangelical Mennonite Conference (EMC) in a statement, "The Christian and Politics," published in full in the Canadian Mennonite.82 It argued that if "love is the standard for the Christian . . . [and] the state is God's arrangement in an evil society to maintain justice, then no Christian can participate in politics." Therefore, a Christian's proper position "is basically one of withdrawal." However, the statement then proceeded to qualify total withdrawal. It noted different forms and levels of political participation, contrasting a "movement" from people to government characterized by voting in elections, and a "movement" from government to the people represented by employment in the civil service, "such as a mail carrier." The latter was acceptable, as, unlike the former, it did not involve political action. But even political action depended on the level and form of involvement; participation as a member of an elected local school board did not raise ethical problems concerned with the "enforcement and administration of justice," but being a municipal councillor might. Of course, membership in a legislative assembly or a parliament raised even more serious issues because, in spite of the increasing government concern with

219

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

social issues, the state's use of force in the administration of justice remained unacceptable. These signs of a weakening in the classic position of total withdrawal were apparent in the statement's recommendations on use of the franchise: A Christian must also evaluate the various political parties and what they stand for as he thinks of his franchise. Which party has a platform which has the aim of exalting and proclaiming Christ clearly stated? Do the parties realize that sin is Canada's greatest problem and the only solution is Jesus Christ? Which party claims to operate on the principle of love? Such a party the Christian would be able to support Therefore it is incumbent upon the Christian to use the franchise with Spirit guided discretion. The call for Christians to support Christian-based parties is more reflective of North American evangelical Christianity than the older, established Mennonite position on the separation of church and state. In the EMC's statement two contradictory voices can be heard.83 A few months earlier, ahead of the federal election, the issue of whether Mennonites should vote for a party with "Christian" values, or candidates who were "confessed Christians," had been discussed in the Mennonite press. In the Canadian Mennonite Frank H. Epp asked a series of rhetorical questions addressed to the main political parties and this time his editorial drew a number of responses. Among these was a claim that Social Credit was "the only party based on Christian principles and policies"84 In responding to this claim, and a subsequent letter, the respected minister and educator Gerhard Ens produced a highly sophisticated statement on the relationship between politics and a Christian way of life.85 Ens pointed out that no political party could be said to be entirely Christian, and Christians must be careful in dealing with political affairs and not attempt to equate parties with absolute Christian values: There is a very vital and fundamental difference between a Christian church and a political party. A Christian church or denomination is part of the Body of Christ, bought by His blood, guided by His spirit, preparing for His Advent and His Kingdom. A political party vying for majority support, eager to be placed in a position of power is basically a part of the kingdom of this world which was decisively rejected by Christ in the temptation in the Wilderness and at the court of Pilate. ... A Christian church is thus in the truest sense of the word Christian: the bearer of the Gospel, God's agent of reconciliation on the earth. A political party, on the other hand, is basically sub-Christian, operating pragmatically, expediently; at its best disciplined and statesmanlike; at its worst flagrantly and cynically corrupt. . . . [A] party (as a political party and not as a

220

PARTY AND

ETHNICITY : MANITOBA

group of individuals many of whom no doubt are sincere Christians) still remains sub-Christian.... Reflecting the spirit of emerging liberalism, Ens suggested that support for political parties, policies, and the use of the franchise ultimately was a matter of personal conscience based on Christian principles. But he also warned that "in disagreeing with each other in political matters we should never allow a wedge to be driven between us as fellow human beings and as brothers in Christ. Politics, if they have to play a role in our lives, surely should be confined to a very narrow role. Our loyalty belongs to Jesus Christ and His Church full and complete. This should leave no room for petty partisan politics, especially if they should serve to separate us as fellow members of the Body of Christ."86 One interesting aspect of the 1960s discussions on politics in the Mennonite press was that they were often couched in terms of more general "Christian" rather than specifically Mennonite attitudes to politics. There was obviously as much variation in what some Mennonites now viewed as "Christian" as there always had been about what constituted "Mennonite."87 But the emphasis on the category "Christian" clearly involved an attempt to move issues beyond the old, established Mennonite position of total non-involvement in politics towards qualified involvement by members of the faith community. It recognized the reality of Mennonite involvement and attempted to refocus discussion. Frank Epp commented that "the quantity and the quality" of the letters he had received on the issue of politics and faith "indicate that the assumption, that Mennonites are not involved in politics, is a myth."88 Erhart Regier, the long-time CCF member for the federal parliamentary seat of Burnaby-Coquitlam in British Columbia, claimed that Mennonites had failed to keep pace with the times. The old tradition of non-involvement and withdrawal had been established by the founding Anabaptists in a political environment different from today and where church and state had conspired to suppress individual freedoms. Mennonites in contemporary Canada, he noted, lived in a democratic society where government was based upon the rule of law and where personal freedoms were protected. In his view it was about time Mennonites recognized this fact, accepted their responsibilities as citizens, and participated in the political process.89 But at the moment Regier attempted to distance contemporary Mennonites from their Anabaptist past, others were trying to "recover" an "Anabaptist vision" and apply its insights to the modern world. A new generation of educated Mennonites was emerging who interpreted the teachings and actions of the Anabaptists as political in the sense that during the Reformation they had challenged the established

221

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

orders and attempted to create new social communities of faith. Transferred into the contemporary situation, this did not mean either withdrawal or involvement in partisan party politics, but, instead, political activism centred on issues of social justice, nuclear disarmament, and the promotion of peace, activities that extended even to opposing the state.90 At issue was the question of a sense of Mennonite peoplehood as part of a modern world, not separate from it. The concerns of individuals and local communities with their responsibilities as evangelical Christians moved them into the mainstream of North American-politicized Christianity and away from a specific sense of historical connectedness with their Mennonite and Anabaptist ancestors. Among those who claimed to have rediscovered the Anabaptist vision, the move was to strengthen such connections and to include a political agenda. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a third factor, which went beyond faith, contributed to the development of a wider sense of Mennonite peoplehood. This was the promotion of the category of "ethnicity" by government, communities, and individuals in Canada. Its official promotion occurred as part of federal policies of multiculturalism. These policies stemmed from the implementation of ideas developed out of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in the 1960s. But multiculturalism was also supported by a developing sense of Canadian nationalism and the assertion of ethnicity by communities and individuals—not to mention by academics who promoted ethnicity as a scholarly enterprise requiring research and worthy of government support. As Mennonites were a people predominantly defined by religion, the Mennonite religious leadership did not participate in the work of the Royal Commission, although three non-religious organizations did.91 References to Mennonites in the commission's reports are few and this reflects a weak and disorganized response by the Mennonite community, in marked contrast to the enthusiasm of other ethnic communities, especially sections of the Ukrainian community.92 The problem lay in the fact that most of the other communities who made submissions to the commission took as their point of ethnic reference a national identity associated with real or imagined nation-states that in most cases had existed only since the nineteenth century. Mennonites, being founded as communities much earlier and on religious grounds, lacked such a focal point. Some individuals and organizations in the Mennonite community did claim connections with national/ethnic identities, but often these were based on language, historical connections, or political allegiances, the latter of a recent and rather shallow nature.93 This lack of response from Mennonites, however, did not stop the commission from making contradictory references to Mennonites in its final report. In the volume on ethnic communities other than the 222

PARTY AND

ETHNICITY : MANITOBA

French or the English, Mennonites are mostly identified as "German." This is in spite of the fact that data included in the same volume from the 1961 census indicate that almost as many Canadian Mennonites claimed a Dutch as a German ethnic origin, and in Manitoba more Mennonites claimed to be of Dutch ancestry than of German descent.94 In the same volume, Mennonite contributions to cultural life go largely unacknowledged, and in the section explaining the absence of "German" participation in Canadian political life, Mennonites are characterized as "strongly isolationist," opposed to participation in politics on religious grounds, with some even forbidding their members from voting.95 If the Mennonite religious leadership felt uncomfortable with the concept of ethnicity, by the 1970s many younger Mennonites had begun to embrace the ethnic label and to exploit its advantages. Ethnicity provided a "cultural" marker of communal and personal identity in addition to religion—and for some, a means of escaping a religious identity. More importantly, for some in the rising educated Mennonite elite, the ethnic label gave access to government grants that supported multiculturalism in order to develop Mennonite cultural programs. As Mennonites joined the ethnic-heritage industry, religious identity was accommodated to an ethnic identity within Canadian nationalism.96 In academic descriptions and in official reports, Mennonites have become an "ethno-religious community."97 One consequence of this emphasis on Mennonite identity as ethnic culture rather than just as religion was a flowering of Mennonite contributions to the arts after the 1970s. This was built in part on the promotion of literature, music, and the other creative arts by members of the Russlander community since their immigration to Canada, even if the Royal Commission had failed to recognize this Mennonite contribution. At first this occurred almost exclusively in the German language and with reference to Germanic culture.98 The children of the Russlander who continued to develop these interests, especially in urban areas, were often hampered by the German emphases in a country where, in spite of the rhetoric of biculturalism and multiculturalism, English remains the dominant language. The educated descendants of Kanadier, however, often made a connection between the Low German of their everyday experience and the English of national discourse in poetry and creative writing. But descendants of both immigrations have made substantial contributions to the arts, particularly in the field of creative literature in English, moving away from religious themes but maintaining an "ethnic" connection with the traditions of their Mennonite inheritance.99 In the 1960s and 1970s, Mennonite involvement in politics became more visible in terms of voting, being members of political parties, and fielding candidates in

223

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

elections. External commentators, journalists, and academics viewed this as something new and as reflective of a wider ethnic trend. It was argued that, as an ethnic group, Mennonites were now a force in local politics. This assumed, however, that Mennonites were indeed an ethnic group, a single people who shared common opinions and voted as an ethnic bloc. Such comments were voiced by people obviously ill-informed about the long history of Mennonite involvement in politics, or the considerable diversity of Mennonite communities, which divided as much as united them.100 A closer examination of voting patterns would have revealed almost as much diversity among Mennonite voters as could be found in equivalent sections of Canadian society when adjustments were made for education, location, and social class. As early as 1962 a Mennonite commentator had questioned attempts to talk of a single Mennonite vote. V.A. Dirks, on the basis of a careful analysis of recent voting patterns in Manitoba, refuted a suggestion in the Winnipeg Free Press that all Mennonites voted Social Credit on the basis of their faith and ethnicity (see Table 2). TABLE 2: Mennonite Rural Voting Patterns

Political Party

Lib (%)

NDP (%)

PC (%)

SC (%)

10 Mennonite rural polls

1013 (25)

55 (1)

1657 (40) 1377 (34)

Altona

210 (23)

9 (1)

543 (49)

339 (38)

Niverville East*

158 (28)

6 (1)

105 (18)

300 (53)

Steinbach

417 (30)

20 (1)

523 (37)

446 (32)

Selected Mennonite rural voting patterns in the 1962 federal election ("includes La Broquerie). Source: V.A. Dirks, "The Mennonite Vote and Social Credit," 1962,2,4; including subsequent corrections.

Although Dirks argued that Mennonite voting was "not strictly a matter of the candidate's name and church affiliation," when Mennonites were presented with a choice of Mennonite candidates, such considerations could play a part in their support. Too many Mennonite candidates created difficulties for Mennonite voters. Ahead of the 1962 provincial election, a Winnipeg newspaper reported as evidence of Mennonite political naivete the case of a Horndean farmer who told a journalist ("with a grin") that in the 1959 by-election he had put three Xs on his ballot

224

P A R T Y AND

ETHNICITY I MANITOBA

paper because "all three [candidates] were his friends" and he had "promised" each his support.101 In the election of 1962, all the candidates in Rhineland were Mennonite: Froese, the Social Credit candidate, received 40 percent of the vote; A.J. Thiessen, the Progressive Conservative, 39 percent; and J.H. Penner, the Liberal, 21 percent. This result, though, was not because voters were unable to choose between candidates, but was a consequence of established party allegiances, local issues, and a three-way contest. In fact, local Mennonite candidates were often too well known to some voters to receive their support; long-standing preferences and prejudices associated with certain individuals, their relations, and congregations complicated voting decisions. In 1962 David K. Friesen, who had stood as a Liberal against Froese in 1959, threw his support behind the Mennonite Progressive Conservative candidate A.J. Thiessen and told a newspaper reporter, "I am supporting a person, not a party"; while still a Liberal, he believed Thiessen "the best man to represent Rhineland."102 The Mennonites who ran the local Liberal and Progressive Conservative party machine in Rhineland, frustrated with Froese's ability to split the Mennonite vote, eventually turned to desperate measures. In 1966 they chose a twenty-six-year-old, non-Mennonite, United Church minister from Altona, Bruce Gunn, to stand against Froese because, as one paper reported, he stood "outside the disputes and differences" among local Mennonites.103 Froese, however, was re-elected, as the Liberals again made the election a three-way contest. In 1972 the president of the local Liberal association, David G. Friesen, was reported to have held discussions with the Progressive Conservatives with a view to forming a coalition in order to unseat Froese at the next election; in the end it proved unnecessary.104 Similar difficulties were apparent in the federal and provincial electorates in Mennonite areas located across the Red River in the East Reserve. In an electorate divided by faith, occupation, social status, history, and regionalism, Mennonites did not find an electable Mennonite candidate until the early 1960s. Although by 1959 many rural provincial electorates had turned Progressive Conservative, in that year the veteran French Liberal Edmund Prefontaine managed to defeat a young Mennonite Progressive Conservative candidate, Peter J. Thiessen, by just 607 votes. With a federal Progressive Conservative member for the area and the retirement of Prefontaine from politics, Thiessen seemed set to win the seat in the 1962 election.105 But the Liberals chose as their candidate a popular Steinbach mayor and businessman, Leonard A. Barkman.106 The electorate was divided not so much on party political grounds, but along well-established fault lines already apparent in municipal politics. Steinbach, predominantly inhabited by descendants of the 1870s Kleine Gemeinde, had become the economic hub of the region; to the south lay

225

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Grunthal, a prosperous rural service town dominated by Russlander, supported by descendants of the Chortitzer and Bergthaler Mennonites. By the 1960s Grunthal had abandoned its hope to replace Steinbach as the main township in the area. The election became a two-way Mennonite struggle when Social Credit chose a local French candidate. The voting returns by polling stations reveal the Mennonite divide; Steinbachers voted overwhelmingly for Barkman; Grunthalers for Thiessen. Ahead of the election a reporter noted that "Grunthal is his [Thiessen's] almost to a man."107 By a narrow margin, however, Thiessen lost to Barkman, whose election confirmed Steinbach's political as well as economic dominance of the region. Barkman represented Carillon for the next seven years, and in 1969 was elected in the reorganized La Verendrye seat before being defeated in 1973 by Conservative Mennonite candidate Robert Banman.108 On the federal scene, the situation was reversed by the rejection of a Mennonite candidate. In the federal seat of Provencher, the long-standing Liberal, French candidate Rene Jutras, had been defeated in 1957 by a Progressive Conservative candidate of Scandinavian background, Warner Jorgenson, who was re-elected in 1963.109 In 1965, obviously hoping to build on their provincial electoral success in the area, the Liberals fielded against Jorgenson a candidate of Mennonite descent, a Steinbach lawyer, Gordon Barkman. Personally Barkman lacked the popular following of Leonard Barkman, while in contrast Jorgenson, a farmer and former director of the Manitoba Farmers' Union, was supported by a large proportion of rural voters who distrusted a town lawyer so symbolic of Steinbach's growing business dominance in the region.110 On the other hand, sections of the Steinbach business community now also supported the Progressive Conservatives. Jorgenson easily defeated Barkman. However, in the 1968 election Jorgenson was narrowly beaten by a non-Mennonite Liberal candidate, Mark Smerchanski, who secured the French and Ukrainian, but not the Mennonite, vote in the period of Trudeau's popular appeal. Thus, in only one federal election was a serious Mennonite candidate fielded against non-Mennonites and he lost. This indicates how a candidate did not need to be of Mennonite descent to secure Mennonite support and that ethnicity was not a major factor in Mennonite voting patterns. During the 1960s, with a Social Credit member representing the old West Reserve and a Liberal the East, some sections of the rural Mennonite community of Manitoba may have had the satisfaction of seeing one of their "own" in the provincial legislature, but in reality the members had little influence on government policy and were largely ineffectual. Both Froese and Barkman had been elected more as a result of local internal Mennonite politics than because of provincial or national issues. Into the 1970s, however, this situation was to change. Finally Mennonites entered fully into national and provincial politics and they did so as members of 226

P A R T Y AND

ETHNICITY I MANITOBA

Canadian society, not as a distinct religious and ethnic community. From now on, Mennonite political activity and voting mirrored Canadian social groups in terms of income and occupation, rural versus urban dwellers, and, in federal elections, in a shared sense of Western regionalism. As a member of the provincial legislature, Barkman was part of a dwindling group of Liberal politicians. From the early 1950s in Manitoba and elsewhere across western Canada, support for the Liberal Party in provincial elections steadily declined.111 In 1969 the first New Democratic Party government was elected in Manitoba and the polarization of political opinion between predominantly rural and urban electorates became established.112 Support for the Liberals in rural and urban areas collapsed. By the early 1970s, Mennonite support in the area of the West Reserve for Social Credit had switched to the Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals were forced into a minority status; in the East Reserve the established support for the Progressive Conservatives in the federal sphere also became apparent in provincial elections. A conservative party once closely identified with Canadians of British descent was now widely supported by peoples of non-British origin and included a number of members of non-British descent, including Mennonites.113 When, in 1962, Leonard Barkman became the first Mennonite to be elected to the Manitoba legislature to represent the old East Reserve, almost exactly seventy years had passed since the first Mennonite, Erdman Penner, stood for election to the legislature in Rhineland, and it was almost thirty years since Cornelius Wiebe became the first Mennonite to be successfully elected to the Manitoba legislature from the West Reserve. Another ten years were to pass before a Mennonite—Jake Epp—would be elected to represent either area in the House of Commons. Surprisingly, given its longer history of political participation, Epp would represent not the West Reserve but the East.114 Epp, the offspring of a Kanadier mother and a Russlander Mennonite Brethren minister, had lived in Steinbach most of his life. He had received a tertiary education, taught high school in Steinbach, and cut his political teeth on the town council. Aged just thirty-two in 1972, Epp represented a new generation of Mennonite Conservatives separated from past Mennonite divisions based on faith and history. But he also possessed all the credentials necessary to appeal to a wide range of Mennonite voters. He was of mixed Mennonite ancestry, was associated with (and publicly championed) evangelical Christianity, and was married to the daughter of another Mennonite minister. He was a family man, educated, a schoolteacher by profession and, finally, well enough established to be considered a local while not being too connected with the Mennonite politics of "kinship" and regionalism in

227

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

the electorate.115 In a four-way contest between Smerchanski, the sitting Liberal member, an NDP candidate with Ukrainian connections, and a Mennonite Social Credit candidate, Jake Wall, Epp was elected with a large majority vote of 4773 over Smerchanski.116 Although in such a four-way contest, Epp secured only 44 percent of the total vote, in identifiable Mennonite areas he achieved a landslide victory: in both Grunthal and Steinbach he received 79 percent of the vote, thereby bringing together people once divided in their political opinion. Party, faith, and a person of Mennonite background, at one level acceptable to members of a diverse Mennonite community, had united them in the political process.117

228

10 POLARIZATION AND PARTISANSHIP: WINNIPEG (1921-1980)

I

n December 1921, the Manitoba Free Press reported that standing for election to the House of Commons for the seat of North Winnipeg "is a socialist of the revolutionary type and also a communist of the school of the third international. ... Neither believes in parliamentary government nor has any intention if elected, of trying to bring about reforms by legislation. Their candidatures will make no apparent appeal except to extremists, of whom unfortunately there are a good many in North Winnipeg."1 Although the candidates are not named, one was Jacob Penner, a person of Mennonite descent. Penner had emigrated to Canada from Russia in 1905 to escape possible arrest for his involvement with the revolutionary underground.2 He was later joined in Canada by his parents and siblings and settled in Winnipeg, where he became involved with labour organizations, joined the Social Democrat Party, and participated in the 1919 Winnipeg strike. Standing as a "Labor" candidate in 1921, Penner called for an alignment with the new Soviet government in Russia and split the left-wing vote, which allowed the Liberal candidate to win.3 This was Penner's only attempt to enter federal politics and he gained only 596 votes and lost his deposit. However, he was subsequently elected a communist alderman for ward three of the City of Winnipeg and held this position almost continuously from 1934 to I960.4 Penner personally abandoned any link with the Mennonite faith community and married a woman of Jewish descent.

Map 9: Kildonan in Winnipeg, Manitoba

POLARIZATION AND PARTISANSHIP! WINNIPEG

However, his obvious Mennonite name and origin served as a constant reminder to many Mennonites of the dangers to their faith and their sense of peoplehood from living in urban areas and becoming involved in "worldly" politics.5 The Mennonites who emigrated to western Canada from Russia in the 1870s were of a somewhat more conservative persuasion than Penner. They were overwhelmingly farmers and little attracted to life in the cities. Living in congregational communities based on ties of kinship, they preferred the isolation of a new agricultural frontier in which to re-establish their separate way of life. However, as in Russia, that way of life still required them to sell part of their produce in 'worldly' markets. In economic affairs the Kleine Gemeinde were probably the shrewdest of any of the congregational communities who emigrated to North America. In Manitoba they settled largely on good farming land within reasonably easy reach of Winnipeg. From here they could purchase essential supplies in the city and sell their goods to its increasingly prosperous market.6 Winnipeg, however, remained a place to visit on business, not one in which to settle down. An urban existence was inconsistent with the simple way of life in a community separated from the "world" that was required to ensure the hope of salvation. Some Mennonites maintained closer contact with the city than others. This was especially true of the few Mennonite merchants who mediated between the farming community and non-Mennonite traders. A few Mennonites also were attracted to higher education and their young people were sent to the city to receive training and obtain qualifications in areas of value to their communities, such as teaching, medicine, and basic business skills. There were, however, risks involved in such contacts. As early as 1891, Klaas R. Reimer, a member of the Kleine Gemeinde and a prominent businessman in Steinbach, regretted permitting his son to visit Winnipeg too often on business. His son had written to say that he intended to pursue a higher education in the city, against his father's wishes.7 By 1900 an ever-growing number of young Mennonites attended schools and training centres in Winnipeg. In 1909 H.H. Ewert was "assigned" by the members of the progressive Mennonite congregations in Manitoba "to make contact" with Mennonites who had drifted to the city and lost touch with their home congregations.8 The first attempts to organize the Mennonites living in Winnipeg before 1914, however, came not from the conservative Mennonite congregational communities firmly based within rural Manitoba, but from the more open and evangelical Mennonite Brethren. Mennonite Brethren from the United States had established themselves in Manitoba through evangelical activity, primarily among fellow Mennonites. After about 1890 their ranks were boosted by the arrival of new 231

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

immigrants from Russia with Mennonite Brethren affiliations. Non-Mennonite converts also joined the church. At first the Mennonite Brethren operated outside Winnipeg and were based mainly in the rural townships adjacent to the Mennonite farming areas. They were particularly strong in the town of Winkler.9 Around 1906 a small group of Mennonites in Winnipeg held religious meetings and were ministered to by the Winkler Mennonite Brethren congregation; in 1907 the city group, along with German Baptists from the Volga, requested more formal assistance. As a consequence, the Mennonite Brethren opened a city mission with a minister from the United States. In time a small congregation became established.10 When Mennonites first arrived in Manitoba in the 1870s, Winnipeg was a frontier town located around the juncture of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, which provided the basis for communication and trade in the region before the railroads were built. By 1914, with new transport systems, Winnipeg had developed into an established and prosperous urban centre. It was now a major rail hub for the rich agricultural prairie land and the gateway to western Canada.11 The city had a population of over 135,000 by 1914, divided by occupation and class, religion, ethnicity, and political outlook. Like the province of Manitoba, the city of Winnipeg was dominated by an Anglo-Canadian elite but also contained a large population of immigrants, mostly from eastern Europe. These were mainly employed in the rail yards, in small factories, and trading outlets. Many were Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians who had brought from their homelands not only distinctive cultural traditions, but also a political radicalism founded in opposition to the established ruling regimes of eastern Europe. Such radicalism included socialist and revolutionary ideas born of the persecution and injustice many had experienced in their homelands.12 By 1914 politics in Winnipeg had a radical dimension unknown elsewhere in Canada. In 1919, in the post-war atmosphere of reform and with ideas of revolution spilling over from Europe, a general strike in the city resulted in a violent confrontation between the forces of capitalism and labour. This left a legacy of social and political division, the effects of which were to last for a long time.13 In the wake of the strike, Russian Mennonite refugees from the Soviet Union began to arrive in western Canada, most passing through Winnipeg on their way to new homes in rural areas. These Russlander Mennonites had been accepted as immigrants by the Canadian government because of the Mennonites' reputation as good farmers, a reputation developed by their predecessors, the Kanadier. The authorities required that all new immigrants settle in rural areas, not in cities. This requirement applied to immigrants of both British and non-British descent and reflected a fear of labour activists and revolutionaries settling in urban areas and becoming a political problem. Given the Mennonites' recent experiences in 232

POLARIZATION AND PARTISANSHIP! WINNIPEG

revolutionary Russia, the Canadian authorities had little to fear from the new immigrants. However, many did begin to drift towards urban areas during the 1920s. Unlike the Kanadier Mennonite settlers of the 1870s, the Russlander included a number of people with direct experience of urban life. Many younger Russlander had received a higher education, often in Russian cities, and they were attracted to careers in business or the professions best pursued in urban areas. However, the Russlander who settled in or close to Winnipeg during the 1920s did so for a number of reasons. From 1924 onwards, a few highly educated Mennonites worked from the city offices of the Canadian Pacific Railway, assisting immigrants to find suitable land. A year earlier Heinrich H. Neufeld purchased an established Germanlanguage newspaper, the Mennonitische Rundschau, transferred its offices from Pennsylvania to Winnipeg, and established a new publishing house in the city.14 During the 1920s several young Mennonite females, mostly Russlander, sought employment as domestic servants among the wealthy Winnipeg elite. They did so in order to help their families to repay their travel and other debts.15 To assist them, and especially to protect such young, vulnerable women from the dangers of urban life, two homes were established, the Mennonite Brethren Mary-Martha Home in 1925 and the Conference of Mennonites in Canada's Ebenzer Home in 1926.16 A number of poor Mennonites, desperate to find money through employment, settled in the less prosperous parts of Winnipeg between 1924 and 1925. Others moved closer to the city in order to exploit the benefits of the urban market. Most notable among these was the nucleus of what would become a major centre of Mennonite settlement in an area of still largely uncleared bush in the municipality of North Kildonan, to the northeast of the city. Here, from 1928 onwards, a small colony of Mennonites developed, based mainly around chicken and egg production and small businesses hoping to exploit the benefits of trade and industry in Winnipeg.17 As the population of Russlander increased, new congregations were formed. In 1917, during the crisis over Mennonite nonresistance during the war but before the arrival of the Russlander, H.H. Ewert's brother Benjamin took over his role of contacting young Mennonites now living in Winnipeg.18 In 1921 he settled permanently in the city. In 1925 the leader of the first wave of Russlander to Canada, Elder Johann P. Klassen, baptized the first members of the congregation Ewert had established.19 By 1928 this group was dominated by Russlander, and a new congregation, named after Klassen's home town in Russia, Schonwiese, was formed with affiliated congregations among Russlander scattered across rural Manitoba.20 A church building was purchased and the congregational community grew, served by ministers who at first were also responsible for the Conference of Mennonites in Canada's girls' home. In 1932 Klassen retired and was replaced by Johann H. Enns, who remained the elder of the Schonwiese congregation into the 1960s. 233

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Outside the city, in North Kildonan, a small church was built, initially shared by members of both the Mennonite Brethren and Kirchlichen Mennonites—the latter usually aligned with the Conference of Mennonites in Canada. In spite of the attempts in pre-revolutionary Russia to bridge the divide between Mennonite Brethren and Kirchlichen congregations, and various experiments among the Russlander in Canada to further this process by forming joint congregations, the success of such ventures varied considerably. Many such attempts at unity were complicated by the existence of Mennonite Brethren whose presence in Manitoba pre-dated the arrival of the new immigrants from the Soviet Union and who maintained strong links with churches in the United States. Eventually, in North Kildonan two Russlander groups formed separate congregations. The Kirchliche congregation was affiliated with the city Schonwiese congregation, and the larger Mennonite Brethren congregation was linked to its city congregation and to centres of Brethren activity such as the community in Winkler. Until 1945, members of the Mennonite Brethren in and around Winnipeg outnumbered Conference of Mennonites in Canada members.21 This major religious divide between Mennonite Brethren and members of the Conference of Mennonites in Canada was later to become the basis for different attitudes to politics and involvement in political activities. For some Russlander Brethren, however, politics first emerged at the congregational level. Shortly before the arrival of the Russlander, a Mennonite Brethren evangelist educated in the United States, C.N. Hiebert, came to Winnipeg to serve the Mennonite Brethren mission in the city. He stayed to assist the influx of Russlander immigrants and to help them establish congregations.22 His son, Clarence, born and raised in Winnipeg, would later recall that many of the new immigrants were "brilliant, astute and educated entrepreneurs" who had lost their fortunes in Russia, but not "their expertise." "Some," he noted, "became 'take over' people in church leadership; they tended to intimidate the former converts."23 Such entrepreneurial expertise and political aptitude would, in time, be applied beyond the internal affairs of their congregations. As in many rural districts of Manitoba, Winnipeg presented Mennonites with opportunities for involvement in Canadian politics. They could vote in elections to the city municipality, the provincial assembly, and to Ottawa. Unlike in rural areas, where a candidate was elected by a single majority in provincial elections, in Winnipeg a system of proportional voting operated and this encouraged minority parties and independent candidates to stand. Winnipeg had been incorporated as an urban municipality in 1873, but municipal politics, at least on the surface, were different from provincial and federal politics. In the city, candidates often claimed to represent non-political "interest" groups. As in provincial urban politics, the

234

POLARIZATION AND PARTISANSHIP! WINNIPEG

candidates often represented extremes in political opinion and allegiances that were rarely encountered in rural areas of Manitoba. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, just as Russlander began to settle in the city, the political divide between largely left-wing immigrants and conservative Anglo-Canadians began to alter. A number of refugees from Europe who settled in Canada after World War I were, like the Russlander, largely opposed to left-wing socialist ideas and came to favour right-wing nationalist ventures.24 This was in marked contrast to many of the pre-war immigrants. Although in many ways this placed the new immigrants more in sympathy with the Anglo-Canadian establishment than with members of their own national and ethnic groups, their non-British status largely excluded them from forming direct political alliances with AngloCanadians. The maintenance of "racial" purity was as much a matter of concern for those of Anglo-Canadian descent as it was for immigrants such as the Russlander. However, a common opposition to socialist ideas and communist candidates eventually resulted in strange alliances in the struggle to elect members to political office in urban areas. The impact of the Depression, which in 1934-35 had seen the election of a left-wing majority to the city council, encouraged some immigrants to support candidates of the established Anglo-Canadian elite standing in local, provincial, and federal elections. The elite gained support by appealing to nationalist, ethnic/racist sentiments among the newer immigrants. As early as the 1926 federal election, "German" voters in North Winnipeg were encouraged, in their own language, to vote for the local Anglo-Canadian Liberal candidate.25 By the 1932 provincial election, the Deutsch-Kanadische Bund von Manitoba (German-Canadian Union of Manitoba) was willing to endorse an Anglo-Canadian Liberal candidate, the lawyer W.J. Major.26 Major again received endorsement in 1936 and was described in one advert published in the Mennonite press as a "special friend of the Germans."27 However, in the same election the Bund supported a German candidate, H. Streuber, reflecting the development of ethnic/racial politics.28 What had changed between the provincial elections of 1932 and 1936 was that Hitler had come to power in Germany and a left-wing council had been elected in Winnipeg. Sections of the Winnipeg German community now fielded candidates of "German" descent in municipal elections precisely to oppose "communist" councillors, who were seen as Jews.29 The increased emphasis on ethnic/racial politics during the 1930s involved several important Russlander Mennonites resident in Winnipeg. Not living in rural settlements surrounded by other Mennonites, and an immigrant minority in a multi-ethnic city, the Russlander came into contact with other Germanspeaking immigrants of non-Mennonite backgrounds. Keen to maintain the

235

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

German language in a predominantly English-speaking world, they often joined German cultural organizations, which naturally led them to associate with other, often politically based immigrant groups.30 Among the named members of the German Bund that in 1932 recommended Major to German-speaking voters were the businessman C.A. DeFehr and the doctor C.H. Warkentin, prominent figures in the Mennonite community.31 This Mennonite participation in the Canadian democratic process during the late 1920s and early 1930s might be interpreted as a positive adaptation to the new land. In reality, it often indicated an increasing movement away from the principles of representative democracy towards support for authoritarian forms of government, most notably Fascism. This was particularly so among urbandwelling Mennonites in Winnipeg. Such support must be interpreted against the background not just of Mennonite experiences in Russia during the revolution and civil war, but also in the context of the 1930s. Russlander in Canada had failed to rebuild the community that had existed in Russia. In the crisis that followed, some moved towards a sense of a cultural and racial "Germanness" that was shaped by Nazi ideology.32 Horrifying reports on the fate of relatives and friends in Stalin's Russia throughout the 1930s further intensified their hatred for communism. Strong dictatorial forms of government were required to oppose the threat of communism and the world's democracies seemed too weak to cope with the situation. Some Mennonites had always mistrusted the principles of democratic, representative government and the equivocations of those who held liberal opinions. At the same time, a sense of alienation developed among many towards their new homeland and made them less interested in close involvement with Canadian society and its politics. In a sense the Russlander, though resident in Canada, continued to focus on European affairs, dreaming of their lost homeland, damning Stalin and the communists, distrusting the failing Western democracies, and seeking a new identity in a racial Germanness connected with the rise of the Third Reich. The shift to the right and support for anti-democratic systems of government are clearly reflected in the numerous articles expressing support for Nazi ideas and policies published in the Russlander-owned press.33 This included the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Rundschau. In 1934 its editor, Hermann Neufeld, was prosecuted for publishing the anti-Semitic literature of the ultra-nationalist William Whittaker.34 In 1939 Neufeld was again brought before the courts for breaching his earlier undertaking not to print such literature.35 This time he was accused of publishing anti-Semitic material in the Deutsche Zeitung Canada.36 The Zeitung published Nazi propaganda and supported the Deutsche Bund Canada,

236

POLARIZATION AND PARTISANSHIP! WINNIPEG

a Nazi front organization.37 The English Winnipeg press exposed the connection between the newspaper, the Nazi government, and its consul in Winnipeg, and the Bund. Among the shareholders of the paper's publishing company named was the businessman C.A. DeFehr, who in 1937 also had been one of the company's three directors.38 C.F. Klassen, a leading figure in the Mennonite Board of Immigration based in Winnipeg, was also listed as a small shareholder.39 In the late 1930s the "German Days" held in major Canadian cities became infamous for the public exhibitions of support for Nazi Germany by German immigrants. In Winnipeg some Mennonites attended such gatherings in spite of their increasingly radical tone. As war threatened in 1939, the English Winnipeg press assessed the allegiances of Canada's German population. Winnipeg's Russlander Mennonite community was identified as having "formed the most fertile field for Nazi agitation" among immigrant groups in the city.40 If, in the 1930s, urban life presented a political challenge to Mennonites, World War II effectively removed most of them from further involvement in politics. Those who had noisily supported Nazism fell silent. Across Canada, party political activities were reduced as people united and concentrated on winning the war. The Kanadier and the Russlander leaders were often divided about how best to serve their faith and the nation-state. Some Mennonites served as conscientious objectors; others joined the military, some in combat roles, others as medics.41 The war revealed long-standing tensions and differences among Mennonites. These included religious differences within and between conferences, social tensions between generations, and a divide between rural and urban Mennonites. The differences between rural and urban Mennonites centred on the future shape of Mennonite communities of faith and the lifestyle of Mennonites living in different environments. Both Kanadier and rural Russlander shared a common distrust of urban life and naturally this extended to any Mennonite who lived in a city. To Mennonite ministers connected with the Kanadier, urban life represented a danger because it was not in harmony with the pace and order of a rural existence that they believed better fitted the Mennonite faith. As H.H. Ewert noted in 1934, "we love a serious and sedate experience; in the city one goes after entertainment." To some Russlander ministers, the city was full of the evils of the world, especially for young people. Winnipeg was a place where "lipstick and powder" were in daily use. Worse, it threatened the future of the Mennonites as a "race." In 1936 the Russlander elder of the rural St. Elizabeth congregation in Manitoba, Peter H. Enns, complained of the dangers of city life to his brother, the elder of the Winnipeg Schonwiese congregation, Johann H. Enns. Mennonites in Winnipeg, Peter Enns claimed, "have 237

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

already been touched by Jewish culture ... and paired off with English, French or other nationalities and therefore committed the desecration of the races."42 A division between rural and urban Mennonites in Manitoba therefore developed in the inter-war years and came to a head in 1945 when the elder of the Winnipeg Schonwiese congregation, Johann Enns, was effectively "banned" by the other leaders of the Canadian and the Manitoba conferences. The initial cause of the problem arose from a dispute over a matter of religious interpretation. In 1944 Enns, at a regular meeting of Mennonite ministers, presented a paper on the sixteenth-century Anabaptist writer Hans Denck. Denck was seen by many as a supporter of the idea of universalist salvation where, in the final days, God would save all humankind, the good and the evil.43 Other ministers—mainly from rural congregations—argued that only those who committed themselves to the narrow path of life would be saved, and so Enns was accused of championing Denck's ideas on universalism and thus promoting false teachings. He was attacked in public and in private, but the members of his congregation stood behind him, realizing that more was at issue than just theological interpretations. As a consequence, Enns, his fellow ministers, and his entire congregation were excluded from membership in the Canadian and Manitoba conferences. The dispute involved a complex mix of factors. Since the 1920s the centre of Russlander General Conference activities had been based around Rosthern in Saskatchewan. Here was where the main conference leaders lived and the Rosthern German-English Academy, the Board of Colonization offices, and the printing presses of the newspaper Der Bote, were located. By the early 1940s, however, it was clear that Winnipeg had emerged as the most important centre of Mennonite activities in western Canada. In 1929 Concordia Hospital had been founded in the city and, during World War II, after the travel debt had been cleared, new institutions were planned. These included Bethania, an old people's home, opened in 1946, and a Bible college established in 1947 to counter the Mennonite Brethren college, which moved from Winkler to Winnipeg in 1944.44 There was tension within the Canadian Conference about the power shift to Winnipeg. Older leaders had reached the age of retirement, heralding major changes in Conference leadership and organization.45 Some people in Saskatchewan and rural Manitoba feared that Elder Enns and members of his Schonwiese congregation might dominate the new institutions, especially the proposed Bible college.46 At the Canadian Conference level, the differences were settled and the congregation readmitted to the Conference in 1949, by which time the Bible college and a new order had been established in Winnipeg. But Schonwiese remained excluded from the Manitoba Conference until 1965.47

238

POLARIZATION AND PARTISANSHIP! WINNIPEG

While some of the problems within Manitoba involved personal differences, negative attitudes towards Mennonites living in Winnipeg, an alien urban environment to the rural rump of Manitoba Mennonites, were also important. Kanadier doubts about the ability of their members to sustain religious purity from the "world" in a city were combined with Russlander concerns with the maintenance of peoplehood through continued cultural separation based on religion, the German language, and endogamy. Also involved, at least for many rural Russlander, were several other issues. These included deep-seated class jealousies that had existed since before emigration to Canada. Although Schb'nwiese was the "mother" congregation of a number of the rural Russlander Manitoba congregations, its members often included people from the former wealthy landed and industrial elites of pre-revolutionary Russian Mennonite society. Many in the congregation favoured higher education for their children and fostered a wide range of "secular" cultural activities, especially those involving music and even drama. These opportunities were not easily available to rural Russlander, who felt they and their children were excluded from enjoying the benefits of modern society. The fallout from the dispute with their elder left many in the Schonwiese congregation alienated from the activities of other Mennonites in Manitoba. Some pursued professional careers and, in doing so, became involved in politics, but not in ways that depended on the support of the wider Mennonite community. Nowhere is this clearer than in the careers of the children of the Schonwiese congregation's elder, Johann H. Enns. Three of his five sons, largely raised and educated in Winnipeg, became involved in politics at the civic, provincial, and federal levels.48 Another became a judge of the Manitoba High Court. Ernest Enns served (1960 to 1970) as a city alderman and unsuccessfully stood as a Progressive Conservative for the Winnipeg seat of Wolseley in provincial elections. Siegfried Enns was elected twice as the Progressive Conservative member for the federal seat of Portage-Neepawa (1962 to 1968). In 1970 his wife Vera stood as a Progressive Conservative candidate in a by-election for the federal seat of Selkirk. Although unsuccessful, she was one of the first Mennonite women to attempt to enter politics. Harry Enns had a long history in provincial politics, again with the Progressive Conservatives. First elected in 1966, he served in a variety of ministerial roles in government. Significantly, no Mennonite candidates stood or were elected to seats that contained a majority of Mennonites. They did not stand as Mennonites hoping for Mennonite voter support. None, however, has ever denied their Mennonite descent and all have remained active in the Mennonite community, some serving on the boards of the major Mennonite social and cultural institutions in Winnipeg. 239

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

After 1945 the number of Mennonites living in Winnipeg steadily grew and their power and influence increased. Between 1941 and 1951, the Mennonite population of metropolitan Winnipeg more than doubled from 1285 to 3460; over the next ten years it quadrupled to 13,595.49 This increase in part reflected a movement of Russlander and Kanadier Mennonites from rural Manitoba into the city.50 The increase also included a large number of new Mennonite immigrants, refugees from the Soviet Union and Germany following World War II. In 1951 it was reported that of the 6000 new Mennonite immigrants who had arrived since 1947, nearly 1000 had settled in Winnipeg.51 Later, more refugees, who had been unable to enter Canada directly and who had first gone to Paraguay, emigrated to Canada. Many settled in Winnipeg. The Winnipeg Mennonite population was therefore more diverse in origin and religious affiliation than it had been prior to World War II. This, in turn, translated into differences in class and occupation. Many of the post-war immigrants found work in the building industry that flourished as governmentfunded urban improvements and industry grew in the city and its environs. The establishment of a Mennonite credit union in the city in 1944 provided an important source of capital to individuals and businesses.52 A few immigrant entrepreneurs became extremely rich, as did some original Russlander who made fortunes through supplying raw materials, goods, and services to members of the Mennonite and non-Mennonite communities. Younger Mennonites, who seized the opportunities for higher education in the post-war world, entered the professions and laid the foundation for changes in Mennonite political outlook. The largest concentration of Mennonites in the 1940s and 1950s was not in the city itself, but in the larger metropolitan area, particularly in North Kildonan and surrounding areas. Until incorporated into the greater Winnipeg Unicity in 1972, North Kildonan was a rural municipality, having been formed in 1925 from the East Kildonan municipality just prior to the first Mennonite settlement in the area.53 As in rural Manitoba, Russlander Mennonites voted in municipal elections as soon as they gained citizenship. By the 1940s a number of leading figures in the Mennonite community, mainly businessmen, had become councillors and trustees of the school board. These included Cornelius Huebert, who had settled in North Kildonan in 1929 and, by the 1940s, had established a successful lumber business. In 1943 he was elected a municipal councillor, along with other Mennonite businessmen, such as Henry W. Redekopp and Henry DeFehr. In 1944 Huebert became reeve of the municipality.54 When North Kildonan became a suburb of Winnipeg, Mennonites—mainly businessmen who promoted closer economic ties with the city—came to play a major role in city government.

240

POLARIZATION AND PARTISANSHIP! WINNIPEG

The politics of local government, however, proved controversial. In 1954, following disagreements over ethnic representation, the Ministry of Education dissolved the local North Kildonan school board and appointed an official trustee.55 By 1956 a new board was established, dominated by Mennonites.56 In the early 1960s the provincial government became concerned with the unequal size of the electoral populations of certain wards in Kildonan. Ward one contained 8000 voters, ward two 2271, ward three contained only 305, and ward four just 633. Two Mennonite councillors, Vern Dyck and Alfred Penner, argued against a change to provide better representation, suggesting that "certain groups" needed special representation that would be denied if the numbers of voters were equalized.57 The special groups included Mennonites. Mennonite congregations also became involved in political issues. For instance, Ernest Isaak, minister of the River East Mennonite Brethren Church, opposed a referendum to lift a ban on the sale of liquor in the municipality. Although the church was situated outside the municipality, Isaak noted that many of his members lived within its boundaries, which justified his intervention.58 Russlander involvement in North Kildonan municipal politics gradually extended to provincial and federal politics. In 1949 the Liberal Party still appealed to Winnipeg Mennonites to vote for them. In an advertisement for its candidate Peter Taraska, the party noted that in the last two years the Liberals had permitted 7000 ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) and 5000 Mennonites to enter Canada, and emphasized the support their candidate had given to this movement.59 Ten years later, in 1959, Cornelius Huebert moved beyond municipal affairs and stood as a Liberal-Progressive candidate for Kildonan in the provincial election.60 Huebert's candidacy reflected the political views of his generation, but over the next twenty years Mennonite political allegiances shifted to become more polarized between left and right. In 1962 John DeFehr stood as a Social Credit candidate for North Winnipeg in the federal election. His adverts in the German-language newspaper Nordwesten were obviously written to appeal to older Mennonite voters who usually voted Liberal. "Social Credit," the advertisement declared, was opposed to "Communism, Fascism and all forms of totalitarian government" and the party "considered the home as the fundamental basis for Christian civilization and the family ... [the] essential foundation of society."61 Not surprisingly, DeFehr received Mennonite support but not enough to win him the seat. There are indications from a neighbouring electorate that the Mennonite vote shifted towards Conservative parties even when no Mennonite candidate was running.62 DeFehr also stood as Social Credit candidate in the provincial election later in 1962, but although he polled well in ridings with large numbers of Mennonites, he again lost, this time to a Conservative-

241

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Progressive.63 In 1963 and again in 1965, Jacob Willms represented Social Credit in North Winnipeg but, as in rural areas, Social Credit's appeal to Mennonites by now had declined.64 In spite of this, Henry W. Redekopp, a dealer in lumber, stood as a Social Credit candidate in the next provincial election of 1966.65 During the previous election campaign, Redekopp had worked for the winning Progressive Conservative candidate, J.T. Mills, and later claimed that he had "delivered" the Mennonite vote that had guaranteed Mills's election. In 1966 Redekopp announced that he was now standing as a Social Credit candidate because the Progressive Conservative government had proved too "socialist" and insufficiently "Tory." In a newspaper interview he rejected the idea that he aimed to secure the "ethnic vote" and instead suggested his actions might, in fact, cost him Mennonite support. "Mennonites," he noted, "believe in loyalty to authority and some think one shouldn't be too outspoken regarding government."66 Redekopp, however, received extensive Mennonite support but in so doing he divided the conservative vote, allowing Peter Fox, a New Democratic Party candidate, to win the seat.67 Mennonites who stood as political candidates in other areas of Winnipeg in the period from 1950 to 1970 represented all the major parties contesting seats in city council, provincial, and federal elections: Progressive Conservative, Liberal, CCF, and its successor the NDP.68 In the 1958, 1959, and 1962 provincial elections, Steve Peters won the urban seat of Elmwood for the CCF, although the small number of Mennonite voters in the constituency did not influence the result.69 In 1966, 1969, and 1973, candidates of Mennonite background contested provincial urban seats in the Osborne, Fort Garry, and Fort Rouge ridings for the Liberals and NDP, although once again the number of Mennonite voters in these seats was inconsequential to the outcome. Even in those ridings with large numbers of Mennonites, such as North Kildonan, it appears that a lack of political unity failed to influence the result. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mennonite voters in Winnipeg were increasingly sophisticated in their understanding of political issues. In part this reflected the increased social diversity of Mennonites living in the city. By the 1960s, a new generation of Mennonites had joined the older settlers in Winnipeg. Social surveys from the period revealed that many Mennonites, sometimes lumped with other "German" ethnic groups, had started to disperse across the city and were less concentrated in particular areas.70 Many Mennonites had grown up in Winnipeg; others had moved from rural areas to pursue higher education in the city and stayed. An increasing number attended university and the Mennonite Bible colleges, especially the Mennonite Brethren College and the Canadian Mennonite Bible College, both affiliated with Winnipeg's two universities. Mennonites were now doctors, lawyers, university 242

POLARIZATION AND PARTISANSHIP! WINNIPEG

professors, teachers, accountants, and public servants, as well as small tradesmen and private entrepreneurs. As Al Reimer, an educated Kanadier and professor of English at the University of Winnipeg, recalled of this time: "[Everywhere in Winnipeg] Mennonites were emerging from their traditional ghettos and boldly making their way in various professions and fields they had never entered before. The quiet in the land were clamoring for attention and being heard. Suddenly it was quite respectable to be a Mennonite—in Winnipeg it was becoming almost fashionable to be one. Rather than playing down their ethnic identity, even sophisticated Mennonites were taking a new pride in it."71 Sociological research among Mennonite students in Winnipeg in the early 1970s revealed the maintenance of a high degree of self-identity as "Mennonite" and separation from other groups.72 While this persistence in identity could be interpreted as a survival of the close-knit religious base that linked Mennonites to their rural background, other factors were involved, such as language use, education, occupation, and marriage patterns. These all suggested that the situation was changing rapidly. The use of German was in rapid decline in favour of English and marriages were becoming less endogamous as younger Mennonites were integrated into the social and cultural fabric of the country through education and employment.73 At the same time, Mennonite identity was being refocussed away from just religion and the continuity of social groups. By the early 1970s the Canadian government had initiated its policy of multiculturalism and advertisements promoting its programs appeared in the Mennonite press, both German and English. This official promotion of ethnic identity began to shift Canadian Mennonite identity into the mainstream.74 The underlying social and religious diversity among Mennonites and their integration into democratic Canadian society were clearly reflected in their political allegiances and support for different parties. An illustration of this can be seen in the civic elections of 1971 as the North Kildonan municipality was incorporated into the city. One candidate for the new area of Kilnorth was George H. Enns, who represented the NDP, a party that many older Mennonites viewed as little more than a communist front. The son of Russlander, Enns was born in Ukraine in 1920 and, after restricted military service during World War II, earned degrees from the Mennonite Brethren college and the University of Manitoba. Closely involved in teachers' unions, he had served as a councillor in North Kildonan in 1968-69.7S Opposing him was another Mennonite with a similar academic and professional record but with very different political views. Alfred Penner was born in Winnipeg in 1935 but raised in the rural Russlander settlement of Springstein. He had also received a degree from the University of Manitoba, was also a teacher, served as a 243

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

councillor in North Kildonan (1966-68), and was elected to the city council.76 On council, Penner represented the Independent Citizen's Electoral Committee, so his political sympathies were essentially conservative in contrast to those of Enns. Penner was also an active member of the River East Mennonite Brethren Church. In Manitoba members of the Mennonite Brethren Conference were more urbanized than their counterparts in the Conference of Mennonites in Canada.77 In 1965 in Manitoba 55 percent of Mennonite Brethren lived in urban areas in contrast to only 36 percent of Conference of Mennonites in Canada members.78 Although in 1965 in Winnipeg the total number of Mennonite Brethren was less than those of the Conference of Mennonites in Canada, they had been numerically stronger up to the 1950s. Many of their members were well established in the city and included prosperous businessmen. Moreover, Mennonite Brethren had been involved in politics since the 1940s, reflecting a Canada-wide trend, and particularly active was a group of businessmen located in North Kildonan.79 By the 1970s, however, Conference of Mennonites in Canada members were also becoming more active in politics and the division of political opinion among Mennonites began to take on features of the deep-seated religious differences between the two major conferences. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the densely populated area of Mennonite settlement in North Kildonan, which Penner represented on council. The reorganization of metropolitan Winnipeg was one of the reforms pushed through the legislature by Manitoba's first NDP government, following its surprise victory in the elections of 1969. The NDP came to power when the Progressive Conservative government of Walter Weir lost support and the Liberal Party continued its decline at the provincial level.80 By the 1969 election, the boundaries of the Kildonan electorate had been redrawn and the majority of local Mennonites relocated in the new seat of Rossmere. In 1969 no candidate of Mennonite background stood for election to the provincial legislature in Winnipeg. Social Credit had ceased to be a serious political force, both nationally and provincially. Mennonite support for the Liberals was also in decline. However, by older voters the Conservatives were still seen as the party of the Anglo-Canadian establishment. While it has been argued that the NDP succeeded in 1969 because "of a decline in ethnic consciousness," the presence of a candidate with a Mennonite name could still attract Mennonite voters.81 In 1973, ahead of the June provincial election, Councillor Alfred Penner was nominated as the Progressive Conservative candidate for Rossmere. This was a strategic choice as Penner was obviously a strong candidate, well known to local voters, and, as a Mennonite, could be expected to draw support from conservative 244

P O L A R I Z A T I O N AND P A R T I S A N S H I PI W I N N I P E G

Mennonites. In the previous year's federal election for the seat of Selkirk, another Mennonite, Dean Whiteway, had won every poll in the Rossmere area for the Progressive Conservatives but lost the seat by just twenty votes. The local NDP member, however, was no other than the premier and leader of the NDP, the charismatic Ed Schreyer. Although older Mennonite voters were still opposed to a socialist party like the NDP, Schreyer received some Mennonite popular support.82 One reason was that although he was of German Catholic background, the fact that Schreyer was not an Anglo-Canadian and could speak some German made him an attractive candidate to some Mennonites.83 Even a committed Social Creditor like the Mennonite Brethren Henry W. Redekopp, who had stood unsuccessfully for the seat in 1966, could describe Schreyer as a "friend," although he told the press he would not vote for him.84 Mennonite support for the NDP was mainly confined to members of the younger professional classes, some of whom were also willing to participate in the party's campaign and even to stand as candidates. In April 1973 Schreyer, in his official capacity as premier, appointed George K. Epp as the returning officer for the seat of Rossmere. Epp, a Mennonite who had been born in the Soviet Ukraine, escaped with the retreating Nazi armies in the 1940s and had come to Canada in 1954 after first living in Paraguay. Epp was extremely active in many aspects of Mennonite life, religious and secular. During his life he served as a minister in three North Kildonan Conference of Mennonites in Canada churches with large numbers of later immigrants and which still favoured the use of German in services. In 1973 he was teaching courses in Winnipeg's tertiary institutions while pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Manitoba. Eventually he would obtain his doctorate and become president of the Canadian Mennonite Bible College and, later, Menno Simons College, a liberal arts college affiliated with the University of Winnipeg and funded largely by Mennonite businessmen.85 According to Penner, just before the close of the election campaign he was alerted to the fact that, as a minister, Epp was prohibited from serving as a returning officer under section 6 of the Manitoba Elections Act.86 He said he had drawn this to Epp's attention, but that Epp had claimed he was a "schoolteacher" and, therefore, not prohibited under the act. The election was a two-way contest and Penner lost to Schreyer by just 588 votes. According to Penner, when Epp delivered the returns to Penner's home following the election, he admitted that earlier he had been in error and that in terms of the act he was indeed a minister. However, Epp continued to insist that this did not prevent him from acting as a returning officer. Penner and his agents thought otherwise and proceeded to challenge the election result as invalid. They claimed that Schreyer had acted illegally in appointing Epp.

245

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

If this were proved, then Schreyer would lose his seat and be debarred from holding office for the next eight years. As the NDP had retained government, the very future of the premier's job and the leadership of the NDP in Manitoba were now in question. Penner's accusations thus went further than just challenging the validity of Epp's appointment. He suggested that the appointment of Epp had been "a shrewd, political move to influence Mennonite voters within Rossmere in favor of Mr. Schreyer" and that its subsequent announcement in local newspapers resulted in many people's associating "the name of Rev. George Epp with Premier Schreyer."87 Penner then claimed that during the campaign "many people of the Mennonite faith asked me why I, a Mennonite, was running against Mr. Schreyer, particularly when their minister, Rev. George Epp, was supporting him." Epp, he suggested, in his role as a Mennonite minister had endorsed Mr. Schreyer's candidature. Penner then reported that he and his agent had attended a drive-in church service held in a local shopping centre where Epp had preached a sermon on "The Christian in Politics" just four days prior to the election. Penner, supported by his party, filed papers under the Controverted Elections Act, seeking to invalidate the election result and force a by-election.88 This was part of a much wider campaign by the Progressive Conservatives to challenge a number of electoral results in order to remove the NDP government.89 Epp and Schreyer argued that, in terms of section 6 of the act, Epp was not a minister as he was not a "registered" clergyman, was unpaid, and merely provided voluntary service to his church.90 Their lawyers sought to get the case dismissed, but the petition was sent to trial after their appeal failed. Justices Israel Nitikman and John Solomon eventually heard the case early in 1974. Justice Nitikman ruled that Epp's appointment as a returning officer had no material effect on the election's outcome and declared the election result valid.91 Justice Solomon addressed the more complex issue of Epp's status as a minister in relation to section 6 of the act. He noted that the Elections Act did not define the term "minister, priests, or ecclesiastics" and, for Mennonites, the term "minister" covered a range of meanings. Epp now claimed he was merely a "Prediger," a preacher, and not a "minister." However, a Mennonite "pastor" from the First Mennonite Church, previously the Schonwiese congregation, stated in evidence that, for Mennonites, the terms "minister" and "preacher" were interchangeable. Penner argued for what Solomon referred to as a more "liberal" interpretation of the term "minister," which would include any "layman" of a congregation. In the end, Solomon interpreted "minister" to refer only to those "persons in charge of congregations, to pastors or spiritual leaders who guide the spiritual welfare of their

246

P O L A R I Z A T I O N AND P A R T I S A N S H I P I W I N N I P E G

flocks," equivalent to "priests" in the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. Epp, as a lay preacher, was thus not, in his opinion, a minister in terms of the act. Justice Solomon therefore also found the election result valid.92 Before Justice Solomon gave his judgement on the term "minister," the liberal Mennonite magazine Mennonite Mirror noted wryly that section 6 of the Elections Act would "be writ large in the annals of Manitoba Mennonite politics" and that it had "obviously been written without an understanding of that unique institution the Mennonite lay clergy."93 The confusion was partly a result of recent changes in Mennonite congregational leadership. By 1973 many Mennonite congregations, particularly in more affluent urban areas, had shifted from relying on unpaid ministers to employing seminary-trained ministers on a salary. This process fundamentally altered the relationship between a congregation and its ministers and was accompanied by a process of democratization in congregations and conferences. One aspect of this was the decline of the power of the elder and ministers who had exercised a high degree of control and authority in Mennonite communities. As they retired or died, elders were not replaced and the ordination of lay preachers declined.94 In reports and later congregational histories, this process of change was often discussed as a natural, peaceful event, but in a number of cases it was a source of tension and conflict. Change occurred at different rates in different congregations and was also associated with the shift from the use of German to English in church services and in congregational and conference meetings. In some congregations the process occurred quite rapidly; in others it was drawn out, causing conflict and even division, some of which resulted in the formation of new congregations. Conflict was most apparent between the older and younger members of a congregation and, in North Winnipeg, between those who were born in Canada and later immigrants. For instance, congregations with several post-war immigrants continued to demand German services and preferred older forms of congregational authority. Justice Solomon might decide in court that Epp was not a minister, but for many Mennonites he represented an older, authoritarian style of minister. This was particularly true of senior people who, as Penner had originally indicated, were potentially conservative voters. In court Epp pointed out he was not a member of a political party, and an NDP representative stated that members of the NDP "felt Epp was partisan to the Conservatives."95 Whatever the real situation, as a result of the case Epp certainly became associated in the minds of many Mennonites with the NDP. In his August 1973 press release Penner had claimed that this association had existed prior to the election. He also suggested that Epp had exploited this association to the NDP's advantage, but Penner did not raise this issue in court. There were, however, other factors involved beyond the court's knowledge or jurisdiction.

247

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

As a Canadian-born, English-speaking Mennonite Brethren with an established political record, Penner expected widespread support from the members of his own Conference. His support among Canadian-born, English-speaking Conference of Mennonites in Canada voters was less certain. Penner apparently believed he had a right to the entire Mennonite vote because he was a Mennonite and because the political views he espoused reflected Mennonite religious values. To many in the Conference of Mennonites in Canada, this smacked of arrogance and was a reflection of his Mennonite Brethren background. The NDP and some sections of the press also suggested that during the campaign Penner had exploited Mennonite religious and political prejudices to further his cause. He had questioned the moral basis of NDP principles and policies and accused them of promoting "socialist and Communist propaganda" in schools instead of "the Bible and Christian principles." He also had suggested that NDP public housing policies threatened private home ownership. More specifically, some of his literature was targeted at Mennonites and contrasted their freedom in Canada with the position of their relatives still in Russia, hinting that the NDP were just one short step away from communism.96 Such views would have appealed to a majority of older Mennonite Conference voters, including the post-war immigrant, German-speaking members. It was precisely these people over whom Epp had potentially the most influence. However, Epp also had pretensions to join the Mennonite intellectual elite that in Winnipeg was dominated by children of Russlander. A number of these were supporters of the NDP. Following Penner's decision to challenge Epp in the courts, the Mennonite community became divided. Epp now received support from conservative Mennonites who disapproved of Penner's politically motivated public attacks. And ironically, as a minister, paid or unpaid, and whatever conference he belonged to, Epp, in their view, deserved their respect. Among some members of the Mennonite elite, however, Epp's actions were viewed as naive and his links with the NDP, real or imagined, strangely at odds with his own background and natural constituency. Many years later Epp suggested that the Canadian Mennonites' "embrace" of politics "in the 1960s" was "directly opposed" to their "traditional position of strict separation of church and state." Conveniently overlooking his role in the 1973 election debacle, Epp continued: almost overnight we became involved [in politics] and hardly in a way you would like to see a Christian involvement. ... Soon we had three political parties (Liberal, Conservative Progressive and New Democratic) within the Mennonite community, and the tensions resulting from this state of affairs affected the church, the body of Christ. Some churches managed to become one-party churches, but the result was in no way 248

POLARIZATION AND PARTISANSHIP! WINNIPEG

more encouraging, for such churches had the tendency to put on blinkers, and as a result political considerations began to color our religious faith. So now we have Mennonite churches leaning to the left or to the right. Can Christ still be the ruler of all?97 Penner's actions in pursuing Schreyer and Epp, and dragging the name of Mennonites into political dispute and the courts, were generally not well received, as they brought the entire community into disrepute. Mennonites dealt best with Mennonite differences, preferably in private. At the time the Mennonite deputy leader of the Progressive Conservatives, Harry Enns, was reported to have questioned the wisdom of any move that might make Schreyer into a martyr.98 Apart from two brief news items, the Mennonite press did not discuss a case that was widely covered in the Winnipeg press." Penner claimed to have received threatening letters and obscene phone calls, including one that strangely called this child of the Russlander generation a "demented DP."100 Epp, of course, belonged to the group of immigrants who had been labelled as DPs (displaced persons) in post-war Canada. The increasing polarization of urban Mennonite political support for the Progressive Conservatives and the NDP in provincial elections is clearly revealed in results for the Rossmere electorate after 1973. Following the unsuccessful challenge to Schreyer and Epp, Penner became a liability to the Progressive Conservatives in terms of his ability to attract the Mennonite votes and he retired from politics. For the 1977 provincial election, the Progressive Conservatives selected a new candidate for the Rossmere seat, a doctor of Kanadier background, Dr. Henry Krahn.101 As a Mennonite and a professional, Krahn might bridge the gap between the older and unskilled Mennonites with conservative views and the new professionals. At the election Krahn won three of the five polls with a majority of Mennonite registered voters, but Schreyer retained the seat as support for the Liberals dropped to 2 percent.102 However, overall the Progressive Conservatives won a majority and formed the government. When in 1979 Schreyer vacated his seat to become Governor General of Canada, the NDP fielded a Mennonite candidate in the by-election, lawyer and union organizer Victor Schroeder, who retained Rossmere for the NDP. He won again at the provincial elections of 1981 when the NDP regained government.103 Speaking to the Mennonite press after the 1981 election, Schroeder pointed out that he had won all the Mennonite polls except one and that in his opinion there was no doubt "the Mennonite vote helped me." However, he also noted that the electorate contained a "pretty strong right wing [Mennonite] business group" who actively supported the Progressive Conservatives.104 In

249

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

subsequent elections during the 1980s and 1990s, the voters of Rossmere elected Mennonite candidates of the NDP and the Progressive Conservatives.105 This polarization of Mennonite party support for Mennonite candidates in Rossmere and elsewhere in Winnipeg was a phenomenon restricted almost exclusively to urban politics. In rural areas Mennonite support for conservative parties continued to strengthen, and at both the provincial and federal levels where Mennonites constituted a large proportion of the voters, rural electorates became bastions of power for the Progressive Conservatives.106 In urban areas at the federal level, however, the Liberals found increased support among educated and professional Mennonites concerned with issues of social justice and reform. Some even considered entering politics, most notably the academic and journalist Frank H. Epp, long a resident of Manitoba but, by the 1970s, living in Ontario. Epp would unsuccessfully stand twice as a Liberal candidate in federal elections in Kitchener. In 1978, at the same time that Epp had decided to run as a Liberal in Ontario, another Mennonite academic in Winnipeg, Roy Vogt, was approached by the organizers of the Liberal Party to see if he would be a candidate for an urban seat at the forthcoming election. Roy Vogt was born and raised in Steinbach, the son of a Russlander shopkeeper and a Kanadier mother. After attending university, he received seminary training in the United States and Germany and was ordained as one of the ministers of the large Russlander First Mennonite Church in Winnipeg. He was charged with helping the younger members of the congregation and aiding in the transition from German to English. Later, however, he resigned as a fulltime minister to pursue an academic career, although he remained a lay minister of First Mennonite. Until his premature death in 1997, Vogt was a professor of economics at St. John's College at the University of Manitoba.107 Using his skills as an economist and a minister, Vogt became involved in social justice issues and advised Mennonite businessmen on how to introduce better industrial relations into their workplaces. He also showed considerable entrepreneurial skill. With other liberal Mennonites, he founded in 1971 a popular Mennonite monthly magazine, the Mennonite Mirror, later published under the auspices of the Mennonite Literary Society, which he also founded. The Mirror championed discussion of social issues relevant to Mennonites in the modern world and encouraged cultural activities, most notably in support of young Mennonite writers and poets. The literary society, of which Vogt was president, also published important literary and historical works during the 1970s and 1980s. Vogt never got to stand for Parliament. He failed in his attempt to gain the Liberal candidacy of Winnipeg-Assiniboine, due to internal party-political intrigues during the nomination process.108 The presence of educated Mennonites such as

250

POLARIZATION AND PARTISANSHIP! WINNIPEG

Epp and Vogt in federal politics, however, illustrates the emergence by the 1970s of a new dimension to Mennonite politics connected to a new sense of Mennonite peoplehood. Previous Mennonite involvement in local municipal and provincial politics was largely centred on their own communities where they competed for the Mennonite vote on the basis of faith, ethnicity, and parochial issues. By the 1970s a new generation of urban, educated Mennonites had emerged who viewed politics in more ideological terms. Motivated by ideas derived from their experience in Canadian society, they attempted to reconcile established Mennonite religious principles with the realities of modern life. This took many forms, but a common theme concerned rethinking Mennonite non-involvement with the "world," especially with regard to political participation and issues of social justice. One aspect of this rethinking centred on what was often termed the "rediscovery" of "the Anabaptist vision," stimulated in part by Harold S. Bender's paper of the same name, first published in 1944.109 The general idea of an original, singular Anabaptist "vision," although challenged by later scholarship, soon entered popular Mennonite discourse as something to rediscover and put into practice. By the 1960s and 1970s, a new generation of often educated Mennonites sought to define aspects of their lives with reference to those of their Anabaptist forebears. In doing so they rejected current doctrinal statements of their churches and conferences. This rejection often took the form of a challenge by the younger generation to their elders and the leaders who dominated the churches and conferences. In turn, this challenge was spurred on by the general rhetoric of radicalism and demands for reform current in wider Western society at the time.110 It often seemed that every aspect of a person's life had to be related to "Anabaptism," even if in actual usage this remained a somewhat loosely defined and highly diverse category.111 In 1980, shortly after his bid to enter politics failed, Vogt delivered a paper to a lecture series sponsored by the newly established Chair in Mennonite Studies, one of the "ethnic" chairs founded by the Canadian government with community financial support and based at the University of Winnipeg. Vogt noted that in Canada Mennonites were increasingly an urban people and that this challenged their traditional stance of withdrawal from the world and presented "far-reaching implications for the formulation and application of Anabaptist theology in urban culture."112 He identified two groups in urban Mennonite congregations: professional people, and workers and managers. Educated professionals, he argued, preferred to disassociate themselves from the concerns of business and labour that dominated the lives of managers and workers and this resulted in a new kind of withdrawal, this time from the modern world. The managers and workers, by contrast, had to face the everyday realities of the marketplace and confront the modern 251

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

world. There was a clear polarization in the attitudes, ideas, and practices of both groups. Vogt noted, however, that both groups could appeal to Anabaptist ideas to justify their particular stance. The professionals could lay claim to an ascetic, otherworldly intellectualism, which interpreted events in terms of liberal ideals. Managers and workers were "precisely the opposite," and possessed a "fundamentalist-Anabaptist faith," which they used as a defence "against the inroads of labor unions and politically sponsored social reforms."113 Although Vogt did not specifically identify his urban Mennonite society, it is clear from his text that his comments were heavily influenced by his own experience in Winnipeg. And although he made only passing references to politics, the division between the Mennonites he identified clearly reflected the polarization of Mennonite voters in the city by 1980. Also, his criticisms of the withdrawal of Mennonite professionals from the reality of the modern world, including politics, accounted for the predominance of conservative Mennonite politicians and the under-representation of professionals in political life.114 Elsewhere Vogt wrote that Mennonite professionals, "like the priests of old ... have effectively retreated into a class that dispenses highly idealistic theoretical advice but which remains unsullied by social and political struggle. The art of politics ... is widely disdained by those in the forefront of Mennonite thought."115 In the same year as Vogt's essay was published, his friend and editor of the Mennonite Mirror, Al Reimer, wrote an editorial on Mennonites in politics. Like Vogt, Reimer was from Steinbach. He was of Kanadier background, had also pursued a professional career in academia, and was a professor of English at the University of Winnipeg. Over ten years previously, in 1969, Reimer had stood unsuccessfully as an NDP candidate for the rural provincial seat of La Verendrye, a bastion of Mennonite conservatism. All things considered, he did quite well but, of course, had no chance of winning a rural seat as an NDP candidate. Drawing on a more radical interpretation of the Anabaptist vision, Reimer asked in his editorial: Why is it that Mennonite politicians by and large tend to identify with the more conservative elements of society? Isn't there a certain irony in this, considering that the Anabaptists began as a radical minority group ... ? ... Our forefathers chose to be radical Christians outside the political context. We modern Mennonites have chosen to participate in the political process. As part of that process we can do one of two things. We can seal off our spiritual convictions from our secular politics and pretend that the two have nothing to do with each other. Or we can try to express our Christian convictions through political action, even if that means sometimes engaging in unsafe or unpopular politics.116

252

POLARIZATION

AND PARTISANSHIP:

WINNIPEG

Clearly, this was an appeal from the left wing of Mennonite professional opinion, but not by a person withdrawn from the modern world. In the same year as Vogt and Reimer published their statements, Harry Enns, the Progressive Conservative member of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly and son of the Russlander Winnipeg elder J.H. Enns, was interviewed in the Mirror along with his brothers. In response to a question on how he reconciled his "involvement with Conservative politics" with his "Anabaptist background," Enns replied: "I believe in the preservation of the sort of climate that allows the individual to develop and congregations to maintain themselves. I see in the left, the Socialist side, if you like, a far greater danger, threatening the values that we with our Anabaptist roots consider important. I consider my support of a conservative philosophy as being extremely important to the survival of our particular Mennonite values."117 History serves many purposes, especially for Mennonites. Enns equated Anabaptism with his own, more recent, Russian background. As he noted: "our families moved here from Russia ... to regain and preserve some degree of individual freedom." This was not the voice of a professional urban Mennonite but, instead, that of a businessman with one foot in the city and the other in rural Manitoba. It was the voice of a person who favoured individual responsibility, free enterprise, and small government, and could justify his views by recourse to history as much as any other Mennonite could appeal to radical Anabaptism. By 1980 the divide in support for different political parties among urban Mennonites was clearly reflected in these three, very different, views of Anabaptism: the radical view of Reimer, the liberal view of Vogt, and Enns's conservative opinion. The urban world of Mennonite politics mirrored the shifting nature of Mennonite identity in the complex world of modern industrialized Canadian society. Almost sixty years on, Jacob Penner's stance of 1921 would not have appeared quite so unMennonite to many urban Mennonites, whether they approved of it or not.

253

This page intentionally left blank

CONCLUSION

THE LOUD IN THE LAND

A

t the start of his famous essay on the "Anabaptist Vision," the American Mennonite historian Harold S. Bender made a rather startling claim: There can be no question but that the great principles of freedom of conscience, separation of church and state, and voluntarism in religion, so basic in American Protestantism and so essential to democracy, ultimately are derived from the Anabaptists of the Reformation period, who for the first time clearly enunciated them, and challenged the Christian world to follow them in practice. The line of descent through the centuries since that time may not always be clear, and may have passed through other intermediate movements and groups, but the debt to original Anabaptism is unquestioned.1

When expressed in this manner, terms such as "freedom of conscience," "separation of church and state," and "voluntarism" reflect more North American than European concerns with politics and its relationship to social and religious issues. Moreover, these are not as easy to trace directly back to Anabaptism as Bender suggests, even in America. Recent studies of the origin and development of the idea of the separation of church and state in American political and legal thought, while paying lip service to Anabaptism and other Reformation groups, locate the major influences closer to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.2

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

One of these studies even quotes a Mennonite political scientist arguing that the roots of this concept lie not in religious ideas, but in "political, constitutional, and juridical thought."3 Bender wrote his article at a particular historical juncture during World War II when rhetoric surrounding the concepts of freedom and democracy was intense in America. Even taking this context into account, however, Bender's words are strangely at odds with Mennonite apolitical claims, especially when seen against his own background and experience in the Mennonite world. But his statement suggests an influence of ideas rather than of actions; Anabaptist "principles" asserted in the Reformation period merely "challenged" other Christians "to follow them in practice." The implication is clear: even if the Quiet in the Land only whisper, their words possess major performative potential in political realms. But if Anabaptism did possess such a voice, however muted, and Mennonites are the heirs of Anabaptism, have Mennonite relations with politics been primarily informed by original Anabaptist principles? There is little doubt that the basic principles of faith established among Anabaptist groups during the Reformation helped to frame the ideas and practices of their descendants. This was especially true in terms of dealings with political forces and institutions, including those that developed in Europe and North America after the Reformation period. An important aspect of this was a widespread rejection on principle of participation in worldly forms of power and involvement in the structures of institutional government. In practice this meant a passive, rather than an active, rejection of politics and involved merely remaining separated from political activities and institutions. This separation was part of a much larger separation from worldly affairs, identified by Mennonite beliefs, and not a strict separation of state and church, as some later commentators have suggested. But other aspects of Mennonite faith, such as their nonresistance stance that rejected all forms of violence, helped sustain the separation from politics, institutional structures, and the pursuit of power. Separation from the world, and with it an assertion of apoliticism, was also to become an important marker in the development of self-identity as Anabaptism gave way to the establishment of Mennonite, Hutterite, Amish, and other groupings, each of which sought to preserve the continuity of their faith-aspractice in often hostile environments. After the Reformation, the reaction of these various groupings to politics and the need to maintain distinctive identities were informed by a number of strategies that became more regularized over the years, for themselves and for those in political power with whom they had to deal. For some Mennonites, one strategy was to obtain protection and a degree of toleration through securing a set of written privileges from

256

CONCLUSION

those in power in the areas in which they had chosen to settle. This often entailed accepting certain restrictions, the payment of additional taxes, and even the provision of supplying or paying for substitutes to carry out their civic duties in local militia or the army. In everyday affairs, Mennonites subjected their lives to the authority of local lords and, in doing so, became subjects of earthly rulers even if in terms of religious fundamentals they continued to recognize only God as the final authority. In time, however, the possession of a privilege from an earthly ruler became so important to some communities that it came to define the nature of Mennonite political relations with rulers and governments to the extent that Mennonites thought they could not exist without them. In this manner a number of Mennonite communities successfully dealt with the fractured political worlds and loosely defined social and cultural identities that characterized much of pre-modern Europe. The restrictions placed on Mennonites by such privileges often suited their desire to remain a separate and separated people and they cared little if rulers and governments suppressed any attempt to establish more generalized rights, duties, and obligations among their other subjects. As long as Mennonites could pursue a high degree of self-sustenance in economic and social life, and could maintain their faith free from persecution and the interference of outsiders, most Mennonites were content with their situation. From the end of the eighteenth century onwards, however, Mennonites increasingly had to face a variety of new forces that threatened the maintenance of their faith and the continuity of their social practices. Unlike in earlier centuries, these threats did not come from a combination of religious and political forces bent on eradicating heresy and confessional non-conformity through forced conversions, execution, imprisonment, or expulsion of wayward subjects. Instead, the new political forces desired to integrate Mennonites into their increasingly secular nationstates as useful citizens through the promise of freedom and legal equality with others. But this meant that Mennonite religious identities were to be subordinated and subsumed by a secular definition of being and belonging based upon nationalist allegiances. As a consequence, Mennonite separate and separated communities were to be homogenized into a mass society based on principles of common citizenship, associated with a common legal code, and increasingly a range of democratic institutions defined and protected by constitutional documents. In this new social and political order, expressions of privilege were no longer permitted, or at least were not to be paraded in the public domain. Religious beliefs were challenged by a rationalism stemming in part from Enlightenment thought that weakened patterns of belief, while religious attachments were subtly compromised by the emergence of romanticism, as the appeal of nationalism provided new

257

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

secular forms of identification and a sense of being and belonging. Religion became increasingly personal, emotional, and disconnected from immediate social practice and the political domain. Behind these changes lay a major transformation of social and cultural life associated with industrialization that steadily eroded older agrarian ideas, institutions, and practices. Mennonite reactions to these changes were complex and varied. In the Dutch lands, some urban Mennonites—or those of close Mennonite descent—were at the forefront of the writing of democratic constitutions and the establishment of a common legal code. But the majority of Dutch rural Mennonites, along with those in neighbouring German-speaking lands, either retreated into their agrarian communities or set out to find new lands beyond the reach of the changes that threatened their economic autonomy, social coherence, and religious principles. In an attempt to re-establish their faith and way of life, they moved to new frontiers. Those who moved eastwards into the Russian Empire sought special privileges and the political protection of autocratic rulers. This strategy of migration only delayed the Mennonite confrontation with the forces of social and political change in western Europe that spread rapidly to other lands during the nineteenth century. In moving eastwards, the Mennonites could be said to have crossed—but in reverse—Ernest Gellner's political "time zones," a concept he developed to explain the differential spread of nationalism and democratic institutions across Europe.4 In Russia, Mennonite communities established with official consent a degree of administrative autonomy at the local level, but only within the structures of a larger Russian bureaucratic system. In time, this resulted in many of the same political problems the Mennonites believed they had avoided through migration as the Russian state modernized and Mennonites were mobilized to assist it in its transformation into a modern society. The establishment of a network of Mennonite social institutions in Russia required extensive systems of management and control. These developments are often attributed just to the later period of the Mennonite experience, but their roots lie in early Mennonite dealings with the Russian state, where a system of indirect rule by the establishment of a Mennonite civil government was soon followed by a state-sponsored educational system. The degree to which the Russian Mennonites moulded these local structures into their communal way of life can be clearly seen in the ways in which these institutions were recreated by many of the emigrants to Canada and the USA in the 1870s, and even by their persistence among otherwise conservative Mennonite groups in Central and South America into more recent times. However, many of the more extensive changes that modernized the Mennonite world in Russia did not occur until after 1870 when, in the face of the rapid transformation of their European neighbours, the Russian rulers and 258

CONCLUSION

their bureaucrats renewed efforts to modernize the state, expand the Empire, and create the bases for an industrial society. Some historians have seen later Mennonite developments as primarily a defensive reaction to changes in Russian government policy, especially those associated with Russian attempts to establish a sense of nationalism.5 While Mennonite responses undoubtedly included defensive strategies aimed to protect what they considered their established rights and privileges and to resist cultural assimilation, they also involved the creation of a new Mennonite social and cultural order to stay ahead of government-sponsored changes. The latter involved the creation of almost a "state within a state," in what has become known as the Mennonite commonwealth. Instead of the established Mennonite strategy of withdrawal and closure to the external "world," later Russian Mennonites combined defensive with offensive strategies. Established rights and principles were defended while new sources of power were pursued as the "world" was engaged rather than withdrawn from. Such activities also involved an assertion of a wider sense of identity, a particular sense of peoplehood, which went beyond religious identity and incorporated aspects of language, custom, history, and social privilege. In time, Mennonites exposed themselves to more violent forces of change as the backward nature of their surrounding societies and the procrastinations of their beloved autocratic rulers led to increasing social and political instability. From the late nineteenth century, the actions of many Mennonites in Russia, particularly community leaders, became profoundly political in nature. Their defensive/offensive strategies of challenging the authorities and culture building through expanding education and social-support institutions were greatly assisted and encouraged by the increasing involvement of most Mennonites in the wider economy and society of the Empire. Such involvement provided a core of Mennonites with the knowledge, skills, and expertise to engage the Russian state and the larger political community, while the possession of land and other propertied wealth increased the power of individuals and communities to achieve their ends. Wealth, education, and political contacts provided the means to develop and support the new institutions of the Mennonite commonwealth. By the late imperial period it was not just Mennonite faith, established customs, or home and the hearth that needed to be maintained, but, instead, an increasingly complex and modern way of life. The opportunities for communal, familial, and personal development were fully pursued in the final years of the Mennonite commonwealth before the outbreak of World War I in an environment that presented new political challenges requiring considerable political skill from the Mennonite leadership.

259

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

It should be emphasized, however, that the vision of a highly cohesive, continuous, well-integrated Mennonite commonwealth, with a united sense of peoplehood and fully functioning institutions covering all aspects of life, belongs to a vision of pre-revolutionary Mennonite existence promoted largely after the revolution, particularly by those Mennonites living in exile in Canada. The reality was that the situation in late imperial Russia was highly dynamic and volatile. The intensification of social, economic, and political opportunities after 1905 added to this sense of dynamism within and beyond the Mennonite world. Within the Mennonite world, religious differences, economic expansion, internal migration, increased social differentiation, and educational advancement threatened to divide the Mennonite commonwealth at the very time its leaders struggled to build a greater unity and common identity among its members. But the leadership itself was divided, with the views of colonist farmers and their farmer-clergy supporters not always shared by the more sophisticated members of the clerisy, property-owning elites, and the new, more secular, professional, educated classes. The sudden and violent end of this world in the cauldron of war and revolution meant that the pre-revolutionary era was reconstructed in exile as an idealized "Golden Age." This was a place and a time when the hidden potential of Mennonite life had been most realized and its destruction was the greatest tragedy to befall Mennonites. If the vision of a Golden Age was created in hindsight by Mennonites in Canada, it nevertheless played an important role in the new political environments in which Mennonites found themselves after the Russian Revolution and civil war. In the Soviet Union those Mennonites who remained were forced to mount a new defence against the Soviet state, the Communist Party, and its organs of local government, as well as the Mennonites' peasant neighbours now empowered by the authorities. These all threatened key aspects of the Mennonite sense of peoplehood, their established rights, autonomy, and the economic system upon which their entire institutionalized way of life had been based in imperial times. But although highly defensive in nature, the new organizations the Mennonites created and the strategies they adopted still contained a degree of offensive action. In the early Soviet period, Mennonites challenged the Soviet regime and the Communist Party and for a period they proved successful in maintaining power and control over aspects of their life while still appearing to serve the state. Ultimately, however, this came at a cost, and as the Soviet leaders rejected earlier economic and social practices and finally turned against religion, the continuance of autonomous Mennonite communities was doomed.

260

CONCLUSION

In Canada the 1870s immigrants from Russia settled in the frontier region of Manitoba and re-established not just congregational communities, but also some of the institutions of community developed only in Russia, including street-villages and forms of local government. In time, however, the English-Canadian government structures imposed themselves on the settlers as villages broke up, farmers settled on their own land sections, and Canadian local government was established. More importantly, Mennonites had to deal with the established political structures of parliamentary democracy at the provincial and national levels. Settled in compact reserves, Mennonites were potentially of advantage to political parties if their votes could be mobilized. As in Russia, changes in the economic and social structures rather than in religious ideas and practices gradually pushed Mennonites into political participation, including the fielding of Mennonite candidates for election. In Canada, as in Russia, aspects of identity connected with nationalism challenged this participation, although in an environment where "race" and imperialism marked Mennonites in different ways from their brethren in Russia. And, in a final parallel, the worldwide conflict of World War I proved as much a testing ground for Mennonites in Canada as for those in Russia. The experience of war for Mennonites in Canada led some to renew the path of withdrawal; and, as in Russia, it motivated political awareness leading to a variety of outcomes, one of which was emigration out of Canada just as Mennonites from the Soviet Union began to arrive in large numbers. The Russlander immigrants from the Soviet Union to Canada in the 1920s could draw upon not just their experience of the pre-revolutionary Mennonite commonwealth, but also their encounter with the revolution, civil war, and the early Soviet system. From the outset of their settlement in Canada, the Russlander attempted to recreate many of the institutions of the old commonwealth in the hope of resurrecting their lost way of life, prosperity, and particularly their position of relative power in the larger society. But their efforts to establish communal integration were hampered from the outset by their extreme poverty. They recognized that to re-establish their institutions and power, they needed to first establish a high degree of economic prosperity, but the Depression frustrated their efforts to achieve this. The work of Russlander leaders to create unity was also hindered by the reality of Canadian geography and land settlement systems, and a political structure that did not provide Mennonites with any special rights or privileges. They also had to contend with other Mennonites and pre-existing Mennonite institutions, which, though often useful and supportive, required them to compromise, cooperate, and adapt. All these factors weakened the ability of the Russlander to control their own destiny and to establish autonomy for their people. The failure to re-establish their distinctive way of life and to achieve domination over their own affairs led certain

261

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Russlander to pursue defensive strategies against what many saw as a threat to their peoplehood and their way of life. What the Mennonite historian Frank H. Epp once called the "organizational genius of the Russlander" in practice possessed the ability to be both constructive and destructive.6 After escaping from communist political domination, some Mennonites appeared willing to support a Nazi political system based on racism, the suppression of basic democratic principles, and the use of violence. Fundamental Christian principles were subordinated to a passionate defence of a false peoplehood and inflated claims to privilege and power. The Russian Mennonites established the basis for a highly dynamic and creative sense of community that challenged the established vision of a religious community quietly withdrawn from the affairs of this world. Many Kanadier tried to preserve separation and emigrated to Central and South America. Those who remained had to deal with the incoming Russlander, who became renowned in North American Mennonite circles for their organizational ability, "aggressiveness," and attempts to "take over" existing Mennonite institutions and redirect them to their own ends.7 Before and after World War II, many of the descendants of older Russian Mennonite immigrants proved more than a match for the Russlander in politics, especially in their established rural communities. But many Russlander, already a people with urban tendencies in late imperial Russia, moved into Canadian cities where they and their descendants have participated in different forms of worldly politics. Frank H. Epp was, in fact, well qualified to speak on the Russlander and their political tendencies. As the child of Russlander born and raised in Canada, his career included that of journalist, academic historian, administrator, and would-be member of the Canadian Parliament. As a journalist and academic, he had commented on both national and international politics in relation to Mennonite beliefs long before he decided—unsuccessfully, as it turned out—to run on two occasions as a Liberal for a seat in Ontario that possessed a large number of Mennonite voters. Long controversial, Epp frequently reflected on the history of his people and their connection with politics. And he was willing to answer critical questions about his attempts to enter politics, questions rarely posed to other politically involved Mennonites before or after his own efforts. In a personal statement written ahead of his attempts to enter Parliament, Epp attempted to answer some of his critics.8 He noted the ambiguity of his Anabaptist inheritance with regard to involvement in politics. He argued, however, that "servants of God have an obligation and a calling to be reform-minded and critical," even if this established "an impossible dichotomy, an intolerable paradox" with the tradition to be in the world, but not of the world.9 Mennonites, he suggested, had 262

CONCLUSION

been willing to accept "special privileges and indeed all the benefits that government can provide without a concomitant acceptance of responsibility": Wrongly, I think, we have invoked our historic doctrines (i.e. churchstate separation) as excuses and explanations for not assuming our share of the national burden. Too easily we have pulled in our skirts or washed our hands when it came to dealing with difficult questions. [When] occasionally ... we did take the plunge, we had great difficulty applying the insights and values our heritage had given us It is important not to be too narrow or one sided . . . or ... let our traditional differentiations and separations get in the way. Politics is a phenomenon descriptive of all human interaction, especially where such interaction is in the context of organizations or institutions or any arrangements that involve the uses of power.... Thus we have politics in church as well as the state, in education as well as in religion and government. The silent in the land had never really been entirely quiet; but the Mennonite experience shows that the loudness of their voices has varied according to time and circumstance.

263

This page intentionally left blank

ENDNOTES

Abbreviations CCF-Co-operative Commonwealth Federation CM-Canadian Mennonite CMBC (in archival and text references)-Canadian Board of Colonization CMBC (in bibliographic references)-Canadian Mennonite Bible College CMBSC-Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies Canada (Winnipeg) CPR-Canadian Pacific Railway JMS-Journal of Mennonite Studies MBA-Mennonite Brethren Archives MBH-Mennonite Brethren Herald ME-Mennonite Encyclopedia MFP-Manitoba Free Press MH-Mennonite Historian MHC-Mennonite Heritage Centre (Winnipeg) ML-Mennonite Life

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

MLSB-Mennonite Land Settlement Board MJ-Mennonitische Jahrbuch MM-Mennonite Mirror MQR-Mennonite Quarterly Review MR-Mennonitische Rundschau. MRep-Mennonite Reporter NDP-New Democratic Party OZ-Odessaer Zeitung PAM-Provincial Archives of Manitoba SP-Steinbach Post UMA-University of Manitoba Archives WFP- Winnipeg Free Press WT-Winnipeg Tribune ZMIK-Zentrale Mennonitische Immigranten Komitee

266

ENDNOTES

Introduction 1

John H. Yoder, for instance, once wrote: "Over and against the majority view, characterized by the acceptance of civil responsibility, Anabaptism represents a pure outworking of the logic of a systematic apoliticism or a dualism of the civil and religious orders," in his '"Anabaptists and the Sword' revisited: systematic historiography and undogmatic nonresistants," Zeitschrift fiir Kirchengeschichte 85 (1974): 126.

2

Susan Schultz Huxman and Gerald Biesecker-Mast, "In the world but not of it: Mennonite traditions as resources for rhetorical invention," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 7, 4 (2004): 540; their emphasis. The authors are referring specifically to North American Mennonites but their comments have wider application.

3

There has been an increasing tendency to refer to the territory as Ukraine but at the time of settlement the area was part of the Russian Empire; for a discussion of the semantic issues involved, see James Urry, "Writing about the 'Russian Mennonites': concerning peoples, places and identities in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union," Ontario Mennonite History 14 (1996): 1-5.

4

In recent years, among some descendants of the 1870s migration from Russia to Canada, there has been a tendency to distance themselves from this "Russian" identification and to identify as just Mennonite. In part, this is a reaction to the domination of identification politics in the Mennonite world by the 1920s immigrants and their descendants, increasing Canadian nationalism, and a recognition of their distinctive history, and also their links to Mennonites from the same background who moved from Canada to South America.

5

By elsewhere I mean those areas where other descendants of Russian Mennonites have settled in large numbers: Germany, the United States, and Central and South America. In Paraguay the recent re-establishment of democracy has witnessed considerable Mennonite involvement in government at the highest levels; see Gerhard Ratzlaff, "Die paraguayischen Mennoniten in der nationalen Politik," Jahrbuch fiir Geschichte and Kultur der Mennoniten in Paraguay 5 (2004): 59-91; and Victor Wall, "Mennonites and politics in Paraguay," California Mennonite Historical Society Bulletin 41 (2004): 1-5; 42 (2005): 1-6.

6

See my discussion in "Who are the Mennonites?" Archives Europeennes Sociologie 24 (1983): 241-62, and other cited works.

7

I shall concentrate in what follows mainly on Mennonite scholars and scholarship as Mennonite studies is dominated by people of Mennonite descent, but where it is relevant I shall mention the work of others.

8

The German Mennonitisches Lexicon, which was first published in instalments prior to World War I, was finished only after the English-language Encyclopedia was completed; while the latter contains much original material, in many places it contains translations with some updating of earlier German entries.

9

Harold Bender, "State, Anabaptist-Mennonite attitude toward," ME, vol. 4, 611-18; N. van der Zijpp, 618-19.

10

ME, vol. 5, 710-11; 711-14; 349-51.

11

Ibid., 159-62; 837-38.

267

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

12

An early synthesis is Henry Kamen, The Rise of Toleration (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967), and more recently it has been the subject of a number of collected essays: C. BerkvensStevelinck, J. Israel, and G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes (eds.), The Emergence of Tolerance in the Dutch Republic (Leiden: Brill, 1997); Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter (eds.), Toleration in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); R. Po-Chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop (eds.), Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

13

ME, vol. 4, 291-93; see also Harold Bender, "The Anabaptists and religious liberty in the 16th century," Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte 44 (1953): 32-50; see also Perez Zagorin's discussion on the connection among ideas of toleration, freedom, and liberalism in European thought, in How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 5-7.

14

Some time ago Hans J. Hillerbrand drew attention to the importance of distinguishing between religious freedom and tolerance, but few Mennonite scholars have investigated this issue; see his "The Anabaptist view of the state," MQR 32 (1958): 90-92, ftn. 49.

15

One could even suggest that the neglect of the concept of toleration might involve an unwillingness to examine how tolerant Mennonites have been of non-Mennonites and, more importantly, other Mennonites!

16

Heinz Schilling, "Confessional Europe," in Thomas A. Brady, Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy (eds.), Handbook of European History 1400-1600. Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, vol. 2. Visions, Programs and Outcomes (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995); Heinz Schilling, "Confessionalization in the Empire: religious and social change in Germany between 1555 and 1620," in his Religion, Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modern Society: Essays in German and Dutch History (New York: E.J. Brill, 1992); Wolfgang Reinhard, "Pressures towards confessionalism? Prolegomena to a theory of the confessional age," in C. Scott Dixon (ed.), The German Reformation: The Essential Readings (Oxford, Blackwell, 1999).

17

See Michael D. Driedger, Obedient Heretics: Mennonite Identities in Lutheran Hamburg and Altona During the Confessional Age (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), and John D. Roth, whose doctoral thesis dealt with the topic; see his "The limits of Confessionalization: Hans Landis and the debate over religious toleration in Zurich, 1580-1620," in C. Arnold Snyder (ed.), Commoners and Community: Essays in Honour of Werner O. Packull (Kitchener: Pandora Press, 2002), 281-300. On Mennonite confessions of faith and confessionalism, see also the recent work of Karl Koop, Anabaptist-Mennonite Confessions of Faith (Kitchener: Pandora Press, 2004).

18

Frank Konersmann's study of Mennonite ideas in relation to political changes in a number of German states, with reference to confessionalism, privilegia, and assimilation, reveals the complexity of the situation in one area of early modern Europe; see "Duldung, Privilegierung, Assimilation und Sakularisation. Mennonitische Glaubensgemeinschaften in der Pfalz, in Rheinhessen und am nb'rdlichen Oberrhein (1664-1802)," in Mark Haberlein and Martin Ziirn (eds.), Minderheiten, Obrigkeit und Gesellschaft in derFriihen Neuzeit. Integrations und Ausgrenzungsprozesse im siiddeutschen Raum (St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, 2001), 339-75.

268

ENDNOTES

19

See, for instance, "'Whoever will not defend his homeland should leave it!' German conscription and Prussian Mennonite emigration to the Great Plains, 1860-1890," ML 58, 3 (2003); http://www.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/2003Sept/jantzen.php. For a recent collection of essays on the subject, see Rainer Liedtke and Stephan Wendehorst (eds.), The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews and Protestants: Minorities and the Nation State in Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).

20

Roland Bainton, "The left wing of the Reformation," Journal of Religion 21 (1941): 124-34.

21

Robert Friedman, "Conception of the Anabaptists," Church History 9 (1940): 341-65; Bainton had supplied Friedman with a copy of his as yet unpublished text.

22

Harold Bender, "The Anabaptist vision," Church History 13 (1944): 8. Although Bender identified the author of the Bolshevik comparison as Preserved Smith, he provided no reference; it comes from Smith's Age of Reformation (1920). See Franklin Hamlin Littell, The Anabaptist View of the Church: A Study on the Origins of Sectarian Protestantism (Boston: Starr King Press, 1958), 162, ftn. 6.

23

H.S. Bender, "Mennonites. Former conception of sect invalidated by later research," New York Times 11, 1929, p. 28. The political context involved attempts by Mennonites to leave the Soviet Union.

24

See especially George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962).

25

On Williams's specific intent, see his entry, "Radical Reformation," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, vol. 3, 375; recently Hans Hillerbrand has questioned the value of the term "radical," but on other grounds; see his "Was there a Reformation in the Sixteenth Century?" Church History 72 (2003): 525-52.

26

Note the success of a popular book on the history of Anabaptism with chapters headed by the term "radical," by the noted scholar Walter Klaassen, in Anabaptism: Neither Catholic nor Protestant (Waterloo: Conrad Press, 1973). This and later editions of the book undoubtedly contributed to the dissemination of the idea of applying the concept of "Anabaptism" to modern life.

27

An early example of this is John Christian Wenger, The Doctrines of the Mennonites (Scottdale: Mennonite Publishing House, 1952); see also Klaassen, Anabaptism, and, more recently, Arnold J. Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction (Kitchener: Pandora Press, 1995).

28

The important Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder addressed this issue in a number of books and articles. See Alain Epp Weaver, "After politics: John Howard Yoder, body politics, and the witnessing church," Review of Politics 61, 4 (1999): 637-73.

29

For historical background for this, see Paul Toews, Mennonites in American Society, 19301970: Modernity and the Persistence of Religious Community (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1996), chapter 4.

30

The Mennonite Encyclopedia contains overviews of the historiography of Anabaptism from a Mennonite perspective, first by Bender (vol. 2, 751-58), later updated by John S. Oyer (vol. 5, 378-82). See also John D. Roth, "Recent currents in the historiography of the radical Reformation," Church History 71 (2002): 523-35.

269

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

31

In the late 1970s, the Mennonites' scholarly journal Mennonite Quarterly Review debated the relationship between history and theology in Anabaptist research; see MQR 53, 3 (1979). See also Brian Froese, "The Anabaptist Vision': a half century of historical and religious debate in twentieth-century America," Fides et Historia 35 (2003): 105-17.

32

This debate occurred in the Mennonite journal Conrad Grebel Review; see Roth, "Recent currents in the historiography of the radical Reformation," for a discussion.

33

Thomas Heilke, "On being ethical without moral sadism: two readings of Augustine and the beginnings of the Anabaptist Revolution," Political Theory 24 (1996): 493-517; "Locating a moral/political economy: lessons from sixteenth-century Anabaptism," Polity 30 (1997): 199-229. See also his discussion of scholarship on Anabaptism and postmodern theory, "Theological and secular meta-narratives of politics: Anabaptist origins revisited (again)," Modern Theology 13 (1997): 227-52.

34

Hillerbrand's "The Anabaptist view of the state" grew out of his more detailed 1957 doctoral thesis from Erlangen; the Mennonite Robert Kreider wrote his PhD thesis at Chicago (1952) on the subject, although it remains unpublished; but see Kreider, "The Anabaptist view of the state," in Guy Herschberger (ed.), The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1957), and selected papers. The Mennonite literature on the state has tended to stress the separation of church and state; for general overviews by an outsider, see Thomas G. Sanders, Protestant Concepts of Church and State (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), and, by a Mennonite, Harry Loewen, "Church and state in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition: Christ versus Caesar?" in Ross T. Bender and Alan P. F. Sell (eds.), Baptism and the State in the Reformed and Mennonite Traditions (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press for the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, 1991), 145-65.

35

Glaus-Peter Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525-1618. Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, South and Central Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972); James M. Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword, 2nd ed. (Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1976 [1972]).

36

See, for example, Hans-Jiirgen Goertz, The Anabaptists (London: Routledge, 1996), who stresses, among other things, Anabaptist anticlericalism, which combined politics, social issues, and religious ideas. For a recent general discussion of politics and Anabaptism, see Abraham Friesen, "Die politische Haltung im Taufertum," Jahrbuch fur Geschichte und Kultur der Mennoniten in Paraguay 5 (2004): 9-20.

37

Werner 0. Packull, Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); Leonard Gross, The Golden Years of the Hutterites: The Witness and Thought of the Communal Moravian Anabaptists during the Walpot Era, 1565-1578 (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1998 [1980]); Wes Harrison, Andreas Ehrenpreis and Hutterite Faith and Practice (Kitchener: Pandora Press, 1997).

38

For a recent review of the literature, see Mack P. Holt, "The social history of the Reformation: recent trends and future agendas," Journal of Social History 37 (2003): 133-44.

39

In most Mennonite studies, discussions of this issue are included under the heading "church" rather than "polity"; see the entry "Church" by H.S. Bender (ME, vol. 1, 594-98) that includes an account of the development of conferences from the nineteenth century. This is largely the subject of the entry in the new volume ("Polity," ME, vol. 5, 714-18). Under "Autonomy of the congregation" (ME, vol. 1, 199-200), Bender indicated that an entry under "Polity" would appear in the first volume, but none was included.

270

ENDNOTES

40

Articles on Mennonite leadership were published in the MQR in the 1950s following the writing of entries for the Mennonite Encyclopedia, but little research or writing has been done since. R. Emmet MacLaughlin identifies the major Mennonite sources and places the Mennonite experience in a wider context. See "The making of the Protestant pastor: the theological foundations of a clerical estate," in C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schiitte (eds.), The Protestant Clergy in Early Modern Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), 75-78, 214.

41

The literature on the Amish schism is probably the most detailed; for an overview, see Thomas J. Meyers, "The Amish division: a review of the literature," in Lydie Hege and Christophe Wiebe (eds.), Les Amish: Origine et Particularismes 1693-1993 (Ingersheim: Association Francaise d'Histoire Anabaptiste-Mennonite, 1996), 72-93. Fred Kniss examines Mennonite communities as an arena for conflict and discord in his Disquiet in the Land: Cultural Conflict in American Mennonite Communities (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997); see also the related essays in MQR 72, 2 (1998).

42

The Reformation could be seen, as in some recent approaches, as an ongoing process extending well beyond the early sixteenth century; see Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe's House Divided, 1490-1700 (London: Allen Lane, 2003); Peter George Wallace, TheLong European Reformation: Religion, Political Conflict, and the Search for Conformity, 1350-1750 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004).

43

Wilhelm Mannhardt, Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreufiischen Mennoniten: eine geschichtliche Erorterung (Marienburg: Altpreuftischen Mennonitengemeinden, 1863); see also Chapter 2 below.

44

David G. Rempel, "An introduction to Russian Mennonite historiography," MQR 48 (1974): 409-46; and Abraham Friesen, In Defense of Privilege: Russian Mennonites and the State before and during World War I, forthcoming. See also Chapter 5 below.

45

See the pioneering work of Diether Gotz Lichdi, Mennoniten im Dritten Reich: Dokumentation und Deutung (Weierhof: Mennonitischer Geschichtsverein, 1977), and Hans-Jiirgen Goertz, "Nationale Erhebung und religioser Niedergang: Missgliickte Aneignung des tauferischen Leitbildes im Dritten Reich," in Hans-Jiirgen Goertz (ed.), Umstrittenes Tdufertum 15251975. Neue Forschungen (Gottingen, 1977), reprinted in Goertz, Das schwierige Erbe der Mennoniten: Aufsdtze und Reden (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2002), Chapter 8.

46

Some of the Canadian literature is discussed in Chapter 8 below. See also Harry Loewen, "Mennonites, National Socialism and Jews 1933-1945: an historical reflection," in Fred Stambrook (with Bert Friesen) (ed.), A Sharing of Diversities: Proceedings of the Jewish Mennonite Ukrainian Conference 'Building Bridges' (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1999). On South America in general, see John D. Thiesen, Mennonite and Nazi? Attitudes among Mennonite Colonists in Latin America, 1933-1945 (Kitchener: Pandora Books, 1999); and, on Paraguay in particular, Peter P. Klassen, Die deutsch-volkische Zeit in der Kolonie Femheim Chaco, Paraguay 1933-1945: Bin Beitrag zur Geschichte der auslandsdeutschen Mennoniten wdhrend des Dritten Reiches (Bolanden-Weierhof: Mennonitischer Geschichtsverein, 1990), and Jakob Warkentin, "Nachwirkungen der Erfahrungen in der 'volkischen Zeit' auf die padagogischen und politischen Haltungen in Fernheim," Jahrbuch fur Geschichte und Kultur der Mennoniten in Paraguay 5 (2004): 93-116.

47

John Horsch, Kurzgefasste Geschichte der Mennoniten Gemeinden (Elkhart: Mennonite Publishing Co., 1890), translated as The Mennonites: Their History, Faith and Practice (Elkhart: Mennonite Publishing Co., 1893); see also his Mennonites in Europe (Scottdale:

271

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Mennonite Publishing House, 1942, 1950); Cornelius H. Wedel, Abriss der Geschichte der Mennoniten (Newton: Schulverlag von Bethel-College, 1900-1904); on Horsch and Wedel, see also Abraham Friesen, History and Renewal in the Anabaptist/Mennonite Tradition (North Newton: Bethel College, 1994), Chapter 5; James C. Juhnke, Dialogue with a Heritage: Cornelius H. Wedel and the Beginnings of Bethel College (North Newton: Bethel College, 1987). 48

The work of the liberal Mennonite historian C. Henry Smith should also be mentioned, especially his The Story of the Mennonites (Berne: Mennonite Book Concern, 1941); 5th ed. revised and enlarged by Cornelius Krahn as Smith's Story of the Mennonites (Newton: Faith and Life Press, 1981).

49

James Juhnke, A People of Two Kingdoms: The Political Acculturation of the Kansas Mennonites (Newton: Faith and Life Press, 1975); one interesting area to follow up from Juhnke's books is the possibility of connections between Mennonite political involvement in the United States and in Canada, especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

50

Theron Schlabach, Peace, Faith, Nation: Mennonites and Amish in Nineteenth-Century America (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1988); see also Royden Loewen, "American nationalism and the rural immigrant: a case study of two midwestern communities 1900-1925," in Abe J. Dueck (ed.), Canadian Mennonites and the Challenge of Nationalism (Winnipeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society, 1994), also in JMS 12 (1994): 118-36.

51

T.D. Regehr, Mennonites in Canada, 1939-1970: A People Transformed (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).

52

T.D. Regehr, Peace, Order and Good Government: Mennonites and Politics in Canada (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 2000).

53

Adolf Ens, Subjects or Citizens? The Mennonite Experience in Canada, 1870-1925 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1994).

54

Donald B. Kraybill (ed.), The Amish and the State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).

55

John H. Redekop, "Mennonites and politics in Canada and the United States," JMS 1 (1983): 79-105; see also his "Decades of transition: North American Mennonite Brethren in politics," in Paul Toews (ed.), Bridging Troubled Waters: The Mennonite Brethren at Mid-Century (Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 1995).

56

Benjamin W. Redekop and Calvin R. Redekop (eds.), Power, Authority and the Anabaptist Tradition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

57

Perry Bush, Two Kingdoms, Two Loyalties. Mennonite Pacifism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).

58

Keith Graber Miller, Wise as Serpents, Innocent as Doves: American Mennonites Engage Washington (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996).

59

See, however, Hope Nisly, "Witness to the way of peace: the Vietnam War and the evolving Mennonite view of their relationship to the state," Maryland Historian 1 (1989): 7-23.

60

William Janzen, Limits on Liberty: The Experience of Mennonite, Hutterite, and Doukhobor Communities in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990). The entire issue of Mennonites and the law since their foundation would repay closer scrutiny as political and legal changes often went hand in hand.

272

in Modern America

ENDNOTES

61

One exception is the work of Alvin J. Esau of the University of Manitoba; see his The Courts and the Colonies: The Litigation of Hutterite Church Disputes (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004) and his "Mennonites and litigation," at http://www.umamtoba.ca/faculties/law/Courses/esau/litigation/mennolitigation.htm (accessed July 2005).

62

C.A. Dawson, Group Settlement: Ethnic Communities in Western Canada (Toronto: Macmillan, 1936); E.K. Francis, "The Russian Mennonites: from religious group to ethnic group," American Journal of Sociology 54 (1948): 101-07; In Search of Utopia: The Mennonites in Manitoba (Altona: D.W. Friesen, 1955); Interethnic Relations: An Essay on Sociological Theory (New York: Elsivor, 1976); for a list of Francis's publications and an account of his contributions to Mennonite studies, see Leo Driedger, "E.K. Francis' search for Utopia: a tribute," JMS 13 (1995): 89-107.

63

Michael L. Yoder, "Ethnicity," ME, vol. 5, 274-75. The most prolific writer in the field is Leo Driedger; see, for instance, his Mennonite Identity in Conflict (New York: Edwin Mellon, 1988). See also Calvin Redekop, Mennonite Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); A.B. Anderson, "The sociology of Mennonite identity: a critical review," in C. Redekop and S. Steiner (eds.), Mennonite Identity: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Lanham: University Press of America, 1988); Daphne Naomi Winland, "The quest for Mennonite peoplehood: ethno-religious identity and the dilemma of definitions," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 30 (1993): 110-38. For an overview of sources, see also Donovan E. Smucker, The Sociology of Canadian Mennonites, Hutterites, and Amish: A Bibliography with Annotations (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991 [1977]).

64

John Redekop, A People Apart: Ethnicity and the Mennonite Brethren (Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 1987); see also his "Ethnicity and the Mennonite Brethren: issues and responses," Direction 17, 1 (1988): 3-16, and the other essays in the same issue of the journal devoted to the theme "Faith and Ethnicity."

65

John Friesen, "The relationship of Prussian Mennonites to German nationalism," in Harry Loewen (ed.), Mennonite Images: Historical, Cultural, and Literary Essays Dealing with Mennonite Issues (Winnipeg: Hyperion Press, 1980), 61-72; Abe Dueck (ed.), Canadian Mennonites and the Challenge of Nationalism (Winnipeg: Mennonite Historical Society, 1994); Mark Jantzen, "Vistula Delta Mennonites encounter German nationalism, 1813-1820," MQR 78 (2004): 185-212; Gerhard Ratzlaff, "Die Mennoniten in Preussen: Staat, Obrigkeit und Politik," Jahrbuch fur Geschichte und Kultur der Mennoniten in Paraguay, 5 (2004): 35-57; Friesen, In Defense of Privilege.

66

John A. Lapp, "Nationalism," ME, vol. 5, 619-20; John K. Stoner and Robert S. Kreider, "Patriotism," ME, vol. 5, 679-80.

Part One From Menno Simons, Foundation Book, in Walter Klaassen (ed.), Anabaptism in Outline: Selected Primary Sources (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1981), 297.

Chapter 1 1

See Luther's text in Harro Hb'pel (ed. and trans.), Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). On Luther's political views, see W.D.J. Cargill Thompson, The Political Thought of Martin Luther (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1984), especially Chapter 3. On Anabaptist references to Luther's writings in disputations, see Arnold Snyder, "The (not-so) 'Simple Confession' of the later Swiss Brethren: Part I: manuscripts and Marpeckites in an age of print," MQR 73 (1999): 700, 702.

273

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

2

Walter Klaassen, "The Anabaptist critique of Constantinian Christianity," MQR 55 (1981): 228.

3

Kirchner, "State and Anabaptists," 7-12, provides an overview of how the established political orders were challenged by the Anabaptists, and Hillerbrand ("The Anabaptist view of the state") gives a good overview of Anabaptist ideas and attitudes. On the wider context of political thought in the early Reformation, see Francis Oakley, "Christian obedience and authority, 1520-1550," in J.H. Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

4

The literature and debates surrounding these connections are extensive, but Klaus Deppermann, "The Anabaptists and the state churches," Ian Waite (trans.), in Kaspar von Greyerz (ed.), Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), 95-106, provides a useful overview.

5

In John H. Yoder (trans, and ed.), The Legacy of Michael Saltier (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1973). Voder's translation, which is widely referred to in the Mennonite literature, renders the text in archaic English; other translations can be found in Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword, based on J.C. Wenger, "The Schleitheim Confession of Faith," MQR 19 (1945): 243-53, and in Michael G. Baylor, The Radical Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 172-80.

6

Stayer (Anabaptists and the Sword, 120) translates this passage as, "[Christ] did not respect the ordinances of his Father," and Baylor (Radical Reformation, 177) as, "[Christ] rejected this (Jh.6:15) and did not view it as ordained by God."

7

Baylor (Radical Reformation, 178) translates this as "spikes and iron."

8

Yoder (trans, and ed.), The Legacy of Michael Saltier, 39, 40.

9

Arnold Snyder, "The Schleitheim articles in light of the revolution of the common man: continuation or departure?" Sixteenth Century Journal 16 (1985): 430.

10

"vom tufl und nit von Got," quoted in Hillerbrand, "The Anabaptist view of the state," 85.

11

Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword, 178-80.

12

Quoted in Klassen, "The limits of political authority as seen by Pilgram Marpeck," MQR 56, 4 (1982): 353-54. See also similar arguments in The Uncovering of the Babylonian Whore (1531-32), now recognized as written by Marpeck, as discussed most recently by Neal Blough, "The Uncovering of the Babylonian Whore: confessionalization and politics seen from the underside," MQR 75 (2001): 37-55.

13

Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword, 142-45; 214-16; Goertz, The Anabaptists, 105.

14

This included the accusation that they had links to the radical preacher Thomas Miintzer, who was killed in the peasants' revolt.

15

Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword, 227-80.

16

See the discussion in Christoph Bornhauser, Leben und Lehre Menno Simons': ein Kampf um das Fundament des Glaubens (etwa 1496-1561), Beitrage zur Geschichte und Lehre der Reformierten Kirche, 35 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1973), 121-30.

274

ENDNOTES

17

Goertz (The Anabaptists, 106) argues that the earlier "revolutionary pacifism" associated with Hoffman and the Miinster radicals became so "domesticated" among Menno's followers that they "soon placed themselves under the protection of their rulers and magistrates in order to practise their faith in peace."

18

See Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modem Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), especially Chapter 6 on the development of accounts of the Anabaptist martyrs by their descendants.

19

Yoder, in The Legacy of Michael Sattler, 31; on recent interpretations of key aspects of the document, see Gerald Biesecker-Mast, "Anabaptist separation and arguments against the sword in the Schleitheim Brotherly Union," MQR 74 (2000): 381-402.

20

Article XVI of Civil Affairs in "Confession of Faith presented to the Invincible Emperor Charles V ... at the Diet of Augsburg, Anno Domini MDXXX," in Henry B. Smith and Philip Schaff (eds.), The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1877), 17.

21

"The Confutatio Pontificia in reference to the matters presented To His Imperial Majesty by the Elector Of Saxony and Some Princes and States of the Holy Roman Empire, on the subject and concerning causes pertaining to the Christian orthodox faith ... August 3, 1530," in J.M. Reu (ed.), The Augsburg Confession: A Collection of Sources (Ft. Wayne, IN: Concordia Theological Seminary Press, 1987).

22

In Smith and Schaff (eds.), The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches, 173, 176.

23

See, for example, the questions put to a suspect in 1544 in Esslingen, in John S. Oyer, "The Anabaptists in Esslingen: a viable congregation under periodic siege," in John D. Roth (ed.), They Harry the Good People out of the Land: Essays on the Persecution, Survival and Flourishing of Anabaptists and Mennonites (Goshen: Mennonite Historical Society, 2000), 263.

24

Schilling, "Confessional Europe"; see also Wolfgang Reinhard, "Pressures towards confessionalism?" For an overview of recent literature of the longer term influences of confessionalism in relation to German politics, see Joel F. Harrington and Helmut Walser Smith, "Confessionalization, community, and state building in Germany, 1555-1870," Journal of Modern History 69 (1997): 77-101.

25

R. Po-Chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe 1550-1770 (London: Routledge, 1989).

26

See the case of the renewal of orthodox Lutheranism by the ruler of Hesse in the 1570s, in David Mayes, "Heretics or nonconformists? State policies toward Anabaptists in sixteenthcentury Hesse," Sixteenth Century Journal 32, 4 (2001): 1003-026.

27

Harry Hopfl, The Christian Polity of Jean Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 31.

28

Schilling, "Confessional Europe," and also Schilling's "Confessionalization in the Empire."

29

Nigel G. Wright, "Baptist and Anabaptist attitudes to the state," Baptist Quarterly 16, 7 (1996): 356.

30

I owe these points to Walter Klaassen.

31

Ambrosius Spitelmaier, quoted in Biesecker-Mast, "Anabaptist separation and arguments against the sword," 397.

275

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

32

Quoted in C. Arnold Snyder, "The 'Perfection of Christ' reconsidered: the later Swiss Brethren and the sword," in Werner O. Packull and Geoffrey L. Dipple (eds.), Radical Reformation Studies: Essays Presented to James M. Stayer (Aldergate: Ashgate, 1999), 62; for a discussion of these issues in the context of such confessional writings and their interrelationships, see C. Arnold Snyder, "The (not so) 'Simple Confession,'" MQR 74 (2000): 103-107.

33

Snyder, "The 'Perfection of Christ' reconsidered," 65.

34

Smith and Schaff (eds.), The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches, 306, 382; Calvin also referred to Anabaptist positions on this issue in a number of his other writings.

35

See James M. Stayer, The German Peasant's War and Anabaptist Community of Goods (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994).

36

The formation and development of these Hutterite polities, their interesting confessions of faith, and other doctrinal writings will not be examined further here as they have been dealt with elsewhere; see Packull, Hutterite Beginnings; Gross, The Golden Years of the Hutterites; Harrison, Andreas Ehrenpreis.

37

See Kenneth R. David, "No discipline, no church: an Anabaptist contribution to the Reformed tradition," Sixteenth Century Journal 13 (1982): 43-58; on the importance of religious discipline and its consequences on politics, see Philip S. Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).

38

This included, in the Dutch case, differences on the use of force to protect the new states that were not unique to Mennonites; see Auke Jelsma, "The 'weakness of conscience' in the reformed movement in the Netherlands: the attitude of the Dutch Reformation to the use of violence between 1562 and 1574," in W.J. Sheils (ed.), The Church and War (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 217-29.

39

For an overview of the religious influences involved, see J.J. Wolter and M.E.H.N. Mout, "Settlements: the Netherlands," in Brady, Oberman and Tracy (eds.), Handbook of European History, 385-415, and, in greater detail, Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), Part 1.

40

Hopfl, The Christian Polity of Jean Calvin; see also Robert M. Kingdon, "Calvinism and resistance theory," in Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450-1700.

41

Theodore Beza, The Rights of Magistrates over their Subjects and the Duty of Subjects towards Magistrates (1574), excerpts in Julian H. Franklin (ed. and trans.), Constitutionalism and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century: Three Treatises by Hotman, Beza and Momay (New York: Pegasus, 1969); Beza condemned Anabaptists for their attitudes and argued magistrates were justified in punishing them; see also Francois Hotman's Francogallia (1573), also in Franklin, Constitutionalism and Resistance.

42

Harm Kleuting, "Die reformierte Konfessionalisierung als 'negative Gegenreformation.' Zum kirchlichen Profil des Reformiertentums in Deutschland des 16. Jahrhunderts," Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte 109, 3 (1998): 167-99; 306-27.

43

Douglas Nobbs, Theocracy and Toleration: A Study of Disputes in Dutch Calvinism from 1600 to 1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938).

276

ENDNOTES

44

On the complexity of these, see Hans W. Blom, "The Republican mirror: the Dutch idea of Europe," in Anthony Pagden (ed.), The Idea of Europe: From Antiquity to the European Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

45

Jonathan Israel, "The intellectual debate about toleration in the Dutch Republic," in BerkvensStevelinck, Israel, and Posthumus Meyjes (eds.), The Emergence of Tolerance in the Dutch Republic; Samme Zijlstra, "Anabaptism and tolerance: possibilities and limitations," in R. Po-Chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop (eds.), Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). On Jewish groups in the Dutch Republic in the larger European context, see Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550-1750 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). On the broader issues involved in Europe, see Hans R. Guggisberg, "The secular state of the Reformation period and the beginnings of the debate on religious toleration," in Janet Coleman (ed.), The Individual in Political Theory and Practice (Oxford: Clarendon Press/European Science Foundation, 1996).

46

Nobbs, Theocracy and Toleration, xi-xiv; Israel, Dutch Republic, 104; see also 460-65 on the Synod of Dort; this Reformed Confession should not be confused with the later Mennonite Dordrecht Confession of Faith.

47

Belgic Confession, Article 36, "The Magistratry (Civil Government)," in J. Gordon Melton (ed.), The Encyclopedia of American Religions: Religious Creeds (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1988), 172.

48

Quoted in Israel, The Dutch Republic, 440.

49

For an overview of Dutch confessions, see N. van der Zijpp, "The confessions of faith of the Dutch Mennonites," MQR 29, 3 (1955): 171-87, and, more recently, Koop, AnabaptistMennonite Confessions of Faith.

50

See Cornelius J. Dyck, "The first Waterlandian confession of faith," MQR 36 (1962): 5-13.

51

Section XI quoted in Cornelius J. Dyck, "The Middelburg confession of Hans de Ries, 1578," MQR 36 (1962): 153.

52

The early Baptist confessions reflect this link but eventually the Baptists rejected the Waterlander's position on the state; see the early texts reprinted in William L. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith (Chicago: Judson Press, 1959).

53

In Cornelius J. Dyck, "A short confession of faith by Hans de Ries," MQR 38 (1964): 17-18.

54

Jo Spaans, "Violent dreams, peaceful coexistence: on the absence of religious violence in the Dutch Republic," De Zeventiende Eeuw 18 (2003): 154-55.

55

See Jelsma, "The 'weakness of conscience,"' 222-24, on William's need to gather as much support from religious groups as possible.

56

See Andrew Pettigrew, "Coming to terms with victory: the upbuilding of a Calvinist church in Holland, 1572-1590," in Andrew Pettigrew, Alastair Duke, and Gillian Lewis (eds.), Calvinism in Europe, 1540-1620 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 175; on William of Orange's views on religious toleration, see Israel, Dutch Republic, 96, 140-41.

57

Quoted in Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword, 327; see also N. van der Zijpp, "Waterlander," ME, vol. 4, 618.

58

Tieleman van Braght, Martyrs' Mirror (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1950), 373-410. 277

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

59

"Algemeene Belydenissen," ME, vol. 1, 52; see also Koop, Anabaptist-Mennonite Confessions of Faith.

60

Braght, Martyrs' Mirror, 27-33.

61

N. van der Zijpp, "[Netherlands] State, Anabaptist and Mennonite attitude toward," ME, vol. 4, 618; on the importance of this collection, see Koop, Anabaptist-Mennonite Confessions of Faith.

62

Not to be confused with the earlier Dordrecht Confession of the Reformed Church.

63

Irvin B. Horst (ed. and trans.), Mennonite Confession of Faith. Adopted April 21st, 1632, at Dordrecht, the Netherlands (Lancaster: Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society, 1988), 32-33; see also Biesecker-Mast, "Anabaptist separation and arguments against the sword," 399-400, and Koop, Anabaptist-Mennonite Confessions of Faith.

64

See Gerald C. Studer, "The Dordrecht Confession of Faith, 1632-1982," MQR 58 (1984): 515-16.

65

Leszek Kolakowski, "Dutch seventeenth-century anticonfessional ideas and rational religion: the Mennonite, Collegiant and Spinozan connections," trans, and intro. James Satterwhite, MQR 64, 3-4 (1990): 259-97, 385-416.

66

Zijpp, "The confessions of faith of the Dutch Mennonites," 174-75, 181-84; Zijlstra, "Anabaptism and tolerance," 127-31. See also Michael D. Driedger, Obedient Heretics: Mennonite Identities in Lutheran Hamburg and Altona during the Confessional Age (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 51-60; Koop, Anabaptist-Mennonite Confessions of Faith.

67

N. van der Zijpp, "Netherlands," ME, vol. 3, 831.

68

Ernst Crous, "Ris, Cornelis," ME, vol. 4, 339-40; Robert Friedmann, Mennonite Piety through the Centuries: Its Genius and Its Literature (Goshen: Mennonite Historical Society, 1949), 135-36, 253.

69

"Mennonite Articles of Faith (Ris 1766/1895)," in Howard John Loewen (ed.), One Lord, One Church, One Hope, and One God: Mennonite Confessions of Faith (Elkhart: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1985), 98.

70

On the general history of Hamburg and Altona and toleration, see Joachim Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg, 1529-1819 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); specifically on the Mennonite congregations, see Driedger, Obedient Heretics.

71

Driedger, Obedient Heretics, 19-22.

72

See Sem C. Sutter, "Friedrichstadt: an early German example of Mennonite magistrates," MQR 53 (1979): 299-305.

73

Driedger, Obedient Heretics, 121, quoting from Gerhard Roosen, "Evangelisches Glaubensbekenntnis der Taufgesinnten Christen oder also genannten Mennonisten, wie solches in Altona dffentlich gelehrt und gepredigt wird," in Roosen's Unschuld und Gegen-Bericht der Evangelischen Tauff-gesinneten Christen (Ratzeburg, 1702).

74

Ernst Crous, "Ris, Cornelis," ME, vol. 4, 340. A revised translation was made in 1849 by Carl J. van der Smissen from Friedrichstadt in 1849 and later republished in the United States with an interesting note by van der Smissen qualifying Ris's warning on holding government office. See Ris's text included in Carl H. A. van der Smissen (ed.), Kurzgefasste Geschichte und

278

ENDNOTES

Glaubenslehre der altevangelischen Taufgesinnten oder Mennoniten (n.p.: The Author, 1895), 230 [48 of the confession] ftn. 75

See Norman Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland. Vol. 1, The Origins to 1795 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), and, for Royal Prussia especially, Karin Friedrich, The Other Prussia: Royal Prussia, Poland and Liberty, 1569-1772 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

76

See Antoni Maczak, "Confessions, freedoms, and the unity of Poland-Lithuania," in R.J.W. Evans and T.V. Thomas (eds.), Crown, Church and Estates: Central European Politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: Macmillan, 1991), and, on Protestantism, Janusz Tazbir, "The fate of Polish Protestantism in the seventeenth century," in J.K. Fedorowicz, Maria Bogucka, and Henryk Samsonowicz (eds.), A Republic of Nobles: Studies in Polish History to 1864 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

77

Michael G. Miiller, "Protestant confessionalism in the towns of Royal Prussia and the practice of religious toleration in Poland-Lithuania," in Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner (eds.), Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); "Toleration in eastern Europe: the dissident question in eighteenth-century PolandLithuania," in Grell and Porter (eds.), Toleration in Enlightenment Europe.

78

Horst Penner, Die ost- und westpreussischen Mennoniten in ihrem religiosen und sozialen Leben in ihren kutlurellen and wirtschaftlichen Leistungen. Teil 1 1526 bis 1772 (Weierhof: Mennonitischer Geschichtsverein, 1978); Teil 2 1772 bis zur Gegemvart (Kirchenheimbolanden: The Author, 1987); Klassen, "A Homeland for Strangers."

79

Confession oder Kurtze und Einfdltige Glaubens-Bekentnis derer / so man nennet / Die vereinigte Fldmische / Friesische und Hochdeutsche Tauffsgesinnete / oder Mennonisten in Preussen. Aussgegeben von denen obigen Gemeinen daselbsten; Gedruckt im Jahr Christi, 1660; reprinted in 1690, 1751, 1756, 1781 (at Elbing), 1854, and in Russia, 1854 (Odessa), 1873, 1912 (Berdiansk).

80

H.G. Mannhardt, Die Danziger Mennonitengemeinde. Ihre Entstehung und ihre Geschichte von 1509-1919 (Danzig: Danziger Mennonitengemeinde, 1919), 77-78, 81; Friedmann, Mennonite Piety, 132-33.

81

The German edition of 1768 appeared under the title Confession, oder Kurtzer und einfdltiger Glaubens-Bericht der Alten Fldmischen Tauf-Gesinneten Gemeinden in Preussen; reprinted in Russia 1875, 1890.

82

Glaubensbekenntniss der Mennoniten in Preussen, reprinted 1836 and 1837 (Elbing), and in Russia in 1870 and 1874; there are other confessions produced in Polish Prussia but none as important as these.

83

Confession oder Kurtze und Einfdltige Glaubens-Bekentnis, 20-21.

84

Kurtze Unterweisung aus der Schrifft/so wir erachten denen zu wissen nothig/Die sich zu der Gemeinschafft der Christlichen Gemeine/welche man Mennoniten nennet/begeben weilen. Verfasset in Fragen und Antwort, 11-12, Question 28: Wie bekennestu die Macht der Obrigkeit? "... darum sind wir schuldig die Obrigkeit zu furchten/ ehren und gehorsamheit zu leisten/ in alien Sachen/ die nicht streiten wider das Wort Gottes"; the Confession has, "'so nicht streiten wider das Wort Gottes."

279

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

85

Harold S. Bender, "Catechetical instruction," ME, vol. 1, 527-29; Chistian Neff and Harold S. Bender, "Catechism," ME, vol. 1, 529-31.

86

On Goosen's Christliches Gemuutsgesprdch, see Friedmann, Mennonite Piety, 144-48.

87

On Luther's catechisms in context, see Gerald Strauss, Lather's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), Chapter 8, and, on the larger context, Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation.

Chapter 2 1

See Christian Hege and N. van der Zijpp, "Mandates," ME, vol. 3, 446-63, which lists over 200 mandates and regulations against Anabaptists and Mennonites, over 90 percent of which were enacted before 1700, 75 percent before 1600, and 48 percent before 1540.

2

Marc Raeff, The Well Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 44.

3

Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg, 4-6; on the debates leading to the treaty and toleration, see Ronald G. Asch, "Religious toleration, the Peace of Westphalia and the German territorial estates," Parliaments, Estates and Representation 20 (2000): 77-83.

4

Joachim Whaley, "A tolerant society? Religious toleration in the Holy Roman Empire, 16481806," in Grell and Porter (eds.), Toleration in Enlightenment Europe.

5

The most infamous case occurred in 1731-32 when the Bishop of Salzburg expelled over 20,000 Protestants from the city; see Mack Walker, The Salzburg Transaction: Expulsion and Redemption in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).

6

Whaley, "A tolerant society?" 180-82; Asch, "Religious toleration," 83-89. The Mennonites in the Palatinate suffered particularly from such changes.

7

Konersmann, "Duldung, Privilegierung, Assimilation und Sakularisation."

8

See John S. Oyer, "Bernese Mennonite religion at the time of the Mennonite-Amish division," in his They Harry the Good People out of the Land, 101-02.

9

"Du Tochter Gottes, Toleranz / Weisst Du, wer dich im Sonnenglanz / In Deutschlands Staedte fuehrte - / Der Fuersten Herz regierte / Oft Wahrheitsliebe! Doch meistentheils Finanz," quoted in Winfried Schulze, "Pluralieserung als Bedrohung: Toleranz als Losung," in Heinz Duchhardt (ed.), Der Westfdlische Friede: Diplomatie - politische Zdsur - kulturelles Umfeld - Rezeptionsgeschichte, Historische Zeitschrift Beihefte (NF) 26 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1998), 139; I am grateful to Professor Jack Thiessen for the spirited translation.

10

From a 1628 letter from Mennonite leaders in Hamburg and Altona to brethren in Amsterdam, quoted in Driedger, Obedient Heretics, 121.

11

Driedger, Obedient Heretics, 132-40, where the case is discussed in detail.

12

Ibid., Chapter 6, for an extensive discussion on oaths.

13

Only selected sections were submitted as evidence and, in fact, this confession states that if the dictates of magistrates conflict with God's precepts, a believer need not obey earthly rulers.

14

The copy cited was 1621 but the first edition was published at Hoorn in 1617; N. van der Zijpp ("The confessions of faith of the Dutch Mennonites," 176-77) suggests Twisck was the

280

ENDNOTES

joint author with Syvaert Pietrsz and that this was less a confession of faith than a private statement. See also Zijpp, "Twisck, Pieter Jansz," ME, vol. 4, 757-59, and James W. Lowry, "Pieter Jansz Twisck on Biblical interpretation," MQR 75 (2001): 357-58. 15

For recent studies of such problems in different regions of Europe, see, for a territory under French rule, Rebecca McCoy, "Religious accommodation and political authority in an Alsatian community, 1648-1715," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52, 2 (2001): 244-84; for a Swiss canton, Mark Furner, "Lay casuistry and the survival of later Anabaptists in Bern," MQR 75, 4 (2001): 429-70; and for a small German state, Michaela Schmolz-Haberlein and Mark Haberlein, "Eighteenth-century Anabaptists in the Margravate of Baden and neighbouring territories," MQR 75, 4 (2001): 471-92.

16

Gail Bossenga, The Politics of Privilege: Old Regime and Revolution in Lille (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 5.

17

Francis D. Wormuth, The Origins of Modern Constitutionalism (New York: Harpers, 1949), Chapter 4.

18

Heinz Mohnhaupt, "Erteilung und Widerruf von Privilegien nach der gemeinrechtlichen Lehre vom 16. bis 19. Jahrhundert," in Barbara Dolmeyer and Heinz Mohnhaupt (eds.), Das Privileg im europdischen Vergleich, vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1997).

19

For an overview of this process, see Martin van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), Chapter 3; on the political ideas and justifications for absolutism, see J.P. Sommerville, "Absolutism and royalism," in Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450-1700.

20

In terms of their privileges and other legal rights for Huguenots, see Barbara Dolmeyer, "Die Aufnahmeprivilegien fur Hugenotten im europaischen Refuge," in Dolmeyer and Mohnhaupt (eds.), Das Privileg im europdischen Vergleich, vol. 1; on Jews in the Holy Roman Empire, see J. Friedrich Battenberg, "Die Privilegierung von Juden und der Judenschaft im Bereich des Heiligen Romischen Reiches deutscher Nation," in Dolmeyer and Mohnhaupt (eds.), Das Privileg im europdischen Vergleich, vol. 1; on Jews in Royal Prussia and the larger Polish Lithuanian Republic, see below.

21

J.P. Miiller, Die Mennoniten in Ostfriesland vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (Amsterdam: Johannes Miiller, 1887), 40.

22

See Konersmann, "Duldung, Privilegierung, Assimilation und Sakularisation," for examples of this situation and change in a number of German states.

23

For a listing, see Ernst Crous, "Privileges," ME, vol. 4, 220, and Adolf Ens, "Privileges (Privilegia),"M£, vol. 5, 724.

24

Peter J. Klassen, "A homeland for strangers and an uneasy legacy," MQR 66, 2 (1992): 117-18.

25

Dated, Warsaw, 22 December 1642; see Mannhardt, Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreuftischen Mennoniten, 81-82 (in German), LX-LXI (in Latin); translated from the original Latin by Matthew Trundle.

26

See Mannhardt, Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreufiischen Mennoniten, 80-95, for a substantial discussion and texts of the original privilegia in German and some Latin originals as appendices.

281

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

27

Waslaw Uruszczak, "Das Privileg im alten Konigreich Polen (10. bis 18. Jahrhundert)," in Barbara Dolmeyer and Heinz Mohnhaupt (eds.), Das Privileg im europdischen Vergleich, vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1999), especially 267-74.

28

Jacob Goldberg, Jewish Privileges in the Polish Commonwealth: Charters of Rights Granted to Jewish Communities in Poland-Lithuania in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Jerusalem: Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities, vol. 1, 1985; vols. 2 and 3, 2001); Moshe Rosman, The Lord's Jews. Magnate Jewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the 18th Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990); Isaac Lewin, "The Protection of Jewish religious rights by Royal Edicts in pre-Partition Poland," in M. Giergieliewicz (ed.), Polish Civilization: Essays and Studies (New York: New York University Press, 1979), 115-34.

29

An exception is the special protection given to Mennonite lace makers in the Danzig area by Royal privilege since 1623; within the city, this Mennonite craft was a constant source of conflict; see Ron Froese, "Were Prussian Mennonites Die Stillen im Lande?" California Mennonite Historical Society Bulletin 39 (2003): 3, 4.

30

Mannhardt, Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreuftischen Mennoniten, 90, 94. Privileges awarded to Mennonites in another part of the Prussian Hohenzollern domains, Crefeld, though, did give them economic advantages in the textile industries. See below.

31

Mannhardt, Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreuftischen Mennoniten, 97-98; Peter Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 229.

32

Kizik, "Religious freedom and the limits of social assimilation," 56-57.

33

See Horst Penner, "Das Verhaltnis der westpreussischen Mennoniten zum Staat," Westpreussen Jahrbuch 27 (1977): 53-54. Unfortunately, Penner does not discuss such involvement in the context of general Mennonite rejections on non-involvement with political office.

34

Edmund Kizik, "Religious freedom and the limits of social assimilation: the history of the Mennonites in Danzig and the Vistula Delta until their tragic end after World War II," in Alastair Hamilton, Sjouke Voolstra, and Piet Vissar (eds.), From Martyr to Muppy [Mennonite urban professional]: A Historical Introduction to Cultural Assimilation Processes of a Religious Minority in the Netherlands: The Mennonites (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994), 56; on the limited legal value of privilegia, see the case discussed below.

35

Mannhardt, Die Danziger Mennonitengemeinde, 98.

36

On Frisian and Flemish congregational leaders uniting in order to renew privilegia, see Abraham Driedger, "Heubuden," ME, vol. 3, 733.

37

Michael G. Miiller, "Stadtische Gesellschaft und territoriale Identitat im Koniglichen Preussen um 1600. Zur Frage der Entstehung deutscher Minderheiten in Ostmitteleuropa," NordostArchiv 7 (1997): 565-84; and, for the general context, see Friedrich, The Other Prussia.

38

Kizik, "Religious freedom and the limits of social assimilation," 56. In some older Mennonite accounts, Elbing was considered a tolerant city, but recent research suggests otherwise; see Wolfgang Froese, "Stets hilfreich und tolerant entgegengekommen? Die Politik des Elbinger Rates gegeniiber den Mennoniten bis 1772," Mennonitische Geschichtsbldtter 49 (1992): 56-72.

39

Mannhardt, Die Danziger Mennonitengemeinde, and Edmund Kizik, Mennonici w Gdansku, Elblgu i na Zulawach Wislanych w drugiej Polowie XVII w XVIII Wieku (Gdansk: Gdanskie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1994).

282

ENDNOTES

40

A few Jewish families remained as local ordinances were passed against them regularly during the eighteenth century and, much like Mennonites, they were forced to make special payments.

41

The following is based on the detailed account in Edmund Kizik, "A radical attempt to resolve the Mennonite question in Danzig in the mid-eighteenth century: the decline of the relations between the City of Danzig and the Mennonites," MQR 66, 2 (1992): 133-54; an earlier account is in Mannhardt, Die DanzigerMennonitengemein.de, Chapter 7.

42

The economic power of the Dutch Republic had seen earlier interventions on behalf of Mennonites, in Danzig in 1681 (Mannhardt, Die Danziger Mennonitengemeinde, 85) and in other states where the Dutch had representatives; these are interesting cases of early international diplomatic activity on behalf of Mennonites suffering persecution in foreign political jurisdictions; see N. van der Zijpp, "Netherlands States-General," ME, vol. 3, 843.

43

On the role of religion in this process, where the rulers followed the Reformed church and encouraged their officials to do likewise but most of the population remained Lutheran, see Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution, Chapter 3.

44

Quoted in Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience 1660-1815 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), 40; on the military nature of state and society, see Otto Biisch, Military System and Social Life in Old Regime Prussia, 1713-1807: The Beginnings of the Social Militarization of Prusso-German Society, trans. John G. Gagliardo (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1997).

45

Horst Quiring and Nanne van der Zijpp, "Kb'nigsberg," ME, vol. 3, 221-22. Unfortunately, there has been little new research on the Konigsberg Mennonite community since Erich Randt's 1912 Konigsberg University thesis, "Die Mennoniten in Ostpreussen und Littauen bis zum Jahre 1772."

46

See the accord in Mannhardt, Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreuftischen Mennoniten, 117.

47

Brock (Pacifism in Europe, 231) suggests that the king may have considered nonresistant rural Mennonites living in a frontier region a strategic threat in contrast to urban Mennonites who were also economically more important; see also below on the continued recognition of the Crefeld Mennonites in spite of this decree.

48

Peter Kriedte, "Aufterer Erfolg und beginnende Identitatskrise: die Krefelder Mennoniten im 18. Jahrhundert (1702-1794)," in Wolfgang Froese (ed.), Sie kamen als Fremde: die Mennoniten in Krefeld von den Anfdngen bis zur Gegenwart (Krefeld: Stadtarchiv Krefeld, 1995), 65-66; the Crefeld Mennonites were mainly of Dutch descent and until 1702 were under the jurisdiction of the House of Orange. See Ralf Klotze, "Verfolgt, geduldet, anerkannt: von Taufern zu Mennoniten am Niederrhein und die Geschichte der Mennoniten in Krefeld bis zum Ende der oranischen Zeit (ca. 1530-1702)," in Froese (ed.), Sie kamen als Fremde: die Mennoniten in Krefeld von den Anfdngen bis zur Gegenwart.

49

In doing so the Prussians merely continued the practice of issuing privilegia followed by earlier rulers of the area; see S. Blaupot ten Gate, Geschiedenis der Doopsgezinden in Groningen, Overijssel en Oost-Friesland ... Erste Deel (Leeuwarden & Groningen: W. Eekhoff and J.B. Wolters, 1842), 104-106, 215-19.

50

Mannhardt, Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreuftischen Mennoniten, 121-22; on the Elbing incident, 100-14; after 1698 Elbing was "leased" by the Hohenzollerns but remained part of Royal Prussia and the city council administered local affairs according to established custom.

283

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

51

On Prussia under this "enlightened" ruler, see T.C.W. Blanning, "Frederick the Great and enlightened absolutism," in H.M. Scott (ed.), Enlightened Absolutism: Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-Century Europe (London: Macmillan, 1990).

52

Frederick II of Prussia, "Political Testament (1752)," trans. George L. Mosse, in George L. Mosse et al. (eds.), Europe in Review: Readings and Sources since 1500 (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1957), 111-112.

53

In fact, earlier Hohenzollerns were Reformed, while most of their German-speaking subjects were Lutheran by confession.

54

See Karl-Heinz Ludwig, Zur Besiedlung des Weichseldeltas durch Mennoniten: die Siedlungen der Mennoniten im Territorium der Stoat Elbing und in der Oekonomie Marienburg bis zur Uebernahme der Gebiete durch Preussen, 1772, Wissenschaftliche Beitrage zur Geschichte und Landeskunde Ost-Mitteleuropas 57 (Marburg-Lahn: Johan Gottfried Herder-Institut, 1961).

55

On the canton system, see Biisch, Military System and Social Life in Old Regime Prussia, Part 1.

56

Mannhardt, Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreuftischen Mennoniten, 125.

57

Ibid., 125-26.

58

"To assist in maintaining the School of Cadets in Culm," as they had done since 1773.

59

The full text is in Mannhardt, Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreufiischen Mennoniten, 131-32, and also Mannhardt's discussion, 133-35; this translation is by Jack Thiessen.

60

See the cases detailed in ibid., 135-36.

61

Henry E. Strakosch, State Absolutism and the Rule of Law: The Struggle for the Codification of Civil Law in Austria 1753-1811 (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1967).

62

Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981), Part III, VI; the importance of Catherine's reforms for later Mennonite history will be discussed in Chapter 4.

63

See discussion in Robert M. Berdahl, The Politics of the Prussian Nobility: The Development of a Conservative Ideology 1770-1848 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 98-104; see also R.C. van Caenegem, An Historical Introduction to Western Constitutional Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 134-37, and Gerhard Dilcher, "The city community as an instance in the European process of individualization," in Janet Coleman (ed.), The Individual in Political Theory and Practice (Oxford: Clarendon Press/European Science Foundation, 1996), 282-88.

64

Allgemeines Landrecht fur die Preussischen Staaten, quoted in Berdahl, The Politics of the Prussian Nobility, 102.

65

Edikt of 30 July 1789 in Mannhardt, Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreufiischen Mennoniten, Appendix 9, LXXVII.

66

Reinhard Riirup, "The tortuous and thorny path to legal equality: 'Jew laws' and emancipatory legislation in Germany from the late eighteenth century," Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 31 (1986): 10-11.

67

On the views of officials, see Caenegem, Historical Introduction to Western Constitutional Law, 136.

284

ENDNOTES

68

Quoted in Strakosch, State Absolutism and the Rule of Law, 177.

Chapter 3 1

See, for example, the case of the city of Kampen as outlined by Frank van der Pol, "Religious diversity and everyday ethics in the seventeenth-century Dutch city of Kampen," Church History 71 (2002): 16-62, especially 41-45.

2

On Mennonite involvement in Amsterdam's government and some other towns, see Piet Visser and Mary Sprunger, Menno Simons: Places, Portraits and Progeny (Altona: Friesens, 1996), 139.

3

Jonathan Israel, "The intellectual origins of modern democratic republicanism (1660-1720)," European Journal of Political Theory 3, 1 (2004): 7-36.

4

Andrew Fix, "Mennonites and Collegiants in Holland 1630-1700," MQR 64, 2 (1990): 160-70; Fix, "Mennonites and rationalism in the seventeenth century," in Hamilton, Voolstra, and Vissar (eds.), From Martyr to Muppy.

5

Kolakowski, "Dutch seventeenth-century anticonfessional ideas and rational religion," 392-94.

6

See Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 168-69, 269-87; and Piet Visser, "'Blasphemous and pernicious': the role of printers and booksellers in the spread of dissident religious and philosophical ideas in the Netherlands in the second half of the seventeenth century," Quaerendo 26, 4 (1996): 311-18.

7

Nadler, Spinoza, 297-98; Glazemaker also translated other writings by Spinoza and the philosophical work of Descartes; see F. Akkerman, "J.H. Glazemaker, an early translator of Spinoza," in C. de Deugd (ed.), Spinoza's Political and Theological Thought (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1984), 23-29.

8

On many of these connections, see Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

9

Wijnand W. Mijnhardt, "The Dutch Enlightenment: humanism, nationalism and decline," in Margaret C. Jacob and Wijnand M. Mijnhardt (eds.), The Dutch Republic in the Eighteenth Century: Decline, Enlightenment and Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 203; see also N. van der Zijpp, "Amsterdam Mennonite Theological Seminary," ME, vol. 1, 10810.

10

See Joris van Eijnatten, Mutua christianorum tolerantia: Irenicism and Toleration in the Netherlands: The Stinstra Affair, 1740-1745 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1998); for a general discussion of the issue of rights in the European context, see Charles Tilly, "Where do rights come from?" in Theda Skocpol (ed.), Democracy, Revolution, and History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).

11

Michael Driedger, "An article missing from the Mennonite Encyclopedia: The Enlightenment in the Netherlands,'" in C. Arnold Snyder (ed.), Commoners and Community: Essays in Honour of Werner O. Packull (Kitchener: Pandora Press, 2002).

12

W. van der Berg, "Literary sociability in the Netherlands, 1750-1840," in Jacob and Mijnhardt (eds.), The Dutch Republic, 156-57; Driedger, "An article missing from the Mennonite Encyclopedia, "109-12. The involvement of a few individual Mennonites with freemasonry in the Dutch Republic is also apparent from the eighteenth century, but this subject needs further research.

285

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

13

See, for instance, Keith L. Sprunger, "Frans Houttuyn, Amsterdam bookseller: preaching, publishing and the Mennonite Enlightenment," MQR 78 (2004), 181-82; Nanne van der Zijpp, "Engelen, Cornelis van," ME, vol. 2, 214.

14

On this idea of a new public sphere developing in the eighteenth century, not only in the Dutch Republic but also across many regions of Europe, see Jiirgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989).

15

Interpretations of the movement vary and some refer to it as a "revolution" rather than a "movement" linked to other democratic revolutions in America and elsewhere in Europe, notably France; see R.R. Palmer, The Age of Democratic Revolution. A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800: The Challenge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959); Simon Schama, Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780-1830 (New York: Knopf, 1977); E.H. Kossmann, The Low Countries 1780-1940 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), Chapter 1; and later works by Wayne Ph. te Brake, "How much in how little? Dutch revolution in comparative perspective," Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 4 (1990): 349-63; Wayne Ph. te Brake, "Staking a claim to an old revolution: a review article," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 104 (1991): 15-23; Maarten Prak, "Citizen radicalism and democracy in the Dutch Republic: the Patriot Movement of the 1780s," Theory and Society 20 (1991): 73-102; Thomas Poell, "Liberal democracy versus late medieval constitutionalism: struggles over representation in the Dutch Republic (1780-1800)," Redescriptions: Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History (2004): 114-45.

16

Schama, Patriots and Liberators, Chapter 3; Israel, The Dutch Republic. On the ideological origins of the movement, see I. Leonard Leeb, The Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution: History and Politics in the Dutch Republic 1747-1800 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973). See also Hans W Blom, "The republic's nation: the transformation of civic virtue in the Dutch eighteenth century," in Paschalis M. Kitromilides (ed.), From Republican Polity to National Community. Reconsiderations of Enlightenment Political Thought (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2003).

17

Robert van der Laarse, "Bearing the stamp of history: the elitist route to democracy in the Netherlands," in John Garrard, Vera Tolz, and Ralph White (eds.), European Democratization since 1800 (London: Macmillan, 2000), 52.

18

Peter van Rooden has examined this increasing sense of belonging to a national community, which he notes also occurred within some Mennonite communities; see his "Public orders into moral communities: eighteenth-century Fast and Thanksgiving Day sermons in the Dutch Republic and New England," in Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (eds.), Retribution, Repentance and Reconciliation, Studies in Church History 40 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 2004), 225, 226.

19

Ernestine van der Wall, "Toleration and Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic," in Grell and Porter (eds.), Toleration in Enlightenment Europe.

20

On the background to religious restrictions and calls for their removal, see Wayne Ph. te Brake, "Religious identities and the boundaries of citizenship in the Dutch Republic," in James K. Bradley and Dale K. van Kley (eds.), Religion and Politics in Enlightenment Europe (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001).

21

N. van der Zijpp, "Patriots and Mennonites," ME, vol. 4,124-25; see also his Geschiedenis der Doopsgezinden in Nederland (Arnhem: van Loghum Slaterus, 1952).

286

ENDNOTES

22

See Col Trompetter, "De eerste schreden. De politieke activitien van Twenste textielondernemers in de Patriottentijd," in Cle Lesger and Leo Noordegraaf (eds.), Ondememers & Bestuurders: economie en politiek in der Noordelijke Nederlanden (Amsterdam: NEHA, 1999). On the importance of Mennonite industrial development in southern areas of the Republic, see Col Trompetter, Agriculture, Proto-industry and Mennonite Entrepreneurship: A History of the Textile Industries in Twente, 1600-1815 (Amsterdam: NEHA, 1997).

23

N. van der Zijpp, "Kemp, Franciscus Adriaan van der," ME, vol. 3, 164.

24

Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 64-67; Israel, The Dutch Republic, 1098-1100.

25

Van der Kemp had served in the army before becoming a Mennonite and "retained a taste for soldiering all his life"; see Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt, The Dutch Republic and American Independence (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 116. Schulte Nordholt provides a vivid description of van der Kemp and reproduces a contemporary cartoon of him preaching while dressed in both his minister's robes and his officer's uniform.

26

N. van der Zijpp, "Workum," ME, vol. 4, 979.

27

No modern study appears to have been made of this Mennonite involvement; for other influential Mennonite Patriots, including a number of ministers, see entries by N. van der Zijpp in the ME on Ragger Bos (vol. 1, 391); Wopke Claes Knoop under "Cnoop" (vol. 1, 630); Andraes Scheltes Cuperus (vol. 1, 746); Jan Kops, (vol. 3, 226-27); Jacob Kuiper (vol. 2, 257); Andraes Loosjes (vol. 3, 390-91); Abraham Stael under "Leeuwarden" (vol. 2, 309-10); Feike Hiddes van der Ploeg (vol. 4, 196); Pieter Toews (vol. 4, 734). For Mennonite Patriots in the city of Deventer, not mentioned by Zijpp, see Wayne Ph. te Brake, Regents and Rebels: The Revolutionary World of an Eighteenth-Century Dutch City (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 95.

28

In some towns the congregational leaders led their people into nonresistance, See W.H. Kuiper on Almelo in the Overijssel, "De Almelose Doopsgezinden en het beginsel der weerloosheid in den Patriottentijd," Overijsselse Historische Bijdragen 88 (1973): 60-66, especially the statement by the ministers, 64-65.

29

Leeb, The Ideological Origins, 175-93. On the idea of democracy and its use in the Patriot movement, see R.R. Palmer, "Notes on the use of the word 'democracy' 1789-1799," Political Science Quarterly 68 (1952): 205-06.

30

te Brake, Regents and Rebels, 96-98.

31

Howell A. Lloyd, "Constitutionalism," in Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450-1700; Jan-Erik Lane, Constitutions and Political Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996); R.C. van Caenegem, An Historical Introduction to Westem Constitutional Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

32

See S.R. Epstein, Freedom and Growth: The Rise of States and Markets in Europe, 1300-1750 (London: Routledge, 2000) and Stephan R. Epstein, "Constitutions, liberties, and growth in pre-modern Europe," in Mark Casson and Andrew Godley (eds.), Cultural Factors in Economic Growth (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 2003); on the Dutch situation, see Poell, "Liberal democracy versus late medieval constitutionalism."

33

Nordholt, The Dutch Republic and American Independence. At the same time, the example of the Dutch Republic's struggle to form a new political order in the sixteenth century was studied by those involved in the American rebellion; see G.C. Gibbs, "The Dutch revolt and the American revolution," in Robert Oresko, G.C. Gibbs, and H.M. Scott (eds.), Royal

287

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

and Republican Sovereignty in Early Modem Europe: Essays in Memory of Ragnhild Hatton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 34

Vreede had published a number of radical tracts under pseudonyms before the outbreak of the Patriot Movement; see his autobiography, M.W. van Boven, A.M. Fafianie, and G.J.W. Steijns (eds.), Mijn levensloop (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 1994). Fijnje came from Harlingen in Friesland and had served the Deventer Mennonite congregation; see N. van der Zijpp, ME, vol. 2, 326; Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 80, 118.

35

Jeremy D. Popkin, News and Politics in the Age of Revolution: Jean Luzac's Gazette de Leyde (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).

36

Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 60, 61.

37

Leeb, The Ideological Origins, 182-83; Nordholt, The Dutch Republic and American Independence, 268-70; Stephan R.E. Klein, "Republikanisme en Patriottisme: Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck en de klassieke wortels van het republikeinse denken (1784-1785)," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 103, 2 (1993): 179-207. Schimmelpenninck's father was a Mennonite merchant in Deventer but his mother was from the Reformed Church and he and his siblings were raised as Calvinists; see N. van der Zijpp, ME, vol. 4, 456. On his later importance, see below.

38

te Brake, Regents and Rebels, 96-97.

39

Nordholt, The Dutch Republic and American Independence, 114.

40

Stephan Klein and Joost Rosendaal, "Democratic in context: nieuwe perpectieven op het Leids Ontwerp (1785)," Achttiende Eeuw 26, 1 (1994): 90, 98; Poell, "Liberal democracy versus late medieval constitutionalism," 126-27.

41

Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 95; Prak, "Citizen radicalism and democracy in the Dutch Republic," 89-92; Klein and Rosendaal, "Democratie in context"; Jeremy D. Popkin, "Dutch Patriots, French journalists, and declerations of rights: the Leidse Ontwerp of 1785 and its diffusion in France," Historical Journal 38, 3 (1995): 553-65.

42

Klein and Rosendaal, "Democratie in context"; Poell, "Liberal democracy versus late medieval constitutionalism," 126.

43

Popkin, "Dutch Patriots, French journalists, and declarations of rights"; Popkin, "AntoineMarie Cerisier, le Leidse Ontwerp et le Grondtwettige Herstellung: Un debat encore ouvert," De Achttiende Eeuw 29, 1 (1997): 17-34.

44

On the complex political events of the Batavian Republic mentioned below, see Palmer, The Age of Democratic Revolution, Chapter 6, and especially Schama, Patriots and Liberators; the Batavians were thought to be the ancient tribe whose territory had included the area of the Dutch Republic before Roman times.

45

Full text of translation in Collection of state papers, relative to the war against France, now carrying on by Great Britain and the several other European powers, Containing Authentic Copies of Treaties, Conventions, Proclamations, Manifestoes, Declarations, Memorials, Remonstrances, Official Letters, Parliamentary Papers, London Gazette Accounts of the War, etc. Many of which have never before been published in England, vol. 3, 1 (London: J. Debrett, 1795), 31-34.

288

ENDNOTES

46

These include, for example, the Mennonite minister Abraham Stael in Leeuwarden, ME, vol. 3, 309-10, and Jan Kop, minister in Leiden elected to the city government in 1795 and, from 1799, Director of Agriculture in the government of the Batavian Republic; see Nana van der Zijpp in ME, vol. 3, 226-27.

47

Barry J. Hake, "The pedagogy of 'useful knowledge for the common man': the lending libraries of the Society for Common Benefit in The Netherlands, 1794-1813," History of Education 29, 6 (2000): 502; Hake discusses the important role of Loosjes and another Mennonite, the minister Jan Nieuwenhuizen, in promoting political change through educational enlightenment; see also Hake's "The making of Batavian citizens: social organization of constitutional enlightenment in The Netherlands, 1795-98," History of Education 23, 4 (1994): 335-53.

48

N. van der Zijpp, "Andraes Loosjes," ME, vol. 3, 390-91.

49

On the coup, see Schama, Patriots and Liberators, Chapter 8.

50

Arthur Elias, "La neerlandicite de la Constitution de 1798," in "La Revolution Batave. Perpeties d'une Republique-Souer (1795-1813)," Annales historiques de la Revolution franc.aise 326 (2001): 43-52.

51

Pieter Paulus, Verhandeling over de vrage: in welken zin kunnen de menschen gezegd warden gelyk te zyn? En welke zyn de regten en pligten die daaruit voordvloeien? (Haarlem, 1793); Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 70-71, 169-70.

52

N. van der Zijpp, "Teyler Foundation," ME, vol. 4, 703; Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 73. Andraes Loosjes was, for a period, president of the foundation. Paulus's essay arrived too late to be considered for the prize but was published nonetheless; see Leeb, The Ideological Origins, 226.

53

Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 71.

54

On this idea of a common citizenship in this context, see Maarten Prak, "Burghers into citizens: urban and national citizenship in the Netherlands during the revolutionary era (c. 1800)," Theory and Society 26 (1997): 411-15.

55

See Poell, "Liberal democracy versus late medieval constitutionalism."

56

Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 71; see also his comments (74) that the "doctrine of Christian sociability was in the vanguard of the Dutch revolution" and that it was "simultaneously a movement for moral and national revival."

57

Not all the Mennonites were concerned with just religious matters. As a businessman, Vreede was particularly eager to modernize economic affairs under government control; see Kossmann, The Low Countries, 92. On his economic thinking, see Karel Davids, "From De la Court to Vreede. Regulation and self-regulation in Dutch economic discourse from c. 1660 to the Napoleonic era," Journal of European Economic History 30, 2 (2001): 280-84.

58

N. van der Zijpp, ME, vol. 2, 341. See his portrait and brief other details in Sjouke Voolstra, '"The hymn to freedom': the redefinition of Dutch Mennonite identity in the restoration and romantic period (ca. 1810-1850)," in Hamilton, Voolstra, and Vissar (eds.), From Martyr to Muppy, 191.

59

Kriedte, "Aufterer Erfolg und beginnende Identitatskrise."

289

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

60

Peter Kreidte, "La dynastie von den Leyen de Krefeld: une famille de soyeux au 18e siecle entre mennonisme et monde moderne," Annales HSS (1995): 749-50; and Jeffry M. Diefendorf, Businessmen and Politics in the Rhineland, 1789-1834 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 31-33,46-47.

61

Diefendorf, Businessmen and Politics in the Rhineland, 50-60, 89-90, 106; Wolfgang Froese, "Revolution, Erweckung und Entkirchlichung: die Krefelder Mennoniten von der Zeit der franzosischen Revolution bis zur Griindung des Deutschen Reiches (1794-1871)," in Wolfgang Froese (ed.), Sie kamen als Fremde: die Mennoniten in Krefeld von den Anfdngen bis znr Gegenwart (Krefeld: Stadtarchiv Krefeld, 1995), 115, 133-35.

62

Diefendorf, Businessmen and Politics in the Rhineland, 153, 189-90.

63

Mannhardt, Die Danziger Mennonitengemeinde, 131-32. I should mention here the Polish May 3 Constitution of 1791, which survived just over a year before the second partition of the Polish land, although I know of no sources on the Mennonite reaction to its passing. On interpretations of the constitution and its significance, see Daniel Stone, "The first (and only) year of the May 3 Constitution," Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes 33, 1-2 (1991): 69-86.

64

Robert Dollinger and H. van der Smissen, "Hamburg-Altona," ME, vol. 2, 642. In Hamburg, Mennonites were recognized as a legally constituted religious society in 1814 and could hold political office, a right most rejected because of the judicial functions of office.

65

Jean Seguy, Les Mennonites dans la Revolution Franc.aise (Montbeliard: Christ Seul, 1989), and Jean Seguy, Les assemblies Anabaptistes-Mennonites de France (Paris: Mouton, 1977).

66

1803 (Article 14), 1805 (Article 2) in Paul Schowalter, "Die Ibersheimer Beschliisse von 1803 und 1805," Mennonitische Geschichtsblaetter 15 (1963): 35, 41.

67

Jacques Klopfenstein, later a Mennonite publisher of almanacs, was a member of the Belfort municipal council from 1800 to 1814, when his sympathies for Napoleon saw him removed from office; see Dominique Varry, "Jacques Klopfenstein and the almanacs of Belfort and Montbeliard in the nineteenth century," MQR 58, 3 (1984): 254.

68

On the significance of conscription in the new social and political order, see Isser Woloch, The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civil Order, 1789-1820$ (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994), Chapter 13.

69

Penner, Die ost- und westpreussischen Mennoniten, Teil 2, 37-38.

70

Quoted, along with the announcement of universal military service, in John Breuilly, Austria, Prussia and Germany 1806-1871 (London: Longman, 2002), 118, 119.

71

Penner, Die ost- und westpreussischen Mennoniten, Teil 2, 39.

72

Mannhardt, Die Danziger Mennonitengemeinde, 134-35; Mark Jantzen has pointed out to me that the topic of the sermon might have been mandated by the authorities. On the issue of nationalism and the Prussian Mennonites at this period, see Jantzen, "Vistula Delta Mennonites encounter German nationalism."

73

Joachim Whaley, "The German lands before 1815," in Mary Fulbrook (ed.), German History since 1800 (London: Arnold, 1997), 15; see also Thomas Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck 1800-1866, trans. Daniel Nolan (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1996), Chapter 1.

290

ENDNOTES

74

Michael John, "The Napoleonic legacy and problems of restoration in Central Europe: the German Confederation," in David Laven and Lucy Riall (eds.), Napoleon's Legacy: Problems of Government in Restoration Europe (Oxford: Berg, 2000), 85-86.

75

Christopher Clark, "Germany 1815-1848: restoration or pre-March?" in Fulbrook (ed.), German History since 1800, 39.

76

On the importance of these constitutions with reference to the Kingdom of Westphalia created by Napoleon in 1807, see Ewald Grothe, "Model or myth? The constitution of Westphalia of 1807 and early German constitutionalism," German Studies Review 28, 1 (2005): 1-18.

77

See H.W. Koch, A Constitutional History of Germany in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Longman, 1984), 3-8.

78

John, "The Napoleonic legacy," 86-87; 93.

79

Diefendorf, Businessmen and Politics in the Rhineland, 243, 255-59.

80

John, "The Napoleonic legacy," 93.

81

Strakosch, State Absolutism and the Rule of Law, 137-42, 158-60.

82

Stuart Woolf, Napoleon's Integration of Europe (London: Routledge, 1991), 206-15.

83

Ibid., 210-11; Michael Broers, Europe under Napoleon 1799-1815 (London: Arnold, 1996), 129-30.

84

Christian Neff and Nanne van der Zipp, "Napoleon," ME, vol. 3, 812; van der Zipp, "Algemeene Doopsgezinde Societeit," ME, vol. 2, 52-53.

85

Rtirup, "The tortuous and thorny path to legal equality," 22.

86

Loyd E. Lee, The Politics of Harmony: Civil Service, Liberalism and Social Reform in Baden, 1800-1850 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1980).

87

Riirup, "The tortuous and thorny path to legal equality," 23-24; Dagmar Herzog, Intimacy and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre-Revolutionary Baden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Stefi Jersch-Wenzel, "Legal status and emancipation," in Michael A. Meyer (ed.), German-Jewish History in Modern Times, vol. 2, Emancipation and Acculturation 1780-1871 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 41-42.

88

Christopher Clark, "Confessional policy and the limits of state action: Frederick William III and the Prussian church union 1817-40," Historical Journal 39, 4 (1996): 985-86.

89

Abraham Hunzinger, Das Religions-, Kirchen- und Schulwesen der Mennoniten oder Taufgesinnten: wahr und unpartheilich dargestellt und mil besonderen Betrachtungen iiber einigeDogmen, und mit Verbesserungs-Vorschldgen versehen (Speyer: J.C. Kolb, 1830); see also Christian Neff, "Hunzinger, Abraham," ME, vol. 2, 845. Hunzinger's book appears to have had little impact on Mennonites in German states, although among its subscribers are listed Mennonites in Konigsberg; in Russia, however, it produced a negative reaction among some Mennonite groups; see Chapter 4.

90

Hunzinger, Das Religions-, Kirchen- und Schulwesen der Mennoniten, 108-43, 178-97.

91

Jerome Blum, The End of the Old Order in Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).

291

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

92

See the essays in Liedtke and Wendehorst (eds.), The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews and Protestants: Minorities and the Nation State in Nineteenth Century.

93

See the discussion in Joel F. Harrington and Helmut Walser Smith, "Confessionalization, community, and state building in Germany, 1555-1870: a review article," Journal of Modem History 69, 1 (1997): 77-101.

94

Riirup, "The tortuous and thorny path to legal equality"; Jersch-Wenzel, "Legal status and emancipation."

95

Andreas K. Fahrmeir, "Nineteenth-century German citizenships: a reconsideration," Historical Journal 40, 3 (1997): 742.

96

Clark, "Confessional policy and the limits of state action," 997-1002; Clark, "Germany 18151848," 56-59; the term "dissident," probably derived from English usage for non-conformists, was used along with the terms "sect" and "separatist."

97

Alf Liidke, Police and State in Prussia, 1815-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 206, quoted in Terry Martin, "The Russian Mennonite encounter with the Soviet State, 1917-1955," from the 2001 Bechtel Lectures in Anabaptist Mennonite Studies, Conrad Grebel Review 20 (2002): 6.

98

Mannhardt, Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreuftischen Mennoniten, 188-89; Harold S. Bender, "Germany," ME, vol. 2, 496.

99

On this episode, see Gustav Reimer and G.R. Gaeddert, Exiled by the Czar: Cornelius Jansen and the Great Mennonite Migration, 1874 (Newton: Mennonite Publishing House 1956), 4-5; Delbert Plett, The Golden Years: The Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde in Russia (18121849) (Steinbach: D.F.P. Publications, 1985), 275-78, 321-33.

100 Berdahl, The Politics of the Prussian Nobility, 199-204, 320-23; Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 239-42, 254-60, 293-96, 351-52. 101 Quoted in Mack Walker (ed.), Metternich's Europe (London: Macmillan, 1968), 326. 102 Christian Neff, "Beckerath, von," ME, vol. 1, 259; for his political career, see also Erich Angermann, "Hermann von Beckerath," Neue DeutscheBiographie, vol. 1, 723-24; H. van der Smissen, "Brons, Isaak," ME, vol. 1, 437-38; Frank Eyck, The Frankfurt Parliament 1848-49 (London: Macmillan, 1968), 99. 103 Mannhardt, Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreuftischen Mennoniten, 191-93; Rudolf Muhs, "'Das schone Erbe der frommen Vater.' Die Petition der badischen Mennoniten an die deutsche Nationalversammlung von 1848 um Befreiung von Eid und Wehrpflicht," Mennonitische Geschichtsbldtter 42 (1985): 85-102; Horst Gerlach, "Die Wehrfreiheit der ost- und westpreussischen Mennoniten und die Reichsversammlung von 1848," Westpreussen Jahrbuch 24 (1974): 110-15. West and East Prussia, although they lay outside the German Confederation, were included in terms of the new Parliament; see Eyck, The Frankfurt Parliament, 49-50. 104 Von Beckerath's words are taken from the stenographed reports of the parliamentary debates quoted in R. Schwemer and H.S. Bender, "Frankfurt Parliament," ME, vol. 2, 376; also quoted in Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914, 416. See also John Thiesen, "First duty of the citizen: Mennonite identity and military exemption in Prussia, 1848-1877," MQR 72 (1998): 164. 105 Section II, Article 137; see text in Elmar M. Hucko (ed. and trans.), The Democratic Tradition: Four German Constitutions (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1987), 106.

292

ENDNOTES

106 Articles 144 and 147 in ibid., 108. 107 The Mennonite deputies voted in favour of the establishment of a hereditary emperor and the election of the Prussian king to the position; see Eyck, The Frankfurt Parliament, 374-75. 108 On the constitution and the political structure that was established, see Koch, A Constitutional History of Germany, 79-83; on the historical context, see Barclay, Frederick William IV, Chapter 9. 109 Articles 34 and 12 in "Constitution of the Kingdom of Prussia," in American Academy of Political and Social Science (1894), reproduced in Foreign Constitutions. The convention manual of the sixth New York Constitutional Convention, 1894, part 2, vol. 3 (Albany: Argus, 1894), 367, 365; a German text can be found at http://www.documentarchiv.de/nzjh/verfprl850.html*. 110 Mark Jantzen has suggested to me that this vagueness stemmed from the king's disdain for the constitution. 111

In Walker (ed.), Metternich's Europe, 326-27.

112 The following is based on Mannhardt, Die Danziger Mennonitengemeinde, 157-67. 113 Ibid., 167. 114 Christian Neff, "Harder, Karl," ME, vol. 2, 661; Penner, Die ost- und westpreussischen Mennoniten, Teil 2, 43, 64, 93-94. 115 Emil Handiges, "Elbing," ME, vol. 2, 177; I am also grateful to Mark Jantzen for further details. 116 I am grateful to Gary Waltner of the Mennonitische Forschungsstelle in Weierhof for this information as the Forschungsstelle has copies of these journals. 117 Mark Jantzen, personal communication. 118 It was not, however, until the 1870s that mixed marriages were gradually accepted, even in urban congregations. 119 Michael Howard, "William I and the reform of the Prussian army," in Martin Gilbert (ed.), A Century of Conflict 1850-1950: Essays for A.J.P. Taylor (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966). 120 Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 668; Koch, A Constitutional History of Germany, 90-94. 121 Koch, A Constitutional History of Germany, 94-97; Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 667-84. 122 Mannhardt's book, Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreuftischen Mennoniten, was privately published by the Mennonites. Mannhardt later became a noted folklorist. 123 Thiesen, "First duty of the citizen," 168-69; on Penner, see also Mark Jantzen, "'Whoever will not defend his homeland should leave it!'" ML 58, 3 (2003): http://www.bethelks.edu/ mennonitelife/2003Sept/jantzen.php. The Mennonite candidate was a Warkentin, probably Hermann Warkentin, who had contributed towards Karl Harder's education. 124 Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 685. 125 Koch, A Constitutional History of Germany, 106-13.

293

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

126 Thiesen, "First duty of the citizen," 169-72, on the Mennonite attempts to negotiate exemption and the result; see also Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914, 423-25. 127 These arguments were rehearsed in the pages of the journal the Mennonites had founded in 1854, the Mennonitische Blatter, edited by the Danzig elder Jakob Mannhardt. His articles, along with replies and responses, are detailed in Thiesen, "First duty of the citizen,"173-77; see also Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914, 425-28. 128 Penner's earlier involvement in political activity, however, appears to have escaped critical comment by later observers, even though his actions could be interpreted as being opposed to values enshrined in the current confession of faith of Prussian Mennonites. 129 Jakob Mannhardt, "Wer ist ein wehrloser Christ?" Mennonitische Blatter 16 (Nov. 1869): 66, quoted in Thiesen, "First duty of the citizen," 177. 130 Koch, A Constitutional History of Germany, 116-24. 131 Constitution of the German Reich, Berlin, 16 April 1871: Section XI, articles 57 and 59, in Hucko, The Democratic Tradition, 138, 139. 132 Editorial in the Mennonitische Blatter, quoted in Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914, 429-30; see also the patriotic response of Anna Brons, wife of Isaak Brons, who had served in the 1848 Parliament, also quoted by Brock, 430-31. 133 Jakob Mannhardt, "Konnen und diirfen wir Mennoniten der von dem Staate geforderten Werhrpflicht geniigen?" Mennonitische Blatter 19 (Aug. 1872): 43, quoted in Thiesen, "First duty of the citizen," 181. 134 See the discussion and extensive quotations in Thiesen, "First duty of the citizen," 182-84. Ewert later emigrated to the United States. 135 "Constitution of the Kingdom of Prussia," 365. 136 Harold S. Bender, "Legal status," ME, vol. 3, 311-12. 137 Thiesen, "First duty of the citizen,"185; on the court case, see also Jantzen, "Whoever will not defend his homeland." 138 In Walker (ed.), Metternich's Europe, 80. On the development of the Russian sense of autocracy, see Andrew M. Verner, The Crisis of Russian Autocracy: Nicholas II and the 1905 Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), Chapter 3. 139 Johannes J. Dyck, Am Trakt: A Mennonite Settlement in the Central Volga Region, based on a text by WE. Surukin (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1995). 140 Wall's letter is recorded in full in Jacob Epp's diary; see Harvey L. Dyck (trans, and ed.), A Mennonite in Russia: The Diaries of Jacob D. Epp 1851-1880 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 89-93. The letter was later partially published in Russia; see Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia (1789-1910) (Fresno: Board of Christian Literature, General Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, 1978 [1911]), 153-56. 141 Martin Klaassen, Geschichte der wehrlosen Taufgesinnten Gemeinden von den Zeiten der Apostel bis auf die Gegenwart. Ein Beitrag zur Kenntniss und rechten Wiirdigung der Kirchengeschichtlichen Stellung derselben (Danzig: Edwin Greening, 1873); see the discussion of his argument in Walter Klaassen, "A belated review: Martin Klaassen's 'Geschichte der wehrlosen Taufgesinnten Gemeinden' published in 1873," MQR 49 (1975): 48-50.

294

ENDNOTES

142 Franz Bartsch, Our Trek to Central Asia (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1993 [1907]); Fred R. Belk, The Great Trek of the Russian Mennonites to Central Asia, 1880-1884 (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1976); Waldemar Janzen, "The great trek: episode or paradigm?" MQR 51 (1972): 127-39; Abe Dueck, "Claas Epp and the great trek reconsidered," JMS 3 (1985): 138-47; Edmund Pries, "Revisiting the Russian Mennonite trek to Central Asia," Conrad Grebel Review 9, 3 (1991): 259-75.

Part 2 Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia (1789-1910) (Fresno: Board of Christian Literature, General Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, 1978), 653-54.

Chapter 4 1

The best account of the manifesto in the context of Russian policy is Roger Bartlett, Human Capital: The Settlement of Foreigners in Russia, 1762-1804 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); see also Detlef Brandes, "Die Ansiedlung von Auslandern im Zarenreich unter Katherina II, Paul I und Alexander I," Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas 34 (1986): 161-87.

2

See David H. Epp, Die Chortitzer Mennoniten: Versuch einer Darstellung des Entwicklungsganges derselben (Odessa: A. Schulze, 1889), 14-23, and the detailed analysis and discussion in David G. Rempel, "The Mennonite Commonwealth in Russia: a sketch of its foundation and endurance, 1789-1919," MQR 48 (1973): 282-86.

3

The excerpts from the 1763 manifesto given below are taken from a contemporary English translation reproduced in Bartlett's Human Capital, Appendix 1, 237-41; this translation of the Mennonite privilegium is by David G. Rempel, reproduced in James Urry, None but Saints: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia, 1789-1889 (Winnipeg: Hyperion Press, 1989), 282-84.

4

The section on religious freedom in the Mennonite privilegium says nothing about evangelism but the 1763 manifesto forbade such activities among fellow Christians "under Penalty of suffering the Rigour and severity of Our Laws." However, foreign colonists could convert "Mahometans ... in a decent manner" to Christianity.

5

In fact, the government issued a set of special regulations for foreign colonists in New Russia, the area of southern Russia where Mennonites had begun to settle; these contain provisions on freedom of religion and exemption from military service consistent with the 1763 manifesto and the 1800 Mennonite privilegium. See Bartlett, Human Capital, Appendix 6, 264-67.

6

Ibid., 239.

7

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great.

8

Bartlett, Human Capital, details the various administrative systems developed to deal with foreign colonists; on the early Mennonite experience, see Rempel, "The Mennonite Commonwealth in Russia," 1974, 8-15; for a comparative focus, see John R. Staples, Crosscultural Encounters on the Ukrainian Steppes: Settling the Molochna Basin, 1783-1861 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), Chapter 2.

9

See Rempel, "The Mennonite Commonwealth in Russia," 13-15.

295

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

10

For purposes of administration, Mennonites were included in the category of state peasants. On the system of local government under which they operated until the 1870s, see Boris N. Mironov, "Local government in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century: provincial government and estate self-government," Jahrbiicher filr Geschichte Osteuropas 42 (1994): 161-201, especially 177-88 on state peasants.

11

See the case of the first administrator and district mayor of the Molochna, Claas Wiens, in Urry, None but Saints, 76.

12

On the Kleine Gemeinde, see Delbert Plett, Saints and Sinners: The Kleine Gemeinde in Imperial Russia 1812-1875 (Steinbach: Crossway Publications, 1999).

13

Abraham Friesen in Plett (ed.), The Golden Years, 311.

14

In Plett, The Golden Years, 282-86, 291, etc. Other Mennonites tried to turn government officials against the Kleine Gemeinde with claims that they refused to recognize government or its authority but officials realized that the group's motives were religious and indulged their concerns.

15

See the documents in Plett, The Golden Years, 291-92.

16

Urry, None but Saints, 101-03; see also James Urry, "'Servants from far': Mennonites and the pan-evangelical impulse in early nineteenth century Russia," MQR 61, 2 (1987): 213-27.

17

Central State Historical Archive, St. Petersburg, Fond 383, opis 29, dielo 439; the relevant files have been microfilmed and are deposited in Mennonite archives in Canada and the USA, with a summary of their contents compiled by Andrey Ivanov. The file also hints at another request in 1821 and also contains the 1826 petition. On Alexander's response, see Franz Isaak, Die Molotschnaer Mennoniten. Bin Beitrag zur Geschichte derselben (Halbstadt: H.J. Braun, 1908), 13.

18

These later were known as the Decembrists and included people influenced by revolutionary ideas while serving with the Russian army in France after Napoleon's defeat.

19

See John B. Toews, "Once again—the Privilegium—a letter from 1826," MH 13, 4 (1997): 1-2.

20

Details on the privilegium's location before it was lost in the Russian civil war were provided to me by the late Dr. David G. Rempel; see also Dietrich H. Epp, "Die Geschichte des Privilegiums der russlandischen Mennoniten," in Abram Berg, Dietrich Heinrich Epp. Aus seinem Leben, Wirken und selbstaufgezeichneten Erinnerungen (Saskatoon: Heese House of Printing, 1973), 73-80.

21

See the diary entries of the Khortitsa minister David Epp in The Diaries of David Epp 18371843, trans, and ed. John B. Toews (Vancouver: Regent College, 2000), 33; the specific entry names Warkentin as "David" but the previous entry clearly shows this is Elder Jacob Warkentin.

22

The Diaries of David Epp, 75-76, 83, 84, 95. The political nature of this struggle and its connection with the privilegium is also discussed by John R. Staples, "Religion, politics, and the Mennonite Privilegium in early nineteenth century Russia: reconsidering the Warkentin affair," JMS 21 (2003): 71-88.

23

Rempel, "The Mennonite Commonwealth in Russia," 301-02.

24

See text in Urry, None but Saints, 282; the original German has "zum Muster dienen."

296

ENDNOTES

25

On this point, see the discussion in Dietmar Neutatz, "'Musterwirte.' Zum Selbstbild der Schwarzmeerdeutschen, insbesondere der Mennoniten," Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur der Russlanddeutschen 9 (1999): 75. Bartlett (Human Capital, 214-15) points out that in government policy the idea of foreign colonists as models became more common after 1804.

26

On Cornies (1789-1848), see David H. Epp, Johann Cornies (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1995 [Berdiansk, 1909]) and Urry, None but Saints, chapters 6 and 7.

27

On this period, the reforms, and the important officials involved, see W. Bruce Lincoln, In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia's Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825-1861 (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1982).

28

Urry, None but Saints, 117-22.

29

On the idea of Cornies as a "servitor of the state," see Harvey L. Dyck, "Russian servitor and Mennonite hero: light and shadow in images of Johann Cornies," JMS 2 (1984): 9-28.

30

See his letter in Isaak, Molotschnaer Mennoniten, 102.

31

Heinrich Neufeld, "The dismissal of Aeltester Jakob Warkentin, 1842," Preservings: The Journal of the Flemish Historical Society 24 (2004): 19-24; Heinrich Neufeld, "A further examination of the Molotschna conflict," Preservings: The Journal of the Flemish Historical Society 24 (2004): 24-28. Neufeld was a minister in Warkentin's congregation.

32

The Diaries of David Epp, 75-76, 83, 95.

33

The correspondence on this matter is in the Central State Historical Archive, St. Petersburg, Fond 383, opis 29, dielo 614; see also Isaak, Molotschnaer Mennoniten, 22-23.

34

Neufeld, "The dismissal of Aeltester Jakob Warkentin"; Urry, None but Saints, 127-29; Staples, "Religion, politics, and the Mennonite Privilegium." In 1842 the Khortitsa elder Jacob Dyck was ordered not to become embroiled in the affairs of Molochna; The Diaries of David Epp, 111.

35

Urry, None but Saints, 132-34; undoubtedly, continuing opposition to Cornies's policies and practices was also involved.

36

Isaak, Molotschnaer Mennoniten, 115-16; Neufeld ("A further examination of the Molotschna conflict," 26) claims that von Hahn told Wiens he would petition the government to "terminate" the privilgium. The privilegium had only recently been incorporated into the newly collated collection of laws (Polnoye Sobraniye Zakanov Rossiyskoy Imperil, XXVI, No. 19, 546) where earlier ukazi were codified as Russia moved towards a state based on the rule of law. Thus, it could not have been as easily rescinded as Hahn suggested. Indeed, his views contradicted the official advice given to the Mennonites in 1837-39 on the status of the privilegium. But all this was probably unknown to most Mennonites. A later Mennonite writer with experience of dealing with Russian offialdom would question the legality of Hahn's actions in removing Warkentin and Wiens; see Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia (1789-1910) (Fresno: Board of Christian Literature, General Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, [1911], 1978), 994, ftn. 62.

37

The Kleine Gemeinde leadership refused to become involved in the disputes and their leadership reasserted established views on non-involvement in politics; see the contemporary documents in Plett, The Golden Years, 282-86, 308-13.

297

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

38

Quoted from a copy included in the diary of Jacob D. Epp for 1851 in Dyck (ed. and trans.), A Mennonite in Russia, 89-93; Wall's letter was widely distributed in manuscript but first published in Russia only in 1907; an edited version appeared in Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 153-55.

39

The original German, as quoted by P.M. Friesen in his Die Alt-Evangelische Mennonitische Briiderschaft in Russland (1789-1910) im Rahmen der mennonitischen Gesamtgeschichte (Halbstadt: Raduga, 1911), 129, says: "Wo man ausserordentliche Vorteile geniesst, da sollen auch ausserordentliche Leistungen erfolgen ..."

40

Bartlett, Human Capital, 213.

41

Rempel, "The Mennonite Commonwealth in Russia," 22-23; Urry, None but Saints, 119-21.

42

The earliest usage of this term I have discovered is in an article "Einige Gedanken iiber die Mennoniten," OZ 144 (14 December 1869): 575, where it is used to emphasize the humble status of Mennonites before they became wealthy and worldly. During the later nineteenth century it acquired more of a volkisch meaning while still preserving its sense of a "little people"; see Leonard Friesen, "Mennonites in the Russian revolution of 1905: experiences, perceptions and responses," MQR 62 (1988): 54.

43

Urry, None but Saints, chapters 10 and 11.

44

In Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 1026, ftn. 10. The comment was made by P.A. Valuev to the teacher Andreas Voth, who had been forced to submit a petition on behalf of Mennonite interest groups; to a surprised Voth, the minister quoted Paul's admonition to the early Christian church in Corinth to avoid disputes and divisions among themselves (1 Corinthians 1:10-12).

45

James Urry and Lawrence Klippenstein, "Mennonites and the Crimean War, 1854-1856," JMS 7 (1989): 9-32.

46

For recent overviews and critical discussion of this era, see W. Bruce Lincoln, The Great Reforms: Autocracy, Bureaucracy, and the Politics of Change in Imperial Russia (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1990); Ben Eklof, John Bushnell, and Larissa Zakharova (eds.), Russia's Great Reforms, 1855-1881 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); and Theodore Taranovski (ed. and trans.), Reform in Modern Russian History. Progress or Cycle? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

47

See the fears expressed by the merchant Cornelius Jansen of the urban Berdiansk community in Reimer and Gaeddert, Exiled by the Czar, 193-96, trans, in Plett (ed.), Storm and Triumph, 253-55.

48

One aspect of this at the time was the naive idea that if the tsar could only be reached with a petition, the privilegium would be upheld and Mennonites exempted from the proposed military law. For an example of such a petition from the Kleine Gemeinde, expressed in the old language used in dealing directly with supreme rulers, see Delbert Plett (ed.), History and Events: Writings and Maps Pertaining to the History of the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde from 1866 to 1876 (Steinbach: D.F.P. Publications, 1982), 63-64.

49

Dyck (ed.), A Mennonite in Russia, 321; the entry is dated 15 May 1871 but obviously was added to later. As Epp notes, "As things turned out, the Charter of Privileges did indeed lose its validity within a short period of time."

298

ENDNOTES

50

There is an extensive body of literature on this issue from the Mennonite point of view, ranging from contemporary reports in newspapers and Mennonite journals to later collections of documents; for the latter, see especially the collection in Abraham Gorz, Em Beitrag zur Geschichte des Forstdeinstes der Mennoniten in Russland (Gross-Tokmak: H. Lenzmann, 1907). For a recent detailed study, see Lawrence Klippenstein, "Mennonite pacifism and state service in Russia: a case study in church-state relations, 1789-1936" (PhD thesis, University of Minnesota, 1984).

51

See the essays by Alfred J. Rieber, "Interest groups in the era of the great reforms," and Larissa Zakharova, "Autocracy and the reforms of 1861-1874 in Russia: choosing paths of development" in Eklof, Bushnell, and Zakharova (eds.), Russia's Great Reforms.

52

Isaak, Molotschnaer Mennoniten, 303 ftn.; Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 587.

53

See Lincoln, In the Vanguard of Reform. Nikolai Miliutin, for instance, had worked for the Ministry of State Domains and surveyed the Mennonite colonies in the 1840s and, in the latter, was involved in the reform of local government; his brother, Dmitrii, initiated the military reforms.

54

Zakharova, "Autocracy and the reforms of 1861-1874 in Russia," 71-72.

55

Epp, Chortitzer Mennoniten, 107-09; Isaak, Molotschnaer Mennoniten, 317-18; Gorz, Em Beitrag zur Geschichte, 15-18.

56

On the ethnic issues, see Robert F. Baumann, "Universal service reform and Russia's Imperial dilemma," War and Society 4, 2 (1986): 31-49.

57

Harry Loewen, "A house divided: Russian Mennonite non-resistance and emigration in the 1870s," in John Friesen (ed.), Mennonites in Russia, 1788-1988: Essays in Honour of Gerhard Lohrenz (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1989).

58

Epp, Chortitzer Mennoniten, 106; see also Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 587-88. Sudermann would later become a leader of the emigration movement to North America.

59

See the numerous documents in Plett (ed.), History and Events.

60

About 15,000 Mennonites did emigrate and while the changes in their status caused by the military reform were the major factor involved, the reasons were more complex and involved a wider range of issues than is reflected in later literature; see James Urry, "The Russian state, the Mennonite world and the migration from Russia to North America in the 1870s," ML 46 (1991): 11-16.

61

Urry, None but Saints, 207-18.

62

Kermit E. McKenzie, "Zemstvo organization and role within the administrative structure," in Terence Emmons and Wayne S. Vucinich (eds.), The Zemstvo in Russia: An Experiment in Local Self-government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

63

The most important figure in Khortitsa, for instance, was Jakob Klassen, who served as secretary from about 1885 until he was murdered by bandits in 1919; N. Kroeker (ed.), First Mennonite Villages in Russia 1789-1943: Khortitsa—Rosental (Vancouver: The Author, 1981), 119-20.

64

Urry, None but Saints, 254. These were mainly from Gross-Liebenthal, which had enjoyed close relations with Russian officials in the first half of the century and whose inhabitants were seen as highly progressive.

299

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

65

John Friesen, Against the Wind: The Story of Four Mennonite Villages (Winnipeg: Henderson Books, 1994), 46-48.

66

Gerhard Tows, Schonfeld: Werde- and Opfergang einer dentschen Siedlung in der Ukraine (Winnipeg: Rundschau Publishing House, 1939).

67

Heinrich Goerz, Memrik: A Mennonite Settlement in Russia, trans. Eric Enns (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1997), 10-11.

68

On Mennonite education in Russia, see Peter Braun, "The educational system of the Mennonite colonies in South Russia," MQR 3 (1929): 169-82; Ens, "Mennonite education in Russia," 75-97.

69

One aspect of the language issue was an increase in Mennonite knowledge and respect for German culture, especially German literature. This cultural "Germanizing" would eventually have negative political consequences for Mennonites in terms of external perceptions of their political loyalty and in self-perceptions of their identity in terms of race and culture (see below and chapters 5 and 8).

70

The control of education by the Agricultural Union proved yet another matter of concern to many conservative religious leaders; see Urry, None but Saints, 148, 123-24, 162-65. Abraham Hunzinger's book calling for reform among Mennonites (see Chapter 3) reached the Russian colonies through government officials who liked the idea of religious reform and congregational rationalization. One Molochna minister reacted strongly against the book; see James Urry, "Heinrich Balzer (1800-1846): Kleine Gemeinde minister and conservative Mennonite philosopher," in Delbert F. Plett (ed.), Leaders of the Kleine Gemeinde in Russia 1812 to 1874 (Steinbach: Crossway Publications, 1993), 295-304.

71

See Peter J. Braun, Der Molotschnaer Mennoniten-Schulrat 1869-1919. Zum Gedenktag seines SOjdhrigen Bestehens, ed. Wladimir Suss (Gb'ttingen: Der Gb'ttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001), 3641.

72

This reason, along with the connection to the reform process, is stressed in Die Schulen in den Mennoniten-Kolonien an der Molotschna im sudlichen Russland, dargestellt von dem Kirchenaltesten Abraham Gorz und herausgegeben von dem Molotschner MennonitenKirchenkonvent (Berdiansk: E. Kylius, 1882), 3-7. Reforms among the peasants were begun in the mid-1860s through a new Ministry of Education; see Allen Sinel, "Educating the Russian peasantry: the elementary school reforms of Dmitrii Tolstoi," Slavic Review 27 (1968): 49-70.

73

See the reports of Samuel Kludt, "Die Wolgaansiedler iiber eine bessere Verfassung ihrer Schulwesen," OZ, 22 August 1875; OZ, 27 August 1875, p. 3; see also Wladimir Suss, "Deutsche Lehrerbildung im Russland des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts," Zeitschrift fur Internationale erziehungs- und sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung 14 (1997): 109-35.

74

Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 748; full text in Die Schulen in den Mennoniten-Kolonien an der Molotschna, 16. The Mennonite right to alternative service required them to differentiate themselves from other colonists as a high school education also reduced the period of service.

75

I have adopted and adapted this concept from the political writings of Samuel Coleridge; see John Morrow, Coleridge's Political Thought: Property, Morality, and the Limits of Political Discourse (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990). I am grateful to Professor Morrow for discussing Coleridge's concept with me.

300

ENDNOTES

76

Heinrich Epp, Kirchendltester der Mennonitengemeinde zu Chortitza (Stidrussland) (Leipzig: August Pries, 1897); James Urry, "David H. Epp: intellectual, spiritual, cultural leader 18611934," in Harry Loewen (ed.), Shepherds, Servants and Prophets: Leadership among the Russian Mennonites (ca. 1880-1960) (Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press/Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2003), 85-102. There is as yet no biography of Gorz, although numerous other leaders developed in later periods with similar backgrounds.

77

On the start of the Forestry Service camps, see Klippenstein, "Mennonite pacifism and state service in Russia," 95-101; and on education, see Braun, "The educational system of the Mennonite colonies," 175-78; Rempel, "Mennonite Commonwealth," 40-48; Urry, None bat Saints, 257-60; Ens, "Mennonite education in Russia," 82-91.

78

On the program of the People's Will, see George Vernadsky et al. (eds.), A Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917, vol. 3, Alexander II to the February Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 664-65; on the proposals and promises of constitutional government, see Chapter 5 below.

79

Texts in Vernadsky et al. (eds.), A Source Book for Russian History, vol. 3, 680-81.

80

See excerpts of the decree of 24 November 1866 in ibid., 620-21.

81

David G. Rempel, personal communication. Some of this material was incorporated into his later publications including his "Zum 200 jahrigen Jubilaum der Mennoniten Einwanderung in Russland 1789-1989," Bote (1991); see especially issues no. 22-23 on political events and Mennonite opinion in Russia.

82

On the landless struggle, see Urry, None but Saints, 196-207.

83

When the Molochna daughter colony of Zagradovka was established in Kherson province in 1871, the setting aside of such areas did not occur, forcing the Molochna colonists to support Zagradovka's landless. On the settlement, see Gerhard Lohrenz, Zagradovka: History of a Mennonite Settlement in Southern Russia (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 2000).

84

Peter P. Dyck, Orenburg am Ural: die Geschichte einer mennonitischen Ansiedlung in Russland (Clearbrook: Christian Book Store, 1951), 11-12.

85

Rempel, "Mennonite Commonwealth," 44. On the ambivalent attitude of the Russian authorities to popular education, see Ben Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Schools and Popular Pedagogy 1861-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

86

Urry, None but Saints, 251.

87

James Urry, "The cost of community: the funding and economic management of the Russian Mennonite Commonwealth before 1914," JMS 10 (1992): 22-55.

88

On the sources of this wealth, see James Urry, "Through the eye of a needle: wealth and the Mennonite experience in Imperial Russia," JMS 3 (1985): 7-35.

89

"Deputation der Mennoniten," OZ, 5-17 February 1885; report on their return in OZ, 28 February 1885, and OZ, 12 March 1885. School and Forestry Service matters were discussed along with the administration of the colony's Orphan's Funds; on the latter, see Rempel, "Mennonite Commonwealth," 38-39.

90

While the idea of a Mennonite state within a state undoubtedly existed before the revolution of 1917 (see also Chapter 5), the earliest reference in print I could find to it is in Die Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Russland wdhrend der Kriegs-und Revolutionsjahre 1914 bis 1920

301

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

(Heilbronn a. Neckar: Kommisions-Verlag der Mennoniten Fliichtingsfiirsorge E.V., 1921), 52, which states the Russian Mennonites "bildeten sozusagen einen Staat im Staate." On the widespread acceptance of this view of a "state within a state," see also Rempel, "The Mennonite Commonwealth," 48. 91

On changing official attitudes to Russia's varied peoples, see Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History (London: Pearson, 2001), chapters 6-8.

92

On the "German Question," see Ingeborg Fleischhauer, Die Deutschen im Zarenreich: zwei Jahrhunderte deutsch-russische Kulturgemeinschaft (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1986), 329-57; Dietmar Neutatz, Die "deutsche Frage" im Schwarzmeergebiet und in Wolhynien: Politik, Wirtschaft, Mentalitdten und Alltag im Spannungsfeld von Nationalismus und Modernisierung (1856-1914), Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des ostlichen Europa 37 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1993); Terry Martin, "The German question in Russia, 1848-96," Russian History 18 (1991): 371-432; James Urry, "The Russian Mennonites, nationalism and the state 1789-1917," in Abe J. Dueck (ed.), Canadian Mennonites and the Challenge of Nationalism (Winnipeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society, 1994), 44-49.

93

This debate had begun in the 1870s and initially was less concerned with nationalism and more with plans to reform agriculture in the post-emancipation environment in which the role of the colonists, including Mennonites as "models," was involved; see Roger P. Bartlett, "Colonists, Gastarbeiter, and the problems of agriculture in post-emancipation Russia," Slavonic and East European Review 60, 4 (1982): 547-71.

94

A.A. Velitsyn, Nemstsy v Rossii: ocherki istoricheskago razvitiia I nastoiaschchago polozheniia nemestskikh kolonii na iuage I vostoke Rossii (St Petersburg: Russkii Vestnik, 1893); see commentary and excerpts in Harvey L. Dyck (ed. and trans.), "Russian Mennonitism and the challenge of Russian nationalism," MQR 56 (1982): 306-41.

95

Velitsyn in Epp, "Russian nationalism," 319-21, 331-32, 340-41. On a Mennonite response to the accusation of the display of such pictures, see K[ornelius] Neufeld, "Pro domo sua," OZ, 31 October 1890 to 12 November 1890, pp. 2-3.

96

There was some substance to this claim, although many Mennonites at the time attempted to distance themselves from the accusations or to argue that the Mennonites involved were no longer Mennonites, but Baptists. See Heinrich Loewen, In Vergessenheit geratene Beziehungen. Fruhe Begegnungen der Mennoniten-Brudergemeinde mit dem Baptismus in Russland—ein Uberblick (Bielefeld: Logos, 1989). The question of Mennonite links to Russian Baptists and the identity of the Mennonite Brethren was to re-emerge before World War I; see Chapter 5.

97

See Sergei I. Zhuk, Russia's Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism, and Radical Sects in Southern Russia and Ukraine, 1830-1917 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 325-31.

98

Velitsyn in Epp, "Russian nationalism," 329.

99

On Neufeld (1862-1909) see ME, vol. 3, 848-49; for examples of his writings on this topic in Odessaer Zeitung, see "Die deutschen Kolonisten in Siid-Russland," OZ, 22 July to 5 August 1888, pp. 164-65; "Die deutsche Frage in Sudrussland," OZ, 16-18 January 1890, p. 11; "Die Deutschen in Siidrusslands," OZ, 23 February to 15 March 1890, pp. 45-50; "Herr Welizyn liber die Deutschen Kolonien," OZ, 11-24 April 1890, pp. 81-82; OZ, 24 May to 6 June 1890, pp. 116-17; "Korrespondenzen aus den Kolonien in russischen Zeitungen," OZ, 1-13 September 1890, p. 198; "Ein Brief an die Redaktion der Ekaterinoslavskiya Gubernsk V'domosti," OZ, 14-31 August 1894, pp. 182-85.

302

ENDNOTES

100 Petr V. Kamensky, Vopros Hi nedorazumenie: k voprosy ob inostrannykh poseleniiakh no. iuage Rossii (Moscow: A.A. Levinson, 1895). After 1905 Kamensky and other wealthy Mennonite landowners became involved in national politics; see Chapter 5. 101 The involvement of Alexander Ill's officials in subsidizing the conservative press and its writers and editors; given that censorship of the press was strictly observed, these attacks could only have received approval at the highest levels. 102 On this concept, and its differentiation from russification (attempts to enforce a single national Russian identity) and russianization (the adoption by Mennonites of Russian and Ukrainian customs and folkways), see Urry, "The Russian Mennonites, nationalism and the state." 103 Here Epp emphasizes the power of prayer by noting the example of "Borki and October 17," a reference to a train crash in 1888 involving Tsar Alexander III. October 17 is the Orthodox Church's saint's day of Andrew the Martyr and in pre-revolutionary Russia the miracle of the tsar's delivery in this accident was added to the day's religious calendar. Ironically, it is believed that the tsar later died from complications associated with this event. 104 David H. Epp, Kurze Erkldmngen and Erlduterungen zum "Katechismus der christlichen, taufgesinnten Gemeinden, so Mennoniten genannt werden," trans. Al Reimer (Odessa: A. Schultze, 1897; 2nd ed., Ekaterinoslav: D.H. Epp, 1899; Canadian reprint of 1899 ed., Rosthern: Dietrich Epp Verlag, 1941), 176-79. 105 Every Mennonite schoolchild after 1895 would read under "Our Fatherland" that "Our Fatherland is mighty Russia. It is the greatest Empire of the World," words followed immediately by a prayer for the tsar; see Kornelius Unruh and Karl Wilhelm (eds.), Deutsches Lesebuch fiir evangelischen Elementarschulen in Rutland, 2nd ed. (Neuhalbstadt: Peter Neufeld, 1900), 84-85, and later editions with slight changes in wording. 106 Handbuch zum Gebrauch bei gottesdienstlichen Handlungen zundchst fiir die Aeltesten und Prediger der Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Russland (Berdiansk: H.A. Ediger, 1911), 8-10, 91103; see also Dyck, "Russian Mennonitism," 317 n. 35. 107 On the 1889 celebrations, see Urry, None but Saints, Chapter 14; the 1900 celebrations are reported as "Jubilaumsfeier," OZ 270 (2-15 December 1900); the Mennonites contributed 5000 rubles to the Red Cross in recognition of the award of the privilegium in 1800 and were thanked by the tsar, "Allhochster Dank," OZ 248 (3-16 November 1900); Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 829. 108 "Die Jahrhundertfeier der taurischen Mennoniten," OZ, 25 May to 7 June 1904. 109 Adolf Ehrt, Das Mennonitentum in Russland von seiner Einwanderung bis zur Gegenwart (Langensalza: Julius Belz, 1932), 52. 110 Urry, "Prolegomena to the study of Mennonite society," 52-54. 111 Rempel, "Mennonite Commonwealth," 52.

303

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Chapter 5 1

Fedor A Petrov, "Crowning the edifice: the zemstvo, local self-government, and the constitutional movement, 1864-1881," and Valeriia A. Nardova, "Municipal self-government after the 1870 reform," both in Eklof, Bushnell, and Zakharova (eds.), Russia's Great Reforms.

2

A new zemstvo statute was issued in 1890, extending government control of the boards, and a new urban statute in 1892, doing much the same; see texts of the statutes in Vernadsky, A Source Book for Russian History, 688-90.

3

In 1911 P.M. Friesen noted that Mennonites were involved in zemstva but "not in large enough numbers," Mennonite Brotherhood, 1038 n. 13. For the importance of zemstva among Volga colonists, see James W. Long, From Privileged to Dispossessed: The Volga Germans, 1860-1917 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), Chapter 7.

4

When in 1905 a new secondary school was planned for Nikolaipol north of Khortitsa, the Mennonite community rejected a proposal to borrow money from the local zemstvo because they would be subject to its overview; see The Diary of Johann Johann Epp 1852-1919 (Winnipeg: n.p., 2000), 124.

5

Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 731-32, 1036 n. 77, on Heinrich Rempel and Gustav Rempel.

6

On the Gutsbestizer in general, see J.C. Toews, "Das mennonitische Gutsbesitzertum in Russland," serialized in Bate (30 June to 24 November 1954); James Urry, "Through the eye of a needle: wealth and the Mennonite experience in Imperial Russia," JMS 3 (1985): 7-35; Al Reimer, "Peasant aristocracy: the Mennonite Gutsbesitzertum in Russia," JMS 8 (1990): 76-88.

7

On Dyck, see Heinrich Ediger, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (Karlsruhe: The Author, 1927), 11.

8

Nikolai Regehr, "Johann Philipp Wiebe: sein Leben und Wirken in den Mennoniten-Siedlungen in Russland," in David H. Epp and Nikolai Regehr, Heinrich Heese [and] Johann Philipp Wiebe: zwei Vordermdnner des siidrussldndischen Mennonitentums (Steinbach: Echo Verlag, 1952), 46.

9

Terry Martin, The Mennonites and the Russian State Duma, 1905-1914, The Donald W. Treadgold Papers in Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies Paper No. 4 (Seattle: The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, 1996), 35; Bergmann's role in national politics is discussed below.

10

A few Mennonites changed from the peasant to the merchant estate; Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 997 n. 106, 1038 n. 13; on the importance of social estates in imperial Russia, see Gregory L. Freeze, "The soslovie (estate) paradigm and Russian social history," American Historical Review 91 (1986): 11-36.

11

Martin, Mennonites and the Russian State Duma, 29; other Mennonite members of the city council include Johann Jacob Fast, 1893-1901; Heinrich Heinrich Heese, 1893-1905; Peter Heinrich Heese, 1905-1909, 1913-1917; Johann Johann Heese, 1905-1909; Johann Johann Thiessen, 1897-1901, 1905-1917; Heinrich Johann Toews, 1901-1905; Johann Jacob Esau, 1901-1909 (information supplied by Paul Toews from Valentina Lazebnik, Yavornitzky Museum, Dnepropetrovsk).

304

ENDNOTES

12

Friesen (1814-1883) was involved in the military service negotiations of the 1870s; on his life, seeMennonitisches Jahrbuch 1913,10; Botsch 4 (1914); Ediger, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, 11.

13

George K. Epp, "Urban Mennonites in Russia," in Friesen (ed.), Mennonites in Russia, 23959; James Urry, "Growing up with cities: the Mennonite experience in Imperial Russia and the early Soviet Union," JMS 20 (2002): 127-30.

14

Heinrich Ediger (Berdiansk), Johann Esau (Ekaterinoslav), and Johann A. Janzen (Orekhov).

15

Roberta Thompson Manning, The Crisis of the Old Order in Russia: Gentry and Government (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1982); on local government reforms, see Leopold H. Haimson (ed.), The Politics of Rural Russia 1905-1914 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979); Neil B. Weissmann, Reform in Tsarist Russia: The State Bureaucracy and Local Government, 1900-1914 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1981).

16

Roberta Thompson Manning, "The zemstvo and politics, 1864-1914," and Thomas Fallows, "The zemstvo and the bureaucracy, 1890-1904," both in Emmons and Vucinich (eds.), The Zemstvo in Russia.

17

Quoted in Vernadsky, A Source Book for Russian History, 749.

18

Marc Raeff, introduction to Plans for Political Reform in Imperial Russia, 1730-1905 (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1966) and the various proposals translated in the volume.

19

Texts of these two proposals are presented in ibid., 121-40.

20

Quoted in Valentina G. Chernukha and Boris V. Anan'ich, "Russia falls back, Russia catches up: three generations of Russian reformers, in Taranovski (ed. and trans.), Reform in Modem Russian History, 77. Chernukha and Anan'ich present a detailed comparison of reformers and their plans in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

21

Nicholas II's manifesto of 6 August 1905 in Vernadsky, A Source Book for Russian History, 702.

22

Nicholas II's manifesto of 17 October 1905 in ibid., 705.

23

Verner, The Crisis of Russian Autocracy, 299-300.

24

The Fundamental State Laws, 23 April 1906, in Vernadsky, A Source Book for Russian History, 722.

25

Max Weber, The Russian Revolutions, trans, and ed. Gordon C. Wells and Peter Baehr (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 184; written in 1906. Marc Szeftel, "The problem of Russian constitutional development in the light of recent views," Parliaments, Estates and Representations 5 (1985); 109, challenges Weber and suggests that in comparison with other European constitutional states, the Russian situation was quite liberal and continued to develop towards a true constitutional state. I, like Weber, remain unconvinced.

26

On the violence and the Mennonite reaction, see Helmut-Harry Loewen and James Urry, "Protecting mammon. Some dilemmas of Mennonite non-resistance in late Imperial Russia and the origins of the Selbstschutz," JMS 9 (1991): 34-53.

305

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

27

On Alexandrovsk, see David H. Epp, "The emergence of German industry in the south Russian colonies," trans, and ed. John B. Toews, MQR 55 (1981): 361-62; on Melitopol, see reports in OZ 107, 12-25 May 1905.

28

Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 831.

29

Ibid., 834-35. Due to industrial unrest in Ekaterinoslav, the editing and publication of Botschafter was moved to Berdiansk.

30

See Friesen, "Mennonites in the Russian revolution of 1905," for early reactions in the Mennonite press.

31

Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 627. David G. Rempel also often stressed this conservative attitude on the basis of his experiences growing up in the village of Nieder Khortitsa in Khortitsa; see David G. Rempel (with Cornelia Rempel Carlson), A Mennonite Family in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union 1789-1923 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 118. Younger scholars (Friesen, Martin, etc.), working with primary and newspaper sources, have correctly pointed out increasing Mennonite interest in political affairs. The opinions of some social groups, however, may not be reflected in such sources.

32

From exchanges in Botschafter for 1906, quoted in Martin, Mennonites and the Russian State Duma, 25.

33

One problem some Mennonites had with supporting the Kadets was that the party supported Jewish rights and political groups. But it is unclear how much this objection was because Jews were non-Christian (as it was for Friesen, who wanted a Christian-based political grouping) or just reflected the anti-Semitism some Mennonites shared with large sections of Russian society at this period.

34

On Friesen, see Abe Dueck, "Peter Martinovitch Friesen (1849-1914)," in Loewen (ed.), Shepherds, Servants and Prophets, 131-48.

35

A.I. Klibanov, History of Religious Sectarianism in Russia (1860s-1917) (Oxford: Pergamon, 1982), and Martin, Mennonites and the Russian State Duma, 12-20.

36

On the context of Russian politics and involvement of the Russian-Germans, see Erich Franz Sommer, Die Einigungsbestrebungen der Deutschen in Vorkriegs-Russland (1905-1914) (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1940), especially Chapter 3; see also Ingeborg Fleischhauer, Die Deutschen im Zarenreich: zwei Jahrhunterdte deutsch-russische Kulturgemeinschaft (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1986), 391-438.

37

Martin, Mennonites and the Russian State Duma, 23-31.

38

On the complex reasons why Bergmann succeeded and Octobrist party politics in Ekaterinoslav, see ibid., 30-31; on the process of the election, see Alfred Levin, The Third Duma: Election and Profile (Hamden: Archon Books, 1973).

39

Bergmann and his friend P.V. Kamensky, a long-time friend of the Mennonites (see Chapter 4) who was also an Octobrist member, worked closely together; see details in Martin, Mennonites and the Russian State Duma, 38-39.

40

Reported by P.M. Friesen in 1910, Mennonite Brotherhood, 629.

41

Quoted in Martin, Mennonites and the Russian State Duma, 18.

42

Klippenstein, "Mennonite pacifism and state service in Russia," 135-40, etc.

306

ENDNOTES

43

An example of this is Abraham Gb'rz's Bin Beitrag zur Geschichte des Forstdeinstes der Mennoniten in Russland, published in 1907 in response to discussions on changes in the conscription laws.

44

On these laws and those cited below, see Peter Waldron, "Religious reform after 1905: Old Believers and the Orthodox Church," Oxford Slavonic Papers 20 (1987): 116; Peter Waldron, "Religious toleration in late Imperial Russia," in Olga Crisp and Linda Edmondson (eds.), Civil Rights in Imperial Russia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 111-12.

45

Article 66 in Vernadsky, A Source Book for Russian History, 723.

46

Waldron, "Religious reform after 1905," and Waldron, "Religious toleration in late Imperial Russia."

47

Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 831.

48

This recognition of new groups within existing confessions was a consistent state policy of tsarist governments; see Paul W. Werth, "Schism once removed: sects, state authority, and meanings of religious toleration in Imperial Russia," in Alexei Miller and Alfred J. Reiber (eds.), Imperial Rule (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004).

49

There are, however, numerous hints of continued "unofficial" Brethren mission activity in Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; see John B. Toews in his Perilous Journey: The Mennonite Brethren in Russia 1860-1910 (Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 1988), 60-63.

50

During the 1890s there were a number of such accusations, some of which came from fellow Mennonites, which resulted in official investigations and debates in the Mennonite press in Germany and North America; see Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 559, etc; J.F. Harms, Geschichte der Mennoniten Briidergemeinde (Hillsboro: Mennonite Brethren Publishing House, 1925), 46-57.

51

The same applied to another break-away from the Mennonite fold in the 1860s, the Templers or Friends of Jerusalem who, like some Mennonite Brethren, had settled in the Kuban region; see Heinrich Sawatzky, Mennonite Templers, trans, and ed. Victor Doerksen (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1990).

52

Verschiedenheiten zwischen den vereinigten Mennoniten-Briidergemeinden, sowie den alten Mennoniten Gemeinden (Odessa, 1908), translated in Dueck, Moving beyond Secession: Defining Russian Mennonite Brethren Mission and Identity 1872-1922 (Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 1997), 105-107; see also Dueck's comments (15) on Epp's preface. On the circumstances of the first printing of this confession, see Urry, None but Saints, 249.

53

In Abe J. Dueck, Moving beyond Secession, 61-65; the Jewish converts in Odessa were viewed with special concern by the Russian authorities because of their negative attitudes to Jews and a belief that their conversion was a cover for revolutionary activities; see Paul W. Werth, "Arbiters of free conscience: state, religion, and the problem of confessional transfer after 1905," unpublished paper.

54

See, for instance, the reports in A.H. Unruh, Die Geschichte der Mennoniten-Bruedergemeinde 1860-1954 (Winnipeg: Christian Press, 1954), 258-63 and elsewhere.

55

Botschafter, 8-21 February 1908, p. 2; see also Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 629.

307

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

56

Waldron, "Religious reform after 1905," 119-20. Fourteen bills on religious matters were introduced by government between September 1906 and February 1907; Waldron, "Religious toleration in late Imperial Russia, "112. See also Peter Waldron, Between Two Revolutions: Stolypin and the Politics of Renewal in Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1998), 86-87.

57

Originally the term "Freedom of conscience" (Gewissensfreiheit) was used in the statement but in later reprints "Freedom of faith" (Glaubensfreiheit) was used, reflecting the confusion in the Russian manifestos and later attempts to draft laws.

58

"Beschluss der Aeltestenkonferenzin Alexanderwohl am 7. Februar 1908 zu den Fragen iiber Gewissensfreiheit und Propaganda," Botschafter, 15-28 February 1908; OZ, 15-28 February 1908; reprinted in Dokumenti, otnosyashchiesya k v'roipv'dnim vopwsam mennonitov/ Dokumente tiber Glaubensangelegenheiten der Mennoniten (Halbstadt: Raduga, 1910), 2-5; see also Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 630; Abe J. Dueck, "Mennonites, the Russian state, and the crisis of Brethren and Old Church relations in Russia, 1910-1918," MQR 69 (1995): 457.

59

A. Gorz, "Fortsetzung des Berichtes iiber die Reise nach Petersburg," Botschafter, 7/20-11/24 March 1908.

60

Waldron, "Religious reform after 1905," 121.

61

Point III in Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 630; the law proposed to make blasphemy and anti-religious actions criminal offences; hence, the reference to "defamation."

62

Point l:b in Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 630.

63

On the new sects, see Andrew Blane, "Protestant sects in late Imperial Russia," in Andrew Blane (ed.), The Religious World of Russian Culture: Russia and Orthodoxy, vol. 2, Essays in Honor of George Florovsky (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), 295-304.

64

Report of P.A. Valuev, Minister of the Interior and his deputy Sievers, c. 1865 in John B. Toews (ed.), The Story of the Early Mennonite Brethren (1860-1869). Reflections of a Lutheran Churchman (Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 2002), 136, 137.

65

Of particular concern were the Russian Baptists and possible links with urban, socialist revolutionary groups; see the Soviet account by Klibanov, History of Religious Sectarianism in Russia, 1-10, 331-32.

66

Waldron, Between Two Revolutions, 139-46; Abraham Ascher, P.A. Stolypin: The Search for Stability in Late Imperial Russia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), Chapter 7, especially 295-302.

67

On the various restrictions, see John Shelton Curtiss, Church and State in Russia: The Last Years of the Empire 1900-1917 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), 322-32; see also Waldron, "Religious toleration in late Imperial Russia," 113, 117-18.

68

Neufeld, Abraham H. (ed.), Herman and Katharina: Their Story. The Autobiography of Elder Herman A. and Katharina Neufeld, in Russia and Canada (Winnipeg: Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies Canada, 1984), 62; two Mennonite Brethren had recently been arrested and briefly imprisoned for distributing Christian literature among Orthodox Russians.

69

David H. Epp, noted minister originally from Khortitsa but based in Berdiansk, where he was editor of the Botschafter, replaced Dyck, who was unwell; Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 1030 ftn.

308

ENDNOTES

70

Reports in OZ 34,12-25 February 1910; 44, 24 February-9 March 1910; Friedensstimme (4-5 March 1910).

71

Dokumenti, 7-21; Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 637-42. The historical section, "Zur Geschichte der Entstehung der Mennoniten," of the Dokumenti, 22-25, is not referred to by Friesen or included in his account.

72

Cornelius Krahn, "Allgemeine Bundeskonferenz der Mennonitengemeinden in Russland," ME, vol. 1, 57-60; on the conferences, see also Abraham Braun, "Conferences in Russia." ME, vol. 1, 678-79.

73

Dueck, "Mennonites, the Russian state," 457.

74

Martin, Mennonites and the Russian State Duma, 41-42.

75

David H. Epp (ed.), Svedeniia o mennonitach Rossii (Berdiansk: H. Ediger, 1912); Martin, Mennonites and the Russian State Duma, 42-43.

76

H. Unruh, "Bange Tag in Halbstadt," Botschafter, reprinted in OZ, 3-16 April 1910, and in North America in MR, 11 May 1910; news of the visit also reached Germany, where the editor of the Mennonitische Blatter commented (Blatter, 8 August 1910); on this event, see also Abraham Friesen, "Heinrich J. Braun: preacher, entrepreneur, servant of his people 18731946," in Loewen (ed.), Shepherds, Servants and Prophets, 31-32. Friesen has also analyzed this event in greater detail in his In Defense of Privilege.

77

Abraham Kroeker, "Der Regenbogen," Der Mithelfer 7 (1926-27): 24-31; Ken Reddig, "Mennonite publishing in Russia: the Raduga press of Halbstadt," MH 13 (1987): 1-2.

78

Quotes from part of the final report indicate that security concerns over Baptist connections with socialist revolutionaries also prompted the investigation; Klibanov, History of Religious Sectarianism in Russia, 331.

79

Friedensstimme, 5 May 1910; also Botschafter, 25 and 28 May 1910; translated in Dueck, Moving beyond Secession, 117-21.

80

Botschafter, 21 July 1910; translated in Dueck, Moving beyond Secession, 123-31.

81

Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 977; see also 309-10, written in direct response to the debates in 1910 over the correct form of baptism and the definition of "Mennonite" with contributions from the American Elder Isaak Peters, and the Gnadenfeld Elder Heinrich Dirks, both quoted extensively by Friesen.

82

This term had been used earlier in Germany, Switzerland, and America, and, in part, was derived from early historical scholarship into the Mennonites' alleged pre-Reformation origins among mediaeval Waldensians made by Ludwig Keller and others; see the entry by Harold S. Bender, "Altevangelische Wehrlose Taufgesinnten-Gemeinden," ME, vol. 1, 78-79, and Friesen, History and Renewal, chapters 3 and 4.

83

See the usage by Elder Heinrich Dirks of Gnadenfeld, cited in John B. Toews, "Brethren and Old Church relations in pre-World War I Russia: setting the stage for Canada," JMS 2 (1984): 56; see also Toews, Perilous Journey, 87. The Russian official of the ministry who attended Mennonite conferences, S.D. Bondar, used this distinction in his book Sekta mennonitov Rossii, v sviazi s istoriei nemetskoi kolonizatsii na iuge Rossii (Petrograd: Tipografiia V.D. Smirnova, 1916).

309

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

84

Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 980-81; the German terms are taken from the original German edition (1911).

85

See the arguments in Botschafter, quoted in Toews, "Brethren and Old Church relations," 56-57; see also Toews, Perilous Journey, 87-88.

86

A later leader would describe the Russian Mennonite world as having "its own particular administrative authority, economic leadership ... [and a] 'state-religion' which in Christian terms constituted a 'state church.'" See J.H. Janzen, "Kirchengemeinden?" Bate 11, 8 (21 February 1934): 1; see also Jacob H. Janzen's literary sketch, "Krusten," Bate 25,447, 22 June 1932, p. 2, where the idea of a state-within-a-state is linked to the concept of Vb'lklein.

87

See Chapter 1.

88

Abe Dueck, "The quest for a Mennonite seminary in Russia, 1883-1926: signs of a changing Mennonite world," MQR 74 (2000): 448-55.

89

Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood, 637-42.

90

Adressbuchlein der Kirchenbuchfiihrer H. Ediger, 1913); Ediger, Beschliisse.

91

Urry, "Prolegomena to the study of Mennonite society," 52-54.

92

On class differences in a village in Khortitsa prior to 1914, see the vivid account of David Rempel in Mennonite Family in Tsarist Russia, Chapter 15.

93

Urry, "The cost of community."

94

Ens, "Mennonite education in Russia"; Urry, "The cost of community."

95

On the process and changes involved, see Martin, Mennonites and the Russian State Duma, 46-52.

96

Martin, Mennonites and the Russian State Duma. Friesen (Mennonite Brotherhood, 627) reported that one Mennonite was the chair of a local chapter of the Union of Russian People, an ultra-nationalist party; see also Rempel, Mennonite Family in Tsarist Russia, 116, 317 n. 8.

97

The differences in political opinion and support in these two key provinces for Mennonites would be worthy of closer study; see Martin, Mennonites and the Russian State Duma, 54, for provisional comments.

98

Sommer, Die Einigungsbestrebungen der Deutschen, 74-78; Martin, Mennonites and the Russian State Duma, 55. The legislation must be considered in the larger context of attacks on other "nationalities" and concerns with the western borderlands; see Heinz-Dietrich Lowe, "Russian nationalism and Tsarist nationalities policies in semi-constitutional Russia, 1905-1914," in Robert B. McKean (ed.), New Perspectives in Modern Russian History (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992).

99

"Resolution of a meeting concerning the question of the Constitution of the Mennonites in Russia as an Evangelical Mennonite Confession, Neuhalbstadt, April 11-12, 1914," in Dueck, Moving beyond Secession, 132-33.

Mennonitengemeinden

Russlands

(Berdiansk:

100 Quoted in Dueck, "Mennonites, the Russian state," 461. 101 Konfession oder Sektel (Halbstadt: The Author, 1914), translation in Dueck, Moving beyond Secession, 142-57. Friesen would die in Moscow within months of publishing his pamphlet.

310

ENDNOTES

102 A translation of the draft is presented in full in Dueck, Moving beyond Secession, 133-36. 103 Responses summarized in Dueck, "Mennonites, the Russian state," 463-64. 104 Waldemar Giinther, David P. Heidebrecht, and Gerhard J. Peters (eds.), "Onsji Tjedils." Ersatzdienst der Mennoniten in Russland unter den Romanows (Yarrow: The Columbia Press, 1966); Klippenstein, "Mennonite pacifism and state service in Russia," Chapter 6; Al Reimer, "Sanitatsdienst and Selbstschutz: Russian-Mennonite non-resistance in World War I and its aftermath," JMS 11 (1993): 135-48. 105 See Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens during World War I (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003). 106 David G. Rempel, "The expropriation of the German colonists in south Russia during the Great War," Journal of Modern History 4 (1932): 49-67; David G. Rempel, "A response to the 'Lost Fatherland' review," CM (13 August 1968): 9-10. 107 Its owner, Heinrich Braun, was eventually forced to flee in order to avoid arrest. 108 Rempel, Mennonite Family in Tsarist Russia, 167; Rempel (in Chapter 18) also provides a vivid account of the corruption, intimidation, and uncertainty the war brought to the Khortitsa area. 109 Andrey Ivanov, "The making of a conspiracy: Russian evangelicals during the First World War," Religion in Eastern Europe 22 (2002): 22-45. 110 See Chapter 4; see also John B. Toews, Czars, Soviets and Mennonites (Newton: Faith and Life Press, 1982), 51-55, on the war situation. 111 The Moscow scientist Karl Lindeman[n] and the Lutheran pastor and author Jakob Stach published works attacking the legislation and defending the colonists; Stach was arrested and banished to Siberia. 112 Most noticeably David H. Epp's biography of Johann Cornies published in 1909. On Epp, the context of his works, and this issue in general, see David G. Rempel,"An introduction to Russian Mennonite historiography," MQR 48 (1974): 409-46. 113 See works by Gorz, David Epp, and others cited above. 114 Kornelius Unruh and Karl Wilhelm (eds.), Deutsches Lesebuch fur evangelische Elemantarschulen in Russland, 4th ed., part 2 (Halbstadt: Raduga, 1911), 166-69, 211-26; GJ.Cl[assen], Unser Menno: Blicke in das Leben und Wirken Menno Simonis (Halbstadt: Raduga, [1913]). 115 See Ediger, Beschliisse, 149-50. 116 This involved people who had received higher education in Switzerland and Germany, including one, Theodore Ediger, with a PhD in history from Leipzig; see the debates in Botschafter, November to December 1912, and their papers presented to the conference in MJ. 117 K voprosu o proiskhozhdenii mennonitov (Petrograd, 1915). 118 [Peter J. Braun], Kto takie Mennonity? Kratkii istoricheskii ocherk' (Halbstadt: Raduga, 1914; 2nd ed., 1915); see Friesen, In Defense of Privilege, for a detailed analysis and discussion of this text. On Peter Braun, brother of Heinrich, see Abraham Friesen, "Peter J. Braun: educator, archivist, scholar 1880-1933," in Loewen (ed.), Shepherds, Servants and Prophets. The historical archive Braun established in Molochna, later seized by the Soviets, has been relocated in Odessa and microfilmed; see Ingrid H. Epp and Harvey L. Dyck (eds.), The Peter J. Braun Mennonite Archive 1803-1920 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996).

311

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

119 The earliest reference I have discovered to a suggestion of such a connection occurred in 1889-90; see Urry, None but Saints, 262 n. 120 See James Urry, "Russian Mennonites and the Boers of South Africa: a forgotten connection," MH20, 3 (1994): 1-2, 12. 121 The issue would later be a cause of discord, especially as some Mennonites fervently identified with Germany and things German; see Chapter 8. 122 For a reaction by a Russian official, see Bondar, Sekta mennonitov Rossii; examples of press articles of 1915-16 in Novoe Vremya and Vechernee Veremya are in the files of the Ministry of the Interior (Central State Historical Archives, St. Petersburg, Fond 387, opis 18, dielo 6873, docs 7/9). 123 Dutch had been preserved as the language of faith in some congregations in Prussia, and, as the transition to High German occurred in the decades prior to the first migrations to Russia, many religious leaders could still read Dutch and brought along texts in the language; see Urry, None but Saints, 44, 166. 124 Rempel, Mennonite Family in Tsarist Russia, 117, 161-62, 322 n. 4; how much the religious leadership knew about and were involved in these moves is unclear. 125 Urry, "Mennonite economic development," 120-23. 126 H.J. White, "Civil rights and the Provisional government," in Olga Crisp and Linda Edmondson (eds.), CivilRights in Imperial Russia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 287-312; the Kadets dominated the legal reforms in ministries and commissions and were eager to ensure a clearer definition of importance of property rights as a central feature of future reforms. 127 On the wider response of the German-speaking groups to the new situation, see Fleischhauer, Die Deutschen im Zarenreich, Chapter 11, and Ingeborg Fleischhauer, "The ethnic Germans in the Russian revolution," in Edith Rogovin Frankel, Jonathan Frankel, and Baruch Knei-Paz (eds.), Revolution in Russia: Reassessments of 1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 274-84. 128 Burger deutscher Nationalitdt und Mennoniten; see Fleischhauer, Die Deutschen im Zarenreich, 552-53. 129 Fleischhauer, Die Deutschen im Zarenreich, 552-53. 130 Ibid., 549. The Moscow group, led by Karl Lindemann, who was an Octobrist party member, had more conservative views than the Odessa group, who had Kadet and even socialist revolutionary sympathies. 131 The Neuhalbstadt meeting discussed voting rights for women in congregational affairs but this was rejected; see minutes in John B. Toews (ed.), The Mennonites in Russia, 1917-1920: Selected Documents (Winnipeg: Christian Press, 1975), 397, 398. 132 Ibid., 461. 133 Ibid., 467. 134 Ibid., 425-46. 135 In ibid., 455. At a congress of German colonists, attended by Mennonite representatives in Siberia in May 1917, the banned Lutheran pastor Jakob Stach stated that Jesus was the "first socialist" because he had been a "struggler for the right of free thought" (Kdmpfer fur das

312

ENDNOTES

Recht auf Gewissensfreiheit]; see Detlef Brandes and Andrej Savin, Die Sibiriendeutschen im Sowjetstaat 1919-1938 (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2001), 8. 136 See the comments of Cornelius Bergmann, "Die Lage der Mennoniten in Russland," MBl 2-3 (1915): 10-11, 18-19; Bergmann, a Russian Mennonite, was completing a PhD on the history of Anabaptists in Zurich at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. 137 Rempel, Mennonite Family in Russia, 171-74; Johann G. Rempel, "From the early days of the revolution: Moscow recollections," in Johann G. Rempel and David G. Rempel, "Of things remembered: recollections of war, revolution and civil war," unpublished manuscript in the author's possession. 138 Toews (ed.), Mennonites in Russia, 1917-1920, 399; see also the resolution of the men serving in the Sanitatsdienst in Ekaterinoslav dated 20 May 1917, in B.B. Janz, "Die Wehrlosigkeit der Mennoniten in Russland," MR, 22 June 1949, p. 3. 139 Toews (ed.), Mennonites in Russia, 1917-1920, 449-480; Rempel, "I too was there, and mead I drank," 73-78; Reimer, "Sanitatsdienst and Selbstschutz," 142. 140 Also known as the Zentralbureaus der Allrussischen Mennonitischen Organisation; see the report of its activities between October 1917 and May 1918, written by P. Wiens in Volksfreund 29, 47, 29 June 1918. p. 2, and Die Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Russland, 55, 56. 141 Dueck, "Mennonites, the Russian state," 467-68, 142 "Explanation," in Dueck, Moving beyond Secession, 158-66. 143 Full text signed by David H. Epp in ibid., 167-69. 144 See B.H. Unruh, "Unsre Koloniepolitik seit Kriegsausbruch," Bate 15, 5 July 1939, p. 2, and the contemporary report in Molotschnaer Flagblatt, 28 October 1917, p. 5. At the earlier meeting in Halbstadt in June, Unruh, along with two other influential Mennonites, had rejected the idea of being a candidate for the national assembly,; see Toews (ed.), Mennonites in Russia, 1917-1920,475. 145 Oliver H. Radkey, Russia Goes to the Polls. The Election for the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, 1917, 2nd ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 150-51, 154, provides voting figures for the provinces with major Mennonite populations, but unfortunately some of the Berdiansk district figures are missing (162). Even so, almost 26,000 people in Ekaterinoslav and 26,000 in Tavrida voted for "German" list candidates. In Tavrida, Molokans also voted for their own religious-based party.

Chapter 6 1

See the text in Edmund Schmid, Die deutschen Kolonien im Schwarzmeergebiet Siidrusslands (Berlin: Verein fur das Deutschtum im Ausland, 1919), 35-36; see also Ingeborg Fleischhauer, Das Dritte Reich und die Deutschen in der Sowjetunion, Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 46 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1983), 30-32; Fleischhauer, Deutschen im Zarenreich, 584-85.

2

Neufeld, Herman and Katharina, 84-85; Rempel, "I too was there, and mead I drank," 88-89. According to one contemporary source, the Mennonites had discussed the question of obtaining German citizenship and the possibility of emigrating to German-controlled land in Latvia at the Ohrloff Congress in August 1917. See John P. Dyck (ed.), Troubles and Triumphs 1914-1924: Excerpts from the Diary of Peter J. Dyck, Ladekopp, Molotschna Colony, Ukraine

313

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

(Springstein, Man.: The Editor, 1981), 54. No reference is made to this in the official report of the congress, but some participants later suggested the published report was highly edited. 3

P. Wiens in Volksfreund, 29 June 1918, p. 2; Afbraham] Kroeker, "Unsere Untertanschaft," Friedensstimme, 28 September 1918, p. 2. The choice apparently had to made by 11 October 1918 but by this time the situation made the decision irrelevant.

4

Some later Mennonite writers believed the White Army wished to restore the tsarist regime, but although some officers were monarchists, a form of military dictatorship appears to have been envisaged.

5

There is an extensive literature on these units but the best overview remains John B. Toews, "The origins and activities of the Mennonite Selbstschutz in the Ukraine (1918-1919)," MQR 44 (1972): 5-40.

6

In the late 1920s, in exile in Germany, Unruh would join the right-wing German Nationalist Party and later cooperated closely with the Nazis after they came to power.

7

On aspects of the Mennonite involvement in the revolution and civil war see Toews, Czars, Soviets and Mennonites, chapters 5-9. As yet there is no comprehensive, scholarly account of this period of Mennonite history, although there are numerous individual studies, memoirs, and popular semi-fictional accounts.

8

Dyck (ed.), Troubles and Triumphs, 57.

9

Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Visions and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). Mennonites tend to see the revolution and its aftermath as destructive, but there were also important creative influences during the 1920s. Some Mennonite writers, for instance, responded positively to the new opportunities; see Harry Loewen, "Anti-Menno: introduction to early Soviet-Mennonite literature," JMS 11 (1993): 23-42.

10

Thiessen's polemical writings, mainly published abroad, came to the attention of Russian radical groups in the 1870s, but his own activities were more parochial than revolutionary in spite of suggestions to the contrary by Cornelius Krahn, "Abraham Thiessen: a Mennonite revolutionary?" ML 24 (1969): 73-77. Further research is needed on Thiessen and his political connections.

11

A youth named Buller was shot in Ekaterinoslav and Abram Vogt was hanged in Sevastopol in 1907; see the Christliche Familien Kalendar 1910, 119; and, for more on Vogt, Peter M. Friesen, Bin mennonitischer Schdcher: drei Briefe (Halbstadt: Raduga, [c. 1910]).

12

In September 1917 landless Molochna Mennonites demanded proper political representation in the selection of delegates to the Constitutional Assembly. See Dyck (ed.), Troubles and Triumphs, 37. In September 1918 a "Union of the Mennonite Landless of the Halbstadt Region" was formed; see Friedensstimme 52,17 September 1918, p. 6. One of the union's leaders later had to emphasize that it was not a Bolshevik organization; A. Fast, "Zur Landlosenfrage," Friedensstimme 57, 5 October 1918, p. 6. Reports from Khortitsa and Molochna between 1917 and 1919 indicate that Mennonite workers were also involved in factory disturbances.

13

David G. Rempel, "Mennonite revolutionaries in the Khortitza settlement under the Tsarist regime as recollected by Johann G. Rempel," JMS 10 (1992): 70-86.

14

Raymond Pearson, The Russian Moderates and the Crisis of Tsarism 1914-1917 (London: Macmillan, 1977), 80; of these, 55 percent were socialist revolutionaries, 20 percent Social

314

ENDNOTES

Democrats, 10 percent right or nationalist, 12 percent Kadet or Progressive, and 2 percent were Octobrist. 15

Dietrich H. Epp, "Heinrich H. Epp," ME, vol. 2, 236-37; see also his radical analysis of Mennonite history in his "Aus der Geschichte der Deutschen Kolonien," in M. Jaworsky (ed.), Kurzgefasste Geschichte der Ukraine (Kharkov: Zentralverlag, 1928).

16

Julius Loewen, Jasykowo: ein mennonitisches Siedlungsschicksal am Dnejpr: Griindung— Bliite—Untergang (Winnipeg: Regehr's Printing, 1967), 31-33.

17

Dyck (ed.), Troubles and Triumphs, 172-73; Dyck also mentions (137) a Gerhard Sawatzky of Khortitsa as a member of the communist administration's Education Branch who worked to establish a German school section in February 1921.

18

See Chapter 5.

19

For a recent account of this period, see the essays in Sheila Fitzpatrick, Alexander Rabinowitch, and Richard Stites (eds.), Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1991), and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Soviet State and Society between Revolutions, 1918-1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

20

Die Trennung der Kirche vom Staat begriissen wir, da sie unseren Gemeindegrundsdtzen entspricht, quoted in MR, 6 September 1922, pp. 10-11.

21

"Decree of the Soviet Commissars Concerning Separation of Church and State, and of School and Church," 23 January 1918; see also the resolution on its execution dated 24 August 1918, both reprinted in Boleslaw Szczesniak (trans, and ed.), The Russian Revolution and Religion: A Collection of Documents Concerning the Suppression of Religion by the Communists, 19171925 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959), 34-35, 40-46; see also Vladimir Gsovski, Soviet Civil Law, vol. 1 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Law School, 1948), 67-70. For a contemporary Mennonite newspaper report see Volksfreund, 7 March 1918, p. 9.

22

See the diary entries of Peter Dyck for 1923 and 1924 in Dyck (ed.), Troubles and Triumphs, 230, 233-34, 243, 244, 249, 255.

23

Article 121 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Republic in Szczesniak, The Russian Revolution and Religion, 107.

24

Reported in Der Mennonitische Immigranten-Bote 1, 2, 23 January 1924, pp. 3-4. A gloss of the memorandum may be found but with an incorrect date in C. Henry Smith, Smith's Story oftheMennonites, 5th ed., revised and enlarged by Cornelius Krahn (Newton: Faith and Life Press, 1981), 327-28. The points raised in the memorandum were revisited at the last General Conference held in Moscow in 1926; see the minutes in John B. Toews (ed.), The Mennonites in Russia, 1917-1920: Selected Documents (Winnipeg: Christian Press, 1975), 430-31. The argument was also repeated in 1926 in a Siberian Mennonite petition to local officials; see appendix to Larissa Belkovic, "Das Bild des sibiriendeutschen Kolonisten in Partei- und Sowjetdokumenten am Ende der zwanziger und zu Beginn der dreisigger Jahre," Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur der Russlanddeutschen 9 (1999): 153.

25

See the discussion of this issue in James Urry, "After the rooster crowed: some issues concerning the interpretation of Mennonite/Bolshevik relations during the early Soviet period," JMS 13 (1995): 40-43.

26

In 1926 Mennonites sent the same demands in a telegram to the head of the Soviet

315

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

government, Mikhail Kalinin; see Terry Martin, "The Russian Mennonite encounter with the Soviet State, 1917-1955," Conrad Grebel Review 20 (2002): 27. Penner wrote under the name "Reinmarus"; Anti-Menno: Beitrdge zur Geschichte der Mennoniten in Rnssland (Moscow: Zentral Vblker Verlag, 1930), 148-49. 27

Klippenstein, "Mennonite pacifism and state service," 272.

28

Those involved were Peter Froese and Cornelius F. Klassen, later to play an important role in political relations between Mennonites and the Soviet government (see below). The organization was called the United Council of Religious Groups and Communities for the Defence of Conscientious Objectors; see [Peter Froese], "Die Wehrlosigkeit unter den Mennoniten Russlands," Mennonitisches Jahrbuch [Newton, Kansas] (1952), 38-40; Klippenstein, "Mennonite pacifism and state service," 273-76, 282-83.

29

Details in Klippenstein, "Mennonite pacifism and state service," 283-305; see also Hans Rempel (comp. and ed.), Waff en der Wehrlosen: Ersatzdienst der Mennoniten in der UdSSR (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1980).

30

These comments are based on my own impressions of the emigration of Mennonites to Canada, although a great deal more research needs to be done in this area. Without a doubt, previous estate owners and industrialists were over-represented in the emigration in the early period.

31

This situation is somewhat similar to that pertaining in peasant villages during the 1920s where the local commune—the pre-revolutionary centre of authority—continued to play a major role in spite of the formation of Soviets; see Lynne Viola, The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivisation (New York, Oxford University Press, 1989), 22.

32

The best account of the activities of the Verband to date with special reference to its emigration activities is John B. Toews, Lost Fatherland: The Story of the Mennonite Emigration from Soviet Russia, 1921-1927 (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1967), which also includes extensive references to the work of the Verein. On the Verband, especially its relations with the Ukrainian government, see also N.V. Ostasheva, "Die siidukrainischen Mennoniten auf der Suche nach einem 'dritten', genossenschaftlichen Weg 1921-1926," Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur der Russlanddeutschen 5 (1995): 38-52. For an early account of the work of the Verein by one of its leaders, see C.F. Klassen, "The Mennonites of Russia, 19171928," MQR 6, 1 (1932): 69-80. Toews's The Mennonites in Russia also contains a number of important documents on the various organizations.

33

On Klassen's later involvement in politics in Canada, see chapters 7 and 8. On Klassen, see Frank H. Epp, Mennonite Exodus: The Rescue and Resettlement of the Russian Mennonites since the Communist Revolution (Altona: D.W. Friesen, 1962); Herbert and Maureen Klassen, Ambassador to His People: C.F. Klassen and the Russian Mennonite Refugees (Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 1990); and the recent reassessment by Gerhard Rempel, "Cornelius Franz Klassen (1894-1956)," in Loewen (ed.), Shepherds, Servants and Prophets, 193-212.

316

ENDNOTES

34

John B. Toews, With Courage to Spare: The Life of B.B. Janz 1877-1964 (Winnipeg: The Christian Press, 1978), and Toews, "Benjamin B. Janz (1877-1964)," in Loewen (ed.), Shepherds, Servants and Prophets, 163-75.

35

The original meeting of the Verein had been held at Alexandertal, Samara, in the Volga area in October 1922 and was entitled a "Religib's-Wirtschaftlichen Verbandes aller Mennoniten Osten Russlands, Sibiriens, Kaukasus und Turkestans"; see its Protokoll in Toews (ed.), Mennonites in Russia, 1917-1920, 214-19. On the Verein in Siberia, see Brandes and Savin, Die Sibiriendeutschen im Sowjetstaat, Chapter 3.

36

Evidence for this exists in various archival sources, including the MBC files in the MHC in Winnipeg, but it has not yet been studied in detail.

37

Strong Soviet opposition to the promotion of emigration is apparent in numerous contemporary reports in the Soviet press during the 1920s, which culminated in highly accusatory pamphlets by N. Dueck, Die Sekten und der socialistischer Aufbau (Kharkov: State Publishing House, 1930), and N.L. Emma, Die Auswanderung ist eine konterrevolutiondre Aktion (Moscow: State Publishing House, 1930).

38

The reports of the meetings of the Verein and especially the Verband clearly reflect this desire to continue to control all these institutions; see documents in Section III of Toews's Mennonites in Russia, 1917-1920.

39

See the statement in the minutes of General Conference held in Moscow in 1925 in ibid., 434.

40

Wesley Berg, From Russia with Music: A Study of the Mennonite Choral Singing Tradition in Canada (Winnipeg: Hyperion Press, 1985), 36-38.

41

The Mennonites in Russia, 1917-1920, 430-31. The lack of unity among Mennonite religious leaders in the early Soviet period was vividly described by Elder Jacob H. Janzen in an account written for C. Henry Smith in 1938 entitled, "The activities of the KfK in Russia from the year 1922 to 1924 AD" (Mennonite Archives of Ontario, Conrad Grebel College), kindly supplied to me by Dr. Reg Good.

42

Appendix in Belkovic, "Das Bild des Sibiriendeutschen Kolonisten in Partei- und Sowjetdokumenten," 151-54.

43

See the earlier opinions of the Soviet-German official J. Gebhardt in his "Zur Auswanderungsbewegung unter den Mennoniten," Der Mennonitische Immigranten-Bote 1, 39, 8 October 1924, pp. 5-6, originally published in Die Arbeit (Moscow) 15 (1924); and the later view of the Mennonite communist David Penner, writing in his Anti-Menno, 124-26, 150-52, etc.

44

On early Mennonite resolutions that attempt to come to terms with the land redistribution policies of the Soviets, see "Generalversammlung der Mennoniten in Landskrone, Siid-Russland," MR, 18 October 1922, pp. 10-11. A more detailed study of land redistribution, Mennonite attempts to maintain large farms, and the government's response is required to understand the Mennonites' efforts at economic reconstruction during the 1920s; cf. Ostasheva, "Die siidukrainischen Mennoniten," 44-45.

45

For a brief account of Mennonite economic activity, see Ehrt, Das Mennonitentum in Russland, 119-33; on the problems of the Siberian settlements, see John B. Toews, "The Mennonites and the Siberian frontier (1907-1930): some observations," MQR 47 (1973): 83-101.

317

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

46

Edward Hallett Carr, A History of Soviet Russia: Socialism in One Country 1924-1926, vol. 2 (London: Macmillan, 1959), Chapter 22.

47

P.P. Gonski, "The zemstvo system and local government in Russia 1917-22," Political Science Quarterly 38 (1923): 552-68.

48

D.J. Male, Russian Peasant Organisation before Collectivisation: A Study of Commune and Gathering 1925-1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971). See also Daniel Thorniley, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Rural Communist Party, 1927-39 (London: Macmillan, 1988), especially Chapter 1; Teodor Shanin, The Awkward Class: Political Sociology of Peasantry in a Developing Society: Russia 1910-1925 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), especially Chapter 9 on rural government and Soviet conflicts with the peasantry over authority and control of the countryside; and Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), Chapter 1.

49

This system had been established after the landless crisis of the 1860s and persisted up to the revolution; see Rempel, "The Mennonite Commonwealth in Russia," 74-78; Urry, None but Saints, 196-207, 222-26.

50

"Die neubegriindete Molotschansker Rayon," Bate 6, 1, 3 January 1929, p. 3; the new villages included settlements such as Karl Liebknecht and Neuborn, a Lutheran settlement in the western Molochna, shown on Karl Stumpp's map of "German" settlements in the Zaporozhe region published in 1956. Both are probably "German" settlements, while the Ukrainian villages have gone unrecorded. Other settlements were established in the 1930s after collectivization.

51

Dyck (ed.), Troubles and Triumphs, 152, 154; the soviet was replaced the following year, 183.

52

Bertram W. Maxwell, The Soviet State: A Study of Bolshevik Rule (Topeka: Steves & Wayburn, 1934), especially Chapter 6 on rural government and Chapter 7 on provincial government. The statistics that follow are from various entries in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984-1993) under the following headings: "Administrative territorial division," "Raion," and "Soviet"; not all the figures given in the Encyclopedia are consistent.

53

Robert Blumenfeld, "Das Problem der Rayonierung in der Sowjetunion," Osteuropa 8 (1933): 578-94; on the issue of raion formation among "Germans" in Ukraine, including Mennonites, see also Meir Buchsweiler, Volksdeutsche in der Ukraine am Vorabend und Beginn des zweiten Weltkriegs—ein Fall doppelter Loyalitdt? (Stuttgart: Bleicher Verlag, 1984), 147-52; and Meir Buchsweiler, Russlandeutsche im Sowjetsystem bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg: Minderheitenpolitik, Rationale Identitaet, Publizistik (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 1995), 22-28; 42-55.

54

Report in Der Mennonitische Immigranten-Bote, 9 April 1924, p. 4; one Mennonite experienced in local government, Peter Dyck, noted "the German section is planning an association of the German volosts to form a kanton, in effect an autnomous unit. I think one should be careful. After all, we have our union [i.e., the Verband] as a substitute for this." See Dyck (ed.), Troubles and Triumphs, 248, entry for 20 January 1924.

55

Dyck (ed.), Troubles and Triumphs, 251, entry 10 March 1924. The report of the meeting of the Verband shows that such an idea was not recorded but there was increasing support for the establishment of agricultural schools under its control.

318

ENDNOTES

56

See, for example, the report of districts to the Kalinovo meeting of the Verband in 1926 in The Mennonites in Russia, 1917-1920, 160-61.

57

Peter Braun, "Zur Auswanderung der Mennoniten aus Russland," Der Bate 2, 5, 4 February 1925, pp. 5-6.

58

Buchsweiler, Russlandeutsche im Sowjetsystem, 46.

59

On Soviet policies, see Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).

60

See Lee Schwartz, "Regional population redistribution and national homelands in the USSR," in Henry R. Huttenbach (ed.), Soviet Nationalities Policies: Ruling Ethnic Groups in the USSR (London: Mansell, 1990), 121-61. On the development of such policies and their implementation in different periods, see Yuri Slezkine, "The USSR as a communal apartment, or how a socialist state promoted ethnic particularism," Slavic Review 53 (1994): 414-52.

61

James E. Mace, Communism and the Dilemmas of National Liberation: National Communism in Soviet Ukraine, 1918-1933 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1983); George 0. Liber, Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the Ukrainian SSR 1923-1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). On the situation of "Germans" and other nationalities in Ukraine, see also Buchsweiler, Volksdeutsche in der Ukraine, 143-47.

62

Buchsweiler, Russlandeutsche im Sowjetsystem, 24; other national raions included Jewish, Polish, Bulgarian, and Greek. There were 400,000 "Germans" recorded in Ukraine's census at that time.

63

See the discussion in Toews, Lost Fatherland, 74-76. For interesting contemporary philosophical reflections on this issue by a leader of the Verband, see Cornies, "Konfessionell oder national?" Bate, 21-28 January 1925.

64

On the problematic issue of Great Russian identity at this period and its assertion in the politics of recognizing the special rights of national groups in the Russian Federation and the USSR as a whole, see Slezkine, "The USSR as a communal apartment," 434-35.

65

Walter Sawatsky has shown how this process continued to be a difficulty for Mennonites in his "From Russian to Soviet Mennonites 1941-1988," in Friesen (ed.), Mennonites in Russia 1788-1988, 299-337.

66

One of the few studies to discuss this shift to German in early Soviet times, and the problems with the curriculum, is T.D. Regehr (with the assistance of J.I. Regehr), For Everything a Season: A History of the Alexanderkrone Zentralschule (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1988), 80-90. Some teachers and parents were, in fact, concerned with the shift to German in all courses as they believed knowledge of Russian (and, to a lesser extent, Ukrainian) was essential if Mennonites were to remain and flourish in the USSR.

67

This is discussed in detail in Liber, Soviet Nationality Policy.

68

I am grateful to Terry Martin for this point.

69

Braun, "Zur Auswanderung der Mennoniten aus Russland," 5-6.

70

"Die neubegriindete Molotschansker Rayon," 3; Buchsweiler, Volksdeutsche in der Ukraine, 147, reports that the proportion of "German" settlers in the Molochansk raion, according to the 1926 census, was 63.2 percent.

319

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

71

Colin Neufeld informs me, however, that the name continued to be used in government documents into the 1930s.

72

Report in Bate, 4 September 1929, p. 3; see also Buchsweiler, Volksdeutsche in der Ukraine, 148-49, 150-51. The new Khortitsa district only had 20,000 inhabitants, which made it less than half the size of the Molochansk district, which conformed in size to most other districts established at this time; see Male, Russian Peasant Organisation before Collectivisation, 223.

73

In the 1930s a new German raion, "Rotfront," based on the old Mennonite industrial centre of Waldheim in the Molochna, was formed; see Buchsweiler, Russlandeutsche im Sowjetsystem, 22, 44-45.

74

When in 1924 a Soviet official argued that Mennonites should reconcile themselves to the new regime and stop their efforts to emigrate, a Mennonite replied with a set of demands he expected first to be satisfied. These included: 1. full religious freedom; 2. Mennonite control of schools and centres of higher education; 3. private enterprise in economic activity; 4. an end to forced taxation; 5. a change in the Soviets' class policies; and 6. government without party dictatorship. See D. Hamm, "Einige Bemerkungen iiber 'Genosse' H. Lingers Rezept, wie man bei den ukrainer Mennoniten das Emigrationsfieber heilen konnte," Der Mennonitische Immigranten-Bote, 24-30 April 1924, p. 4, replying to H. Linger [Report in the Mennonite emigration from Ukraine published first in Die Arbeit (Moscow) in 1923]. Der Mennonitische Immigranten-Bote, 30 January, 6 February, and 19 March 1924.

Parts Gerhard Wiebe, Causes and History of the Emigration of the Mennonites from Russia to America (Winnipeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society, 1981 [1900]), 2.

Chapter 7 1

See Schlabach, Peace, Faith, Nation, 255-57, on the fate of the bill and debates surrounding it. The Mennonites who did go to the United States settled in areas associated with railway companies.

2

On these considerations, see Francis, In Search of Utopia, 42-43, and Frank H. Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1786-1920: The History of a Separate People (Toronto: Macmillan, 1974), 194-95. On other factors than just the different political structures of Canada and the US involved in the decision making that made some conservative Mennonite groups choose the United States over Canada, see Schlabach, Peace, Faith, Nation, 250-53.

3

Some Canadian Mennonites continued to insist they had been granted a privilegium by the British and Canadian governments well into the twentieth century (see below). P.M. Friesen uses the term with reference to Canadian Mennonites; see Die Alt-Evangelische Mennonitische Briiderschaft in Russland, part 2, Die Mennoniten in Nord-Amerika, 71.

4

Chicago Daily Tribune, 30 January 1876, p. 4; the report claimed that American railway companies hoping to attract settlers to the United States were the source of the rumours.

5

Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 652. As will be seen, by 1911 more young Mennonites in Russia were probably still naive monarchists than members of the same generation of Canadian Mennonites.

6

R.O. MacFarlane, "Manitoba politics and parties after Confederation," Annual Report of the Canadian Historical Association, 1940, 45-55; cf. W.L. Morton, Manitoba: A History, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967).

320

ENDNOTES

7

On Shantz's involvement, see Samuel J. Steiner, Vicarious Pioneer: The Life of Jacob Y. Shantz (Winnipeg: Hyperion Press, 1988).

8

On Hespeler and his links with Mennonites, see Angelika Sauer, "Ethnicity employed: William Hespeler and the Mennonites," JMS 18 (2000): 82-94.

9

On the reserves and their establishment, see Francis, In Search of Utopia, 61-70; Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1786-1920, Chapter 9; Ens, Subjects or Citizens?

10

The best description and analysis of these matters is by Ens, Subjects or Citizens? Chapter 1.

11

See K. Grant Crawford, Canadian Municipal Government (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1954), and Donald C. Rowat, Your Local Government: A Sketch of the Municipal System in Canada, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Macmillan, 1975).

12

Again, Ens provides the most detailed account of these matters, Subjects or Citizens? Chapter 2. On the initial re-establishment in Manitoba of the forms of local government in Russia, see especially John Dyck, Oberschulze Jakob Peters (1813-1884): Manitoba Pioneer Leader (Steinbach: Hanover Steinbach Historical Society, 1990).

13

In certain congregational communities, ministers were chosen by a group of men "called" to office by drawing lots; from Titus Guenther, personal communication, based on more recent Chortitzer Mennonite practice in Paraguay. In most Russian Mennonite communities, however, even before 1870, voting had become commonplace in choosing religious ministers and village and district heads, members of school boards, etc. On the use of the lot among Amish to select ministers, see John A. Hosteller, Amish Society, 3rd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 112-13.

14

Dennis E. Stoesz, "A history of the Chortitzer Mennonite Church of Manitoba 1874-1914" (MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 1987), 163.

15

On these voting restrictions, see Royden K. Loewen, Family, Church, and Market: A Mennonite Community in the Old and the New Worlds, 1850-1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 184, 248, 327-28 n. 15.

16

On the development of such political activity on the East Reserve from the 1930s onwards, see Chapter 9.

17

A similar pattern, but earlier, occurred in areas of the USA where Mennonites had settled from Russia, particularly in Kansas; see Juhnke, A People of Two Kingdoms, Chapter 4.

18

The development of prosperity in Mennonite farming communities in the 1880s and 1890s, and the emergence of businessmen, are discussed in John H. Warkentin, The Mennonite Settlements of Southern Manitoba (Steinbach: Hanover Steinbach Historical Society, 2000), originally a PhD thesis at the University of Toronto, 1960.

19

John Dyck, "Erdman Penner: entrepreneur in Winnipeg, Tannenau, Gretna," in John Dyck (ed.), Historical Sketches of the East Reserve 1874-1910: Villages—Biographies—Institutions (Steinbach: Hanover Steinbach Historical Society, 1994), 287-94.

20

PAM, Greenway Papers, GR 1662, 2, 2305 (Hespeler reply, 31 October 1889), 2288 (on Dominion Lands, 11 October 1889); Hespeler owed his appointment as immigration commissioner to his contacts with the previous government and more conservative administrations in Ottawa; see Sauer, "Hespeler."

21

The following is largely based on Gerhard J. Ens, "Die Schule muss sein": A History of the Mennonite Collegiate Institute (Gretna: The Mennonite Collegiate Institute, 1990).

321

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

22

Ibid., 17-19; Siemens later acted as an immigration agent to encourage emigration from the United States to Canada (NAC RG76, Series I-A-1, Volume 16, File 143), an appointment probably linked with his connections to the Liberal Party; although he later returned to live in the USA, he maintained links with the local MLA Valentine Winkler. See PAM, Valentine Winkler Papers MG14; see also Kevin Enns-Rempel, "In search of the 'Greatest Mennonite Settlement': the career of Julius Siemens," California Mennonite Historical Society Bulletin 26 (1992): 1-2, 6-10. On Ewert, cf. Paul J. Schaefer, Heinrich H. Ewert: Teacher, Educator and Minister of the Mennonites (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1990).

23

For Kansas, see Juhnke, A People of Two Kingdoms, and the comparative study of David A. Haury, "German-Russian immigrants to Kansas and American politics," Kansas History 3 (1980): 226-38; for Mennonites in Nebraska, see Loewen, "American nationalism and the rural immigrant." Obviously more research is needed on these connections and for comparative purposes between Mennonite communities as well as other immigrant groups.

24

Ens, "Die Schule muss sein," 20.

25

On the political nature of the support of the Gretna institute in the context of these problems, see D.J. Hall, Clifford Sifton, vol. 1, The Young Napoleon 1861-1900 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1981), 82-83; to his cost, Ewert was later to discover the political nature of his appointment.

26

Ibid., Chapter 11.

27

Shantz's responses are included at Appendix 2 in Steiner's Vicarious Pioneer, 183, 185, 195.

28

On this group see Jacob E. Peters, "The forgotten immigrants: the coming of the 'late Kanadier', 1881-1914," JMS 18 (2000): 129-45; on their wider political involvement, see also Chapter 9 below.

29

For a listing of immigrants able to be identified from passenger lists and their destinations between 1881 and 1896, see Section F in John Dyck and William Harms (eds.), 1880 Village Census of the Mennonite West Reserve (Winnipeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society, 1998), 485-500.

30

NAC, RG17, Agriculture files, Volume 686, 78540.

31

On Peters, including his immigration activities, see Leonard Doell, "Klaas Peters (1855-1932); A Biography," in Klaas Peters, The Bergthaler Mennonites (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1988), 41-85. On Peters's first visit to Russia in 1894, see his reports in Nordwesten 5-12 April 1894.

32

PAM, G. 491, Greenway Papers, 8596/1; 84881/1; Esau and Loewen owned businesses in Gretna, Altona, and Winkler. Peters went with them to Europe; see Nordwesten, 6 August 1896, p. 5; Nordwesten 1 October 1896, p. 5.

33

Nordwesten, 1 October 1896, pp. 1, 5.

34

"More Mennonites," Manitoba Morning Free Press, 6 November 1899, p. 7; the Free Press was, in fact, secretly owned by Sifton, who used it to further the views of the Liberal Party. Hall, Clifford Sifton, vol. 1, Chapter 9; on the 1899 campaign and Sifton's central role in organizing Liberal Party affairs in the West, see Hall, Clifford Sifton, vol. 1, 274-79.

35

Enns-Rempel, "In search of the 'Greatest Mennonite Settlement'," 2.

36

F.G. Enns, Gretna: Window on the Northwest (Altona: D.W Friesen for the Village of Gretna History Committee, 1987), 81-82.

322

ENDNOTES

37

Nordwesten 4, 9, July 1892, p. 5; 4, 10, 1892, p.l.

38

PAM, Greenway Papers, MG 13, El LB B/632; Wilhelm Rempel, "An die mennonitschen Wahler," Nordwesten 4, 11, 22 July 1892, p. 5, trans, in Enns, Gretna, 81.

39

Nordwesten, 15 July 1892, p. 5; letter of Heinrich Abrams, Nordwesten, 22 July 1892, p. 5.

40

Provisional results in Nordwesten, 29 July 1892, p. 1, and final results "Records of Elections Results ... 1870-1958," Microfilm Mc6, Legislative Library, Winnipeg. The following year, in 1893, Penner and Julius Siemens were sent by Premier Greenway to represent the province at the Chicago World's Fair, thereby proving that business came before politics. See EnnsRempel, "In search of the 'Greatest Mennonite settlement,'" 2. Penner was a silent partner in Siemens's bank.

41

The following information on the Winklers is based largely on Gerhard John Ens, Volost and Municipality: The Rural Municipality of Rhineland 1884-1984 (Altona: R.M. of Rhineland, 1984), 44,76,99; on Valentine, cf. the entry by Gerhard John Ens in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, XIV, 1998, 1072-073.

42

Barry Heinrichs, in an unpublished paper, argues that Mennonites tended to support the Liberals for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although he might be correct, the evidence and statistics he produces from election results are questionable, considering the difficulty in differentiating Mennonites from non-Mennonites in the townships and the very low numbers of voters in rural areas ("Voting trends among Mennonites of the West Reserve," unpublished research essay, Canadian Mennonite Bible College, 1979; copy in vertical files, MHC). A contemporary non-Mennonite observer, the Morden newspaper editor, J.F. Galbraith, noted that Mennonites, "except" for a "natural preference for men of their own nationality," voted for different parties and stated that any idea "that the [West] reserve was a sort of political pocket borough can no longer be entertained." See The Mennonites in Manitoba 1875-1900. A Review of Their Coming, Their Progress, and Their Present Prosperity (Morden: The Chronicle Presses, 1900), 39.

43

Manitoba Morning Free Press, 17 November 1899, p. 2; Manitoba Morning Free Press, 27 November 1899, p. 2; Hespeler had been an alderman on the Winnipeg city council and his conservative sympathies were well known in the city, if not in the countryside.

44

Nordwesten, 30 November 1899, p. 1; in the same issue Peters was accused by a correspondent of corruption as his position as an immigration agent was a form of patronage from the Liberal Party.

45

Nordwesten, 30 November 1899, p. 7. Hespeler was also German Consul in Winnipeg.

46

Nordwesten, 30 November 1899, p. 1; repeated in Nordwesten, 5 December 1899, p. 1.

47

Gerhard Wiebe, Causes and History, 64 (dated January 1900); in July 1899 the Nebraska, Kansas, and Manitoba leaders of the Kleine Gemeinde meeting at Blumenort resolved that its members could not hold political office or vote. See Henry Fast, "The Kleine Gemeinde in the United States of America," in Delbert Plett (ed.), Profile of the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde 1874 (Steinbach: D.F.P. Publications, 1987), 126.

48

Manitoba Free Press, 14 December 1899, p. 1. The Liberals were obviously annoyed by the shift in Mennonite votes and, somewhat ironically, Liberal-backed English newspapers in the province questioned Mennonite claims to be the "quiet in the land" and uninvolved in politics. See Nordwesten, 3 May 1900, p. 1, quoting reports from Brandon, Morden, and Winnipeg newspapers.

323

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

49

MFP 26, 142, 8 December 1899, p. 5. In contrast to Rosenfeldt, however, the turnout in Rhineland was lower with only 34 percent voting, although this was an improvement over the less than 26 percent in 1896. In both years (and in 1892), these represented the lowest turnout of registered voters in the province, itself a reflection of the general Mennonite unwillingness to vote.

50

MFP, 15 December 1899, p. 1; MFP, 16 January 1900, p. 1; Nordwesten 11, 37, 18 January 1900, p. 1; the cost of filing a petition was £750, a considerable sum at this period but this was probably met by the Liberal Party; the petition was unsuccessful.

51

The Canadian Parliamentary Guide (Ottawa) for 1900, 385, noted that after the election, Hespeler declared against the Liberal government and, in his personal entry to the Guide, he described himself as an "independent with a strong Conservative leaning" (379); he was elected speaker of the assembly but still had to defend himself against Mennonite attacks; see Nordwesten, 29 March 1900, p. 1; Nordwesten, 5 April 1900, p. 1.

52

MR, 31 January 1899, pp. 2, 4.

53

"Liberals of Rosenfeldt organization and resolutions on the Tariff, Greenway and Hespeler," newspaper cutting dated 6 August 1900, probably from the MFP, in the Julius Siemens Family Papers, Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies (Fresno), Personal Paper Collections. Although he had returned to the United States, Siemens was reported to be present at the meeting and obviously kept this cutting of the event.

54

Hall, Clifford Sifton, vol. 1, 223, 300-301.

55

Flyer in PAM, Valentine Winkler Papers, MG 14 B45, Box 5.

56

After a judicial appeal, however, Sifton managed to unseat Richardson, and he was defeated in the subsequent by-election. D.J. Hall, Clifford Sifton, vol. 2, A Lonely Eminence 1901-29 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1985), 28-31.

57

The election raised again the issue of whether Mennonites should vote in such elections, with Abraham Braun of Eigengrund supporting the idea; MR, 26 December 1900, p. 5.

58

In 1914 the Conservatives again redrew the boundaries to include the largely English town of Morden, the seat becoming Morden-Rhineland.

59

"The bilingual schools of Manitoba. XXXIII. How the Mennonite public schools suffered from political intrigue," Manitoba Free Press 40, 186, 7 February 1913; cf. Francis, In Search of Utopia, 173; Ens, "Die Schule muss sein," 27-28, 60.

60

Francis, In Search of Utopia, 170-71; H.J. Gerbrandt, Adventure in Faith: The Background in Europe and Development in Canada of the Bergthaler Mennonite Church of Manitoba (Altona: D. W. Friesen for the Bergthaler Mennonite Church of Manitoba, 1970), Chapter 8; Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1786-1920, 295-96.

61

Each group, though, had differences in their position on these issues, and in the degree to which they would state them openly and act upon those who breached the often unwritten but understood rules; both the Kleine Gemeinde and some Sommerfelder, for instance, accepted government educational support and were not all opposed per se to higher education.

62

Ein Beteiligter (Plum Coulee), MR, 15 April 1903, pp. 3-4; cf. reply by Bin Beobachter (Winkler), MR, 27 May 1903, p. 3.

324

ENDNOTES

63

Enns, Gretna, 87, 91, 133, 136, 164, 165; and, for further details and documents see PAM, Gretna History Book Committee Papers, p. 5701, Erdman Penner File.

64

Nordwesten, 1 July 1903, p. 1, and Winkler's campaign advertisement in Nordwesten, 8 July 1903, p. 6; Manitoba Free Press, 11 July 1903, pp. 1, 8.

65

"Mr Campbell among the Mennonites," MFP, 11 July 1903, p. 4; Colin Campbell was the member for Morris and Attorney General in the Conservative government; he was also Penner's lawyer and thus knew the Mennonites well.

66

See Herman Dirks's long letter in MR, 15 July 1903, pp. 5-6, 9, where he answers accusations in the Nordwesten and states his position.

67

Results in MFP, 21 July 1903, p. 7; Dirks received 148 votes to Winkler's 355 and the Conservative candidate's 284; significantly, shortly after the election, the ministers involved in the first meeting of the newly formed Conference of Mennonites of Central Canada discussed the religious issues of Mennonite involvement in politics. See Lawrence Klippenstein, "The Hochstadt Conference of 1903," MH 4, 2 (1978): 2; Ens, Subjects or Citizens? 222.

68

Germania, 27 October 1904, p. 5. A Liberal supporter ("A.F.") from Altona attacked Dirks in Germania, 3 November 1904, p. 3. On Sifton's purchase of the Nordwesten and other ethnic newspaper ventures, see Hall, Clifford Sifton, vol. 2, 150-51; see also Arthur Grenke, "The secular German-language press of Winnipeg, 1889-1914," Deutschkanadisches Jahrbuch/ German-Canadian Yearbook 10 (1988): 81-97. A Winkler-based newspaper published by a Mennonite, Heinrich H. Neufeld, called the Volkszeitung, appeared some time between 1903 and 1906. Although no copies have survived, this too may have been a local Liberal newspaper as Neufeld's son, Peter, later supported Valentine Winkler; see Brown, Winkler, 90, on the newspaper.

69

Germania, 20 October 1904, p. 4; Germania, 3 November 1904, p. 1; the latter also contains a political poem by Peters exhorting readers to vote Conservative; cf. Doell, "Klaas Peters," 62-66, who also reproduces the poem with a translation.

70

Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1786-1920, Chapter 13; Ens, Subjects or Citizens? Chapter 3.

71

Doell, "Klaas Peters," 57-59; Ens, Subjects or Citizens? 97-98. Both Ens and Peters, however, became Swedenborgians, although their kinship and other links with members of the Mennonite community meant that they continued to play a part in Mennonite affairs; see Adolf Ens and Leonard Doell, "Mennonite Swedenborgians," JMS 10 (1992): 101-17.

72

On Hiebert, see L.G. Thomas, The Liberal Party in Alberta: A History of Politics in the Province of Alberta 1905-1921 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959); Thomas points out that Hiebert's "Conservatism did not prove durable," 29, cf. 37, 67-68, and he lost the following election to another person of Mennonite descent from Virginia, Joseph Emmett Stauffer, who became a Presbyterian and was killed serving with the Canadian forces in France in 1917 (169); cf. Lawrence Klippenstein, "Cornelius Hiebert: MLA (1905-1909)," MH 1, 1 (1975): 1-2.

73

Ens, Volost and Municipality, 100-09; Esther Epp-Tiessen, Altona: The Story of a Prairie Town (Altona: D.W. Friesen, 1982).

74

The best accounts of this affair are to be found in Gerbrandt, Adventure in Faith, 113-15, 253-70, and more recently in Ens, "Die Schule muss sein," Chapter 4.

325

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

75

On Winkler's offer, see Ens, Volost and Municipality, 112, although Ens does not mention this fact in his later account of the Mennonite Collegiate Institute. Another political factor may well have been the appointment in 1906 of Johann M. Friesen of Altona as district school inspector; Friesen was a Bergthaler minister so he was not directly involved in politics, but his brother Peter was a delegate to the selection committee that chose Bergmann as the Conservative candidate in 1907 (see below). Friesen, who moved to Saskatchewan in 1909, like the Conservative Klaas Peters later joined the Swedenborgians. See J.G. Rempel, Fiinfzig Jahre Konferenzbestrebungen, 1902-1952, 22; Gerbrandt, Adventure in Faith, 155-56; Gerhard I. Peters, Remember our Leaders: Conference of Mennonites in Canada (Chilliwick: Mennonite Historical Society of British Columbia, 1982), 9.

76

Germania, 14 February 1907, p. 1, where the complete list of delegates is given, a number of whom were supporters of Altona's claim to the teachers' college; on the nomination meeting, cf. Germania, 21 February 1907, p. 1; Nordwesten, 6 March 1907, p. 10.

77

On Bergmann's life and connections, see Ens, Volost and Municipality, 99, 107, 110; Friesen was later to establish the famous printing business in Altona that still bears his name.

78

Rhineland-Bote der Germania: den mennonitischen Ansiedlungen in der Munizipalitdt Rhineland und Umgegend gewidmet; this section was retained for a period until it became clear that open Mennonite involvement in politics had declined. It is unclear if a newspaper entitled the Rheinlander (1908) is the same or a different newspaper (listing of Manitoba newspapers in the Manitoba Legislative Library, Winnipeg).

79

Germania, 31 January 1907, p. 7; Germania, 7 February 1907, p. 1; in an advertisement in Nordwesten, 6 March 1907, p. 12, however, Winkler played down this "German" theme.

80

Quoted in Francis, In Search of Utopia, 174; cf. also Ens, Subjects or Citizens? 110-11.

81

For a detailed account of the concerns discussed in Der Mitarbeiter, see Ens, Subjects or Citizens? 111-12.

82

MFP, 23 February 1907, p. 1; Campbell admitted he had spoken with Wiens over the longdistance telephone, but had merely told him that the legislation was yet to be passed.

83

"Flim-Flam 'Flag Policy,'" MFP, 25 February 1907, p. 3; in the same edition (p. 5} the paper reproduced Germania's response and claimed that the government did not want to upset the Mennonites prior to the election.

84

"Records of Elections Results ... 1870-1958," Microfilm Mc6, Legislative Library, Winnipeg. The detailed results suggest that Winkler won in the English seats (62 percent), Winkler (58 percent), Gretna (54 percent), and possibly Rosenfeld, but Bergmann won Plum Coulee (55 percent), Schanzenfeld (63 percent), and Altona (58 percent).

85

Morton, Manitoba, 294.

86

Johann Gerbrand, on the theme "Welche Stellung sollten wir dem politischen Treiben gengeniiber einnehmen?" reported in the "Protokoll" of the meeting of the Mennonites of Central Canada, 5 July 1907 in Mitarbeiter 1, 10 (1907): 74.

87

For instance, the 1910 election passed practically without any report on Mennonite activity. No Mennonites stood as candidates and the conservative Germania (2 June 1910, p. 1) merely complained of the low number of Mennonite voter registrations in Rhineland. A report on an election meeting in Rosenfeld noted that the Conservative candidate would not agree to Valentine Winkler's addressing the meeting in German; Winkler won the seat again with a

326

majority of 110; see MFP, 7 July 1910, p. 14. A regular correspondent to the Mennonitische Rundschau, Heinrich Rempel of Steinbach, cynically dismissed the forthcoming election and the promises of politicians; see MR, 27 July 1910, p. 13. 88

Nordwesten, 22 March 1900, p. 1; Nordwesten, 29 March 1900, p. 1. The member for Lisgar, R.L. Richardson, also made a statement on the Mennonite position in the House of Commons. It should be remembered that Germany supported the Boers during the conflict and, in many parts of Europe, public opinion, including among some Mennonites in Russia, was strongly pro-Boer and anti-British; on the Russian Mennonites, see Urry, "Russian Mennonites and the Boers of South Africa."

89

"All-Briton's Day Catechism, May 23, 1907," reprinted in Enns, Gretna, 330-31. Elder Isaak Dyck, leader of one of the conservative congregations later to settle in Mexico, would recall these lines as "one king, one God, one navy, one all-British empire," quoted in Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1786-1920, 346.

90

"Bericht iiber die Bemiihungen der Delegation mennonitischer Aeltesten und Prediger um Entbindung von der Forderung, die Fahnen iiber den Schulen aufzuziehen," Mitarbeiter 2, 4 (1908): 25-27. One of the Kleine Gemeinde representatives noted the premier kept the delegation waiting for four hours; see Loewen, Family, Church, and Market, 246.

91

Ens, Subjects or Citizens? 112, 159 n. 40.

92

J.M. Friesen, "Mennonite Schools," in G.R. Coldwell, "Report of the Department of Education for the Year Ending December 31 1907," Sessional Papers, Manitoba Legislature, 8, 1908, 498-99.

93

"The bilingual schools ...," MFP, 7 February 1913; cf. Schaefer, Ewert, 45; Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1786-1920, 348; Ens, Subjects or Citizens? 222. His dismissal was to gain the support of the Altona voters and probably any conservative rural Mennonites who might vote in the lead-up to election, in which the Conservatives won Lisgar from the Liberals.

94

"The bilingual schools. XXXIV. How the Mennonites suffered a short lapse from political independence," MFP, 8 February 1913, p. 3; Ens, Subjects or Citizens? 110. Given the volatile Mennonite vote, the government probably wanted to keep its options open by supporting both schools.

95

Hall, Clifford Sifton, vol. 2, Chapter 8.

96

"The bilingual schools of Manitoba XXXI. The Mennonites and the public schools," MFP, 5 February 1913, p. 3; see also Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1786-1920, 344.

97

Francis, In Search of Utopia, 179

98

Ens, Subjects or Citizens? 113.

99

On Ewert, see Ens, "Die Schule muss sein," 41-42; by 1915 Ewert also disapproved of Mennonites' seeking public office through political activity and told Valentine Winkler that he thought "the aspirations of our people in this direction be not much encouraged." Letter of 17 May 1915, PAM, Valentine Winkler Papers, MG14 B45, Box 1.

100 The newly established Mennonite newspaper the Steinbach Post reported on the political issues involved, relying on information gleaned from the Regina Courier 2, 24, 7 July 1915, pp. 1, 8; reprinted from the Post in MR, 21 July 1915, pp. 14-15, and a report on the Liberal victory, Regina Courier 2, 29, 11 August 1915, p. 1.

327

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

101 PAM, Valentine Winkler Papers, MG14 B45, Box 1; cf. Epp-Tiessen, Altona, 92. Another "supporter," F.F. Siemens from Saskatchewan, pointed out that a former secretary treasurer of Rhineland, Peter Braun, who also had moved to Saskatchewan, had been appointed to a similar post but, as a Conservative, should be removed; Winkler promised to act on this information! In fact, in 1907 Siemens had been one of those Conservative delegates from Altona who had nominated Bergmann to run against Winkler and in the same year had been succeeded as secretary treasurer by Braun. See Nordwesten, 14 February 1907, p. 1; Ens, Volost and Municipality, 265-66. 102 Morton, Manitoba, 351. 103 Handwritten draft (with corrections) and typed copy in MHC, Benjamin Ewert Papers, Vol. 544, xx-1; Ens, Subjects or Citizens? 119 (cf. 222), quotes this passage in detail but omits the final point referring to the 1915 election. The Mennonites were wrong on this point; the Liberals had included school reform in their 1914 platform and, when they assumed power, the leader of the party stated they intended to implement their 1914 election policies; see Morton, Manitoba, 346. 104 Two recent scholarly Mennonite accounts deal in detail with the school question in Saskatchewan and Manitoba: William Janzen, Limits on Liberty: The Experience of Mennonite, Hutterite, and Doukhobor Communities in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), Chapter 5; and especially Ens, Subjects or Citizens? Chapter 4. 105 On the misunderstanding and its origins, see Adolf Ens, "The conspiracy that never was," MH 11,3 (1985): 1-2. 106 Quoted in Francis, In Search of Utopia, 179. 107 Ens, Subjects or Citizens? Chapter 6; see also the collection of documents on Mennonite privileges and relations with the state indicating a continuity in the idea of privilege in such relationships from Russia to Canada and onwards through migration to Paraguay and Mexico; J.H. Dorksen, Geschichte und Wichtige Dokumente der Mennoniten von Russland, Canada, Paraguay und Mexico (N.p., 1923). 108 The issue of anti-German versus anti-Mennonite attitudes during the war needs further research. Prior to World War I, Canadian politicians had appealed to the ethnic/national background of voters where they constituted a potential political force in electorates. In Mennonite areas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the appeal was less to the people as Mennonites, in the context of these times still a religious label, and more to them as "Germans." This is clearly reflected in the campaign languages and literature of all parties in Rhineland and earlier also in Rosenfeldt. Until the early years of the twentieth century, however, such identification did not imply links to the German state, as everyone knew that the Manitoba Mennonites had come from Russia, not Germany. It was also convenient for the Mennonites involved to speak of themselves publicly as "German" rather than as "Mennonite," thereby avoiding the displeasure of religious leaders. As the Mennonites in late imperial Russia had already discovered, however, this identification with being "German," or even just with the German language, could not escape being linked with the contemporary German state and becoming confused with nationalism and imperialist rivalries. The German-language newspapers in the West served a larger German-speaking constituency than just the Mennonites, and carried news reports from Germany that increasingly indulged in imperialistic rhetoric. During the 1904 federal election campaign, Herman Dirks is reported to have argued that German voters in Canada should support the Conservative Party as Germans in Germany favoured conservative governments. See Germania 1, 6, 27 October 1904, p. 5.

328

ENDNOTES

109 Threats to remove the franchise from non-British-descent, non-English speakers had occurred before 1914. In the federal campaign of 1900 in Lisgar, Winkler's German-language election pamphlet claimed one indication of the Conservatives' hatred towards "Germans" (Deutschhasser) was the threat to remove the vote from those unable to speak or read English. See PAM, Valentine Winkler Papers, MG14 B45, Box 5; cf. Thomas Peterson, "Manitoba: ethnic and class politics," in Martin Robin (ed.), Canadian Provincial Politics: The Party Systems of the Ten Provinces, 2nd ed. (Scarborough: Prentice Hall, 1978), 61-119. Later, in at least one province, British Columbia, Mennonite believers were technically disenfranchised by a 1931 law aimed at Doukhobors, which banned all members of pacifist religious sects from voting in provincial elections. However, Mennonites in British Columbia who wished to register and vote did so without interference until an amendment in 1947 listed Mennonites and Hutterites with Doukhobors as disenfranchised on the same grounds. The amendment was repealed the following year. 110 Hall, Clifford Sifton, vol. 2, 288. 111

Robert Craig Brown and Ramsey Cook, Canada 1896-1921: A Nation Transformed (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974), 226; see Ens, Subjects or Citizens? 185-88 on the impact of the regulation on the Mennonites.

112 Ens, Subjects or Citizens? 201. The regulation was later repealed, allowing for the immigration of the Russlander from the Soviet Union. 113 The conscription issue is discussed in detail in Janzen, Limits on Liberty, Chapter 8; Ens, Subjects or Citizens? Chapter 5. 114 Francis, In Search of Utopia, 189-90; Ens, Subjects or Citizens? 200; 223 n. 3. 115 Even among conservative Mennonites, such as the Reinlander, who intended to leave Canada, the idea of being involved in democratic processes through exercising their right to vote, however, appears to have been generally accepted by this period. In 1921, while outlining Mennonite beliefs and practices to a reporter, one of their representatives seeking to purchase land in Mississippi and Alabama noted that they took "no part in city, state or national politics, other than to vote," but added that no Mennonite would "hold any office." See "Mennonite aims stated by leader of the colonists," Christian Science Monitor, 1 February 1921, p. 1. 116 Vogt's letter was in response to the criminal prosecution of a Mennonite youth from Altona, which had provoked negative comments on Mennonite schooling in the press; Vogt, "Manitoba Mennonites and the school question," MFP, 18 May 1927, pp. 34-35; [Editorial] "Mennonites have no special rights," MFP, 28 May 1927, p. 13; cf. cuttings in the Benjamin Ewert Papers, MHC, 543 21(26). During World War I, Vogt had been involved in presenting the case of Saskatchewan Mennonites on education to provincial and federal governments. On Vogt, see also Harold J. Dyck, Lawyers of Mennonite Background in Western Canada before the Second World War, Research Report 3 (Winnipeg: Legal Research Institute of the University of Manitoba, 1993), 112, 117.

329

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Chapter 8 1

"Formen und Grundlagen der Regierung der 12 bedeutendsten kriegfiihrenden Staaten (ausser Russland)"; "Politische Parteien," Kroekers ChristlicherFamilienkalender fur 1918 (1917), 31; 33-36; cf. A. Kroeker, "Die staatsumwalzung Russland," Volksfreund, 21 December 1917, p. 3.

2

The comments on socialism were later criticized by someone signing themselves "A Mennonite Revolutionary," a criticism Kroeker rejected. See Volksfreund, 24 January 1918, p. 8.

3

L. Unger, "Zur Ukrainian Frage," Molotschnaer Flugblatt, 1917, p. 3.

4

"Welche Griinde liegen fur eine Auswanderung vor?" Friedensstimme, 25 January 1919, pp. 3-5.

5

Esther Epp-Tiessen, J.J. Thiessen: A Leader for His Time (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 2001), 104.

6

Epp, Mennonite Exodus. One important figure in the establishment of the board was Gerhard Ens, an emigrant from Russia to Saskatchewan in the 1890s who later left the Mennonites for the Swedenborgians and had been elected to the provincial legislature.

7

See the printed constitution entitled Vereinigung der seit 1923 eingewanderten Mennoniten (c. 1927/1928), copy in Mennonite Heritage Centre (MHC), Canadian Board of Colonization fonds (CMBC), ZMIK Papers, Vol. 1156. A typescript copy with a letter from Dietrich H. Epp to B.B. Janz, dated 30 October 1927, is in Mennonite Brethren Archives (MBA), Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies Canada (CMBSC), B.B. Janz Papers, Box 7 (97), Group X.

8

On ZMIK, see the assorted papers and minutes of the committee in the MHC, CMBC fonds; there are also additional minutes and papers in MBA, CMBSC, B.B. Janz Papers. See also Dietrich H. Epp, "Das Zentrale Mennonitische Immigranten Komitee," Bate, 21-28 July 1948; Cornelius Krahn, "Central Mennonite Immigration Committee," ME, vol. 1, 542-43; and the discussion in Epp, Mennonite Exodus, 203-14.

9

Dietrich Epp's father Heinrich was elder of the Khortitsa congregation and his brother David a leading member of the clerisy in late imperial Russia, editor of Der Botschafter, and the final elder of the Khortitsa congregation in Stalin's time (see chapters 5 and 6). Another brother, Heinrich, became head of the Teachers' Seminar in Khortitsa and cooperated with the Soviets (Chapter 6). On Dietrich Epp, see James Urry, "Dietrich Heinrich Epp: first editor of Der Bote 1875-1955," in Loewen (ed.), Shepherds, Servants and Prophets.

10

As Dietrich H. Epp put it in 1933 when ZMIK's future was soon to be subordinated to the Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization: "Es sind hauptsaechtlich zwei Punkte: I) dass die Board eine kirchliche Organisation ist, dagegen das Z.M.I.K. eine buergerliche, II) dass die Board aus Mitgliedern besteht, die von Gemeinden gewaehlt wurden, dagegen sind alle Immigranten, die set 1923 eingewandert sind, Mitglieder unserer Organisation." Protokoll of the meeting of ZMIK of 25 July 1933, in MBA, CMBSC, B.B. Janz Papers, Box 2, No. 19, Group 2(c).

11

Vereinigung der seit 1923 eingewanderten Mennoniten.

12

D.P. Enns, later treasurer of the Board of Colonization and member of ZMIK, organized the first network of district men in Ontario and this became the "model" for their establishment in other provinces; see the statement in "Aufruf an die Immigranten in Ontario," Bote, 29 October 1924, p. 3. The later constitution of the committee gives a clear outline of the duties of the Ortskomiteen

330

ENDNOTES

and Distriktmanner, Vereinigang der seit 1923 eingewanderten Mennoniten, points 5 and 6. A later, but undated, document (likely c. 1930s), details the duties of local organizations, "Information und Regeln fuer die Ortskomitees und die Distriktmaenner in den Provinzen Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta und British Columbia," MHC, CMBC fond, Vol. 1366 (1350). 13

The distinction between "secular" and "sacred" bodies was not absolute, as before 1914 many Mennonites ministers in Russia served on secular boards as well as religious conference committees.

14

There has been no study to date of the actual organization and system of administration of the Forestry Service or most other institutions in Russia at the central or the local levels; these comments are based on a general reading of a range of reports.

15

See Janz's account published as "Zu der Geschichte des Ersatzdienstes in Russland. Unser Bekenntnis und die biblische Begriindung der Ablehnung des Kriegsdienstes," Bate, 30 October 1940, pp. 1-2.

16

This followed the trend set by Dietrich Epp's brother David, who, prior to World War I, published regular reports in the newspaper he edited, the Botschafter. This use of the press followed the granting of greater freedom from censorship to the Russian press in 1906; see Chapter 5.

17

See note 6 and Epp, Mennonite Exodus, 205; a comparison of a draft of the constitution with its final published version points to this tension between religious and secular aims.

18

H.B. Janz, "Einige Gedanken iiber die geplante Organisation der neueingewanderten Mennoniten in Canada" (dated 8 December 1926), MHC, CMBC fond, ZMIK Papers, Vol. 1157.

19

This opinion is expressed in a number of the early letters of the immigrants; see also Frank H. Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920-1940: A People's Struggle for Survival (Toronto: Macmillan, 1982), 197.

20

Epp, Mennonite Exodus, 191, 201; Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920-1940, 202-06.

21

Epp, Mennonite Exodus, 188-89; Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920-1940, 190-94.

22

On the reorganization and rationalization of the Mennonite Land Settlement Board, see CPR Papers 1886-1958, CAA Glenbow-Alberta Institute, Calgary, Ms. 2269, Box 82, 646.

23

Janz, "Einige Gedanken iiber die geplante Organisation."

24

See Henry Paetkau on the divisions in Ontario, "Separation or integration? The Russian Mennonite immigrant community in Ontario, 1924-45" (PhD thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1986), 127-34; cf. Ed Boldt, "The baptism issue: an episode in the history of the Ontario Mennonite Brethren Church," MH 13, 2 (1987): 1-2. Similar problems were experienced in other provinces.

25

Letter from B.B. Janz to the committee, dated 11 March 1931, and Dietrich Epp's reply of 7 April in MBA, CMBSC, B.B. Janz Papers; see also Epp, Mennonite Exodus, 209. This reflected a longstanding Mennonite Brethren objection to the production of secular plays in Mennonite communities, dating back to before World War I in Russia. See Urry, "Growing up with cities."

26

These comments are based on a reading of the minutes of the committee's meetings.

331

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

27

See the accounts published at the annual meetings of the immigrants, Vertreterversammlung in Herbert, Sask. vom 11. bis 13. Dezember 1928. Protokoll der Vertrerversammlung der seit 1923 in Canada eingewanderten Mennoniten in Herbert, Sask. Vom 11 bis 13 Dezember 1928; Die 10. Vertreterversammlung der seit 1923 in Canada eingewanderten Mennoniten in Coaldale, Alberta, vom 8.-10. Dezember 1931. Printed account of meetings in MHC, CMBC fonds, ZMIK Papers, Vol. 1155, 1156. On the work of ZMIK and secular immigrants' organizations at a provincial level, see Paetkau, "Separation or integration?" 139-47, for Ontario.

28

H.B. Janz to the members of ZMIK, 5 March 1928; reply of D.H. Epp, 6 March, and Janz's response, 15 March 1928, in MHC, CMBC fonds, ZMIK Papers, Vol. 1157.

29

Epp, Mennonite Exodus, 210.

30

Berg, Dietrich Heinrich Epp, 52; on Dyck, see Al Reimer, "Arnold Dyck and Steinbach 19231947," Preservings: Magazine/Journal of the Hanover Historical Society 13 (1998): 89-93.

31

Renamed the Mennonitische Warte in 1937, the journal folded in 1938 due to a lack of subscriptions, although Dyck later attempted—unsuccessfully—to restart it. The Steinbach Post had been founded by a Kanadier but bought by Dyck and he competed for the Russlander readership with Epp's Der Bate and Hermann Neufeld's Winnipeg-based Rundschau. He sold the newspaper to another Russlander, Gerhard S. Derksen, and embarked on other publishing ventures.

32

This was the successful Echo-Verlag series established in 1944 by former pupils of the Chortitza Zentralschule following their reunion and celebration of the school's centenary in 1942.

33

Epp's views, along with other influential leaders, are recorded in the Protokoll of the meeting of ZMIK of 25 July 1933, in MBA, CMBSC, B.B. Janz Papers, Box 2, No. 19, Group 2(c). The division of opinion among members of the clergy, the clerisy, and secular Mennonites was also marked in Ontario; see the differences between Jacob H. Janzen and B.B. Wiens outlined in Paetkau, "Separation or integration?" 113-15, 142-43.

34

"Protokoll der vereinigten Sitzung der Executive der Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization und der Verwaltung des Zentralen Mennonitischen Immigrantenkomitee in der Kanzelei der Board zu Rosthern am 20. Oktober, 1933," MHC, ZMIK Papers, Vol. 1155.

35

See David Toews in Die Zweiunddreissisgte Allgemeine Konferenz der Mennoniten in Canada vom 2. bis zum 4. Juli 1934 in der Rosenorter Gemeinde zu Hague, Sask." (Rosthern: Druck von Dietrich H. Epp, 1934), 75-77; Epp, Mennonite Exodus, 296-98. Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920-1940, 395-96; Epp also argues (438 n. 20) that the reorganization of the board "foreshadowed" the later development of the Mennnonite Central Committee (Canada).

36

As Henry Paetkau has noted in his "Russian Mennonite immigrants of the 1920s: a reappraisal," JMS 2 (1984): 80: "Nature and economics ... triumphed over the values and traditions of these Russian Mennonites."

37

H.A. Peters, "Unsere Organisation und ein Weg sie zu retten," MR, 27 June 1934, pp. 2-4, which includes his proposal entitled "Verfassung eines Verbandes aller nach Canada eingewanderter Mennoniten (Der Menno-Verband)." Peters later presented a paper to the Saskatchewan Provincial Assembly on "Mennonite civil organisations past and present" in which he reviewed the history of Mennonite non-religious organizations in Russia since the time of Johann Cornies, criticized the Board of Colonization, and again proposed changes to its

332

ENDNOTES

organization along more secular lines. The assembly noted the historical discussion with interest, but rejected "completely" his criticisms and proposals. See Die siebente provinziale Jahresversammlung der Mennoniten von Saskatchewan am 12. und 13. Juli 1935 in Waldheim, Sask. (Rosthern: "Boten" Sonderdruck, 1935), 9. 38

For example, see the following in Der Bate in 1934: "Unsere Probleme," Bate, 10 January 1934; J.J. Hildebrand, "Unsere Probleme," Bate, 14 January 1934; P.D. Willms, "Zum Artikel 'Unserer Probleme,'" and Bin Farmer in Manitoba, "Unsere Probleme," Bate, 31 January 1934, pp. 1-2, 2; B.W. [Ontario] Geschaft vis Religion," Bate, 14 March 1934, p. 1; P.D. Willms, "Eingesandt," Bate, 4 April 1934, pp. 1-2; Die junge E., "Unsere Probleme," Bate, 11 April 1934, pp. 2-3; and in MR, B.W., "Analyse zum Mennonitischen Problem," Bate, 14 April 1934, p. 2.

39

On MIA, see Epp, Mennonite Exodus, 179-82; Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920-1940, 19496. See also the appeal to Mennonites by the board of MIA, c. 1927, in MHC, Hildebrand Papers, Vol. 3484, Folder 39.

40

This account of Hildebrand's life is based on letters in his own papers in MHC, Winnipeg, Manitoba; for example, his letter to A.K. Thiessen dated 21 June 1934 (Vol. 2821) and to C. Henry Smith in August 1939 (Vol. 3308, Folder 27).

41

J.J. Hildebrand, "Mennonitische Geschichte 60. Jahre spater," MR, 21-28 March 1934, pp. 3-4, 2. J.J. Hildebrand, "Mennonitische Geschichte," MR, 14 April 1934, pp. 6-7. Hildebrand assembled considerable historical documentation of the granting of special Mennonite rights by various states and governments and attempted to trace the history of Mennonites to discern a secular pattern to their past that revealed their genius. One product of this was his self-published Chronologische Zeittafel: 1,500 Daten historischer Ereignisse aus der Zeit der Geschichte der Mennoniten Russlands und Amerikas (Winnipeg, 1946), as well as a massive unpublished history of the Mennonites among his papers in the Mennonite Heritage Centre and in the J.J. Hildebrand Papers, University of Calgary Library, Archival Holdings, Special Collections, MsC 235.

42

Toews (ed.), Mennonites in Russia, 1917-1920, 451, 458-59.

43

See Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920-1940, 219-22; Paetkau, "Separation or integration?" 179-81, etc.

44

J.J. Hildebrand's articles pushing this idea were published in 1933 in Die [Steinbach] Post and in the MR: "Zeichen der Zeit," SP, 23 March 1933, pp. 1, 3, 6; also in MR, 29 March 1933, pp. 4-6; "Zu meinem 'Zeichen der Zeit,'" SP, 4 May 1933, p. 3; also in MR, 19 April 1933, pp. 11-12; "Ueber Mennostaat," SP, 18 May 1933, pp. 2-3, and "Der Mennostaat," MR, 10 May 1933, pp. 11-12. The issue also was debated in Bate. For examples of his letters on the issue to various leaders, see MHC, J.J. Hildebrand Papers, Vol. 3308, Folder 14; MBA, CMBSC, B.B. Janz Papers, Box 4, File 61 (Group VI), D. Private Correspondence (1925-1944), letters to Janz, David Toews, J.C. Dyck, W. Dyck. For a more detailed analysis, see James Urry, "A Mennostaat for the Mennovolk: Mennonite immigrant fantasies in Canada in the 1930s," JMS 14 (1996): 65-80.

45

Hildebrand, "Zeichen der Zeit!" The quotations that follow are also from this source.

46

See Urry, "A Mennostaat for the Mennovolk," 77.

333

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

47

For a detailed study of the rise of pro-German and pro-Nazi sentiments in the Mennonite press, see Frank H. Epp, "An analysis of Germanism and National Socialism in the immigrant newspapers of a Canadian minority group, the Mennonites in the 1930s" (PhD thesis, University of Minnesota, 1965); and Benjamin Redekop, "The Canadian Mennonite Response to National Socialism," ML 46 (1991): 18-24. The impact of the Nazis on Germans and Mennonites in Canada is discussed in Jonathan F. Wagner, Brothers Beyond the Sea: National Socialism in Canada (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981), and Benjamin W. Redekop, "Germanism among Mennonite Brethren immigrants in Canada, 1930-1960: a struggle for ethno-religious integrity," Canadian Ethnic Studies 24 (1992): 24-28. Hildebrand became a member of the infamous Deutsche Bund Canada; see letter to H. Herling 25 March 1935 in MHC Hildebrand Papers, Vol. 4150. On the Bund, see Jonathan Wagner, "The Deutsche Bund Canada 1934-9," Canadian Historical Review 58, 2 (1977): 176-200, and Wagner, Brothers Beyond the Sea, Chapter 3.

48

J.H. Janzen, "Eine Utopie," Bote, 17 January 1934, p. 1; Janzen, "Kirchengemeinden?" Bate, 21 February 1934, p. 1; Janzen, "Kirche und Staat," Bote, 6 June 1934, p. 1; see also B.B. Janz, "Streiflichter auf die mennonitische Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft," MR, 3 April 1935; Janz to Hildebrand, 2 October 1935 in MBA, CMBSC, B.B. Janz Papers, Box 4, File 61; Jac. Thiessen, "Ueber die Einheit der Mennoniten," MR, 10 October 1934, pp. 2-3, and Epp, Mennonites in Canada 1920-1940, 527-29.

49

DJ. Loewen, "Welche Stellung nehmen wir dem Staate gegeniiber ein?" in Die Zweiunddreissisgte Allgemeine Konferenz der Mennoniten in Canada vom 2. bis zum 4. Juli 1934 in der Rosenorter Gemeindezu Hague, Sask." (Rosthern: Druck von Dietrich H. Epp, 1934), 55-61; resolutions of the Conference on page 20 of the report. Loewen's account of Mennonite non-involvement in politics in Russia, ruled by an autocrat, defied the historical evidence.

50

Walter Quiring, H.H. Schroeder, and even B.H. Unruh and Abraham Kroeker. On Schroeder, see Toews, "The origins and activities of the Mennonite Selbstschutz," 18 n. 35, and articles in the Bote and Rundschau. Some former members of the units even organized a reunion in Winnipeg, modelling themselves on war veteran's organizations; see Reimer, "Sanitdtsdienst and Selbstschutz," 144.

51

Toews, With Courage to Spare, 94-96.

52

H. Schroeder, "Entwurf fur die Begriindung einer Erbhofsiedlung "Iraditionskolonie der Russland-Deutschen,'" MR, 12 September 1934, pp. 3-4; J.P. Dyck, "Ein allgemeiner, mennonitischer, wirtschaftlicher Verein," MR, 30 October 1935, pp. 6-7; Schroeder's "plans" were not just criticized by some Mennonites, but also lampooned; for example, see G.G. Wiens, "Heimweh, Friesenheil und sonst noch was," MR, 6 May 1936, p. 2.

53

On Gerhard J. Friesen, see Gerhard K. Friesen, "Fritz Senn (1894-1983). Kurze Selbstbiographie," German-Canadian Yearbook 7 (1983): 89-92. Dyck's son Otto eventually was conscripted into the German army and, ironically, found himself in Ukraine, close to his place of birth (personal communication). Friesen also served with the German forces in the East.

54

See Hildebrand in his Chronologische Zeittafel, 404, on these attempts, which he claims began in Winnipeg in November 1934.

55

Janzen, "Briefe aus Ontario," Bote, 26 January 1938, p. 2, quoted in Paetkau, "Separation or integration?" 256.

56

The letter to the Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada, dated 15 December 1929, is in MHC, CMBC fonds, ZMIK Papers, Vol. 1156. 334

ENDNOTES

57

Memorandum of ZMIK to the Saskatchewan Royal Commission, copy in ZMIK minutes, MHC, CMBC fonds, ZMIK Papers, Vol. 1156.

58

Joanna R. Buhr, "Pursuit of a vision: persistence and accommodation among Coaldale Mennonites from the mid-nineteen twenties to World War II" (MA thesis, University of Calgary, 1986), 193. Buhr is here commenting on a petition sent by Coaldale Mennonites in 1936 to the premier of Alberta on schooling; see below, Chapter 9.

59

MHC, ZMIK Papers, Vol. 1156; see note 51 above.

60

"Die neue Heimat," MR, 11 March 1936, pp. 6-7.

61

See Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920-1940, 576-77; a photographic reproduction of the actual document is in the Benjamin Ewert Papers, MHC, Vol. 545 xx-1 (4) (63).

62

N[ikolai] Cflassen], "Canada oder Russland?" Der Nordwesten, 3 November 1926, pp. 1, 12. Classen was a highly educated estate owner in Russia who settled near Culross in Manitoba and died of cancer in 1929. See Paul Klassen, From the Steppes to the Prairies: A History of the Agneta and David Klassen Family in Russia and Canada (Winnipeg: City Press, [c. 2000]).

63

"Zum diamenteren Jubilaum der Canadischen Konfoderation," Bate, 15 June 1927, p. 3; Jakob P. Penner, "Die Konstitution Canadas," Bate, 22 June 1927, p. 3; Penner, "Wie Canada entwickelt," Bate, 29 June 1927, pp. 2-3.

64

See, for instance, Government of Saskatchewan, Department of Natural Resources, Report of the Saskatchewan Royal Commission on Immigration and Settlement 1930 (Regina: Roland S. Garrett, King's Printer, 1930).

65

H.J. Jakob, "Ein Bekenntnes," Bate, 7 November 1934, p. 2; H. Gorz, "Einige Gedanken," MR, 6 January 1927, pp. 10-11.

66

[Letter from Winkler], Bote, 29 January 1934, p. 3. On William Whittaker and his party, see Lita-Rose Betcherman, The Swastika and the Maple Leaf: Fascist Movements in Canada in the Thirties (Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1975), 65-66. See also Martin Robin, Shades of Right: Nativist and Fascist Politics in Canada 1920-1940 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992).

67

Victor Peters, "Era of political ferment marks pre-war years," MM 6, 9 (June 1977): 9-10.

68

Hermann's father had been an influential minister in Russia and had settled in Winkler; his younger brother, Kornelius, famous for his promotion of music, also resided in the town, which had an active Mennonite Brethren congregation. On Neufeld and his association with right-wing forces, see also Chapter 10.

69

"Hitlers Reichstagsrede im Wortlaut," MR, 10 May 1939. In 1938, following the Munich crisis, the "bishops and ministers of the Mennonite Church ... assembled in Winnipeg" sent a telegram to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, thanking "Almighty God" for "using you as his instrument to avert the tragedy of another world war." Copy in MHC, Benjamin Ewert Papers, Vol. 544 (with thanks in reply from London).

70

John P. Dyck, "Was ich bin," MR, 1 March 1939, p. 12; "Pro-Hitler teacher of Morden district dismissed," Morden Times, 5 June 1940, p. 1; "Pro-Nazi teacher loses license," Globe and Mail, 31 May 1940. Dyck was probably the teacher at Neuenburg near Winkler who appears in an account produced by the notorious Mennonite supporter of the Nazis in Germany, Heinrich Schroeder, promoting the allegiance of Mennonite teachers and pupils in

335

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Canada and South America to Nazi ideas of the "Volk"; see his Auslanddeutschtum in der Volksschule (Berlin: Julius Beltz, [c. 1935]). 71

The teacher was named as H. Janzen; see "Manitoba bars Nazi teacher, anti-British schools curbed," Globe and Mail, 5 July 1940.

72

Howard Palmer, Patterns of Prejudice: History of Nativism in Alberta (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982), 120-21; Epp, Mennonites in Canada 1920-1940, 315-16.

73

See the overview by Nelson Wiseman, "The pattern of prairie politics," in R. Douglas Francis and Howard Palmer (eds.), The Prairie West: Historical Readings (Edmonton: Pica Pica Press, 1992), 640-60; and, for Mennonites, Regehr, Peace, Order and Good Government, chapters 3 and 4.

74

Jacob Peters, "Changing leadership patterns: Conference of Mennonites in Canada," JMS 7 (1989): 167-82.

Chapter 9 1

See letters to Valentine Winkler in 1916, giving the names of local supporters, almost all of whom are local Mennonites, in PAM, Valentine Winkler Papers, MG14 B45, Box 2.

2

Frank Brown, A History of the Town of Winkler, Manitoba 1892-1973 (Winkler: The Author, 1973), 41-42; Howard Winkler eventually served four terms (1935 to 1953) as member for Lisgar in the House of Commons, maintaining good contacts with local Mennonites.

3

He served as mayor for seventeen years between 1917 and 1945; Brown, Winkler, 32, 47, 101. On his background, see John Dyck and William Harms (eds.), 1880 Village Census of the Mennonite West Reserve (Winnipeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society, 1998), 498; Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies, Canada, Winnipeg, Winkler Mennonite Brethren Church Register 1893 to c. 1926, 150, 186.

4

Nordwesten, 4 May 1927, p. 4; Nordwesten, 8 June 1927, pp. 1, 2; [Editorial] "Ein Mennonit ist Kandidat in Manitoba," MR, 22 June 1927; Beilage [supplement], and the impressive full-page advertisement for Biickert on page 18 addressed to "All German-speakers" in the electorate and containing the statement, "Liegen eure Schulen, die deutsche Sprache und eure Kinder euch am Herzen, so wahlt und unterstiitzt euren liberalen Kandidaten Peter Biickert."

5

J.J. Enns, the mayor of Winkler, H.H. Hamm, the secretary-treasurer of the Rhineland municipality in Altona, P.H. Buhr, a lawyer in Gretna, J.A. Klassen, a Sommerfelder teacher in Plum Coulee, J.J. Rempel in Rosenfeld, and H.H. Reimer in Horndean. See list of agents in the advertisement, MR, 15 June 1932, p. 7; cf. Die [Steinbach] Post, 26 May 1932, p. 4. Dawson, a social scientist writing of the West Reserve in the early 1930s, noted that the municipal secretary, along with teachers and businessmen, were replacing ministers as leaders in the Mennonite community (Dawson, Group Settlement, 154).

6

On Wiebe, see Mavis Reimer, Cornelius W. Wiebe: A Beloved Physician: The Story of a Country Doctor (Winnipeg: Hyperion, 1983).

7

MHC Minutes of the Bergthaler Ministerial, February 1931, cited in Gerbrandt, Adventure in Faith, 317; Ens, Subjects or Citizens? 230 n. 128.

8

A related issue might have been the problems with the finances of the Waisenamt (Orphan's Fund) at this time; Gerbrandt, Adventure in Faith, 284-86; Reimer, Cornelius W. Wiebe, 48-49.

336

ENDNOTES

9

In October 1931, at the suggestion of Howard Winkler, Wiebe was approached by Bracken's local supporters who reported to the premier. Wiebe had indicated his support for the Progressives and stated that "it is my duty to co-operate fully, especially in these days of strife"; PAM, Bracken Papers, P2544, Constituency Files, 28—Morden and Rhineland 1931-1940; on Bracken, see John Kendle, John Bracken: A Political Biography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979).

10

Dawson, Group Settlement, 147, 155, 165-66.

11

Gerbrandt, Adventure in Faith, 317. Although Gerbrandt suggests this warning was directed at those who supported the CCF, it is as likely that it referred to the supporters of the Conservatives.

12

See Reimer, Cornelius W. Wiebe, Chapter 3 for details. Wiebe returned full-time to his medical practice and became a highly successful figure in local affairs, modernizing medical practices and services; he died in 1999 at the age of 106, shortly after receiving the Order of Canada.

13

On Enns, see his obituary in MR, 16 July 1941, p. 3; cf. MR, 23 July 1941, p. 7.

14

Canadian Parliamentary Guide (Ottawa) 1937, 435-36, 444, where Miller is also described as a real-estate agent, mill operator, and notary public, and chair of the Gretna school board. His Mennonite power base was in Altona, where he was supported in spite of his later switching party allegiances.

15

Walkof (or Wolkof) was of Romanian background although he and his brother married sisters with Mennonite names and were members of the Church of God; Brown, Winkler, 113, 139-40,195.

16

"Ein Mennonit als Kandidat," MR, 8 June 1932, p. 10; MR, 15 June 1932, p. 10. The advertisements differ; cf. advertisement "An die Wa'hler des Morden-Rhineland Wahlbezirks," Die [Steinbach] Post, 2 June 1932, p. 4.

17

G. Enns, "Fragekasten. Auf die von Herrn K. A. Klassen im Offene Brief," Bote, 2 March 1927, p. 3. The "Enns" who referred readers to the clerk of the provincial parliament for further questions of this nature may be Gerhard Ens, who had served as a member of the Saskatchewan legislative assembly and who had assisted the new immigrants in other negotiations with government.

18

See Frank H. Epp, Education with a Plus: The Story of Rosthem Junior College (Waterloo: Conrad Press, 1975): 78-79. On one occasion the "undemocratic" attempts by Russlander resulted in conflict with local English settlers in Coaldale, Alberta; see Buhr, "Pursuit of a vision," 191-92, 195-96.

19

For their impact in areas of the West Reserve, see Theodore J. H. Dueck, "Mennonite federal electoral behaviour on the West Reserve in Manitoba, 1887-1935" (MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 1987), 27, 65.

20

See the report from Ontario quoted in Henry Paetkau, "Separation or Integration? The Russian Mennonite Community in Ontario, 1924-45" (PhD thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1986), 266.

21

Mackenzie King himself courted Mennonites as voters and referred to them positively in his diary. See Robert Wardhaugh, Mackenzie King and the Prairie West (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 118, 178.

22

Janzen quoted in Paetkau, "Separation or Integration?" 268.

337

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

23

Editor-Spalte [Arnold Dyck], "Zu den Wahlen in Manitoba," Die [Steinbach] Post, 2 June 1932, p. 3. All the subsequent quotations by Dyck are from the Post editorial.

24

The 1935 elections follow the traumatic events for Russlander of the early 1930s after the ending of emigration from the USSR, Stalin's collectivization, famine in Ukraine, and the start of arrests of perceived enemies of the state. The rise of Hitler was viewed by some Mennonites as an attempt to stand against the tide of Communism and gave them pride in a new-found Germanism.

25

Nordwesten, 25 September 1935, p. 6.

26

" Fur die Farmer kampfen, gegen Kommunismus kampfen," advertisement for Howard Winkler, Liberal candidate for Lisgar, in MR, 2 October 1935, p. 14; cf. MR, 9 October 1935, p. 2. Robert Ward of the University of Manitoba has confirmed to me that the wording of these advertisements was different from those directed at English voters but points out that it was not uncommon for local branches to tailor advertisements to local voters.

27

Steinbach Post, 2 October 1935, p. 4 (which also endorses Winkler), and Steinbach Post, 9 October 1935, pp. 1-6; the election was held on 14 October.

28

See the lengthy "explanation" on "Section 98," Steinbach Post, 9 October 1935, p. 4; and, on the repeal of the controversial section, see The Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs 1933 (Toronto: Canadian Review Co., 1934), 79-80; The Canadian Annual Review ... 1935-36 (Toronto: Canadian Review Co. 1936), 63, 122.

29

The seat of Provencher covered most of the old East Reserve but also included French and Ukrainian districts. The Liberal candidate secured 80 percent of the votes in Russlander areas, compared with 62 percent overall; Report of the Chief Electoral Officer: Eighteenth General Election (Ottawa: The Queen's Printer, 1936), 450-51. In Lisgar Winkler apparently won the Russlander and Bergthaler vote but the Conservative candidate, a previous MLA for the area, won the rest of the Mennonite vote.

30

S.D. Mast, Das Christentum und der Stimmkasten oder die Ursache, warum ich nicht an die weltliche Wahl gehe (Steinbach: P.P. Reimer, 1930); cf. Royden Loewen, Blumenort: A Mennonite Community in Transition, 1874-1982, 2nd ed. (Steinbach: Blumenort Mennonite Historical Society, 1990), 423.

31

See Loewen, Blumenort, 617-18. As late as 1960, members of the local EMC congregation were forbidden from electioneering or becoming involved in political demonstrations.

32

On the Prefontaines and their links with their constituents from a Mennonite point of view, see Abe Warkentin, Reflections on Our Heritage: A History of Steinbach and the R.M. of Hanover from 1874 (Steinbach: Derksen Printers, 1971), 274-77.

33

Ibid., 278-79.

34

See the RCMP "Intelligence Bulletin" of 30 October 1939, which stresses Mennonite anticommunism at the expense of pro-Nazism, in Gregory S. Kealey and Reg Whitaker (eds.), R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins. The War Series, 1939-1941 (St. John's: Committee on Canadian Labour History, 1989), 38; also see the "Monthly Intelligence Report" of 1 March 1943, which confuses Mennonites with German Sudetenland refugees, in Kealey and Whitaker (eds.), R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins. The War Series, Part II, 1942-1945 (St. John's: Committee on Canadian Labour History, 1993), 88-90. A very small number of Russlander were detained for their Nazi sympathies at times during the war.

338

ENDNOTES

35

On the sudden changes in terms of ethnic identity on census forms, see William Peterson, Planned Migration: The Social Determinants of the Dutch-Canadian Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955), 181-83; Urry, "Who are the Mennonites?" 254. On the racial registration issue, see the discussion in MR by B.B. Janz, MR, 31 July 1940, pp. 5-6; Johann G. Rempel, "Die Frage Nummer acht," MR, 14 August 1940, p. 3; David Toews, MR, 14 August 1940, p. 2; and H.P. Toews, MR, 18 September 1940, pp. 4-5.

36

Regehr, Mennonites in Canada 1939-1970, Chapter 2. Regehr calculates that during World War II, approximately 4500 Mennonites served in the military, compared with 7543 in alternative, non-combatant roles. The number of young men of Mennonite descent, rather than members of a congregation, who served in military units is not easy to ascertain and might be higher; some men were still unbaptized when they enlisted or were conscripted.

37

MR, 6 March 1940, p. 7; MR, 20 March 1940, p. 11; Steinbach Post, 6 March 1940, p. 4; Steinbach Post, 13 March 1940, p. 1; Steinbach Post, 20 March 1940, pp. 1, 3-5. The Rundschau published a negative speech on nonresistance by the Conservative leader in MR, 6 March 1940, pp. 3-4, and the Post carried reports on political meetings, the speeches of Liberal candidates, and celebrated the Liberal victory; see Steinbach Post, 3 April 1940, p. 1.

38

The candidate, though, was an odd figure, Leonard Kriiger, an engineer with peculiar ideas for a new social order and government; see advertisement in MR, 26 March 1941, p. 15, and his self-published newspaper, Firsf Review Square Government, 25 May 1939, and letters of April to June 1940 to the premier in PAM, Bracken Papers, P2544, Constituency Files, 28—Morden and Rhineland 1931-1940. In the election he received just 109 of the 3317 votes cast. In later years Kriiger became an eccentric figure in Winnipeg who, in spite of appearing as if he lived on the streets, was a wealthy benefactor of the University of Manitoba.

39

"Mennonite Group refuse to vote," Hamilton Spectator, 26 January 1942; the grounds given by "a spokesman" were rather odd: '"Apart from our non-combatant views ... I would personally regard it as totally unfair if we people, comprising some 40,000 to 50,000 in Canada, voted in favour of conscription, which might require other people to take up arms which we are not prepared to do ourselves.'"

40

WT, 28 April 1942, and WT, 1 May 1942; the Manitoba French rejection followed the pattern in Quebec. On the larger issues, see J.L. Granatstein, Conscription in the Second World War 1939-1945: A Study in Political Management (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1969), 40-47; Margaret Levi, Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 153-56.

41

Comment in Altona Echo, 7 September 1949; cf. H.H. Hamm, Sixty Years of Progress (Altona: The Rural Municipality of Rhineland, 1944). Hamm served as secretary-treasurer from 1913 to 1944 and was a keen supporter of the Liberal Party.

42

Jakob F. Isaak, "Mennoniten in Ottawa," MR, 3 January 1945, p. 4, reported that over fifty Mennonites were serving in the capital. There are subsequent reports on their social activities; many were involved in translation and other technical assistance.

43

A.M. Willms, "We have failed to carry out our duty to government," CM, 4 January 1963, p. 5. Willms noted that the number of senior civil servants with identifiable Mennonite names was higher than their representation in the general population; cf. Frank H. Epp, "Mennonites and the Civil Service," ML 23 (1968): 179-82.

339

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

44

On the mock election in which the candidates were Isaak Suderman (Liberal), Henry Fehr (CCF), and John Wieler (Progressive Conservative), see the Altona Echo, 20 June 1945, p. 1.

45

Steinbach Post, 25 April 1945, p. 4; Steinbach Post, 2 May 1945, p. 6; Steinbach Post, 23 May 1945, pp. 2, 3; Steinbach Post, 30 May 1945, p. 3; C.F. Klassen, "Unser Premier Minister," Steinbach Post, 6 June 1945, p. 1. Klassen, it should be noted, was not a congregational minister; for more detail on his political involvement in the Soviet Union and Canada, see chapters 6 and 8.

46

MR, 23 May 1945, p. 5; MR, 30 May 1945, p. 5; C.F. Klassen, "Unser Premier Minister," MR, 6 June 1945, p. 2; cf. Abe Dueck, "Church and state: developments among Mennonite Brethren in Canada since World War II," Direction 10, 3 (1981): 33.

47

Heinrichs, "Voting trends among Mennonites of the West Reserve." An advertisement in the Mennonitische Lehrerzeitung 1, 6 (June 1949) announced that Heppner had "served the Mennonite area for 35 years" and noted he had graduated from the Mennonite Collegiate Institute in 1907; see also "Offene Brief an die Wahler von Lisgar," Steinbach Post, 15 June 1949, p. 5.

48

Morton, Manitoba, 463-64; cf. M.S. Donnelly, The Government of Manitoba (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963), 64-67.

49

The Liberal (Walkof) lost again to the Conservative Miller, In an assessment of the campaign for the Liberal leader, it was noted that Wolkof had not received much help from the local Liberal organization (he was not a Mennonite!) and that unless something was done, the Liberal votes would go to the CCF (PAM MG 14 F Elections—Provincial: Morden-Rhineland 1945); as will be seen below, this prediction proved incorrect.

50

Memorandum to Mr. Garson, 24 October 1945, PAM MG 14 F Elections—Provincial: Carillon 1945; the Reimer mentioned may have been the Steinbach businessman J.J. Reimer, Reeve of the Hanover Municipality in the early 1930s.

51

Steinbach Post, 26 October 1949, p. 4; Steinbach Post, 2 November 1949, pp. 4, 5 (with reports on meetings in Steinbach, one where Dr. Cornelius Wiebe spoke in favour of Prefontaine); Steinbach Post, 9 November 1949, p. 4; results in Steinbach Post, 16 November 1949; cf. Prefontaine's comments on this period reported in Warkentin, Reflections on oar Heritage, 276.

52

On these parties and their links with Mennonites, see Regehr, Peace, Order and Good Government, chapters 3 and 4; see also Bruce L. Guenther, "Populism, politics and Christianity in Western Canada," Canadian Society for Church History. Historical Papers (2000), 93-112.

53

For a discussion of these differences, see Nelson Wiseman, "The pattern of prairie politics," in Francis and Palmer (eds.), The Prairie West, 640-60; and, for the religious connections, see Nelson Wiseman, "An historical note on religion and parties on the prairies," Journal of Canadian Studies 16, 2 (1981): 109-112.

54

The relationship between English-speaking Protestants and social reform had long existed in Canada but had little or no influence on Mennonites. See Richard Allen, The Social Passion: Religion and Social Reform in Canada 1914-28 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973).

55

"An die Wahler von Provencher und Lisgar," Steinbach Post, 6 June 1945, p. 4.

56

See Francis, In Search of Utopia, 227-30; Epp-Tiessen, Altona, 159-70; Ens, Volost and Municipality, 183-86.

340

ENDNOTES

57

Friesen had been campaign manager for Major Edgar J. Bailey, who had stood for the CCF in the 1945 federal election in Lisgar; Friesen was nominated in Plum Coulee; Altona Echo, 3 October 1945, p. 1; Altona Echo, 10 October 1945, p. 1.1 am grateful to Adolf Ens for these details.

58

Editorial in the Red River Valley Echo, 5 March 1958, p. 2, cited in Epp-Tiessen, Altona, 291 n. 48.

59

The first reference to Social Credit in a Manitoba Mennonite paper occurs with a small advertisement in MR, 25 September 1935, p. 14. During the 1941 elections in Winnipeg, the party is noted but without mention of any religious connections; see J. Krb'ker, "Zu den Manitoba Wahlen," MR, 16 April 1941, p. 7.

60

V.A. Dirks quoting the Winnipeg Free Press in the run-up to the 1962 federal campaign, "The Mennonite vote and Social Credit," CM, 6 July 1962, p. 2.

61

On the changing nature of Social Credit ideology in Alberta, with hints as to its change in other areas of Canada, see Alvin Finkel, The Social Credit Phenomenon in Alberta (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989).

62

On these influences, see Regehr, Mennonites in Canada 1939-1970, 207-12.

63

On Peters, see Chapter 8.

64

George Loeppky in Dufferin, J.J. Friesen in Emerson, H. Dyck in Ethelbert, C.F. Rempel in Iberville, and B.H. Rempel in Portage la Prairie. Loeppky would later stand in the federal elections of 1962, 1963, and 1965 in Lisgar, and, in spite of his Mennonite name, was reported to be a steward of the Carmen United Church; WT, 6 November 1965, p. 29, in UMA, WT cuttings 1055.

65

Eugene Griffen, "Radical parties face Canadian province test," Chicago Daily Tribane, 7 June 1953, p. 7.

66

WT, 27 September 1957, and WT, 14 November 1957, in UMA, WT cuttings 6170, "Social Credit." Rempel had obviously served on the executive and held office earlier.

67

On the urban support, see Chapter 10 below.

68

Later research on support for political parties among Mennonite Brethren across Canada also indicates that in answer to a questionnaire, over a third showed support for Social Credit at the provincial level. See John H. Redekop, "Decades of transition: North American Mennonite Brethren in politics," in Paul Toews (ed.), Bridging Troubled Waters: The Mennonite Brethren at Mid-Century (Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 1995), 34.

69

Dueck, "Church and state," 42; Dueck quotes letters of support for the leader of the federal Social Credit party in the Mennonite Brethren press, but does not name the party itself. On the religious appeal of Social Credit to Mennonites, see also Regehr, Peace, Order and Good Government, 92-93.

70

On charges of anti-Semitism see WT (31 October; 1 November; 7 November; and 15 November 1957) in UMA, WT cuttings 6170, "Social Credit." On the larger context of anti-Semitism in the party, see Finkel, The Social Credit Phenomenon, 105-07.

71

On Froese, see Brown, Winkler, 198; Ens, Volost and Municipality, 215, 229-30, the biographical sketch in the Canadian Parliamentary Guide, and his obituary in CM, 14 July 2003.

341

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

72

A.J. "Bus" Thiessen was an entrepreneur who established the successful Grey Goose Bus Lines. He stood unsuccessfully as a PC for the federal seat of Provencher in 1953 and in 1962 for the provincial seat of Rhineland; see Canadian Who's Who, 16 (1981): 985. Friesen was the director of D.W. Friesen and Sons, the Altona printer and publisher of local newspapers; very active in the Liberal Party, he stood against Froese in 1959.

73

Miller, first elected as a Conservative in 1936, later became a Progressive Liberal, a move that hardly effected his success in Rhineland, where a strong local support group existed. Froese won in 1959 with a majority of 91 percent with the percentage of votes almost evenly split between the Liberal, PC, and Social Credit candidates (30, 34, and 36 percent, respectively).

74

See, for instance, the struggles in the Green Valley School Division chronicled in Brown, Winkler, 153-56, of which, between 1944 and 1972, Froese was a local trustee.

75

Ens, Volost and Municipality, 230.

76

See Gerhard Ens's comments in Allan J. Siebert, "The Mennonite vote in Manitoba: a significant factor in the election," MRep, 7 December 1981, p. 8.

77

[Frank H. Epp], [Editorial], CM, 14 June 1957, p. 2. Later, Epp, now in academia, entered politics, twice standing unsuccessfully as a Liberal in federal Ontario elections; on his connections with the Canadian Mennonite, see Regehr, Mennonites in Canada, 386-90.

78

In November, however, John H. Redekop, later an academic political scientist who commented extensively in the Mennonite Brethren press on political matters, published one of his first pieces, "Should a Christian join a political party?" CM, 22 June 1957; he recommended against membership.

79

His semi-religious style of delivering political addresses drew large Mennonite audiences in rural Manitoba. See Duart Farquharson, "Dief shows versatility in wooing rural vote," WT, 9 October 1965, UMA, WT cuttings 1054; Warkentin, Reflections on Our Heritage, 281; Gerald Wright, Steinbach: Is There Any Place Like It (Steinbach: Derksen, 1991), 109.

80

For a discussion of these issues from a Canadian perspective, see Bothwell, Drummond, and English, Canada since 1945.

81

See, for example, the discussion in the Mennonite Brethren Herald before the 1962 federal election: Vernon Ratzlaff, "The Christian and politics" and Bert Huebner, "Why should a Christian be interested in politics?" MBH, 27 April 1962, pp. 1, 4, 5, 6-7.

82

"Evangelical Mennonite Conference speaks on politics," CM, 12 July 1963, pp. 6, 12.

83

In fact, at the time the Evangelical Mennonite Church was in a process of transition, as the differences in its statements of faith on this issue between 1960 and 1994 indicate. The earlier influence and involvement of United States evangelical groups and evangelists in American politics undoubtedly influenced the Mennonite Brethren with their strong pan-American ties earlier than Kanadier groups, where evangelical influences flowed a little later from south of the border.

84

[Editorial], CM, 15 February 1963, p. 6; George G. Dyck [Letter], CM, 22 February 1963, cf. p. 6. A view similar to that was expressed a year earlier in the Mennonite Brethren paper, the Rundschau, which also claimed that as Robert Thompson, the Social Credit federal leader, was a committed Christian, his party was worthy of the Mennonite vote; see Dueck, "Church and state," 42; cf. Huebner, "Why should a Christian be interested in politics?" MBH, 27 April 1962, p. 5, for support of the Alberta Social Credit premier E.G. Manning.

342

ENDNOTES

85

Ens was a teacher and later principal of the Mennonite Collegiate Institute in Gretna; see the history of the school written by his son, Gerhard J. Ens, "Die Schule mass sein."

86

Gerhard Ens [letter], CM, 1 March 1963, p. 6; [Letter to the editor], "Christian principles and political involvement," CM, 29 March 1963, pp. 6-7. A similar position had been taken a year earlier by John H. Redekop after a detailed consideration of the differences between the political parties; see "Which political party should I support with my vote?" MEN, 8 June 1962, pp. 5-6.

87

In 1957 Redekop stated that "Christian" for him meant a "born-again Christian," a view and use of terms not shared by all Mennonites but one which reflected his Mennonite Brethren roots; see Redekop, "Should a Christian join a political party?"

88

[Frank H. Epp], [Editorial], "Political Interest," CM, 22 March 1963, p. 6.

89

Erhart Regier, "A Mennonite in a democratic society," CM, 23 November 1962, p. 7. Regier was born into the Saskatchewan Tiefengrund Mennonite community and was elected to the House of Commons but by a non-Mennonite electorate; he represented the same seat for the CCF and its successor the NDP between 1953 and 1963 and contested seats unsuccessfully in 1965 and 1968; see also Regehr, Peace, Order and Good Government, 4-5, 9, 70, 72, 116.

90

In an emerging generation of Mennonite intellectuals, the most influential writer was John Howard Yoder; see, for example, his The Christian Witness to the State (Newton: Faith and Life Press, 1964).

91

The Mennonite German Language Society in Vancouver, the Mennonite Society for the Promotion of the German Language, and the Manitoba Mennonite Trustee Association for the Mennonite Education Committee, the latter two in Winnipeg.

92

The issue of language undoubtedly confused matters further as the commission's work coincided with the final struggles over language use and religious continuity; see, for example, Gerald C. Ediger, Crossing the Divide: Language Transition among Canadian Mennonite Brethren 1940-1970 (Winnipeg: Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 2001).

93

The obvious connection was through the German language to German culture and Germany as a nation-state. One such organization was the Mennonitischer Verein zur Pflege der Deutschen Muttersprache, founded in Winnipeg in 1952 to promote the German language among Mennonites and which was later known as the Mennonitsche Sprachverein (or in English as The Mennonite German Society of Canada) and included in its work the promotion of German music and literature as well as the language.

94

Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. IV. The Cultural Contribution of the Other Ethnic Groups (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1969), 20, identifies the 1874 immigrants as "German Mennonites"; and, for the census data, 301 (Tables A—76/77 Canada), 308 (A—90/91 Manitoba).

95

Canada, Report of the Royal Commission, 83; the only "exceptions" noted were the elections of Wiebe to the Manitoba legislature in 1932 and Regier to the House of Commons in 1953 and 1962; no mention is made of any other political involvement.

96

Urry, "Who Are the Mennonites?"

97

Not, however, without opposition from some quarters. One notable critic was the Mennonite political scientist John H. Redekop; see his book A People Apart,

343

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

98

A collection of these writings, with some notable omissions, such as examples of Jack Thiessen's work, can be seen in George Epp and Heinrich Wiebe (eds.), Unter dem Nordlicht. Anthologie des deutschen Schrifttwns der Mennoniten in Canada (Winnipeg: The Mennonite German Society of Canada, 1977); see also Harry Loewen, "Canadian Mennonite literature: longing for a lost homeland," in Walter Riedel (ed.), The Old and the New World: Literary Perspectives of GermanSpeaking Canadians (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984).

99

The number of writers and scholarly commentaries on their works is too large to list here without being unnecessarily selective. On the context, see Al Reimer, Mennonite Literary Voices: Past and Present (North Newton: Bethel College, 1993).

100 For examples of such comments in the literature, see Jim McAllister, "Ethnic participation in Canadian legislatures: the case of Manitoba," Canadian Ethnic Studies 3, 1 (1971): 77-94; Thomas Peterson, "Manitoba: ethnic and class politics," in Martin Robin (ed.), Canadian Provincial Politics: The Party Systems of the Ten Provinces, 2nd ed. (Scarborough: PrenticeHall, 1978 [1972]). On the diversity of Mennonites within this area, see James Urry, "Of borders and boundaries: reflections on Mennonite unity and separation in the modern world," MQR73, 3 (1999): 503-24. 101 WT, 8 December 1962, UMA, WT Cuttings 4285; the journalist undoubtedly failed to appreciate Mennonite humour. 102 Jim Shilliday, "Profiles of Provincial ridings 1. Rhineland Tories fighting to take lone Socred seat," WT, 8 December 1962, UMA, WT Cuttings 4285. 103 WT, 20 June 1966, UMA, WT Cuttings 4286. 104 WT, 4 February 1972, UMA, WT Cuttings 4290. 105 Thiessen was of Russlander descent, had served in the navy in World War II, and was a Steinbach councillor, and, by profession, an insurance salesman. "Visit to the Thiessens," Carillon News, 8 May 1959, p. 3; Steinbach Post, 11 December 1962, p. 9. 106 Barkman was the son of the leader of the Church of God in Christ and his wife was the daughter of the elder of the Russlander Schb'nwiese church in Steinbach; his note of thanks following his first election was addressed to both the Mennonite and Lutheran voters in his electorate; Steinbach Post, 18 December 1962. 107 Gerald Wright, "Photo-finishes shaping up in 2 seats," WT, 12 December 1962, UMA, WT Cuttings 4285. 108 Warkentin, Reflections on Our Heritage, 277-78. Banman was re-elected in 1977 and 1981; he was replaced by another Mennonite Progressive Conservative, Helmut Pankratz, and, following a further reorganization into the seat of Steinbach, Albert Driedger from Grunthal, a former Reeve of the Hanover Municipality, was elected in 1990; Wright, Steinbach, 111. 109 Warkentin, Reflections on Our Heritage, 279-81. 110 The newspaper reporter Steve Melnyk noted that Barkman's answers to questions had more the "feeling of office rather than farm"; WT, 6 November 1965, UMA, WT Cuttings 1055. Another handicap may have been that Barkman was reported to be a member of the executive of St. Paul's Lutheran Church (his wife was a Lutheran), suggesting he was no longer a Mennonite by faith, WT, 6 November 1965, p. 29, UMA, WT Cuttings 1055.

344

ENDNOTES

111 John Wilson, "The decline of the Liberal Party in Manitoba politics," Journal of Canadian Studies 10 (1975): 24-41; David E. Smith, The Regional Decline of a National Party: Liberals on the Prairies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981); Wardaugh, Mackenzie King and the Prairie West, traces this decline back to the inter-war years, although Mennonite voters in many areas of western Canada were supporters of the Liberals during the period. 112 See Chapter 10. 113 Rick Ogmundson "A social profile of the members of the Manitoba Legislature 1950, 1960, 1970," Journal of Canadian Studies 12, 4 (1977): 79-84. 114 Another Mennonite, Siegfried ("Sig") Enns, was elected earlier as a Progressive Conservative to the House of Commons in 1962 (and in 1963 and 1965) in the seat of Portage la Prairie, but not by Mennonite voters. Enns was the son of the leading Russlander elder in Winnipeg, Johann Enns, and part of a remarkable political family also involved in municipal and provincial politics. Siegfried's brother, Harry Enns, was regularly re-elected to the provincial legislature after 1966 and served in a number of ministerial positions in government, but once again his electorates were not in areas with many Mennonite voters. Another brother, Ernest, was involved in municipal politics in Winnipeg. See Chapter 10 for more on the Enns family in politics. 115 The editor of the local Carillon newspaper, Eugene Derksen, strongly endorsed Epp throughout the campaign; see his editorial, Carillon, 25 October 1972, p. 2:1, and coverage and adverts in other issues published at the time. 116 On the campaign, see WT, 21 October 1972, and WT, 27 October 1972, UMA, WT Cuttings 1060; cf. Wright, Steinbach, 107-10. 117 Epp would go on to be re-elected many times and to serve in government as an important cabinet minister in Progressive Conservative administrations; the complex aspects of his appeal that allowed Mennonites of diverse backgrounds to support him in the long run proved to be the bases by which they could each find a way to disown him. Epp, alienated from his constituents, did not seek re-election in 1993.

Chapter 10 1

MFP, 5 December 1921, p. 13; cf. MFP, 7 December 1921, p. 12 for results of the election.

2

Norman Penner, introduction to "Jacob Penner's recollections," Histoire Sociale/Social History 7, 14 (1971): 366-78; Victor G. Doerksen, introduction to Jacob Penner, "A letter from Winnipeg in 1907," JMS 15 (1997): 191-96.

3

Harry Gutkin and Mildred Gutkin, Profiles in Dissent: The Shaping of Radical Thought in the Canadian West (Edmonton: NeWest, 1997), 3-4, 171.

4

Defeated in 1952, Penner was re-elected the following year and retired in 1960; he was interned for eighteen months as a communist during the early years of World War II; "Penner defeat ends City Council Reds," WT, 27 October 1952, and WT, 31 October 1953, UMA, WT Cuttings 7154. His son, Roland, later became an NDP member of the legislative assembly and served in government as a cabinet minister.

5

A recent decision to rename a Winnipeg park in memory of Penner's service to the city and local community met with a storm of protest: David O'Brien, "Duck and cover! Cold War lives at city hall: Steek's angry salvos shock councillors at vote to rename park after

345

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Communist," WFP, 9 May 2000, and subsequent letters, WFP, 14, 17, and 20 May 2000. For a negative Mennonite response see John Schroeder, "Why honor long-time Communist?" Carillon [Steinbach], 4 September 2000. 6

Loewen, Family, Church and Market, 81.

7

Plett (ed.), Pioneers and Pilgrims, 122.

8

Anna Ens, In Search of Unity: Story of the Conference of Mennonites in Manitoba (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1996), 62.

9

William Neufeld, From Faith to Faith: The History of the Manitoba Mennonite Brethren Church (Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 1989).

10

A[be] D[ueck], "Rewriting history: Alberta and Manitoba Mennonite Brethren," MH 27, 4 (2001): 5; Anna Thiessen, Die Stadtmission in Winnipeg (Winnipeg: The Author, 1955), 7-8.

11

The most comprehensive study of Winnipeg during this period is Alan F.J. Artibise, Winnipeg: A Social History of Urban Growth, 1874-1914 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1975); on the wider context, see Gerald Friesen, The Canadian Prairies: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987).

12

Artibise, Winnipeg; cf. A.F.J. Artibise, "Divided City: the immigrant in Winnipeg, 1874-1921," in Gilbert A. Stelter and Alan F.J. Artibise (eds.), The Canadian City: Essays in Urban History (Toronto: Macmillan, 1966), 300-36; Daniel Hiebert, "Class, ethnicity and residential structure: the social geography of Winnipeg, 1901-1921," Journal of Historical Geography 17, 1 (1991): 56-86.

13

On the strike, see David Jay Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg: Labour, Industrial Relations, and the General Strike, rev. ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990); Friesen, The Canadian Prairies, 358-64.

14

Founded in the 1880s, the newspaper was well known to the Mennonites in Russia, first through an especially printed edition and later by the full edition. Neufeld was the son of a noted Mennonite Brethren preacher who had settled in Winkler.

15

Frieda Esau Klippenstein, "'Doing what we could': Mennonite domestic servants in Winnipeg, 1920s to 1950s," JMS 7 (1989): 145-66.

16

Marlene Epp, "The Mennonite girls' homes of Winnipeg: a home away from home," JMS 6 (1988): 100-14.

17

Gerhard Lohrenz, "The Mennonites in Winnipeg," ML (January 1951): 17-18; 25 Jahre MennonitischeAnsiedlungNordKildonan, 1928-1953 (North Kildonan: Publications Committee of the Mennonite Brethren Congregation and Mennonite Congregation of North Kildonan, 1953); Fiftieth Anniversary of the Mennonite Settlement in North Kildonan (Winnipeg: Mennonite Churches of North Kildonan, 1978).

18

On Ewert, see Chapter 7.

19

Ens, In Search of Unity, 62-63.

20

Dem Herm die Ehre: Schonwiese Mennoniten Gem.ein.de von Manitoba 1924-1968 (Winnipeg: The Congregational Committee, 1968); Ens, In Search of Unity, 36-40, 62-63.

21

John Friesen, "Manitoba Mennonites in the rural-urban shift," ML (October 1968): 154, Chart 1.

346

ENDNOTES

22

Thiessen, Die Stadtmission in Winnipeg, Chapter 2.

23

Clarence Hiebert, "Journeyings outward and journeyings inward," Direction 23, 2 (1994): 113.

24

Harold Kaplan, Reform, Planning and City Politics: Montreal, Winnipeg, Toronto (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 494.

25

Nordwesten 38, 18 August 1926, p. 5; 25 August 1926, p. 3; 1 September 1926, pp. 3, 7.

26

MR, 15 June 1932, p. 15.

27

MR, 22 July 1936, pp. 10, 11; see also the brief earlier report on support for the Bund among Winnipeg's Mennonite community in Mennonitische Volkswarte 1, 8 (1935): 318, published by Arnold Dyck.

28

Streuber had stood as a Social Credit candidate in 1935 ("An die deutschen Wahler," MR, 9 October 1935, p. 11), but by 1936, when he received Bund support, he may have been an independent standing away from an "English" party; see "Deutsches Wahlkomitee fur Herrn H. Streuber," MR, 22 July 1936, p. 11.

29

"Zur Kandidatur Jestadt," MR, 2 November 1934, p. 3; J. K[roeker], "Am Morgen nach den Wahlen," MR, 13 December 1934, p. 8; J. K[roeker], "Nord Winnipeg communistisch?" MR, 20 November 1935, p. 14. Kroeker was of Mennonite descent. The Jewish community in Winnipeg was, in fact, politically diverse and active, see Henry Trachtenberg, "The Winnipeg Jewish community and politics: the inter-War years, 1919-1939," Transactions of the Manitoba Historical Society (Series 3) 35 (1978-79).

30

More research is required on Mennonite links with non-Mennonite German organizations in Winnipeg in the 1920s and 1930s.

31

In his autobiography, DeFehr says nothing about his involvement in politics in the 1930s; Cornelius A. DeFehr, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (Winnipeg: The Christian Press, 1976).

32

See Chapter 8.

33

Epp, "An analysis of Germanism and National Socialism."

34

Betcherman, The Swastika and the Maple Leaf, 73-74; Robin, Shades of Right, 261, 263.

35

WT, 12 January 1939 and 14 January 1939; Neufeld defended himself, somewhat disingenuously, by claiming that he published a number of ethnic newspapers and was personally unaware of the contents of the Zeitung. See also Gutkin and Gutkin, Profiles in Dissent, 367-68.

36

See Jonathan F. Wagner, "The Deutsche Zeitung fur Canada: a Nazi newspaper in Winnipeg," Transactions of the Manitoba Historical Society (Series 3) 33 (1976-77).

37

The Bund is not to be confused with the earlier Bund, which was involved in elections, although some of the members may have been the same. On the Nazi front, see Wagner, Brothers Beyond the Sea, 83-84. The Nazi Bund was noted in Arnold Dyck's newspaper soon after it formed; "Neue Deutsch-Kanadische Organistion," SP, 13 July 1933, p. 3. Dyck himself later moved his publishing centre to Winnipeg, where he too became involved in the Bund's activities; his Mennonitische Volkswarte carried articles sympathetic to Nazi Germany and an advert for the Zeitung. See MV 4, 47/48 (1938): 418.

347

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

38

WT, 21 April 1939, pp. 1-2; WT, 21 August 1940; DeFehr had earlier claimed that his involvement had been restricted to the ownership of just a few shares (WT, 30 January 1939). However, he had visited Germany in 1938 and reported enthusiastically on his attendance at the Nuremberg Rally; see C. DeFehr, "Meine Reiseeindriicke," MR, 6-13 April 1938.

39

Klassen was an important leader of the Mennonites in the Soviet Union until his emigration in the late 1920s (see chapters 6 and 8)

40

WT, 2 September 1939.

41

Regehr, Mennonites in Canada 1939-1970, 35-59.

42

Both quotes from Ens, In Search of Unity, 62, 54; for similar sentiments expressed by Mennonites elsewhere in Canada, see Regehr, Mennonites in Canada 1939-1970, 169-70, 177-78.

43

At the time, this interpretation of Denck was well established in Mennonite and nonMennonite circles, but has been seriously questioned by later Denck scholars.

44

Bruno Dyck, "Half a century of Canadian Mennonite Bible College: a brief organizational history," JMS 11 (1993): 196-97; Regehr, Mennonites in Canada 1939-1970, 260-63.

45

Jacob Peters, "Changing leadership patterns: Conference of Mennonites in Canada," JMS 7 (1989): 167-82; Regehr, Mennonites in Canada 1939-1970, Chapter 13.

46

Between 1936 and 1946 the Schonwiese Mennonite Church and some of its affiliated congregations operated a "Mennonite Religious School" in Winnipeg with a four-year course and local ministers serving as instructors, led by Elder Enns; ME, vol. 3, 637. In 1943 Enns published a survey of various Bible colleges, illustrating his interest and expertise in the field; J.H. Enns, "Mennonitische Bibelschulen in Canada," Warte-Jahrbuch fuer die Mennonitische Gemeinschaft in Canada 1943 I: 32-36.

47

Johann Hermann Enns, "Dem Lichte zu!" in 'Denk wer du bist': Stories of the Johann Hermann and Agathe Enns Families ([Winnipeg: The Enns Family], 1998), 68-77; for interpretations of this affair, see Regehr, Mennonites in Canada 1939-1970, 178-83; Ens, In Search of Unity, 80-85, 132-36; and, from the point of view of the Enns family, 'Denk wer du bist,' 87-89.

48

Individual autobiographical sketches can be found in 'Denk wer du bist'; see also Mary Enns, "One man's sons: the Enns brothers look back at the father who shaped their lives," MM (November 1980): 6-8.

49

Driedger, Mennonites in Winnipeg, 85.

50

Friesen, "Manitoba Mennonites in the rural-urban shift," 153-55.

51

Lohrenz, "The Mennonites in Winnipeg," 24.

52

J.A. Kroeker, "The Crosstown Credit Union," ML (July 1949): 32; John Dyck, Crosstown Credit Union Ltd.: The First Fifty Years, 1944-1994 (Winnipeg: Crosstown Credit Union, 1994).

53

See the sketch of its history in "North Kildonan was youngest Greater Winnipeg municipality," WT, 1 January 1972, in UMA 5024.

54

WT, 9 and 14 November 1943; Karl Fast, "C. Huebert, Mennonitischer Reeve," in 25 Jahre Mennonitische Ansiedlung Nord Kildonan, 44-45, 46; George Tatlock, "50 years of business progress," in Fiftieth Anniversary of the Mennonite Settlement in North Kildonan, 54.

348

ENDNOTES

55

WT, S August 1954.

56

WT, 31 January 1956.

57

Wr, 10 November 1965.

58

WT, 8 October 1969.

59

Rundschau, 22 June 1949, p. 4.

60

Nordwesten, 14 May 1959, pp. 9, 10.

61

Nordwesten, 5 June 1962, p. 6; cf. Nordwesten, 12 June 1962, p. 8.

62

T. Peterson and I. Avakumovic, "A return to the status quo: the election in Winnipeg North Centre," in John Meisel (ed.), Papers on the 1962 Election (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), 102.

63

Based on results in WFP, 15 December 1962, analyzed by Joe Friesen, "It's not that the Tories are closer to God, they're furthest from the Devil: politics and Mennonites in Winnipeg, 1945-1999," JMS 21 (2003): 180.

64

WT, 6 November 1965, p. 28; the report notes that Willms was a plumber, leader of the Boys League, and a Sunday school teacher in his local church.

65

On Redekopp's background and business, see Lohrenz, "Mennonites in Winnipeg," 17.

66

WT, 22 June 1966.

67

Friesen, "It's not that the Tories are closer to God," 180-81.

68

This broad support for political parties by urban Mennonites was also apparent in Saskatoon in the 1960s; see John C. Courtney and David E. Smith, "Voting in a provincial general election and a federal by-election: a constituency study of Saskatoon City," Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 32, 3 (1966): 346, 349.

69

Regehr, Peace, Order and Good Government, 67.

70

Leo Driedger and Glenn Church, "Residential segregation and institutional completeness: a comparison of ethnic minorities," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 11 (1974): 30-52; Peter Matwijiw, "Ethnicity and urban residence: Winnipeg, 1941-71," Canadian Geographer 23 (1979): 45-61.

71

Al Reimer, "Coming in out of the cold," in Loewen (ed.), Why I Am a Mennonite, 259.

72

Leo Driedger and Jacob Peters, "Ethnic identity: a comparison of Mennonite and other German students," MQR 47 (1973): 225-44; Leo Driedger, "Canadian Mennonite urbanism: ethnic villagers or metropolitan remnant?" MQR 49 (1975): 226-41.

73

Leo Driedger, Roy Vogt, and Mavis Reimer, "Mennonite intermarriage: national, regional and intergenerational trends," MQR 57, 2 (1983): 132-44; on the decline in the use of German in urban areas, see Victor Doerksen, "Language and communication among urban Mennonites," ML (October 1968): 182-85.

74

On the impact of these factors, see Urry, "Who Are the Mennonites?" For examples of the advertisements, see MM (April 1973), which had four pages explaining the government's new policy.

349

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

75

Details on Enns along with interesting details on the campaign can be found in PAM, MG 14, G, Elections, Civic, Winnipeg, 1971, and contemporary newspapers.

76

Material on Penner is included in the PAM file (ibid.); see also "Penner retires from city politics," Elmwood Herald (August 1977), and his funeral notice, both in the Katie Peters Collection, CMBS, Winnipeg.

77

This is reflected in a statement issued by their Conference in 1978 on "The Mennonite Brethren and the urban challenge."

78

Friesen, "Manitoba Mennonites in the rural-urban shift," 155, 156.

79

Redekop, "Decades of transition," 31-32, 34, 36-37.

80

On the wider political context of the period, see Thomas Peterson, "Manitoba: ethnic and class politics," in Martin Robin (ed.), Canadian Provincial Politics: The Party System of the Ten Provinces, 2nd ed. (Scarborough: Prentice Hall, 1978), 96-101.

81

Ibid., 100.

82

In 1969 he had polled well even in areas with a large number of Mennonite voters; Friesen, "It's not that the Tories are closer to God," 181, using figures from the WFP (26 June 1969).

83

Regehr, Peace, Order and Good Government, 67, states that Schreyer's wife was a Mennonite; this is incorrect. She was the daughter of Jacob Schulz, the CCF member for the federal seat of Springfield, whom Redekop ("Decades of Transition," 41, 42) incorrectly lists as a Mennonite; this may be the source of Regehr's error.

84

During the election campaign, Redekopp had been photographed with Schreyer and the picture used by the NDP and published in the press, much to Redekopp's chagrin. He claimed the picture might be misinterpreted that he was a supporter of the NDP rather than just a friend of Schreyer, whom he also described as "a gentleman and a good customer," WT, 12 July 1973.

85

See George K. Epp, "Mennonite in spite o f . . . , " in Loewen (ed.), Why I Am a Mennonite; and George Richert, Peter Letkemann, and Werner Epp, "In memoriam: George K, Epp (19241997)," JMS 16 (1998): 285-90.

86

An outline of Penner's version of events up to August 2 is contained in his press release, a copy of which is in the UMA, WT Files, 3526. This file also contains press cuttings on the issue between 10 July and 9 November 1973 and copies of the initial legal responses by Epp and Schreyer. A larger collection of press cuttings and the final 1974 legal judgements were supplied at the request of Frank H. Epp by the head of Schreyer's Premier's Office in 1974 and is deposited in the MAO (Historical Mss 21, No. 4).

87

Penner's press release was also reported in WFP, 3 August 1973.

88

WT, 7 September 1973; WFP, 8 September 1973.

89

On the broader context, see WFP, 1 September 1973.

90

Copies of their lawyer's responses are in UMA, 4293; contemporary press reports provide further detail and interpretation.

91

Legal judgement of Nitikman, J., in the Queen's Bench, 17 June 1974; copy in MAO (Historical Mss 21, No. 4).

350

ENDNOTES

92

Legal judgement of Solomon, J., in the Queen's Bench, 17 June 1974; copy in MAO (Historical Mss 21, No. 4).

93

MM (October 1973): 19.

94

These issues are discussed in Peters, "Changing leadership patterns," 177; Ens, In Search of Unity, 119-24; and Regehr, Mennonites in Canada, 316-17.

95

Legal judgement of Solomon, J., 11-12.

96

WFP, 10 July 1973, and WFP, 25 October 1973; see also the extended comment with quotations from his campaign literature in Frances Russell, "In the Rossmere Constituency: questions of law and the categorical imperative," WFP, 7 November 1973.

97

Epp, "Mennonite in spite o f . . . ," 58.

98

WFP, 1 September 1973.

99

MRep, 15 October 1973, p. 11; MRep, 19 October 1973, p. 1.

100 WFP, 13 July 1973, p. 4; another letter, he claimed, stated, "There are good Germans and dirty Germans like you." 101 "Krahn leaves 'no stone unturned' in election race," MM (October 1977): 15. 102 Friesen, "It's not that the Tories are closer to God," 181-82. 103 Schroeder became a minister in government, along with other Mennonites, thus moving into the centre of power. 104 Allan J. Siebert, "The Mennonite vote in Manitoba: a significant factor in the election," MRep, 7 December 1981, p. 8. 105 In 1986 Schroeder faced the Progressive Conservative Mennonite, Harold Neufeld, narrowly beating Neufeld in at least one Mennonite poll and retaining his seat. In 1988 Neufeld outpolled Schroeder and retained the seat in the next election of 1990; Friesen, "It's not that the Tories are closer to God," 182. When Neufeld resigned in 1993, another NDP Mennonite candidate, Harry Schellenberg, won the by-election, only to be defeated in 1995 by another Progressive Conservative Mennonite, Vic Toews. Schellenberg regained the seat in 1999, defeating Toews, who subsequently won the Mennonite-dominated rural seat of Provencher as a Canadian Alliance candidate in the federal election of 2000. 106 See Chapter 9. 107 Al Reimer, "Portrait of a selfless life: Roy Vogt (1934-1997)," JMS 16 (1998): 291-97; on his background, see A Vogt Family History: The Descendants of Andreas Vogt (1854-1914) and Agnetha (Block) Vogt (1857-1930) (Winnipeg: N.p, 1994). 108 Roy Vogt, "Some strange things happened on the way to the political arena," MM (June 1978): 12-13, is an amusing account of his experiences; cf. Reimer, "Portrait of a selfless life," 295. 109 See Introduction. 110 Don Wiebe, "Philosophical reflections on twentieth-century Mennonite thought," in Loewen (ed.), Mennonite Images, 152-58; Regehr, Mennonites in Canada, 382-408.

351

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

111 In North America, this practice, seen predominantly as an urban phenomenon, even became subject to satire in Mennonite circles; see Emerson L. Lesher, The Muppie Manual: The Mennonite Urban Professional's Handbook for Humility and Success (Intercourse: Good Books, 1985); cf. Driedger, "From Martyrs to Muppies," 304-22. 112 Roy Vogt, "The impact of economic and social class on Mennonite theology," in Loewen (ed.), Mennonite Images, 138. 113 Vogt, "The impact of economic and social class," 147. Vogt had supported unionism, often in the face of fierce opposition from certain Mennonite quarters; see the MM (November 1974) and MM (June 1980). 114 Vogt's idea of a Mennonite professional appears to have been coloured by his academic background; Mennonite lawyers were represented on both sides of the political divide. 115 Roy Vogt, "Staying on," in Loewen (ed.), Why I Am a Mennonite, 308. 116 A[l] Rfeimer], [Editorial] "Mennonites in politics: no radicals," MM (April 1980): 22. 117 Quoted in Enns, "One man's sons: the Enns brothers look back," 8.

Conclusion 1

Bender, "Anabaptist vision," 3-4.

2

Daniel L. Dreisbach, Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 72-73; Philip Hamburger, Separation of State and Church (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 26-27; Hamburger also reports how eighteenth-century American Baptists distanced themselves from Reformation Anabaptists and only began to draw historical links with them in the twentieth century, 77-79, 348-49.

3

John H. Redekop, "The state and the free church," in J.R. Burkholder and C. Redekop (eds.), Kingdom, Cross and Community (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1976), 181, quoted by Dreisbach, Thomas Jefferson, 202-03 n. 11.

4

Gellner used this analogy of time zones in a number of his works, in a most developed form in his book Nationalism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997), Chapter 7 and later writings.

5

Toews, Czars, Soviets and Mennonites, 12-14.

6

Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920-1940, 399.

7

Ibid., 417.

8

Frank H. Epp, "One Mennonite in politics (a personal statement in response to many enquiries)," unpublished paper dated 7 December 1977 in the author's possession.

9

Epp appears to have forgotten Gerhard Ens's warning in his 1963 letter to him as editor of the Canadian Mennonite (see Chapter 9) that Mennonites "should realize ... that the sphere of effective Christian action in the political arena is much more limited than many of us are inclined to believe." Ens, "Christian principles and political involvement," 7.

352

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARCHIVAL SOURCES CANADA ALBERTA

Glenbow-Alberta Institute, Calgary CPR Papers 1886-1958 University of Calgary Library, Archival Holdings, Special Collections J.J. Hildebrand Papers, MsC 235 MANITOBA Mennonite Brethren Archives (MBA) Winnipeg, Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies Canada (CMBSC) B.B. Janz Papers Katie Peters Collection Winkler Mennonite Brethren Church Register 1893-C.1926 Mennonite Heritage Centre (MHC), Winnipeg Benjamin Ewert Papers H.H. Hamm Papers Canadian Board of Colonization (CMBC) fonds J.J. Hildebrand Papers Vertical files Provincial Archives of Manitoba MG 14 F Elections—Provincial John Bracken Papers

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Thomas Greenway Papers Valentine Winkler Papers University of Manitoba Archives Winnipeg Tribune cuttings

ONTARIO

Mennonite Archives of Ontario, Conrad Grebel College Frank H. Epp Papers

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies (Fresno) Julius Siemens Family Papers, Personal Paper Collections

UNPUBLISHED THESES AND RESEARCH PAPERS Buhr, Joanna R. "Pursuit of a vision: persistence and accommodation among Coaldale Mennonites from the mid-nineteen twenties to World War 11." MA thesis, University of Calgary, 1986. Dueck, Theodore J.H. "Mennonite federal electoral behaviour on the West Reserve in Manitoba, 1887-1935." MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 1987. Epp, Frank H. "An analysis of Germanism and National Socialism in the immigrant newspapers of a Canadian minority group, the Mennonites in the 1930s." PhD thesis, University of Minnesota, 1965. . "One Mennonite in politics (a personal statement in response to many enquiries)." Paper dated 7 December 1977. Esau, Alvin J. "Mennonites and litigation." At http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/law/Courses/ esau/litigation/mennolitigation.htm. Accessed July 2005. Harms, Don. "Mennonite participation in federal elections in the Manitoba East Reserve in the federal constituency of Provencher," Research essay, Canadian Mennonite Bible College, 1979. Heinrichs, Barry. "Voting trends among Mennonites of the West Reserve," Research essay, Canadian Mennonite Bible College, 1979. Klippenstein, L. "Mennonite pacifism and state service in Russia: a case study in church-state relations, 1789-1936." PhD thesis, University of Minnesota, 1984. Paetkau, Henry. "Separation or integration? The Russian Mennonite immigrant community in Ontario, 1924-45." PhD thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1986. Randt, Erich. "Die Mennoniten in Ostpreussen und Littauen bis /urn Jahre 1772." PhD thesis, University of Kb'nigsberg, 1912. Rempel, Johan G., and David G. Rempel. "Of things remembered: recollections of war, revolution and civil war." Manuscript in the author's possession. Stoesz, Dennis E. "A history of the Chortitzer Mennonite Church of Manitoba 1874-1914." MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 1987.

354

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Werth, Paul W. "Arbiters of free conscience: state, religion, and the problem of confessional transfer after 1905." PUBLISHED SOURCES 25 Jahre Mennonitische Ansiedlung Nord Kildonan, 1928-1953. North Kildonan: Publications Committee of the Mennonite Brethren Congregation and Mennonite Congregation of North Kildonan, 1953. Addressbiichlein der Kirchenbuchfiihrer Mennonitengemeinden Russlands. Berdiansk: H. Ediger, 1913. Akkerman, F. "J.H. Glazemaker, an early translator of Spinoza." In C. de Deugd, ed., Spinoza's Political and Theological Thought. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1984. Allen, Richard. The Social Passion: Religion and Social Reform in Canada 1914-28. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973. Anderson, A.B. "The sociology of Mennonite identity: a critical review." In C. Redekop and S. Steiner, eds., Mennonite Identity: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Lanham: University Press of America, 1988. Artibise, Alan F.J. "Divided City: the immigrant in Winnipeg, 1874-1921." In Gilbert A. Stelter and Alan F.J. Artibise, eds., The Canadian City: Essays in Urban History. Toronto: Macmillan, 1966. . Winnipeg: A Social History of Urban Growth, 1874-1914. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1975. Asch, Ronald G. "Religious toleration, the Peace of Westphalia and the German territorial estates." Parliaments, Estates and Representation 20 (2000): 74-89. Ascher, Abraham. P. A. Stolypin: The Search for Stability in Late Imperial Russia. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Bainton, Roland H. "The left wing of the Reformation." Journal of Religion 21 (1941): 124-34. Barclay, David E. Frederick William IV and the Prussian Monarchy 1840-1861. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Bartlett, Roger. Human Capital: The Settlement of Foreigners in Russia, 1762-1804. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. . "Colonists, Gastarbeiter, and the problems of agriculture in post-emancipation Russia." Slavonic and East European Review 60, 4 (1982): 547-71. Bartsch, Franz. Our Trek to Central Asia. 1907. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1993. Battenberg, J. Friedrich. "Die Privilegierung von Juden und der Judenschaft im Bereich des Heiligen Romischen Reiches deutscher Nation." In Barbara Dolmeyer and Heinz Mohnhaupt, eds., Das Privileg im europdischen Vergleich. Volume 1. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1997. Baumann, Robert F. "Universal service reform and Russia's Imperial dilemma." War and Society 4, 2 (1986): 31-49. Baylor, Michael G., trans, and ed. The Radical Reformation. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Belk, Fred R. The Great Trek of the Russian Mennonites to Central Asia, 1880-1884. Scottdale: Herald Press, 1976.

355

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Belkovic, Larissa. "Das Bild des sibiriendeutschen Kolonisten in Partei- und Sowjetdokumenten am Ende der zwanziger und zu Beginn der dreisigger Jahre." Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur der Russlanddeutschen 9 (1999). Bender, Harold S. "The Anabaptist vision." Church History 13 (1944): 3-24. . "The Anabaptists and religious liberty in the 16th century." Archiv fur ReformationsgeschichteM (1953): 32-50. Bercuson, David Jay. Confrontation at Winnipeg: Labour, Industrial Relations, and the General Strike. Revised edition. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990. Berdahl, Robert M. The Politics of the Prussian Nobility: The Development of a Conservative Ideology 1770-1848. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Berg, Abram. Dietrich Heinrich Epp. Aus seinem Leben, Wirken und selbstaufgezeichneten Erinnerungen. Saskatoon: Heese House of Printing, 1973. Berg, W. van der. "Literary sociability in the Netherlands, 1750-1840." In Margaret C. Jacob and Wijnand M. Mijnhardt, eds., The Dutch Republic in the Eighteenth Century: Decline, Enlightenment and Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. Berg, Wesley. From Russia with Music: A Study of the Mennonite Choral Singing Tradition in Canada. Winnipeg: Hyperion Press, 1985. Betcherman, Lita-Rose. The Swastika and the Maple Leaf: Fascist Movements in Canada in the Thirties. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1975. Biesecker-Mast, Gerald. "Anabaptist separation and arguments against the sword in the Schleitheim Brotherly Union."MQR 74 (2000): 381-402. Blane, Andrew. "Protestant sects in late Imperial Russia." In Andrew Blane, ed., The Religious World of Russian Culture: Russia and Orthodoxy. Volume 2, Essays in Honor of George Florovsky. The Hague: Mouton, 1975. Blanning, T.C.W. "Frederick the Great and enlightened absolutism." In H.M. Scott, ed., Enlightened Absolutism: Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-Century Europe. London: Macmillan, 1990. Blaupot ten, S. Gate. Geschiedenis derDoopsgezinden in Groningen, Overijssel en Oost-Friesland ... ErsteDeel. Leeuwarden and Groningen: W. Eekhoff and J.B. Wolters, 1842. Blom, Hans W. "The Republican mirror: the Dutch idea of Europe." In Anthony Pagden, ed., The Idea of Europe: From Antiquity to the European Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. . "The republic's nation: the transformation of civic virtue in the Dutch eighteenth century." In Paschalis M. Kitromilides, ed., From Republican Polity to National Community. Reconsiderations of Enlightenment Political Thought. Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 9. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2003. Blum, Jerome. The End of the Old Order in Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978. Blumenfeld, Robert. "Das Problem der Rayonierung in der Sowjetunion." Osteuropa 8 (1933): 578-94. Boldt, Ed. "The baptism issue: an episode in the history of the Ontario Mennonite Brethren Church." MH 13, 2 (1987): 1-2. Bondar, S.D. Sekta mennonitov Rossii, v sviazi s istoriei nemetskoi kolonizatsii na iuge Rossii. Petrograd: Tipografiia V.D. Smirnova, 1916.

356

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bornhauser, Christoph. Leben and Lehre Menno Simons: ein Kampf urn das Fundament des Glaubens (etwa 1496-1561). Beitrage zur Geschichte und Lehre der Reformierten Kirche, 35. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1973. Bossenga, Gail. The Politics of Privilege: Old Regime and Revolution in Lille. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Bothwell, Robert, Ian Drummond, and John English. Canada since 1945: Power, Politics, and Provincialism. Revised Edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989. Bradley, Joseph. "Russia's parliament of public opinion: association, assembly, and the autocracy, 1906-1914." In Theodore Taranovsky, ed., Reform in Modern Russian History: Progress or Cycle? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Braght, Tieleman van. Martyrs Mirror. Scottdale: Herald Press, 1950. Brandes, Detlef. "Die Ansiedlung von Auslandern im Zarenreich unter Katherina II., Paul I. und Alexander I." Jahrbiicher fur Geschichte Osteuropas 34 (1986): 161-87. Brandes, Detlef, and Andrej Savin. Die Sibiriendeutschen im Sowjetstaat 1919-1938. Veroffentlichungen zur Kultur und Geschichte im ostlichen Europa, 19. Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2001. Braun, Peter. Kto Takie Mennonity? Kratkii istoricheskii ocherk? Halbstadt: Raduga, 1914. . "The educational system of the Mennonite colonies in South Russia." MQR 3 (1929): 175-78. . Der Molotschnaer Mennoniten-Schulrat 1869-1919. Zum Gedenktag seines SOjdhrigen Bestehens. Ed. Wladimir Suss. Gottingen: Der Gb'ttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001. Breuilly, John. Austria, Prussia and Germany 1806-1871. London: Longman, 2002. Brock, Peter. Pacifism in Europe to 1914. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972. Broers, Michael. Europe under Napoleon 1799-1815. London: Arnold, 1996. Brons, A. Ursprung, Entwickelung und Schicksale der altevangelischen Taufgesinnten: oder Mennoniten in kurzen Ziigen iibersichtlich dargestellt. Norden: Diedrich Soltau, 1891. Brown, Frank. A History of the Town of Winkler, Manitoba 1892-1973. Winkler: The Author, 1973. Brown, Robert Craig, and Ramsey Cook. Canada 1896-1921: A Nation Transformed. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974. Buchsweiler, Meir. Volksdeutsche in der Ukraine am Vorabend und Beginn des zweiten Weltkriegs —ein Fall doppelter Loyalitdt? Stuttgart: Bleicher Verlag, 1984. . Russlandeutsche im Sowjetsystem bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg: Minderheitenpolitik, nationale Identitaet, Publizistik. Essen: Klartext Verlag, 1995. Biisch, Otto. Military System and Social Life in Old Regime Prussia, 1713-1807: The Beginnings of the Social Militarization of Prusso-German Society. Trans. John G. Gagliardo. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1997. Bush, Perry. Two Kingdoms, Two Loyalties. Mennonite Pacifism in Modem America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Caenegem, R.C. van. An Historical Introduction to Western Constitutional Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Canada. Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. IV, The Cultural Contribution of the Other Ethnic Groups. Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1969.

357

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Carr, Edward Hallett. A History of Soviet Russia: Socialism in One Country 1924-1926. London: Macmillan, 1959. Chernukha, Valentina G., and Boris V. Anan'ich. "Russia falls back, Russia catches up: three generations of Russian reformers. In Theodore Taranovski, ed. and trans., Reform in Modem Russian History. Progress or Cycle? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Clark, Christopher. "Confessional policy and the limits of state action: Frederick William III and the Prussian church union 1817-40." Historical Journal 39, 4 (1996): 985-1004. . "Germany 1815-1848: restoration or pre-March?" In Mary Fulbrook, ed., German History since 1800. London: Arnold, 1997. . "The Napoleonic moment in Prussian church policy." In David Laven and Lucy Riall, eds., Napoleon's Legacy: Problems of Government in Restoration Europe. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Clasen, Claus-Peter. Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525-1618. Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, South and Central Germany. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972. Courtney, John C., and David E. Smith. "Voting in a provincial general election and a federal byelection: a constituency study of Saskatoon City." Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 32, 3 (1966): 338-53. Crawford, K. Grant. Canadian Municipal Government. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1954. Creveld, Martin van. The Rise and Decline of the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Curtiss, John Shelton. Church and State in Russia: The Last Years of the Empire 1900-1917. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940. David, Kenneth R. "No discipline, no church: an Anabaptist contribution to the Reformed tradition." Sixteenth Century Journal 13 (1982): 43-58. Davids, Karel. "From De la Court to Vreede. Regulation and self-regulation in Dutch economic discourse from c. 1660 to the Napoleonic era." Journal of European Economic History 30, 2 (2001): 245-89. Davies, Norman. God's Playground: A History of Poland. Volume 1, The Origins to 1795. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981. Dawson, C.A. Group Settlement: Ethnic Communities in Western Canada. Toronto: Macmillan, 1936. DeFehr, Cornelius A. Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben. Winnipeg: The Christian Press, 1976. Deppermann, Klaus. "The Anabaptists and the state churches." Trans. Ian Waite. In Kaspar von Greyerz, ed., Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984. Diefendorf, Jeffry M. Businessmen and Politics in the Rhineland, 1789-1834. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. Dilcher, Gerhard. "The city community as an instance in the European process of individualization." In Janet Coleman, ed., The Individual in Political Theory and Practice. Oxford: Clarendon Press/European Science Foundation, 1996. Doell, Leonard. "Klaas Peters (1855-1932); A biography." In Klaas Peters, The BergthalerMennonites. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1988.

358

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dolmeyer, Barbara. "Die Aufnahmeprivilegien fur Hugenotten im europaischen Refuge." In Barbara Dolmeyer and Heinz Mohnhaupt, eds., Das Privileg im europdischen Vergleich. Volume 1. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1997. Dorksen, J.H. Geschichte und Wichtige Dokumente der Mennoniten von Russland, Canada, Paraguay and Mexico. N.p., 1923. Doerksen, Victor G. "Language and communication among urban Mennonites." ML 23 (October 1968): 182-85. Dokumenti, otnosyashchiesya k v'roipv'dnim voprosam mennonitov/ Dokumente iiber Glaubensangelegenheiten der Mennoniten. Halbstadt: Raduga, 1910. Donnelly, M.S. The Government of Manitoba. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963. Dreisbach, Daniel L. Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Driedger, Leo. "Canadian Mennonite urbanism: ethnic villagers or metropolitan remnant?" MQR 49 (1975), 226-41. . "From Martyrs to Muppies: The Mennonite urban professional revolution." MQR 67, 3 (1993): 304-22. . "E.K. Francis' search for Utopia: a tribute." JMS 13 (1995): 89-107. , and Glenn Church. "Residential segregation and institutional completeness: a comparison of ethnic minorities." Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 11 (1974): 30-52. , and Jacob Peters. "Ethnic identity: a comparison of Mennonite and other German students." MQR 47 (1973): 225-44; , Roy Vogt, and Mavis Reimer. "Mennonite intermarriage: national, regional and intergenerational trends." MQR 57, 2 (1983): 132-44. Driedger, Michael D. Obedient Heretics: Mennonite Identities in Lutheran Hamburg and Altona during the Confessional Age. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. . "An article missing from the Mennonite Encyclopedia: The Enlightenment in the Netherlands'." In C. Arnold Snyder, ed., Commoners and Community: Essays in Honour of Werner O. Packull. Kitchener: Pandora Press, 2002. Dueck, Abe. "Church and state: developments among Mennonite Brethren in Canada since World War II." Direction 10, 3 (1981): 30-47. . "Claas Epp and the great trek reconsidered." JMS 3 (1985): 138-47. . "Mennonite churches and religious developments in Russia 1850-1914." In John Friesen, ed., Mennonites in Russia, 1788-1988: Essays in Honour of Gerhard Lohrenz. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1989. . "Mennonites, the Russian state, and the crisis of Brethren and Old Church relations in Russia, 1910-1918." MQR 69 (1995): 453-85. . Moving beyond Secession: Defining Russian Mennonite Brethren Mission and Identity 1872-1922. Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 1997. . "The quest for a Mennonite seminary in Russia, 1883-1926: signs of a changing Mennonite world." MQR 74 (2000): 448-55. . "Rewriting history: Alberta and Manitoba Mennonite Brethren." MH 27, 4 (2001): 5.

359

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

. "Peter Martinovitch Friesen (1849-1914)." In Harry Loewen, ed., Shepherds, Servants and Prophets: Leadership among the Russian Mennonites (ca. 1880-1960). Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press/Scottdale PA: Herald Press, 2003. Dueck, N. Die Sekten und der socialistischer Aufbau. Kharkov: State Publishing House, 1930. Dyck, Bruno. "Half a century of Canadian Mennonite Bible College: a brief organizational history." ./MS 11 (1993): 194-223. Dyck, Cornelius J. "The first Waterlandian confession of faith." MQR 36 (1962): 5-13. . "The Middelburg confession of Hans de Ries, 1578." MQR 36 (1962): 147-54, 161. . "A short confession of faith by Hans de Ries." MQR 38 (1964): 5-19. Dyck, Harold J. Lawyers of Mennonite Background in Western Canada before the Second World War. Research Report 3. Winnipeg: Legal Research Institute of the University of Manitoba, 1993. Dyck, Harvey L., trans, and ed. "Russian Mennonitism and the challenge of Russian nationalism." MQR 56 (1982): 306-41. . "Russian servitor and Mennonite hero: light and shadow in images of Johann Cornies." 7MS2 (1984): 9-28. Dyck, Johannes J. Am Trakt: A Mennonite Settlement in the Central Volga Region. Based on a text by W.E. Surukin. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1995. Dyck, John. Oberschulze Jakob Peters (1813-1884): Manitoba Pioneer Leader. Steinbach: Hanover Steinbach Historical Society, 1990. . "Erdman Penner: entrepreneur in Winnipeg, Tannenau, Gretna." In John Dyck, ed., Historical Sketches of the East Reserve 1874-1910: Villages—Biographies—Institutions. Steinbach: Hanover Steinbach Historical Society, 1994. . Crosstown Credit Union Ltd.: The First Fifty Years, 1944-1994. Winnipeg: Crosstown Credit Union, 1994. Dyck, John, and William Harms, eds. 1880 Village Census of the Mennonite West Reserve. Winnipeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society, 1998. Dyck, John P., ed. Troubles and Triumphs 1914-1924: Exerpts from the Diary of Peter J. Dyck, Ladekopp, Molotschna Colony, Ukraine. Springstein, Man.: The Editor, 1981. Dyck. Peter P. Orenburg am Ural: die Geschichte einer mennonitischen Ansiedlung in Russland. Clearbrook: Christian Book Store, 1951. Echt, Samuel. Die Geschichte derJuden in Danzig. Leer and Ostfriesland, 1972. Ediger, Gerald C. Crossing the Divide: Language Transition among Canadian Mennonite Brethren 1940-1970. Winnipeg: Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 2001. Ediger, Heinrich, ed. Beschliisse der von den geistlichen und anderen Vertretern der Mennonitengemeinden Russlands abgehaltenen Konferenzen fur die Jahre 1879 bis 1913. Berdiansk: H. Ediger, 1914. . Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben. Karlsruhe: The Author, 1927. Ehrt, Adolf. Das Mennonitentum in Russland von seiner Einwanderung bis zur Gegenwart. Langensalza: Julius Belz, 1932.

360

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eijnatten, Joris van. Matua christianorum tolemntia: Irenicism and Toleration in the Netherlands: The Stinstra Affair, 1740-1745. Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1998. Eklof, Ben. Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Schools and Popular Pedagogy 1861-1914. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Eklof, Ben, John Bushnell, and Larissa Zakharova, eds. Russia's Great Reforms, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.

1855-1881.

Elias, Arthur. "La neerlandicite de la Constitution de 1798." In "La Revolution Batave: perpeties d'une Republique-Souer (1795-1813)." Annales historiques de la Revolution francaise 326 (2001): 43-52. Emma, N.L. Die Auswanderung ist eine Konterrevolutiondre Aktion. Moscow: State Publishing House, 1930. Enns, EG. Gretna: Window on the Northwest. Altona: D.W. Friesen for the Village of Gretna History Committee, 1987. Enns, J.H. "Mennonitische Bibelschulen in Canada." Volume 1. Warte-Jahrbuch fuer die Mennonitische Gemeinschaft in Canada 1943. . "Dem Lichte zu!" In 'Denk wer du bist': Stories of the Johann Hermann and Agathe Enns Families. [Winnipeg: The Enns Family], 1998. Enns-Rempel, Kevin. "In search of the 'Greatest Mennonite Settlement:' the career of Julius Siemens." California Mennonite Historical Society Bulletin 26 (1992): 1-2, 6-10. Ens, Adolf. "The conspiracy that never was." MH 11, 3 (1985): 1-2. . "Mennonite education in Russia." In John Friesen, ed., Mennonites in Russia, 1788-1988: Essays in Honour of Gerhard Lohrenz. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1989. . Subjects or Citizens? The Mennonite Experience in Canada, 1870-1925. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1994. _, and Leonard Doell. "Mennonite Swedenborgians." JMS 10 (1992): 101-17. Ens, Anna. In Search of Unity: Story of the Conference ofMennonites in Manitoba. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1996. Ens, Gerhard J. Volost and Municipality: The Rural Municipality ofRhineland 1884-1984. Altona: R.M. ofRhineland, 1984. . "Die Schule muss sein": A History of the Mennonite Collegiate Institute. Gretna: The Mennonite Collegiate Institute, 1990. Epp, David H. Die Chortitzer Mennoniten: Versuch einer Darstellung des Entwicklungsganges derselben. Odessa: A. Schulze, 1889. . Kurze Erkldrungen und Erlduterungen zum "Katechismus der christlichen, taufgesinnten Gemeinden, so Mennoniten genannt werden." Odessa: A. Schultze, 1896. Second edition, Ekaterinoslav: D.H. Epp, 1899 [Reprinted Rosthern: Dietrich Epp Verlag, 1941.] . Svedeniia o mennonitach Rossii. Berdiansk: H. Ediger, 1912. . "The emergence of German industry in the south Russian colonies." Trans, and ed. John B. Toews. MQR 55 (1981): 289-371. . Johann Comies. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1995. Epp, David H., and H.A. Bergmann. K voprosu o proiskhozhdenii mennonitov. Petrograd, 1915.

361

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Epp, Dietrich H. "Die Geschichte des Privilegiums der russlandischen Mennoniten." In Abram Berg, Dietrich Heinrich Epp. Aus seinem Leben, Wirken and selbstaufgezeichneten Erinnerungen. Saskatoon: Heese House of Printing, 1973. Epp, Frank H. Mennonite Exodus: The Rescue and Resettlement of the Russian Mennonites since the Communist Revolution. Altona: D.W. Friesen, 1962. . "Mennonites and the Civil Service." ML 23 (1968): 179-82. . Mennonites in Canada, 1786-1920: The History of a Separate People. Toronto: Macmillan, 1974. . Education with a Plus: The Story of Rosthern Junior College. Waterloo: Conrad Press, 1975. . Mennonites in Canada, 1920-1940: A People's Struggle for Survival. Toronto: Macmillan, 1982. Epp, George K. "Mennonite in spite o f . . . " In Harry Loewen, ed., Why I Am a Mennonite: Essays on Mennonite Identity. Scottdale: Herald Press, 1988. . "Urban Mennonites in Russia." In John Friesen, ed., Mennonites in Russia 1788-1988. Essays in Honour of Gerhard Lohrenz. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1989. , and Heinrich Wiebe, eds. Unter dem Nordlicht. Anthologie des deutschen Schrifttums der Mennoniten in Canada. Winnipeg: Mennonite German Society of Canada, 1977. Epp, Heinrich H. "Aus der Geschichte der Deutschen Kolonien." In M. Jaworsky, ed., Kurzgefasste Geschichte der Ukraine. Kharkov: Zentralverlag, 1928. Epp, Ingrid H., and Harvey L. Dyck, eds. The Peter J. Braun Mennonite Archive 1803-1920. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1996. Epp, Jacob D. A Mennonite in Russia: The Diaries of Jacob D. Epp 1851-1880. Trans, and ed. Harvey L. Dyck. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Epp, Johann. The Diary ofJohann Johann Epp 1852 -1919. Winnipeg: N.p., 2000. Epp, Marlene. "The Mennonite girls' homes of Winnipeg: a home away from home." JMS 6 (1988): 100-14. Epp-Tiessen, Esther. Altona: The Story of a Prairie Town. Altona: D.W. Friesen, 1982. . J.J. Thiessen: A Leader for His Time. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 2001. Epstein, Stephan R. Freedom and Growth: The Rise of States and Markets in Europe, 1300-1750. London: Routledge, 2000.

. "Constitutions, liberties, and growth in pre-modern Europe." In Mark Casson and Andrew Godley, eds., Cultural Factors in Economic Growth. Berlin: Springer Verlag, 2003. Esau, Alvin J. The Courts and the Colonies: The Litigation ofHutterite Church Disputes. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004. Eyck, Frank. The Frankfurt Parliament 1848-49. London: Macmillan, 1968. Fahrmeir, Andreas K. "Nineteenth-century German citizenships: a reconsideration." Historical Journal 40, 3 (1997): 721-52. Fallows, Thomas. "The zemstvo and the bureaucracy, 1890-1904." In Terence Emmons and Wayne S. Vucinich, eds., The Zemstvo in Russia: An Experiment in Local Self-government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

362

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fast, Henry. "The Kleine Gemeinde in the United States of America." In Delbert Plett, ed., Profile of the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde 1874. Steinbach: D.F.P. Publications, 1987. Finkel, Alvin. The Social Credit Phenomenon in Alberta. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. , Alexander Rabinowitch, and Richard Stites, eds. Russia in the Era ofNEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1991. Fix, Andrew. "Mennonites and Collegiants in Holland 1630-1700." MQR 64, 2 (1990): 160-70. . "Mennonites and rationalism in the seventeenth century." In Alastair Hamilton, Sjouke Voolstra, and Piet Vissar, eds., From Martyr to Muppy [Mennonite urban professionals]: An Historical Introduction to Cultural Assimilation Processes of a Religious Minority in the Netherlands: The Mennonites. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994. Fleischhauer, Ingeborg. Dos Dritte Reich und die Deutschen in der Sowjetunion. Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 46. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1983. . Die Deutschen im Zarenreich: zwei Jahrhunderte deutsch-russische Kulturgemeinschaft. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1986. . "The ethnic Germans in the Russian revolution." In Edith Rogovin Frankel, Jonathan Frankel, and Baruch Knei-Paz, eds., Revolution in Russia: Reassessments of 1917. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Francis, E.K. "The Russian Mennonites: from religious group to ethnic group." American Journal of Sociology 54 (1948): 101-07. . In Search of Utopia: The Mennonites in Manitoba. Altona: D. W. Friesen, 1955. . Interethnic Relations: An Essay on Sociological Theory. New York: Elsivor, 1976. Franklin, Julian H., ed. and trans. Constitutionalism and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century: Three Treatises by Hotman, Beza and Mornay. New York: Pegasus, 1969. Freeze, Gregory L. "The_soslovie (estate) paradigm and Russian social history." American Historical Review 91 (1986): 11-36. Friedmann, Robert. "Conception of the Anabaptists." Church History 9 (1940): 341-65. . Mennonite Piety through the Centuries: Its Genius and its Literature. Goshen: Mennonite Historical Society, 1949. Friedrich, Karin. The Other Prussia: Royal Prussia, Poland and Liberty, 1569-1772. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Friesen, Abraham. History and Renewal in the Anabaptist/Mennonite Bethel College, 1994.

Tradition. North Newton:

. "Heinrich J. Braun: preacher, entrepreneur, servant of his people 1873-1946." In Harry Loewen, ed., Shepherds, Servants and Prophets: Leadership among the Russian Mennonites (ca. 1880-1960). Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press/Scottdale PA: Herald Press, 2003. . "Peter J. Braun: educator, archivist, scholar 1880-1933." In Harry Loewen, ed., Shepherds, Servants and Prophets: Leadership among the Russian Mennonites (ca. 1880-1960). Kitchener ON: Pandora Press/Scottdale PA: Herald Press, 2003.

363

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

. "Die politische Haltimg im Taufertum." Jahrbuch far Geschichte und Kultur der Mennoniten in Paraguay 5 (2004): 9-20. . "Die Politik der Mennoniten in Russland: Verfolgung und Lebensmoglichkeiten." Jahrbuch fur Geschichte und Kultur der Mennoniten in Paraguay 5 (2004): 21-34. . "Die politische Haltung im Taufertum." Jahrbuch fur Geschichte und Kultur der Mennoniten in Paraguay 5 (2004): 9-20. . In Defense of Privilege: Russian Mennonites and the State before and during World War I. Forthcoming. Friesen, Gerald. The Canadian Prairies: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987. Friesen, Gerhard K. "Fritz Senn (1894-1983). Kurze Selbstbiographie." Deutschkanadisches Jahrbuch/'German-Canadian Yearbook 7 (1983): 89-92. Friesen, Joe. "It's not that the Tories are closer to God, they're furthest from the Devil: politics and Mennonites in Winnipeg, 1945-1999." JMS 21 (2003): 175-90. Friesen, John. "Manitoba Mennonites in the rural-urban shift." ML 23 (1968): 154. . "The relationship of Prussian Mennonites to German nationalism." In Harry Loewen, ed., Mennonite Images: Historical, Cultural, and Literary Essays dealing with Mennonite Issues. Winnipeg: Hyperion Press, 1980. . Against the Wind: The Story of Four Mennonite Villages. Winnipeg: Henderson Books, 1994. Friesen, Leonard. "Mennonites in the Russian revolution of 1905: experiences, perceptions and responses." MQR 62 (1988): 42-55. Friesen, Peter M. Ein mennonitischer Schdcher: drei Briefe. Halbstadt: Raduga, [1910]. . Die Alt-Evangelische Mennonitische Briiderschaft in Russland (1789-1910) im Rahmen der mennonitischen Gesamtgeschichte. Halbstadt: Raduga, 1911. . Konfession oder Sekte? Halbstadt: The Author, 1914. . The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia (1789-1910). Fresno: Board of Christian Literature, General Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, 1978. Froese, Brian. "The Anabaptist Vision:' a half century of historical and religious debate in twentieth-century America." Fides etHistoria 35 (2003): 105-17. [Froese, Peter]. "Die Wehrlosigkeit unter den Mennoniten Russlands." Mennonitisches Jahrbuch. [Newton, Kansas], 1952. Froese, Ron. "Were Prussian Mennonites Die Stillen im Landed" California Mennonite Historical Society Bulletin 39 (2003): 1-6. Froese, Wolfgang. "Stets hilfreich und tolerant entgegengekommen? Die Politik des Elbinger Rates gegeniiber den Mennoniten bis 1772." Mennonitische Geschichtsbldtter 49 (1992): 56-72. . "Revolution, Erweckung und Entkirchlichung: die Krefelder Mennoniten von der Zeit der franzosischen Revolution bis zur Griindung des Deutschen Reiches (1794 -1871)." In Wolfgang Froese, ed., Sie kamen als Fremde: die Mennoniten in Krefeld von den Anfdngen bis zur Gegenwart. Krefeld: Stadtarchiv Krefeld, 1995. Furner, Mark. "Lay casuistry and the survival of later Anabaptists in Bern." MQR 75, 4 (2001): 429-70.

364

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Galbraith, J.F. The Mennonites in Manitoba 1875-1900. A Review of Their Coming, Their Progress, and Their Present Prosperity. Morden: The Chronicle Presses, 1900. Gellner, Ernest. Nationalism. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997. Gerbrandt, H.J. Adventure in Faith: The Background in Europe and Development in Canada of the Bergthaler Mennonite Church of Manitoba. Altona: D.W. Friesen for the Bergthaler Mennonite Church of Manitoba, 1970. Gerlach, Horst. "Die Wehrfreiheit der ost- und westpreussischen Mennoniten und die Reichsversammlungvon 1848." Westpreussen Jahrbuch 24 (1974): 110-15. Gibbs, G.C. "The Dutch revolt and the American revolution." In Robert Oresko, G.C. Gibbs, and H.M. Scott, eds., Royal and Republican Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Memory of Ragnhild Hatton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Gorz, Abraham. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Forstdeinstes der Mennoniten in Russland. GrossTokmak: H. Lenzmann, 1907. Goertz, Hans-Jiirgen. "Nationale Erhebung und religib'ser Niedergang: Missgliickte Aneignung des tauferischen Leitbildes im Dritten Reich. "In Hans-Jiirgen Goertz, ed., Umstrittenes Tdufertum 1525-1975. Neue Forschungen. Gottingen, 1977. . The Anabaptists. London: Routledge, 1996. . Dos schwierige Erbe der Mennoniten: Aufsdtze und Reden. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2002. Goerz, Heinrich. Memrik: A Mennonite Settlement in Russia. Trans. Eric Enns. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1997. Goldberg, Jacob. Jewish Privileges in the Polish Commonwealth: Charters of Rights Granted to Jewish Communities in Poland-Lithuania in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. Three volumes. Jerusalem: Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1985 (Volume 1); 2001 (Volume 2 and Volume 3). Gonski, P.P. "The zemstvo system and local government in Russia 1917-22." Political Science Quarterly 38 (1923): 552-68. Gorski, Philip S. The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modem Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Graber Miller, Keith. Wise as Serpents, Innocent as Doves: American Mennonites Engage Washington. Knoxville: University of Tennesee Press, 1996. Granatstein, J.L. Conscription in the Second World War 1939-1945: A Study in Political Management. Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1969. Gregory, Brad S. Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modem Europe. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. Grenke, Arthur. "The secular German-language press of Winnipeg, 1889-1914." Deutschkanadisches Jahrbuch/German-Canadian Yearbook 10 (1988): 81-97. Gross, Leonard. The Golden Years of the Hutterites: The Witness and Thought of the Communal Moravian Anabaptists during the Walpot Era, 1565-1578. 1980. Scottdale: Herald Press, 1998. Grothe, Ewald. "Model or myth? The constitution of Westphalia of 1807 and early German constitutionalism." German Studies Review 28, 1 (2005): 1-18. Gsovski, Vladimir. Soviet Civil Law. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Law School, 1948.

365

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Guenther, Bruce L. "Populism, politics and Christianity in Western Canada." Canadian Society for Church History Historical Papers (2000): 93-112. Gtinther, Waldemar, David P. Heidebrecht, and Gerhard J. Peters, eds. "Onsji Tjedils." Ersatzdienst der Mennoniten in Russland unterden Romanows. Yarrow: The Columbia Press, 1966. Guggisberg, Hans R. "The secular state of the Reformation period and the beginnings of the debate on religious toleration." In Janet Coleman, ed., The Individual in Political Theory and Practice. Oxford: Clarendon Press/European Science Foundation, 1996. Gutkin, Harry, and Mildred Gutkin. Profiles in Dissent: The Shaping of Radical Thought in the Canadian West. Edmonton: NeWest, 1997. Habermas, Jiirgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989. Haimson, Leopold H., ed. The Politics of Rural Russia 1905-1914. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979. Hake, Barry J. "The making of Batavian citizens: social organization of constitutional enlightenment in The Netherlands, 1795-98." History of Education 23, 4 (1994): 335-53. . "The pedagogy of 'useful knowledge for the common man': the lending libraries of the Society for Common Benefit in The Netherlands, 1794-1813." History of Education 29, 6 (2000): 495-515. Hall, D.J. Clifford Sifton. Volume 1, The Young Napoleon 1861-1900. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1981. . Clifford Sifton. Volume 2, A Lonely Eminence 1901-29. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1985. Hamburger, Philip. Separation of Church and State. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. Hamm, H.H. Sixty Years of Progress. Altona: The Rural Municipality of Rhineland, 1944. Handbuch zum Gebrauch bei gottesdienstlichen Handlungen zundchst fur die Aeltesten und Prediger der Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Russland. Berdiansk: H.A. Ediger; 1911. Harms, J.F. Geschichte der Mennoniten Brudergemeinde. Hillsboro: Mennonite Brethren Publishing House, 1925. Harrington, Joel K, and Helmut Walser Smith. "Confessionalization, community, and state building in Germany, 1555-1870: a review article." Journal of Modem History 69 (1997): 77-101. Harrison, Wes. Andreas Ehrenpreis and Hutterite Faith and Practice. Kitchener: Pandora Press, 1997. Haury, David A. "German-Russian immigrants to Kansas and American politics." Kansas History 3 (1980): 226-38. Heilke, Thomas. "On being ethical without moral sadism: two readings of Augustine and the beginnings of the Anabaptist Revolution." Political Theory 24 (1996): 493-517. . "Locating a moral/political economy: lessons from sixteenth-century Anabaptism." Polity 30 (1997): 199-229. . "Theological and secular meta-narratives of politics: Anabaptist origins revisited (again)." Modern Theology 13 (1997): 227-52.

366

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Heinrich Epp, Kirchendltester der Mennonitengemeinde zn Chortitza (Siidrussland). Leipzig: August Pries, 1897. Dem Herm die Ehre: Schonwiese Mennoniten Gemeinde von Manitoba 1924-1968. Winnipeg: The Congregational Committee, 1968. Herzog, Dagmar. Intimacy and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre-Revolutionary Baden. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Hiebert, Clarence. "Journeyings outward and journeyings inward." Direction 23, 2 (1994): 112-16. Hiebert, Daniel. "Class, ethnicity and residential structure: the social geography of Winnipeg, 1901-1921." Journal of Historical Geography 17, 1 (1991): 56-86. Hildebrand, J.J. Chronologische Zeittafel: 1,500 Daten historischer Ereignisse aus der Zeit der Geschichte der Mennoniten Russlands und Amerikas. Winnipeg: The Author, 1946. Hillerbrand, Hans J. "The Anabaptist view of the state." MQR 32 (1958): 83-110. . "Was there a Reformation in the Sixteenth Century?" Church History 72 (2003): 525-52. Holt, Mack P. "The social history of the Reformation: recent trends and future agendas." Journal of Social History 37 (2003): 133-44. Hopfl, Harro. The Christian Polity of Jean Calvin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. , ed. and trans. Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Horsch, John. Kurzgefasste Geschichte der Mennoniten Gemeinden. Elkhart: Mennonite Publishing Co., 1890. . The Mennonites: Their History, Faith and Practice. Elkhart: Mennonite Publishing Co., 1893. _. Mennonites in Europe. Scottdale: Mennonite Publishing House, 1942; 1950. Hosteller, John A. Amish Society. Third edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. Howard, Michael. "William I and the reform of the Prussian army." In Martin Gilbert, ed., A Century of Conflict 1850-1950: Essays for A. J.P. Taylor. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966. Hsia, R. Po-Chia. Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe 1550-1770. London: Routledge, 1989. , and Henk van Nierop, eds. Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Hucko, Elmar M., ed. and trans. The Democratic Tradition: Four German Constitutions. Leamington Spa: Berg, 1987. Hunzinger, Abraham. Das Religions-, Kirchen- und Schulwesen der Mennoniten oder Taufgesinnten: wahr und unpartheilich dargestellt und mil besonderen Betrachtungen iiber einige Dogmen, und mil Verbesserungs-Vorschldgen versehen. Speyer: J.C. Kolb, 1830. Huxman, Susan Schultz, and Gerald Biesecker-Mast. "In the world but not of it: Mennonite traditions as resources for rhetorical invention." Rhetoric and Public Affairs 7, 4 (2004): 539-54. Isaak, Franz. Die Molotschnaer Mennoniten. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte derselben. Halbstadt: H.J. Braun, 1908.

367

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Israel, Jonathan I. European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550-1750. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. . The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. . "The intellectual debate about toleration in the Dutch Republic." In C. Berkvens-Stevelinck, J. Israel, and G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes, eds., The Emergence of Tolerance in the Dutch Republic. Leiden: Brill, 1997. . Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. . "The intellectual origins of modern democratic republicanism (1660-1720)." European Journal of Political Theory 3, 1 (2004): 7-36. Jantzen, Mark. '"Whoever will not defend his homeland should leave it!' German conscription and Prussian Mennonite emigration to the Great Plains, 1860-1890." ML 58, 3 (2003). Http:// www. bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/2003 Sept/j antzen. php. . "Vistula Delta Mennonites encounter German nationalism, 1813-1820." MQR 78 (2004): 185-212. Janzen, Waldemar. "The great trek: episode or paradigm?" MQR 51 (1972): 127-39. Janzen, William. Limits on Liberty: The Experience of Mennonite, Hutterite, and Doukhobor Communities in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990. Jelsma, Auke. "The 'weakness of conscience' in the reformed movement in the Netherlands: the attitude of the Dutch Reformation to the use of violence between 1562 and 1574." In W.J. Shells, ed., The Church and War. Studies Church History 20. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983. Jersch-Wenzel, Stefi. "Legal status and emancipation." In Michael A. Meyer, ed., German-Jewish History in Modem Times. Volume 2, Emancipation and Acculturation 1780-1871. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. John, Michael. "The Napoleonic legacy and problems of restoration in Central Europe: the German Confederation." In David Laven and Lucy Riall, eds., Napoleon's Legacy: Problems of Government in Restoration Europe. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Juhnke, James C. A People of Two Kingdoms: The Political Acculturation of the Kansas Mennonites. Newton: Faith and Life Press, 1975. . Dialogue with a Heritage: Cornelius H. Wedel and the Beginnings of Bethel College. North Newton: Bethel College, 1987. Kamen, Henry. The Rise of Toleration. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967. Kamensky, Petr V. Vopros ili nedorazumenie: k voprosy ob inostrannykh poseleniiakh na iuage Rossii. Moscow: A.A. Levinson, 1895. Kaplan, Harold. Reform, Planning and City Politics: Montreal, Winnipeg, Toronto. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982. Kappeler, Andreas. The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History. London: Pearson, 2001 Kealey, Gregory S., and Reg Whitaker, eds. R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins. The War Series, 1939-1941. St. John's: Committee on Canadian Labour History, 1989. . R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins. The War Series, Part II, 1942-1945. St. John's: Committee on Canadian Labour History, 1993.

368

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Keim, Albert N. Harold S. Bender, 1897-1962. Scottdale: Herald Press, 1998. Kendle, John. John Bracken: A Political Biography. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979. Kingdon, Robert M. "Calvinism and resistance theory." In J.H. Burns, ed., The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Kirchner, Walther. "State and Anabaptists in the sixteenth century: an economic approach." Journal of Modem History 46 (1976): 1-25. Kizik, Edmund. "A radical attempt to resolve the Mennonite question in Danzig in the mideighteenth century: the decline of the relations between the City of Danzig and the Mennonites." MQR 66, 2 (1992): 127-54. . "Religious freedom and the limits of social assimilation: the history of the Mennonites in Danzig and the Vistula Delta until their tragic end after World War II." In Alastair Hamilton, Sjouke Voolstra, and Piet Vissar, eds., From Martyr to Muppy: A Historical Introduction to Cultural Assimilation Processes of a Religious Minority in the Netherlands: The Mennonites. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994. . Mennonici w Gdansku, Elblgu i na Zulawach Wislanych w drugiej Polowie XVII w XVIII Wieku. Gdansk: Gdanskie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1994. Klaassen, Martin. Geschichte der wehrlosen Taufgesinnten Gemeinden von den Zeiten der Apostel bis auf die Gegenwart. Bin Beitrag zur Kenntniss und rechten Wiirdigung der Kirchengeschichtlichen Stellung derselben. Danzig: Edwin Groening, 1873. Klaassen, Walter. Anabaptism: Neither Catholic nor Protestant. Waterloo: Conrad Press, 2001 [1973; 1991]. . "A belated review: Martin Klaassen's 'Geschichte der wehrlosen Taufgesinnten Gemeinden' published in 1873." MQR 49 (1975): 43-52. . "The Anabaptist critique of Constantinian Christianity." MQR 55 (1981): 218-30. , 'The Days of Our Years.' A History of the Eigenheim Mennonite Church Community: 18921992. Rosthern: Eigenheim Mennonite Church, 1992. , ed. Anabaptism in Outline: Selected Primary Sources. Scottdale: Herald Press, 1981. Klassen, C.F. "The Mennonites of Russia, 1917-1928." MQR 6, 1 (1932): 69-80. Klassen, Herbert, and Maureen Klassen. Ambassador to His People: C.F. Klassen and the Russian Mennonite Refugees. Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 1990. Klassen, Paul. From the Steppes to the Prairies: A History of the Agneta and David Klassen Family in Russia and Canada. Winnipeg: City Press, [c. 2000]. Klassen, Peter J. "A homeland for strangers and an uneasy legacy." MQR 66, 2 (1992): 117-26. Klassen, Peter P. Die deutsch-volkische Zeit in der Kolonie Fernheim Chaco, Paraguay 1933-1945: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der auslandsdeutschen Mennoniten wdhrend des Dritten Reiches. Bolanden-Weierhof: Mennonitischer Geschichtsverein, 1990. Klassen, William. "The limits of political authority as seen by Pilgram Marpeck." MQR 56, 4 (1982): 342-64. Klein, Stephan R.E. "Republikanisme en Patriottisme: Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck en de klassieke wortels van het republikeinse denken (1784-1785)." Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 103, 2 (1993): 179-207. , and Joost Rosendaal. "Democratic in context: nieuwe perpectieven op het Leids Ontwerp (1785)." Achttiende Eeuw 26, 1 (1994): 71-100.

369

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Kleuting, Harm. "Die reformierte Konfessionalisierung als 'negative Gegenreformation.' Zum kirchlichen Profil des Reformiertentums in Deutschland des 16. Jahrhunderts." Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte 109, 3 (1998): 167-99, 306-27. Klibanov, A.I. History of Religious Sectarianism in Russia (1860s-1917). Oxford: Pergamon, 1982. Klippenstein, Frieda Esau. "'Doing what we could': Mennonite domestic servants in Winnipeg, 1920s to 1950s." JMS 7 (1989): 145-66. Klippenstein, Lawrence. "Cornelius Hiebert: MLA (1905-1909)." MH 1, 1 (1975): 1-2. . "The Hochstadt Conference of 1903." MH 4, 2 (1978): 1-2. Klb'tzer, Ralf. "Verfolgt, geduldet, anerkannt: von Taufern zu Mennoniten am Niederrhein und die Geschichte der Mennoniten in Krefeld bis zum Ende der oranischen Zeit (ca. 1530 - 1702)." In Wolfgang Froese, ed., Sie kamen als Fremde: die Mennoniten in Krefeld von den Anfdngen bis zur Gegenwart. Krefeld: Stadtarchiv Krefeld, 1995. Kniss, Fred. Disquiet in the Land: Cultural Conflict in American Mennonite Communities. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997. Koch, H.W. A Constitutional History of Germany in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. London: Longman, 1984. Koejemans, A.J. "Een doopsgezind patriot in West-Brabant en de geboorte van de eerste Nederlandse grondwet." Doopsgezind Jaarboek 77 (1983): 26-35. Kolakowski, Leszek. "Dutch seventeenth-century anticonfessional ideas and rational religion: the Mennonite, Collegiant and Spinozan connections." Trans, and intro. James Satterwhite. MQR 64, 3/4 (1990): 259-97, 385-416. Konersmann, Frank. "Duldung, Privilegierung, Assimilation und Sakularisation. Mennonitische Glaubensgemeinschaften in der Pfalz, in Rheinhessen und am nordlichen Oberrhein (16641802)." In Mark Haberlein and Martin Ziirn, eds., Minderheiten, Obrigkeit und Gesellschaft in der Friihen Neuzeit. Integrations- und Ausgrenzungsprozesse im siiddeutschen Raum. St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, 2001. Koop, Karl. Anabaptist-Mennonite Confessions of Faith. Kitchener: Pandora Press, 2004. Korros, Alexandra S. "Nationalist politics in the Russian Imperial State Council: forming a new majority, 1909-1910." In Mary Schaeffer Conroy, ed., Emerging Democracy in Late Imperial Russia. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1998. Kossmann, E.H. The Low Countries 1780-1940. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Krahn, Cornelius. "Abraham Thiessen: a Mennonite revolutionary?" ML 24 (1969): 73-77 Kraybill, Donald B., ed. The Amish and the State. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Kreider, Robert. "The Anabaptist view of the state." In Guy E. Herschberger, ed., The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision. Scottdale: Herald Press, 1957. Kriedte, Peter. "Aufterer Erfolg und beginnende Identitatskrise: die Krefelder Mennoniten im 18. Jahrhundert." In Wolfgang Froese, ed., Sie kamen als Fremde: die Mennoniten in Krefeld von den Anfdngen bis zur Gegenwart. Krefeld: Stadtarchiv Krefeld, 1995. . "La dynastie von den Leyen de Krefeld: une famille de soyeux au 18e siecle entre mennonisme et monde moderne." Annales HSS (1995): 725-52. Kroeker, Abraham. "Der Regenbogen." Der Mithelfer 7 (1926/27): 24-31.

370

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kroeker, J.A. "The Crosstown Credit Union." ML 4 (1949): 32. Kroeker, Nikolai. "Mennonite intelligentsia in Russia." ML 24 (1969): 51-60. , ed. First Mennonite Villages in Russia 1789-1943: Khortitsa—Rosental. Vancouver: The Author, 1981. Kuiper, W.H. "De Almelose Doopsgezinden en net beginsel der weerloosheid in den Patriottentijd." Overijsselse Historische Bijdragen 88 (1973): 60-66. Laarse, Robert van der. "Bearing the stamp of history: the elitist route to democracy in the Netherlands." In John Garrard, Vera Tolz, and Ralph White, eds., European Democratization since 1800. London: Macmillan, 2000. Lane, Jan-Erik. Constitutions and Political Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996. Lee, Loyd E. The Politics of Harmony: Civil Service, Liberalism and Social Reform in Baden, 18001850. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1980. Leeb, I. Leonard. The Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution: History and Politics in the Dutch Republic 1747-1800. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. Lesher, Emerson L. The Muppie Manual: The Mennonite Urban Professional's Handbook for Humility and Success. Intercourse: Good Books, 1985. Levi, Margaret. Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Levin, Alfred. The Third Duma: Election and Profile. Hamden: Archon Books, 1973. Lewin, Isaac. "The Protection of Jewish religious rights by Royal edicts in pre-Partition Poland." In M. Giergieliewicz, ed., Polish Civilization: Essays and Studies. New York: New York University Press, 1979. Liber, George 0. Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the Ukrainian SSR 1923-1934. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Lichdi, Diether Gb'tz. Mennoniten im Dritten Reich: Dokumentation und Deutung. Weierhof: Mennonitischer Geschichtsverein, 1977. Liedtke, Rainer, and Stephan Wendehorst, eds. The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews and Protestants: Minorities and the Nation State in Nineteenth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. Lincoln, W. Bruce. In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia's Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825-1861. De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1982. . The Great Reforms: Autocracy, Bureaucracy, and the Politics of Change in Imperial Russia. De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1990. Littell, Franklin Hamlin. The Anabaptist View of the Church: A Study on the Origins of Sectarian Protestantism. Boston: Starr King Press, 1958. Lloyd, Howell A. "Constitutionalism." In J.H. Burns, ed., The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Lowe, Heinz-Dietrich. "Russian nationalism and Tsarist nationalities policies in semi-constitutional Russia, 1905-1914." In Robert B. McKean, ed., New Perspectives in Modern Russian History. New York: St Martin's Press, 1992. Loewen, D.J. "Welche Stellung nehmen wir dem Staate gegeniiber ein?" In Die Zweiunddreissisgte Allgemeine Konferenz der Mennoniten in Canada vom 2. bis zum 4. Juli 1934 in der Rosenorter Gemeinde zu Hague, Sask," Rosthern: Druck von Dietrich H. Epp, 1934.

371

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Loewen, Harry. "Canadian Mennonite literature: longing for a lost homeland." In Walter Riedel, ed., The Old and the New World: Literary Perspectives of German-Speaking Canadians. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984. . "A house divided: Russian Mennonite non-resistance and emigration in the 1870s." In John Friesen, ed., Mennonites in Russia, 1788-1988: Essays in Honour of Gerhard Lohrenz. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1989. . "Intellectual developments among the Mennonites of Russia: 1880-1917." JMS 8 (1990): 89-107. . "Church and state in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition: Christ versus Caesar?" In Ross T. Bender and Alan P.P. Sell, eds., Baptism and the State in the Reformed and Mennonite Traditions. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press for the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, 1991. . "Anti-Menno: introduction to early Soviet-Mennonite literature." JMS 11 (1993): 23-42. . "Mennonites, National Socialism and Jews 1933-1945: a historical reflection." In Fred Stambrook (with Bert Friesen), ed., A Sharing of Diversities: Proceedings of the Jewish Mennonite Ukrainian Conference 'Building Bridges." Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1999. Loewen, Heinrich. In Vergessenheit geratene Beziehungen. Friihe Begegnungen der MennonitenBrudergemeinde mit dem Baptismus in Russland—ein Uberblick. Bielefeld: Logos, 1989. Loewen, Helmut-Harry, and James Urry. "Protecting mammon. Some dilemmas of Mennonite nonresistance in late Imperial Russia and the origins of the Selbstschutz." JMS 9 (1991): 34-53. Loewen, Howard John. One Lord, One Church, One Hope, and One God: Mennonite Confessions of Faith. Elkhart: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1985. Loewen, Julius. Jasykowo: ein mennonitisches Siedlungsschicksal am Dnejpr: Griindung—Blute— Untergang. Winnipeg: Regehr's Printing, 1967. Loewen, Royden K. Blumenort: A Mennonite Community in Transition, 1874-1982. Second edition. Steinbach: Blumenort Mennonite Historical Society, 1990. . Family, Church, and Market. A Mennonite Community in the Old and the New Worlds, 1850-1930. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. . "American nationalism and the rural immigrant: a case study of two Midwestern communities, 1900-1925." In Abe J. Dueck, ed., Canadian Mennonites and the Challenge of Nationalism. Winnipeg: Mennonite Historical Society, 1994. Lohr, Eric. Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens during World War I. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. Lohrenz, Gerhard. "The Mennonites in Winnipeg." ML 6 (1951): 17-18. '_. Zagradovka: History of a Mennonite Settlement in Southern Russia. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 2000. Long, James W. From Privileged to Dispossessed: The Volga Germans, 1860-1917. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988. Lowry, James W. "Pieter Jansz Twisck on Biblical interpretation." MQR 75 (2001): 355-69. Liidke, Alf. Police and State in Prussia, 1815-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

372

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ludwig, Karl-Heinz. Zur Besiedlung des Weichseldeltas durch Mennoniten: die Siedlungen der Mennoniten im Territorium der Stadt Elbing und in der Oekonomie Marienburg bis zur Uebemahme der Gebiete durch Preussen, 1772. Wissenschaftliche Beitrage zur Geschichte und Landeskunde Ost-Mitteleuropas 57. Marburg-Lahn: Johan Gottfried Herder-Institut, 1961. Lumpkin, William L. Baptist Confessions of Faith. Chicago: Judson Press, 1959. MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Reformation: Europe's House Divided, 1490-1700. London: Allen Lane, 2003. MacFarlane, R.O. "Manitoba politics and parties after Confederation." Annual Report of the Canadian Historical Association (1940): 45-55. MacLaughlin, R. Emmet. "The making of the Protestant pastor: the theological foundations of a clerical estate." In C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schiitte, eds., The Protestant Clergy in Early Modem Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003. McKenzie, Kermit E. "Zemstvo organization and role within the administrative structure." In Terence Emmons and Wayne S. Vucinich, eds., The Zemstvo in Russia: An Experiment in Local SelfGovernment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Mace, James E. Communism and the Dilemmas of National Liberation: National Communism in Soviet Ukraine, 1918-1933. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1983. Maczak, Antoni. "Confessions, freedoms, and the unity of Poland-Lithuania." In R.J.W. Evans and T.V. Thomas, eds., Crown, Church and Estates: Central European Politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. London: Macmillan, 1991. Madariaga, Isabel de. Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981. Male, DJ. Russian Peasant Organisation before Collectivisation: A Study of Commune and Gathering 1925-1930. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. Mannhardt, H.G. Die Danziger Mennonitengemeinde. Ihre Entstehung und ihre Geschichte von 1509 -1919. Danzig: Danziger Mennonitengemeinde, 1919. Mannhardt, Wilhelm. Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreufiischen Mennoniten: eine geschichtliche Erorterung. Marienburg: Altpreuftischen Mennonitengemeinden, 1863. Manning, Roberta Thompson. The Crisis of the Old Order in Russia: Gentry and Government Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1982. . "The zemstovo and politics, 1864-1914." In Terence Emmons and Wayne S. Vucinich, eds., The Zemstvo in Russia: An Experiment in Local Self-Govemment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Martin, Terry. "The German question in Russia, 1848-96." Russian History 18 (1991): 371-432. . "The Empire's new frontiers: New Russia's path from frontier to Okraina 1774-1920." Russian History 19 (1992): 181-201. . The Mennonites and the Russian State Duma, 1905-1914. The Donald W. Treadgold Papers in Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies Paper No. 4. Seattle: The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, 1996. . The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001. . "The Russian Mennonite encounter with the Soviet State, 1917-1955." The 2001 Bechtel Lectures in Anabaptist Mennonite Studies. Conrad Grebel Review 20 (2002): 3-59.

373

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Mast, S.D. Das Christentum und der Stimmkasten oder die Ursache, warum ich nicht an die weltliche Wahl gehe. Steinbach: P.P. Reimer, 1930. Matwijiw, Peter. "Ethnicity and urban residence: Winnipeg, 1941-71." Canadian Geographer 23 (1979): 45-61. Maxwell, Bertram W. The Soviet State: A Study of Bolshevik Rule. Topeka: Steves and Wayburn, 1934. Mayes, David. "Heretics or nonconformists? State policies toward Anabaptists in sixteenth-century Hesse." Sixteenth Century Journal 32, 4 (2001): 1003-26. McAllister, Jim. "Ethnic participation in Canadian legislatures: the case of Manitoba." Canadian Ethnic Studies 3, 1 (1971): 77-94. McCoy, Rebecca. "Religious accommodation and political authority in an Alsatian community, 1648-1715." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52, 2 (2001): 244-84. Melton, J. Gordon, ed. The Encyclopedia of American Religions: Religious Creeds. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1988. Die Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Russland wdhrend der Kriegs-und Revolutionsjahre 1914 bis 1920. Heilbronn a. Neckar: Kommisions-Verlag der Mennoniten Fluchtingsfursorge E.V., 1921. Mennonite Churches of North Kildonan. Fiftieth Anniversary of the Mennonite Settlement in North Kildonan. Winnipeg: Mennonite Churches of North Kildonan, 1978. Meyers, Thomas J. "The Amish division: a review of the literature." In Lydie Hege and Christophe Wiebe, eds., Les Amish: origine etparticularism.es 1693-1993. Ingersheim: Association Francaise d'Histoire Anabaptiste-Mennonite, 1996. Mijnhardt, Wijnand W. "The Dutch Enlightenment: humanism, nationalism and decline." In Margaret C. Jacob and Wijnand M. Mijnhardt, eds., The Dutch Republic in theEighteenth Century: Decline, Enlightenment and Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. Mironov, Boris N. "Local government in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century: provincial government and estate self-government." Jahrbiicher fur Geschichte Osteuropas 42 (1994): 161-201. Mohnhaupt, Heinz. "Erteilung und Widerruf von Privilegien nach der gemeinrechtlichen Lehre vom 16. bis 19. Jahrhundert." In Barbara Dolmeyer and Heinz Mohnhaupt, eds., Das Privileg im europdischen Vergleich. Volume 1. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1997. Morrow, John. Coleridge's Political Thought: Property, Morality, and the Limits of Political Discourse. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990.

Morton, W.L. Manitoba: A History. Second edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967. Mosse, George L., Rondo E. Cameron, Henry Bertram Hill, and Michael B. Petrovich, eds. Europe in Review: Readings and Sources since 1500. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1957. Muhs, Rudolf. "'Das schone Erbe der frommen Vater.' Die Petition der badischen Mennoniten an die deutsche Nationalversammlung von 1848 um Befreiung von Eid und Wehrpflicht." Mennonitische Geschichtsbldtter 42 (1985): 85-102. Miiller, J.P. Die Mennoniten in Ostfriesland vom 16. biszum 18. Jahrhundert. Amsterdam: Johannes Miiller, 1887.

Miiller, Michael G. "Protestant confessionalism in the towns of Royal Prussia and the practice of religious toleration in Poland-Lithuania." In Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner, eds., Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 374

BIBLIOGRAPHY

. "Stadtische Gesellschaft und territoriale Identitat im Kb'niglichen Preussen um 1600. Zur Frage der Entstehung deutscher Minderheiten in Ostmitteleuropa." Nordost-Archiv 7 (1997): 565-84 . "Toleration in eastern Europe: the dissident question in eighteenth-century PolandLithuania." In Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter, eds., Toleration in Enlightenment Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Nadler, Steven. Spinoza: A Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Nardova, Valeriia A. "Municipal self-government after the 1870 reform." In Ben Eklof, John Bushnell, and Larissa Zakharova, eds., Russia's Great Reforms, 1855-1881. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Neufeld, Abraham H., ed. Herman and Katharina: Their Story. An Autobiography of Elder Herman A. and Katharina Neufeld in Russia and in Canada. Winnipeg: Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies in Canada, 1984. Neufeld, Heinrich. "The dismissal of Aeltester Jakob Warkentin, 1842." Preservings: the Journal of the Flemish Historical Society 24 (2004): 19-24. . "A further examination of the Molotschna conflict." Preservings: the Journal of the Flemish Historical Society 24 (2004): 24-28. Neufeld, William. From Faith to Faith: The History of the Manitoba Mennonite Brethren Church. Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 1989. Neutatz, Dietmar. Die "deutsche Frage" im Schwarzmeergebiet und in Wolhynien: Politik, Wirtschaft, Mentalitdten und Alltag im Spannungsfeld von Nationalismus und Modernisierung (18561914). Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des ostlichen Europa 37. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1993. . "'Musterwirte.' Zum Selbstbild der Schwarzmeerdeutschen, insbesondere der Mennoniten." Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur der Russlanddeutschen 9 (1999): 73-83. Nipperdey, Thomas. Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck 1800-1866. Trans. Daniel Nolan. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1996. Nisly, Hope. "Witness to the way of peace: the Vietnam War and the evolving Mennonite view of their relationship to the state." Maryland Historian 1 (1989): 7-23. Nobbs, Douglas. Theocracy and Toleration: A Study of Disputes in Dutch Calvinism from 1600 to 1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938. Oakley, Francis. "Christian obedience and authority, 1520-1550." In J.H. Burns, ed., The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Ogmundson, Rick. "A social profile of members of the Manitoba Legislature 1950, 1960, 1970." Journal of Canadian Studies 12, 4 (1977): 79-84. Ostasheva, N.V. "Die sudukrainischen Mennoniten auf der Suche nach einem 'dritten', genossenschaftlichen Weg 1921-1926. Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur der Russlanddeutschen S (1995): 38-52. Oyer, John S. "The Anabaptists in Esslingen: a viable congregation under periodic siege." In John S. Oyer, They Harry the Good People out of the Land: Essays on the Persecution, Survival and Flourishing of Anabaptists and Mennonites. Ed. John D. Roth. Goshen: Mennonite Historical Society, 2000.

375

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

. "Bernese Mennonite religion at the time of the Mennonite-Amish division. In John S. Over, They Harry the Good People out of the Land: Essays on the Persecution, Survival and Flourishing of Anabaptists and Mennonites. Ed. John D. Roth. Goshen: Mennonite Historical Society, 2000. Packull, Werner 0. Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Paetkau, Henry. "Russian Mennonite immigrants of the 1920s: a reappraisal." JMS 2 (1984): 7285. Palmer, Howard. Patterns of Prejudice: History of Nativism in Alberta. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982. Palmer, R.R. "Notes on the use of the word 'democracy' 1789-1799." Political Science Quarterly 68 (1952): 203-26. . The Age of Democratic Revolution. A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800: The Challenge. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959. . The Age of Democratic Revolution. A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800: The Struggle. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962. Paulus, Pieter. Verhandeling over de vrage: in welken zin kunnen de menschen gezegd warden gelyk te zyn? En welke zyn de regten en pligten die daaruit voordvloeien? Haarlem: n.p., 1793. Pearson, Raymond. The Russian Moderates and the Crisis ofTsarism 1914-1917. London: Macmillan, 1977. Penner, Horst. "Das Verhaltnis der westpreussischen Mennoniten zum Staat." Westpreussen Jahrbuch27 (1977): 51-56. . Die ost- und westpreussischen Mennoniten in ihrem religiosen und sozialen Leben in ihren kutlurellen and wirtschaftlichen Leistungen. Teil 1 1526 bis 1772. Weierhof: Mennonitischer Geschichtsverein, 1978. . Die ost- und westpreussischen Mennoniten in ihrem religiosen und sozialen Leben in ihren kutlurellen and wirtschaftlichen Leistungen. Teil 2 1772 bis zur Gegenwart. Kirchenheimbolanden: The Author, 1987. Penner, Jacob. "A letter from Winnipeg in 1907." Trans, and intro. Victor G. Doerksen. JMS 15 (1997): 191-96. Penner, Norman. Introduction to "Jacob Penner's recollections." Histoire Sociale/Social History 7, 14 (1971): 366-78. Peters, Gerhard I. Remember Our Leaders: Conference of Mennonites in Canada. Chilliwick: Mennonite Historical Society of British Columbia, 1982. Peters, Jacob. "Changing leadership patterns: Conference of Mennonites in Canada." JMS 1 (1989): 167-82. Peters, Jacob E. "The forgotten immigrants: the coming of the 'late Kanadier', 1881-1914." JMS 18 (2000): 129-45. Peterson, Thomas. "Manitoba: ethnic and class politics." In Martin Robin, ed., Canadian Provincial Politics: The Party Systems of the Ten Provinces. Second edition. Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1978 [1972].

376

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Peterson, T., and I. Avakumovic. "A return to the status quo: the election in Winnipeg North Centre." In John Meisel, ed., Papers on the 1962 Election. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964. Peterson, William. Planned Migration: The Social Determinants of the Dutch-Canadian Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955. Petrov, Fedor A. "Crowning the edifice: the zemstvo, local self-government, and the constitutional movement, 1864-1881." In Ben Eklof, John Bushnell, and Larissa Zakharova, eds., Russia's Great Reforms, 1855-1881. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Pettigrew, Andrew. "Coming to terms with victory: the upbuilding of a Calvinist church in Holland, 1572-1590." In Andrew Pettigrew, Alastair Duke, and Gillian Lewis, eds., Calvinism in Europe, 1540-1620. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Plett, Delbert, ed. History and Events: Writings and Maps Pertaining to the History of the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde from 1866 to 1876. Steinbach: D.F.P. Publications, 1982. , ed. The Golden Years: The Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde in Russia (1812-1849). Steinbach: D.F.P. Publications, 1985. , ed. Profile of the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde 1874. Steinbach: D.F.P. Publications, 1987. , ed. Pioneers and Pilgrims: The Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde in Manitoba, Nebraska and Kansas, 1874 to 1882. Steinbach: D.F.P. Publications, 1990. . Saints and Sinners: The Kleine Gemeinde in Imperial Russia 1812-1875. Steinbach: Crossway Publications, 1999. Poell, Thomas. "Liberal democracy versus late medieval constitutionalism: struggles over representation in the Dutch Republic (1780-1800)." Redescriptions: Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History (2004): 114-45. Pol, Frank van der. "Religious diversity and everyday ethics in the seventeenth-century Dutch city of Kampen." Church History 71 (2002): 16-62. Popkin, Jeremy D. News and Politics in the Age of Revolution: Jean Luzac's Gazette de Leyde. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. . "Dutch Patriots, French journalists, and declarations of rights: the Leidse Ontwerp of 1785 and its diffusion in France." Historical Journal 38, 3 (1995): 553-65. . "Antoine-Marie Cerisier, le Leidse Ontwerp et le Grondtwettige Herstellung: Un debat encore ouvert." De Achttiende Eeuw 29, 1 (1997): 17-34. Porter, Thomas, and William Gleason. "The democratization of the zemstvo during the First World War." In Mary Schaeffer Conroy (ed.), Emerging Democracy in Late Imperial Russia. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1998. Prak, Maarten. "Citizen radicalism and democracy in the Dutch Republic: the Patriot movement of the 1780s." Theory and Society 20 (1991): 73-102. . "Burghers into citizens: urban and national citizenship in the Netherlands during the revolutionary era (c.1800)." Theory and Society 26 (1997): 403-20. Pries, Edmund. "Revisiting the Russian Mennonite trek to Central Asia." Conrad Grebel Review 9, 3 (1991): 259-75. Radkey, Oliver H. Russia Goes to the Polls. The Election for the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, 1917. Second edition. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990.

377

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Raeff, Marc. Plans for Political Reform in Imperial Russia, 1730-1905. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1966. Ratzlaff, Gerhard. "Die Mennoniten in Preussen: Staat, Obrigkeit und Politik." Jahrbuch far Geschichte und Kultur der Mennoniten in Paraguay 5 (2004): 35-57. . "Die paraguayischen Mennoniten in der nationalen Politik." Jahrbuch fur Geschichte und Kultur der Mennoniten in Paraguay 5 (2004): 59-91. Reddig, Ken. "Mennonite publishing in Russia: the Raduga press of Halbstadt." MH 13 (1987): 1-2. Redekop, Benjamin W. "The Canadian Mennonite response to National Socialism." ML 46 (1991): 18-24. . "Germanism among Mennonite Brethren immigrants in Canada, 1930-1960: a struggle for ethno-religious integrity." Canadian Ethnic Studies 24 (1992): 24-28. , and Calvin R. Redekop, eds. Power, Authority and the Anabaptist Tradition. London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Redekop, Calvin. The Old Colony Mennonites: Dilemmas in Ethnic Minority Life. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969. . Mennonite Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Redekop, John H. "The state and the free church." In J.R. Burkholder and C. Redekop, eds., Kingdom, Cross and Community. Scottdale: Herald Press, 1976. . "Mennonites and politics in Canada and the United States." JMS 1 (1983): 79-105. . A People Apart: Ethnicity and the Mennonite Brethren. Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 1987. . "Ethnicity and the Mennonite Brethren: issues and responses." Direction 17, 1 (1988): 3-16. . "Decades of transition: North American Mennonite Brethren in politics." In Paul Toews, ed., Bridging Troubled Waters: The Mennonite Brethren at Mid-Century. Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 1995. Regehr, Nikolai. "Johann Philipp Wiebe: sein Leben und Wirken in den Mennoniten-Siedlungen in Russland." In David H. Epp and Nikolai Regehr, Heinrich Heese [and] Johann Philipp Wiebe: zwei Vordermdnner des siidrussldndischen Mennonitentums. Steinbach: Echo Verlag, 1952. Regehr, Ted D. (with the assistance of J.I. Regehr). For Everything a Season: A History of the Alexanderkrone Zentralschule. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1988. . "Relations between the Old Order Amish and the state in Canada." MQR 69 (1995): 15177. . Mennonites in Canada 1939-1970: A People Transformed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. . Peace, Order and Good Government: Mennonites and Politics in Canada. J.J. Thiessen Lectures. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 2000. Reimer, Al. [Editorial], "Mennonites in politics: no radicals." MM 9 (April 1980): 22. . "Coming in out of the cold." In Harry Loewen, ed., Why I Am a Mennonite: Essays on Mennonite Identity. Scottdale: Herald Press, 1988. . "Peasant aristocracy: the Mennonite Gutsbesitzertum in Russia." JMS 8 (1990): 76-88. . Mennonite Literary Voices: Past and Present. North Newton: Bethel College, 1993.

378

BIBLIOGRAPHY

. "Sanitdtsdienst and Selbstschutz: Russian-Mennonite non-resistance in World War 1 and its aftermath." JMS 11 (1993): 135-48. _. "Portrait of a selfless life: Roy Vogt (1934-1997)." JMS 16 (1998): 291-97. . "Arnold Dyck and Steinbach 1923-1947." Preservings: Magazine/Journal of the Hanover Historical Society 13 (1998): 89-93. Reimer, Gustav E., and G.R. Gaeddert. Exiled by the Czar: Cornelius Jansen and the Great Mennonite Migration, 1874. Newton: Mennonite Publishing House 1956. Reimer, Mavis. Cornelius W. Wiebe: A Beloved Physician. The Story of a Country Doctor. Winnipeg: Hyperion, 1983. Reinhard, Wolfgang. "Pressures towards confessionalism? Prolegomena to a theory of the confessional age." In C. Scott Dixon, ed., The German Reformation: The Essential Readings. Oxford, Blackwell, 1999. Reinmarus [David Penner]. Anti-Menno: Beitrdge zur Geschichte der Mennoniten in Russland. Moscow: Zentral Vb'lker Verlag, 1930. Rempel, David G. "The expropriation of the German colonists in south Russia during the Great War." Journal of Modern History 4 (1932): 49-67. . "The Mennonite Commonwealth in Russia: a sketch of its foundation and endurance, 1789-1919." MQR 47 (1973): 259-308; 48 (1974): 5-54. . "An introduction to Russian Mennonite historiography." MQR 48 (1974): 409-46. . "Mennonite revolutionaries in the Khortitza settlement under the Tsarist regime as recollected by Johann G. Rempel." JMS 10 (1992): 70-86. Rempel, David G. (with Cornelia Rempel Carlson). A Mennonite Family in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union 1789-1923. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. Rempel, Gerhard. "Cornelius Franz Klassen (1894-1956)." In Harry Loewen, ed., Shepherds, Servants and Prophets: Leadership among the Russian Mennonites (ca. 1880-1960). Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press/Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2003. Rempel, Hans, ed. Waffen der Wehrlosen: Ersatzdienst der Mennoniten in der UdSSR. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1980. Rempel, J.G. Fiinfzig Jahre Konferenzbestrebungen, Mennoniten in Kanada, [1954].

1902-1952. Rosthern: Konferenz der

Richert, George, Peter Letkemann, and Werner Epp. "In memoriam: George K. Epp (1924-1997)." JMS 16 (1998): 285-90. Rieber, Alfred J. "Interest groups in the era of the great reforms." In Ben Eklof, John Bushnell, and Larissa Zakharova, eds., Russia's Great Reforms, 1855-1881. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Robin, Martin. Shades of Right: Nativist and Fascist Politics in Canada 1920-1940. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. Rooden, Peter van. "Public orders into moral communities: eighteenth-century Fast and Thanksgiving Day sermons in the Dutch Republic and New England." In Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory, eds., Retribution, Repentance and Reconciliation. Studies in Church History 40. Woodbridge: Boydell Press for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 2004. Rosenberg, Hans. Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience 1660-1815. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958.

379

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Rosman, Moshe. The Lord's Jews. Magnate-Jewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth daring the 18th Century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990. Roth, John D. "Recent currents in the historiography of the radical Reformation." Church History 71 (2002): 523-35. . "The limits of confessionalization: Hans Landis and the debate over religious toleration in Zurich, 1580-1620." In C. Arnold Snyder, ed., Commoners and Community: Essays in Honour of Werner O. Packull. Kitchener: Pandora Press, 2002. Rowat, Donald C. Your Local Government: A Sketch of the Municipal System in Canada. Second edition. Toronto: Macmillan, 1975. Riirup, Reinhard. "The tortuous and thorny path to legal equality: 'Jew laws' and emancipatory legislation in Germany from the late eighteenth century." Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 31 (1986): 3-33. Sanders, Thomas G. Protestant Concepts of Church and State. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964. Sauer, Angelika. "Ethnicity employed: William Hespeler and the Mennonites." JMS 18 (2000): 82-94. Sawatsky, Walter. "From Russian to Soviet Mennonites 1941-1988." In John Friesen, ed., Mennonites in Russia 1788-1988: Essays in Honour of Gerhard Lohrenz. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1989. Sawatzky, Heinrich. Mennonite Templers. Trans, and ed. Victor Doerksen. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1990. Schaefer, Paul J. Heinrich H. Ewert: Teacher, Educator and Minister of the Mennonites. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1990. Schama, Simon. Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780-1830. New York: Knopf, 1977. Schilling, Heinz. "Confessionalization in the Empire: religious and social change in Germany between 1555 and 1620." In Heinz Schilling, Religion, Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modem Society: Essays in German and Dutch History. New York: E.J. Brill, 1992. . "Confessional Europe." In Thomas A. Brady, Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, eds., Handbook of European History 1400-1600. Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation. Volume 2, Visions, Programs and Outcomes. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995. Schlabach, Theron F. Peace, Faith, Nation: Mennonites and Amish in Nineteenth-Century America. Scottdale: Herald Press, 1988. Schmid, Edmund. Die deutschen Kolonien im Schwartzmeergebiet Sudrusslands. Berlin: Verein fur das Deutschtum im Ausland, 1919. Schmb'lz-Haberlein, Michaela, and Mark Haberlein. "Eighteenth-century Anabaptists in the Margravate of Baden and neighbouring territories." MQR 75, 4 (2001): 471-92. Schowalter, Paul. "Die Ibersheimer Beschlusse von 1803 und 1805." Mennonitische GeschichtsblaetterlS (1963): 29-48. Schroeder, Heinrich. Auslanddeutschtum in der Volksschule. Berlin: Julius Beltz, [c.1935]. Die Schulen in den Mennoniten-Kolonien an der Molotschna im siidlichen Russland, dargestellt von dem Kirchendltesten Abraham Gorz und herausgegeben von dem Molotschner MennonitenKirchenkonvent. Berdiansk: E. Kylius, 1882.

380

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Schulte Nordholt, Jan Willem. The Dutch Republic and American Independence. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Schwartz, Lee. "Regional population redistribution and national homelands in the USSR." In Henry R. Huttenbach, ed., Soviet Nationalities Policies: Ruling Ethnic Groups in the USSR. London: Mansell, 1990. Seguy, Jean. Les assemblies Anabaptistes-Mennonites de France. Paris: Mouton, 1977. . Les Mennonites dans la Revolution Franqaise. Les Cahiers de Christ Seul, nouvelle serie 4. Montbeliard: Christ Seul, 1989. Shanin, Teodor. The Awkward Class: Political Sociology of Peasantry in a Developing Society: Russia 1910-1925. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. Siegelbaum, Lewis H. Soviet State and Society between Revolutions, 1918-1929. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Sinel, Allen. "Educating the Russian peasantry: the elementary school reforms of Dmitrii Tolstoi." Slavic Review 27 (1968): 49-70. Slezkine, Yuri. "The USSR as a communal apartment, or how a socialist state promoted ethnic particularism." Slavic Review 53 (1994): 414-52. Smissen, Carl H.A. van der, ed. Kurzgefasste Geschichte und Glaubenslehre der altevangelischen Taufgesinnten oder Mennoniten. N.p.: The Author, 1895. Smith, C. Henry. The Story of the Mennonites. Berne: Mennonite Book Concern, 1941. Fifth edition revised and enlarged by Cornelius Krahn as Smith's Story of the Mennonites. Newton: Faith & Life Press, 1981. Smith, David E. The Regional Decline of a National Party: Liberals on the Prairies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981. Smith, Henry B., and Philip Schaff, eds. The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1877. Smucker, Donovan E. The Sociology of Canadian Mennonites, Hutterites, and Amish: A Bibliography with Annotations. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991 [1977]. Snyder, C. Arnold. "The Schleitheim articles in light of the revolution of the common man: continuation or departure?" Sixteenth Century Journal 16 (1985): 419-30. . Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction. Kitchener: Pandora Press, 1995. . "The 'Perfection of Christ' reconsidered: the later Swiss Brethren and the sword." In Werner 0. Packull and Geoffrey L. Dipple, eds., Radical Reformation Studies: Essays Presented to James M. Stayer. Aldergate: Ashgate, 1999. . "The (not so) 'Simple Confession' of the late sixteenth century Swiss Brethren: Part II: the evolution of separatist Anabaptism." MQR 74 (2000): 87-122. Sommer, Erich Franz. Die Einigungsbestrebungen der Deutschen in Vorkriegs-Russland (19051914). Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1940. Sommerville, J.P. "Absolutism and royalism." In J.H. Burns, ed., The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Spaans, Jo. "Violent dreams, peaceful coexistence: on the absence of religious violence in the Dutch Republic." De Zeventiende Eeuw 18 (2003): 149-66.

381

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Sprunger, Keith L. "Frans Houttuyn, Amsterdam bookseller: preaching, publishing and the Mennonite Enlightenment." MQR 78 (2004): 165-84. Staples, John R. "Religion, politics, and the Mennonite Privilegium in early nineteenth century Russia: reconsidering the Warkentin affair." JMS 21 (2003): 71-88. . Cross-Cultural Encounters on the Ukrainian Steppes: Settling the Molochna Basin, 17831861. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Stayer, James M. Anabaptists and the Sword. Second edition. Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1976 [1972]. . The German Peasant's War and Anabaptist Community of Goods. Montreal: McGillQueen's University Press, 1994. Steiner, Samuel J. Vicarious Pioneer: The Life of Jacob Y. Shantz. Winnipeg: Hyperion Press, 1988. Stites, Richard. Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Visions and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Stone, Daniel. "The first (and only) year of the May 3 Constitution." Canadian Slavonic Papers/ Revue canadienne des slavistes 33, 1-2 (1991): 69-86. Strakosch, Henry E. State Absolutism and the Rule of Law: The Struggle for the Codification of Civil Law in Austria 1753-1811. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1967. Strauss, Gerald. Luther's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Studer, Gerald C. "The Dordrecht Confession of Faith, 1632-1982." MQR 58 (1984): 503-19. Siiss, Wladimir. "Deutsche Lehrerbildung im Russland des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts." Zeitschrift fur Internationale erziehungs- und sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung 14 (1997): 109-35. Sutter, Sem C. "Friedrichstadt: an early German example of Mennonite magistrates." MQR 53 (1979): 299-305. Szeftel, Marc. "The problem of Russian constitutional development in the light of recent views." Parliaments, Estates and Representations 5 (1985): 109-18. Szczesniak, Boleslaw, trans, and ed. The Russian Revolution and Religion: A Collection of Documents Concerning the Suppression of Religion by the Communists, 1917-1925. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959. Taranovski, Theodore, trans, and ed. Reform in Modem Russian History. Progress or Cycle? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Tazbir, Janusz. "The fate of Polish Protestanism in the seventeenth century." In J.K. Fedorowicz, Maria Bogucka, and Henryk Samsonowicz, eds., A Republic of Nobles: Studies in Polish History to 1864. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. te Brake, Wayne Ph. Regents and Rebels: The Revolutionary World of an Eighteenth-Century Dutch City. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. . "How much in how little? Dutch revolution in comparative perspective." Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 4 (1990): 349-63. . "Staking a claim to an old revolution: a review article." Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 104 (1991): 15-23.

382

BIBLIOGRAPHY

. "Religious identities and the boundaries of citizenship in the Dutch Republic." In James K. Bradley and Dale K. van Kley, eds., Religion and Politics in Enlightenment Europe. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. Thiesen, John D. "First duty of the citizen: Mennonite identity and military exemption in Prussia, 1848-1877." MQR 72 (1998): 161-87. . Mennonite and Nazi? Attitudes among Mennonite Colonists in Latin America, 1933-1945. Kitchener: Pandora Books, 1999. Thiessen, Anna. Die Stadtmission in Winnipeg. Winnipeg: The Author, 1955. Thomas, L.G. The Liberal Party in Alberta: A History of Politics in the Province of Alberta 19051921. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959. Thorniley, Daniel. The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Rural Communist Party, 1927-39. London: Macmillan, 1988. Tilly, Charles. "Where do rights come from?" In Theda Skocpol, ed., Democracy, Revolution, and History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. Tows, Gerhard. Schonfeld: Werde- und Opfergang einer deutschen Siedlung in der Ukraine. Winnipeg: Rundschau Publishing House, 1939. Toews, John B. Lost Fatherland: The Story of the Mennonite Emigration from Soviet Russia, 19211927. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1967. . "The origins and activities of the Mennonite Selbstschutz in the Ukraine (1918-1919)." MQR 44 (1972): 5-40. . "The Mennonites and the Siberian frontier (1907-1930): some observations." MQR 47 (1973): 83-101. . "The Halbstadt volost 1918-1922: a case study of the Mennonite encounter with early Bolshevism." MQR 48 (1974): 489-514. , ed. The Mennonites in Russia, 1917-1920: Selected Documents. Winnipeg: Christian Press, 1975. . With Courage to Spare: The Life of B.B. Janz 1877-1964. Winnipeg: The Christian Press, 1978. . Czars, Soviets and Mennonites. Newton: Faith and Life Press, 1982. . "Brethren and Old Church relations in pre-World-War 1 Russia: setting the stage for Canada." JMS 2 (1984): 42-59. . Perilous Journey: The Mennonite Brethren in Russia 1860-1910. Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 1988. . "Once again—the Privilegium—a letter from 1826." MH 13, 4 (1997): 1-2. , trans, and ed. The Diaries of David Epp 1837-1843. Vancouver: Regent College, 2000. . The Story of the Early Mennonite Brethren (1860-1869). Reflections of a Lutheran Churchman. Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 2002. . "Benjamin B. Janz (1877-1964)." In Harry Loewen, ed., Shepherds, Servants and Prophets: Leadership among the Russian Mennonites (ca. 1880-1960). Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press/Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2003. Toews, Paul. Mennonites in American Society, 1930-1970: Modernity and Persistence of Religious Community. Scottdale: Herald Press, 1996.

383

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Trachtenberg, Henry. "The Winnipeg Jewish community and politics: the inter-War years, 19191939." Transactions of the Manitoba Historical Society (Series 3) 35 (1978-79). Trompetter, Col. Agriculture, Proto-industry and Mennonite Entrepreneur ship: A History of the Textile Industries in Twente, 1600-1815. Amsterdam: NEHA, 1997. . "De eerste schreden. De politieke activitien van Twenste textielondernemers in de Patriottentijd." In Cle Lesger and Leo Noordegraaf, eds., Ondememers und Bestuurders: economie enpolitiek in der Nooordelijke Nederlanden. Amsterdam: NEHA, 1999. Unruh, A.H. Die Geschichte der Mennoniten-Bruedergemeinde 1860-1954. Winnipeg: Christian Press, 1954. Unruh, Kornelius, and Karl Wilhelm, eds. Deutsches Lesebuch fur evangelische Elementarschulen in Rufiland. Second edition. Neuhalbstadt: Peter Neufeld, 1900. . Deutsches Lesebuch fur evangelische Elemantarschulen in Russland. Fourth edition. Halbstadt: Raduga, 1911. Urry, James. "Who Are the Mennonites?" Archives Europeennes Sociologie 24 (1983): 241-62. . "Through the eye of a needle: wealth and the Mennonite experience in Imperial Russia." JMS 3 (1985): 7-35. . "'Servants from far': Mennonites and the pan-evangelical impulse in early nineteenth century Russia." MQR 61, 2 (1987): 213-27. . None but Saints: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia, 1789-1889. Winnipeg: Hyperion Press, 1989. . "Mennonite economic development in the Russian mirror." In John Friesen, ed., Mennonites in Russia, 1788-1988: Essays in Honour of Gerhard Lohrenz. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1989. . "Prolegomena to the study of Mennonite society in Russia 1880-1914." JMS 8 (1990): 52-75. . "The Russian state, the Mennonite world and the migration from Russia to North America in the 1870s." ML 46 (1991): 11-16. . "The cost of community: the funding and economic management of the Russian Mennonite Commonwealth before 1914." JMS 10 (1992): 22-55. . "Heinrich Balzer (1800-1846): Kleine Gemeinde minister and conservative Mennonite philosopher." In Delbert F. Plett, ed., Leaders of the Kleine Gemeinde in Russia 1812 to 1874. Steinbach: Crossway Publications, 1993. . "The Russian Mennonites, nationalism and the state 1789-1917." In Abe J. Dueck, ed., Canadian Mennonites and the Challenge of Nationalism. Winnipeg: Mennonite Historical Society, 1994. . "Mennonites, nationalism and the state in Imperial Russia." JMS 12 (1994): 65-88. . "Russian Mennonites and the Boers of South Africa: a forgotten connection." MH 20, 3 (1994): 1-2, 12. . "After the rooster crowed: some issues concerning the interpretation of Mennonite/ Bolshevik relations during the early Soviet period." JMS 13 (1995): 26-50. . "Writing about the "Russian Mennonites": concerning peoples, places and identities in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union." Ontario Mennonite History: The Newsletter of the Mennonite Historical Society of Ontario 14 (1996): 1-5.

384

BIBLIOGRAPHY

. "AMennostaat for the Mennovolk: Mennonite immigrant fantasies in Canada in the 1930s." JMS 14 (1996): 65-80. . "Of borders and boundaries: reflections on Mennonite unity and separation in the modern world." MQR 73, 3 (1999): 503-24. . "Growing up with cities: the Mennonite experience in Imperial Russia and the early Soviet Union." JMS 20 (2002): 123-54. . "David H. Epp: intellectual, spiritual, cultural leader 1861-1934." In Harry Loewen, ed, Shepherds, Servants and Prophets: Leadership among the Russian Mennonites (ca. 18801960). Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press/Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2003. . "Dietrich Heinrich Epp: first editor of Der Bote 1875-1955." In Harry Loewen, ed., Shepherds, Servants and Prophets: Leadership among the Russian Mennonites (ca. 18801960). Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press/Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2003. , and Lawrence Klippenstein. "Mennonites and the Crimean War, 1854-1856." JMS 7 (1989): 9-32. Uruszczak, Waslaw. "Das Privileg im alten Konigreich Polen (10. bis 18. Jahrhundert)." In Barbara Dolmeyer and Heinz Mohnhaupt, eds., Das Privileg im europdischen Vergleich. Volume 2. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1999. Varry, Dominique. "Jacques Klopfenstein and the almanacs of Belfort and Montbeliard in the nineteenth century." MQR 58, 3 (1984): 241-57. Venturi, Franco. The End of the Old Regime in Europe 1776-1789. Volume 2, Republican Patriotism and the Empires of the East. Trans. R. Burr Litchfield. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Vernadsky, George, et al., eds. A Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917. Volume 3, Alexander 11 to the February Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. Velitsyn, A.A. Nemstsy v Rossii: ocherki istoricheskago razvitiia I nastoiaschchago polozheniia nemestskikh kolonii na iuage I vostoke Rossii. St. Petersburg: Russkii Vestnik, 1893. Verner, Andrew M. The Crisis of Russian Autocracy: Nicholas 11 and the 1905 Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Viola, Lynn. The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivisation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Visser, Piet. "'Blasphemous and pernicious:' the role of printers and booksellers in the spread of dissident religious and philosophical ideas in the Netherlands in the second half of the seventeenth century." Quaerendo 26, 4 (1996): 303-26. Visser, Piet, and Mary Sprunger. Menno Simons: Places, Portraits and Progeny. Altona: Friesens, 1996. A Vogt Family History: The Descendants of Andreas Vogt (1854-1914) and Agnetha (Block) Vogt (1857-1930). Winnipeg: The Vogt Family, 1994. Vogt, Roy. "Some strange things happened on the way to the political arena." MM 7 (June 1978): 12-13. . "The impact of economic and social class on Mennonite theology." In Harry Loewen, ed., Mennonite Images: Historical, Cultural, and Literary Essays Dealing with Mennonite Issues. Winnipeg: Hyperion Books, 1980. . "Staying on." In Harry Loewen, ed., Why I Am a Mennonite: Essays on Mennonite Identity. Scottdale: Herald Press, 1988. 385

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Voolstra, Sjouke. "The hymn to freedom': the redefinition of Dutch Mennonite identity in the restoration and romantic period (ca. 1810-1850)." In Alastair Hamilton, Sjouke Voolstra, and Piet Vissar, eds., From Martyr to Mappy: A Historical Introduction to Cultural Assimilation Processes of a Religious Minority in the Netherlands: The Mennonites. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994. Vreede, Pieter. Mijn levensloop. Ed. M.W. van Boven, A.M. Fafianie, and G.J.W. Steijns. Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 1994. Wagner, Jonathan F. "The Deutsche Zeitung fur Canada: a Nazi newspaper in Winnipeg." Transactions of the Manitoba Historical Society (Series 3) 33 (1976-77). . "The Deutsche Bund Canada 1934-9." Canadian Historical Review 58, 2 (1977): 176-200. . Brothers Beyond the Sea: National Socialism in Canada. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981. Waldron, Peter. "Religious reform after 1905: Old Believers and the Orthodox Church." Oxford Slavonic Papers 20 (1987): 110-39. . "Religious toleration in late Imperial Russia." In Olga Crisp and Linda Edmondson, eds., Civil Rights in Imperial Russia. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. . Between Two Revolutions: Stolypin and the Politics of Renewal in Russia. De Kalb: Northern Illinois Press. 1998. Walker, Mack, ed. Mettemich's Europe. London: Macmillan, 1968. . The Salzburg Transaction: Expulsion and Redemption in Eighteenth-Century Germany. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. Wall, Ernestine van der. "Toleration and Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic." In Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter, eds., Toleration in Enlightenment Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Wall, Victor. "Mennonites and politics in Paraguay." California Mennonite Historical Society Bulletin^ (2004): 1-5; 42 (2005): 1-6. Wallace, Peter George. The Long European Reformation: Religion, Political Conflict, and the Search for Conformity, 1350-1750. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004. Wardhaugh, Robert. Mackenzie King and the Prairie West. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Warkentin, Abe. Reflections on Our Heritage: A History ofSteinbach and the R.M. of Hanover from 1874. Steinbach: Derksen Printers, 1971. Warkentin, Jakob. "Nachwirkungen der Erfahrungen in der 'vb'lkischen Zeit' auf die padagogischen und politischen Haltungen in Fernheim." Jahrbuch fur Geschichte und Kultur der Mennoniten in Paraguay 5 (2004): 93-116. Warkentin, John H. The Mennonite Settlements of Southern Manitoba. Steinbach: Hanover Steinbach Historical Society, 2000. Weaver, Alain Epp. "After politics: John Howard Yoder, body politics, and the witnessing church." Review of Politics 61, 4 (1999): 637-73. Wedel, Cornelius H. Abriss der Geschichte der Mennoniten. Newton: Schulverlag von BethelCollege, 1900-1904.

386

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Werth, Paul W. "Schism once removed: sects, state authority, and meanings of religious toleration in Imperial Russia." In Alexei Miller and Alfred J. Reiber, eds., Imperial Rule. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004. Weissmann, Neil B. Reform in Tsarist Russia: The State Bureaucracy and Local Government, 19001914. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1981. Wenger, John Christian. "The Schleitheim Confession of Faith." MQR 19 (1945): 243-53. . The Doctrines oftheMennonites. Scottdale: Mennonite Publishing House, 1952. Whaley, Joachim. Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg, 1529-1819. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. . "The German lands before 1815." In Mary Fulbrook, ed., German History since 1800. London: Arnold, 1997. . "A tolerant society? Religious toleration in the Holy Roman Empire, 1648-1806." In Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter, eds., Toleration in Enlightenment Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. White, H.J. "Civil rights and the Provisional government." In Olga Crisp and Linda Edmondson, eds., Civil Rights in Imperial Russia. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Wiebe, Don. "Philosophical reflections on twentieth-century Mennonite thought." In Harry Loewen, ed., Mennonite Images: Historical, Cultural, and Literary Essays dealing with Mennonite Issues. Winnipeg: Hyperion Books, 1980. Wiebe, Gerhard. Causes and History of the Emigration of the Mennonites from Russia to America. Winnipeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society, 1981 [1900]. Williams, George H. The Radical Reformation. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962. Wilson, John. "The decline of the Liberal Party in Manitoba politics." Journal of Canadian Studies 10 (1975): 24-41. Winland, Daphne Naomi. "The quest for Mennonite peoplehood: ethno-religious identity and the dilemma of definitions." Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 30 (1993): 110-38. Wiseman, Nelson. "An historical note on religion and parties on the prairies." Journal of Canadian Studies 16,2 (1981): 109-112. . "The pattern of prairie politics." In R. Douglas Francis and Howard Palmer, eds., The Prairie West: Historical Readings. Edmonton: Pica Pica Press, 1992. Woloch, Isser. The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civil Order, 1789-1820s. New York: W.W Norton, 1994. Wolter, J.J., and M.E.H.N. Mout. "Settlements: the Netherlands." In Thomas A. Brady, Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, eds., Handbook of European History 1400-1600. Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation. Volume 2, Visions, Programs and Outcomes. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995. Woolf, Stuart. Napoleon's Integration of Europe. London: Routledge, 1991. Wormuth, Francis D. The Origins of Modem Constitutionalism. New York: Harpers, 1949. Wright, Gerald. Steinbach: Is There Any Place Like It. Steinbach: Derksen, 1991. Wright, Nigel G. "Baptist and Anabaptist attitudes to the state." Baptist Quarterly 16, 7 (1996): 349-57. Yoder, John Howard. The Christian Witness to the State. Newton: Faith and Life Press, 1964.

387

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

, trans, and ed. The Legacy of Michael Sattler. Scottdale: Herald Press, 1973. . '"Anabaptists and the Sword' revisited: systematic historiography and undogmatic nonresistants." Zeitschrift far Kirchengeschichte 85 (1974): 126-39. Zagorin, Perez. How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Zakharova, Larissa. "Autocracy and the reforms of 1861-1874 in Russia: choosing paths of development." In Ben Eklof, John Bushnell, and Larissa Zakharova, eds., Russia's Great Reforms, 1855-1881. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Zhuk, Sergei I. Russia's Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism, and Radical Sects in Southern Russia and Ukraine, 1830-1917. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2004. Zijlstra, Samme. "Anabaptism and tolerance: possibilities and limitations." In R. Po-Chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop, eds., Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Zijpp, N. van der. Geschiedenis der Doopsgezinden in Nederland. Arnhem: van Loghum Slaterus, 1952. . "The confessions of faith of the Dutch Mennonites." MQR 29, 3 (1955): 171-87.

388

INDEX

Aberhart, William, Social Credit Party leader Canada, 214 absolutism, 10, 44, 281 Adams, John, President of United States, 60 Alberta, 175, 197, 203, 214, 217, 325, 335, 337, 341, 342 Alexander I, Tsar, 89, 90, 296 Alexander II, Tsar, 96, 103, 111, 114 Alexander III, Tsar, 103, 106, 111, 113, 114, 303 Alexandrovsk, city and Mennonites, 116, 134, 306 Allrussischer Mennonitischer Landwirtschaftlicher Verein, see Soviet Union, Mennonites in Altona, Manitoba, 166, 171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 178, 180, 208, 213, 216, 224, 225, 323, 325, 326, 327, 336, 337, 342 Altona, port of near Hamburg, 33, 34, 42, 45, 75, 278, 280, 290 Amish, 3, 11, 65, 211, 256, 271, 273, 321 Amsterdam, 28, 29, 30, 32, 55, 56, 61, 63, 280, 285 Theological Seminary, 56 Anabaptism, 8-11, 18-25, 27, 29, 35, 42-43, 49, 57, 127, 221, 222, 238, 251-53, 255, 256, 262, 267, 269, 270, 273, 274, 275, 276, 352 Andres, Heinrich J., 141 anti-semitism, 106, 199, 217, 306, 341 Austro-Hungary, 106, 130 autocracy, 10, 90, 103, 124, 135, 294 Baden, Grand Duchy of, 66, 67, 69, 70, 73, 77 Bailey, Major Edgar J., 341 Bainton, Roland H., 8, 269 Baltic Germans, in Russia, 106 Banman, Robert, 226 Baptists, American, 352 English, 29, 277 German, 121 Russian, 71, 107, 120, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 131, 232, 302, 308

Baratov-Shlachtin, Mennonite settlement in Russia, 101 Barkman, Gordon, 226 Barkman, Leonard A., 225, 226, 227, 334 Bartsch, Johann (1757-1821), 85 Batavian Republic, see Dutch Republic: Batavian Republic Bavaria, Kingdom of, 67, 77 Beaubien, Arthur Lucien, 211 Beckerath, Hermann von (1801-70), 73, 74, 75, 292 Bender, Harold S. (1897-1962), 6, 7, 8, 11, 251, 255, 256, 267, 269, 270, 271, 309, 352 Bennett, R.B., Conservative Party leader, Canada, 210 Berdiansk, Russian port, 99, 113, 135, 298, 305, 306, 308, 309, 310, 313 Bergmann, Cornelius (1881- ), Mennonite historian, 313 Bergmann, Cornelius, candidate for MLA, 176, 177, 326, 328 Bergmann, Hermann (1850-1919), Member of the Russian Duma, 113, 117, 121, 125, 128, 132, 304, 306, Bergthaler Church, Manitoba, 171, 173, 176, 177, 179, 207, 208, 226, 326, 338 Bern, Canton of, 41 Mennonites in, 49 Bethania, Old Peoples' Home in Winnipeg, 238 Beza, Theodore, 26, 276 Bill of Rights, English (1689), 60 Bismarck, Otto von, 78, 107, 293 Blumenort, Manitoba, 211, 323, 338 Board of Colonization, Mennonite, 187, 189, 193, 194, 195, 196, 209, 238, 330, 332 Boer settlers in South Africa, Mennonite association with, 132, 177, 327 Bate, Mennonite newspaper in Canada, 187, 193, 194, 208, 238, 319, 332, 333, 334

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Botschafter, Mennonite newspaper in Russia, 126, 130, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 331 Bracken, John, Premier of Manitoba, 207, 213, 337 Braght, Thielman van (1625-64), 30 Braun, Heinrich J. (1873-1946), 124, 125, 126, 135 Braun, Peter J. (1880-1933), 132, 311 Braun, Peter, of Saskatchewan, 328 Brest-Litovsk Treaty, 138 Brey, Guy de, 27 British Columbia, 187, 192, 221, 324, 329 Brons, Anna (1810-1902), 294 Brons, Isaak (1802-86), 73, 75, 294 Buckert, Peter, 205, 207, 208, 336 Buhr, P.H. Mennonite lawyer, 336 Bullinger, Heinrich (1504-75), 24 Calvin, Jean (1509-64), 24, 26, 27, 273, 276 Calvinism, see Reformed Church Campbell, Colin, Attorney General of Manitoba, 177, 325 Canadian Alliance Party, 351 Canadian Mennonite, newspaper, 186, 214, 219, 220, 334, 342, 344, 352 Canadian Mennonite Bible College, Winnipeg, 242, 245 Canadian Nationalist Party, 203 Catherine II (the Great), Tsarina, 53, 85 Capellen, Baron van der, 58, 60 Carillon, provincial seat of in Manitoba, 211, 212, 214, 216, 226 catechisms, 38 Heidelberg, 38 Mennonite, 36, 38, 79, 107-08, 280 Catholic Church, 20-22, 25-28, 35, 38, 41, 43, 47, 61, 69, 70, 72, 77, 78, 123, 164, 168, 170, 179, 245, 247 Chamberlain, Neville, British Prime Minister, 335 Chortitzer Mennonites in Manitoba, 165, 181, 226, 321 citizenship, 4, 5, 177, 185, 240, 257, 289, 313 Canadian, 189, 202-03, 209-10 French ideas of, 65 German states and, 65, 66-67, 69-71, 75-76 Russian, 135, 138 civil office, Anabaptist rejection of, see magistrates, Anabaptist attitude to Clasen, Claus-Peter, 9 Classen, Nikolai, 335 Coaldale, Alberta, Mennonites in, 335, 337 Coleridge, Samuel, idea of clerisy, 300 Collegiants, in the Dutch Republic, 55-56 Committees of Poor Peasants (Kombedy), 141

communism, 11, 210, 215, 241, 248, 338 Confederation of the Rhine (1805-16), 66 Conference of Mennonites in Canada, 233, 234, 244, 245, 248 confessionalism, 7, 23, 32, 39, 50, 55, 71, 269 Confessions of Faith Concept of Cologne (1591), 30 Dordrecht (1632), 27, 31, 32, 277, 278 Dordrecht Reformed, 27, 31, 32, 277, 278 French Reformed (1559), 24 Jan Cents (1630), 31 Lutheran, Augsburg, 21, 22 Olive Branch (1627), 30-31, 43 Pieter Jansz Twisck, 43 Sijwaert Pietersz and Peter J. Twisck, 30 Ris (1766), 32-34, 278 Waterlander, 28-29, 30, 31 conscription, 51, 52, 65, 66, 79, 97, 98, 100, 117, 142, 182, 212, 269, 290, 307, 329, 339 Conservative, Party in Canada, 171-80, 207-208, 211, 218, 241-242, 244, 253, 324-26, 328-29, 338-40, 342, 344-45, 351, see also Progressive Conservative Party Constantine, Emperor and the Christian Church, 17 constitutions and constitutionalism, 10, 59-60, 115, 130, 286 American, 60-61 French, 61-62 Dutch, 5, 59, 60, 62-63 German states and, 66-67, 69-70, 73-74, 77, 293 Prussian, 66, 72-73, 74-75, 77-78, 81, 293 Russian, 103, 110, 114-17 Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), 214, 215, 221, 242, 337, 340, 341, 343, 350 co-operatives, Mennonite, 148, 150, 151, 192, 215 Cornies, Johann (1789-1848), 92, 93, 94, 96, 101, 297, 311, 332 Cornies, Philip (1884-1962), 148 Crefeld, Mennonites in, 49, 63, 64, 65, 67, 73, 75, 282, 283 Cuperus, Andraes Scheltes (1750-1812), Dutch minister and politician, 287 Danzig, 33, 34, 35, 36, 47, 48, 65, 66, 72, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 85, 282, 283 Dawson, C.A., 13, 336 Declaration of Human Rights, French (1789), 61 DeFehr, Cornelius A. (1881-1979), 236, 237, 348 DeFehr, Henry, 240 DeFehr, John, 241 democracy, Mennonites and, 4, 7, 58, 60-62, 65, 105, 116-17, 135-36, 163, 182-83, 185, 188, 202-03, 221, 236, 243, 257-58, 262, 286, 329

390

INDEX

Denck, Hans (c. 1500-27), 238, 348 Denmark, 34, 78 Depression, Great in Canada, 193, 194, 202, 207, 215, 235, 261 DerBote, Mennonite newspaper in Canada, 187, 193, 194, 208, 238, 319, 332, 333 Der Botschafter, Mennonite newspaper in tsarist Russia, 116, 330 Derksen, Eugene, newspaper owner, 345 Derksen, Gerhard S., newspaper owner, 213, 332 Descartes, Rene, 56, 285 Deutsche Bund Canada, 236, 334 Deventer, Mennonites in, 59, 60, 61, 287, 288 Dick, Jakob, President Melitipol zemstvo, 113 Didsbury, Alberta, Mennonites in, 175 Diefenbaker, John G., 219, 342 Dirks, Heinrich (1842-1915), 309 Dirks, Herman, 174, 325, 328 Dirks, V.A., 224, 341 Dominion Elections Act of 1916, 181 Douglas, Major C.H., and Social Credit, 215 Douglas, Municipality of, 170 Doukhobors, 122, 131, 329 Driedger, Albert, MLA, 344 Dufferin, Lord, 159 Dutch constitutions, 5, 59, 60, 62-63 Batavian Republic (1795-1806), 62-63 Golden Age in 17th century, 26, 260, 277 Patriot Movement (1785-87), 57-59, 6061, 62, 286, 287, 288 Revolt (1573-76), 25, 27-28, 29 Dyck, Arnold (1889-1970), 194, 200, 209, 211, 332, 338, 347 Dyck, H., 341 Dyck, I.R., 217 Dyck, Isaak (1847-1929), Elder, Khortitsa, 124 Dyck, Isaak, Elder in Mexico, 327 Dyck, Jacob (1779-1853), Elder, Khortitsa, 91, 93, 297 Dyck, John P., 335 Dyck, Otto, 334 Dyck, Peter, 318 Dyck, Vern, 241 East Prussia, Mennonites in, 48, 49, 72, 73 Ebenzer Home, Winnipeg, 233 Echo-Verlag, Mennonite Historical series, 332 Ediger, Heinrich, Mayor of Berdiansk, 305 Ediger, Theodore, history graduate, 311 education, as a political issue, in Manitoba, 164,167-68,178-81, 328, 329

in Imperial Russia, 101, 103-05, 300, 301 in Saskatchewan, 328, 329 in Soviet Union, 143, 158, 319 Ekaterinoslav, 89, 93, 107, 113, 116, 117, 128, 131, 134, 153, 305, 306, 313, 314 Elbing, Mennonites in, 35, 36, 38, 47, 50, 76, 78, 107, 279, 282, 283 emancipation, political and civil, 7 Jewish, 54, 70-71, 302 Mennonite, 70, 71, 76, 80 peasant, 71, 104 Emden, Mennonites in, 73 Emerson, Manitoba, 170, 341 Enlightenment, 54, 57, 62, 88, 257, 285 Enns, D.P. (1877-1946), treasurer Board of Colonization, 330 Enns, Ernest (1920- ), 239, 345 Enns, G., 208 Enns, George H. (1920- ), NDP candidate for Kilnorth, 243 Enns, Harry J (1932- ), 239, 249, 253, 345 Enns, J.J., 208, 336 Enns, Johann H. (1889-1974), 233, 237, 239, 253, 345, 348 Enns, Peter H. (1883-1942), 237, 337 Enns, Siegfried (1924- ), 239, 345 Enns, Vera (1926-), 239 Ens, Adolf, 11, 321, 341 Ens, Gerhard, 220, 221, 325, 342, 343, 352 Ens, Gerhard (1864-1952), 175, 330, 337 Epp, Claas 1838-1913, 81 Epp, David (1781-1843), 91, 93, 296, 311 Epp, David H. (1861-1934), 103, 107-08, 116, 126, 130, 132, 303, 330, 331 Epp, Dietrich H. (1875-1955), 187, 193, 194, 197, 202, 203, 330, 331, 332 Epp, Frank H. (1929-86), 219, 220, 221, 250, 251, 262, 332, 342, 350, 352 Epp, George K. (1924-1997), 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 350 Epp, Heinrich, 121 Epp, Heinrich H. (1873-1937?), 141, 330 Epp, Heinrich (1827-96), Elder, Khortitsa, 103, 330 Epp, Jacob D. (1820-90), 97, 294 Epp, Jake, MP, 227, 228, 345 Esau, Alvin J., 273 Esau, Johann J. (1859-1940), Mayor of Ekaterinoslav, 304 Esau, W, 169, 322 ethnicity, 6, 13, 116, 221-23, 224, 226, 232, 243, 251, 334, 339 Evangelical Mennonite Church (EMC) in Manitoba, 165, 219, 220, 338, 342

391

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Evangelical Protestant Church in Germany (1821-), 69 Ewert, Benjamin, 233, 317, Ewert, H.H. (1855-1934), 167, 173, 178, 179, 180, 231, 233, 237, 322, 327, 346 Ewert, Wilhelm (1827-89), 80, 294 fascism, 8, 203, see also Nazis Fijnje, Wijbo (1750-1809), 60, 61, 62, 63, 288 First Mennonite Church Winnipeg, 246, 250 Floh, Gottschalk, 64 Floh, Jacob Henrik (1758-1830), member of Batavian Republic government. 63 Formula of Concord (1577), 21-22 Fort Garry, Manitoba provincial seat of, 242 Fort Rouge, Manitoba provincial seat of, 242 Fox, Peter, 242 Francis II, last emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, 66 Francis, E.K., 13, 273, 340 Frankfurt Parliament (1848), 73, 74, 75, 77, 282 Frederick I, ruler of Ducal Prussia, 49 Frederick II, king of Prussia, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 284 Frederick William II of Prussia, 61 Frederick William III, 66, 67, 70, 71, 72 Frederick William, "Great Elector" of Brandenburg, 48,49 Frederick William IV, 72, 73, 74, 77 French Revolution, 8, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 81, 96 Friedensstimme, Mennonite newspaper in tsarist Russia, 116 Friedman, Robert, 8, 269 Friedrichstadt, Mennonites in, 34, 75, 278 Friesen, D.W., 176, 326 Friesen, D.W. & Sons, printery, 342 Friesen, David, 171 Friesen, David G., 225 Friesen, David K., 215, 218, 225 Friesen, Edward, 215, 341 Friesen, Gerhard J., 200, 334 Friesen, Isaak, 309 Friesen, Isbrand (1814-83), Berdiansk, 113 Friesen, J.J., Social Credit candidate, 341 Friesen, John M., Inspector of Schools in Manitoba, 178, 326 Friesen, Len, 306 Friesen, Peter, 326 Friesen, Peter M. (1849-1914), 83, 116, 117, 126, 129, 304, 306, 310, 314, 320 Fritz Senn, see Friesen, Gerhard J. Froese, Jacob, 341,342 Froese, Jacob J., Elder, Old Order Mennonites, 217

Froese, Jacob M., 217 Froese, Peter, 134, 148, 316 Garson, S.S., Premier of Manitoba, 214 Gazette de Leyde, 60 Gellner, Ernest, 258, 352 Gentz, Friedrich von, 81 George VI, King and Emperor, visit to Canada 1939, 202, 203 Gerbrandt, Johann (1854-1938), 326 German Soviet Republic on the Volga, 155 Germania, newspaper in Manitoba, 174-75 Germanness, 77, 196, 199, 201, 208, 236 Glazemaker, Jan Hendrik, 56, 285 Gliickstadt, Mennonites in, 34 Gnadenfeld, in Molochna, 101, 154, 309 Golitsyn, Prince, 163 Goosen, Gerrit, 36 Gorz, Abraham (1840-1911), Elder, Molochna, 103, 105, 124, 307, 308, 311 Greenway, Thomas, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172, 174, 178, 323, 324 Gretna, Manitoba, 166-72, 174-76, 178, 208, 326, 327, 336, 337, 343 Gross-Liebenthal, German colonist settlement in Russia, 299 Grotius, Hugo, 28 Grunthal, Manitoba, 212, 216, 226, 228 Guenther, Titus, 321 Gunn, Bruce, 225 Hahn, Eduard von, 93, 94, 98, 297 Halbstadt Neu, Molochna, 129 Halbstadt, Molochna, 101, 116, 121, 125, 138, 154, 308, 309, 310, 311, 313, 314, see also Molochansk Hamburg, port city of, 33, 34, 36, 42, 65, 75, 278, 280, 290 Hamm, H.H., secretary treasurer of R.M. Rhineland, 180, 213, 336, 339 Hansell, Reverend Ernest, and Social Credit, 217 Hansen, Georg (1636-1705), Elder, Danzig, 36, 38 Harder, Karl (1820-98), 76, 293 Heese, Heinrich H., Ekaterinoslav city councillor, 304 Heese, Johann J., Ekaterinoslav city councillor, 304 Heese, Peter, Ekaterinoslav city councillor, 304 Heilke, Thomas, 9, 270 Heppner, Diedrich, 213, 340 Hespeler, William (1830-1920), 164, 166, 167, 171, 172, 173, 174, 321, 323, 324 Hesse-Darmstadt, 67, 70 Hiebert, C.N., 234 Hiebert, Cornelius, 175, 325

392

INDEX

Hiebert, Johann, 171, 174, 178 Hildebrand, J.J. (1880- ), 196-99, 201, 333 Hillerbrand, Hans J., 9, 268, 270, 274 historiography of Anabaptism, 8-10 of Mennonites, in Canada, 12, 192, 193-94, 332; in Germany, 11; in Russia, 11, 131-33, 311; in United States, 6-8, 11-12 Hitler, Adolf, 199, 203, 209, 235, 335, 338 Hoffman, Melchior (1495-1543), 20, 275 Hofstra, Sybren, 58 Holdeman, Mennonites in Manitoba, 165, 179 Holland, State of, 28, 30, 32, 62, 63, 285 Holy Roman Empire, 21, 34, 39, 42, 54, 66, 281 Hoorn, Mennonites in, 32 Hoppner, Jacob (1746-1826), 85, 176 Horndean, Manitoba, 224, 336 Horsch, John (1867-1941), 11, 272 House of Orange, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 283 Huebert, Cornelius, 240, 241 Huguenots, 26, 281 Hunzinger, Abraham (1792-1859), 70, 72, 291, 300 Hutterites, 3, 10, 25, 182, 256, 276, 328, 329 Ibersheim, Mennonite meetings at (1803, 1805), 65,66 industrial society, 4, 5, 13, 64, 76, 105, 116, 133, 140, 189, 210, 239, 250, 259, 320 Isaak, Ernest, 241 Jansen, Cornelius (1822-94), merchant, Berdiansk and in USA, 298 Jantzen, Mark, 293 Janz, B.B. (1877-1964), 148, 188, 192, 200, 313, 317,331,333,339 Janz, H.B., 188, 189, 191, 192, 193 Janzen, H., teacher, 336 Janzen, Jacob H. (1878-1950), 209, 310, 317, 332, 337 Janzen, Johann A., 305 Janzen, William, 12, 201, 310, 329 Jews, 33, 35, 41, 42, 44, 46, 48, 50, 53, 54, 58, 69, 71, 97, 98, 116, 119, 232, 235, 281, 282, 292, 306, 307 Jorgenson, Warner, 226 Joris, David, 21 Joseph II, ruler of Hapsburg Austria, 53, 69 Juhnke, James C., 7, 11,272 Jutras, Rene, 211,226 Kadets (Constitutional Democrats), in Russia, 115, 117, 128, 133, 306, 312 Kamensky, P.V., 107, 123, 303, 306

Kanadier, 190, 195, 205, 208, 209, 215, 217, 219, 223, 227, 232, 233, 237, 239, 240, 243, 249, 250, 252, 262, 342 Kansas, 11, 167,316,321 Keller, Ludwig, 309 Kemp, Francis Adriaan van der (1752-1829), 58, 60,61,287 Kharkov, 121, 147, 150,315 Khortitsa, Mennonite colony in Russia, 89, 90-91, 93, 100-01, 103-04, 107, 109, 116, 120-21, 124, 129-31, 138, 141, 143, 145, 147, 154, 156-57, 186-87, 297, 299, 306, 308, 310-11, 314-15, 320, 330 King, W.L. Mackenzie, Prime Minister, 201, 202, 209, 210, 213, 334, 337 Klaassen, Dietrich, 172 Klaassen, Martin (1820-81), 81 Klaassen, Walter, 17, 269, 275 Klassen, C.F. (1894-1954), 148, 188, 213, 237, 316, 340, 348 Klassen, J.A., 336 Klassen, Jakob (1856-1919), secretary of Khortitsa volost, 299 Klassen, Johann P. (1868-1947), Elder in Russia and Canada, 233 Kleine Gemeinde, 72, 89, 99, 165, 171, 173, 178, 179, 181, 211, 225, 231, 296, 297, 298, 323, 324, 327 Klopfenstein, Jacques, 290 Knoop, Wopke Claes (1740-1801), Dutch minister and Patriot, 287 Konersmann, Frank, 269 Konigsberg, Mennonites in, 49, 50, 51, 75, 76, 78, 283, 291 Koontz, Theodore, 7 Kop, Jan, Dutch minister, 289 Krahn, Henry (1923-85), 249 Kreider, Robert, 270 Kroeker, 309, 314, 348 Kroeker, Abraham (1863-1944), 116, 185, 330, 334 Kroeker, Jacob (1872-1948), 116 Kroeker, J., Winnipeg, 347 Kroeker, Klaas T., 216 Kriiger, Leonard, 339 Kuiper, Jacob (d. 1825), Dutch minister and Patriot, 287 La Verendrye, Manitoba provincial seat of, 226, 252 language issues in Manitoba, 191, 201, 223, 243, 343 in Russia, 101, 132, 312 Laurier, Wilfrid, government of, 168, 172, 178

393

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

law and legal issues, 6, 7, 12, 22, 34, 38, 45-49, 52, 59, 67, 69, 72, 77, 80, 91, 96, 98, 105, 122, 125-26, 130, 135, 163, 192, 196, 202, 255, 257, 258, 272, 282, 291, 312, 350 in Canada, franchise, 180, 181, 329; elections, 245-47 Mandates against Anabaptists and Mennonites, 39, 40, 41-42, 44, 70, 280 Napoleonic Code, 67 Prussian General Law, 53, 54 Russian proposals for reform, 115, 118-19, 129, 297 Leiden, 58, 60, 61, 63, 289 Leopold II, Hapsburg ruler of Austria, 54 Leyens, von der, Mennonite family, Crefeld, 64 Liberal Party in Canada, 166-80, 202, 205, 207, 209-15, 218-19, 225-29, 235, 241-42, 244, 248-50, 262, 288, 322-25, 327, 328, 338-42, 345 Lindeman[n], Karl, 311, 312 Lisgar, federal seat of, 172, 210, 213, 215, 327, 329, 336, 338, 340, 341 Lithuania, Mennonite settlement in, 49, 282 local government, Mennonites and in Canada, 186, 208, 261 in Winnipeg, 241,234-35 in Manitoba, 164, 165, 321 in Russia, 42, 64, 72, 89-90, 92-93, 96, 100, 105-06, 296, 299, 304 in Soviet Union, 152-58, 260 Loeppky, Abraham, 176 Loeppky, George, 341 Loewen, D. J. (1872-1951), 200, 334 Loewen, Isaac, 169 Loewen, J.J., 172 Loosjes, Adriaan (1761-1818), 62, 287, 289 Loris-Melikov, Count M.T., 114 Lowe Farm, Manitoba, 176, 177 Luther, Martin (1483-1526), 17, 21, 38, 273, 280 Lutheran Church, 21, 23, 24, 26, 34, 35, 38, 41, 42, 47, 64, 69, 70, 72, 153, 154, 283, 284, 308, 311, 312, 318, 344 Lutheran colonists in Russia, 100 Luzac, Jean, publisher, 60 MacDonald, John A., 170 magistrates, Anabaptist attitude to, 17-19, 20-24, 27-31, 34, 36, 46, 99, 275, 276, 280 Major, W.J., 235 Makhno, Nestor, anarchist in Russian civil war, 138 Manitoba, Mennonites in alternative service, World War II, 212-13, 339 East Reserve, 165, 166, 176, 178, 181, 209, 211, 214, 216, 225, 227, 321, 338

educational issues, 164, 167-68, 178-81, 328, 329 elections, in Manitoba, 163-64, 166, 168-80, 205, 207-10, 224-29, 235, 239, 242, 244-50, 261, 306, 323-29, 338, 339, 340-42, 344, 345, 350, 351 emigration from in 1920s, 181, 190 ethnicity and politics among, 221-23, 224, 226, 232, 243, 251, 334, 339 flag issue of 1907-08, 177, 179 immigration to, 168-69, 322 local government and, 164-65 Mennonite Collegiate Institute, Gretna, Gretna Institute, 167, 173, 321, 322, 326, 340, 343 Mennonite Educational Institute, Altona, 167, 208 plebiscite on conscription (1942), 212 Social Credit success among, 215-19, 226-27, 341 West Reserve, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 172, 173, 175, 176, 207, 211, 213, 215, 216, 217, 226, 227, 322, 336, 337 Mannhardt, H.G. (1855-1927), 75 Mannhardt, Jakob (1801-85), Elder, Danzig, 75, 76, 79, 80, 294 Mannhardt, Wilhelm (1831-80), 11, 78, 80, 293 Manning, Ernest, Leader Social Credit Party in Canada, 214, 342 Maria Theresa, Ruler of Hapsburg Austria, 53 Marpeck, Pilgram (d. 1556), 19, 20, 23, 274 Martin, Terry, 304, 306, 316, 319 martyrs, Anabaptist, 21, 24 Martyrs' Mirror, 30 McGavin, Hugh, 207 Melanchthon, Philip (1497-1560), 21 Melchiorites, see Melcior Hoffmann Melitopol, city of in Russia, 113, 116, 154, 306 Memrik, Mennonite settlement in Russia, 101 Mennonite Brethren, 120, 121, 123-27, 129, 130, 148, 173, 179, 191, 200, 205, 207, 208, 217, 227, 231, 233, 234, 243, 245, 248, 302, 307, 308, 324, 331, 334, 335, 336, 341, 342, 343, 346, 350 Mennonite Brethren Bible College, Winnipeg, 238 Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), 11 Mennonite Encyclopedia, 6, 7, 14, 270, 271 Mennonite German Language Society (Vancouver), 343 Mennonite Mirror, magazine Winnipeg, 247, 250, 252 Mennonite Society for the Promotion of the German Language (Winnipeg), 34 Mennonite Trustee Association for the Mennonite Education Committee (Winnipeg), 343 Mennonitische Rundschau, Mennonite newspaper, 172, 203, 208, 213, 233, 236, 327, 346

394

INDEX

Mennonitische Volkswarte, Mennonite literary magazine, 347 Mennonitische Warte, Mennonite literary magazine 1930s, 332 Mennonitischer Verein zur Pflege der Deutschen Muttersprache, Winnipeg, 343 Mennonitisches Lexicon, 267 Metternich, Prince Clemens von, 73, 75, 81 Mexico, Mennonites in, 181, 190, 218, 327, 328 Middelburg, Dutch town of, 28, 29 military reform Prussian, 77-81,294 Russian, 96-100, 117-18 Miliutin, Dmitrii, 299 Miliutin, Nikolai, 299 Miller, W.C., Conservative MLA, 208, 218, 337, 342 Mills, J.T., 242 Molochansk, 153, 154, 157, 319, 320, see also Halbstadt Molochna, Mennonite colony in Russia, 72, 81, 8993, 96, 100-05, 109, 116, 120-21, 124-27, 130, 132, 134, 137-41, 145, 147, 153-54, 157, 196, 296, 301, 311, 314, 318, 320 Molokans, 122, 131,313 Morden, Manitoba, 166, 170, 180, 203, 205, 210, 212, 214, 215, 323, 324, 335, 337, 339, 340 Morris, provincial seat in, 325 Miinster, Anabaptists and, 20, 21, 275 Miintzer, Thomas, 274

Nitikman, Justice Israel, 246 Niverville, Manitoba, 166, 216, 217, 224 nonresistance, 3, 6, 9, 18, 21, 46, 65, 71, 73, 76, 78, 79, 89, 94, 97, 98, 126, 131, 134, 139, 147, 149, 178, 200, 212, 233, 256, 287, 339 Nordwesten, Canadian German-Language newspaper, 175, 210, 241, 325 North Winnipeg, electoral seat of, 229

Napoleon I, 64, 65-69, 89, 290, 291, 296 Napoleon III, 77, 79 Nassau, 69 nationalism, 5, 6, 11, 13, 66, 71, 80, 106, 107, 124, 131, 147, 155, 178, 219, 222, 223, 257, 258, 259, 261, 267, 285, 302, 310, 322, 328 Nazi sympathies among Russlander Mennonites, 199, 200, 210, 212, 236-37, 245, 262, 334, 335, 336, 338, 347, 348 Nebraska, Kleine Gemeinde in, 323 Neufeld, Abraham (1862-1909), 107, 297, 302, 308, 313, 346 Neufeld, Colin, 320 Neufeld, Harold, 351 Neufeld, Heinrich H., 233, 325 Neufeld, Hermann, 203, 236, 332, 335, 247 Neufeld, Peter, 325 New Democratic Party (NDP), 215, 224, 227, 228, 242-49, 252, 343, 345, 350, 351 Nicholas I, Tsar, 74, 90, 93, 96 Nicholas II, Tsar, 103, 107, 113, 114, 115, 118, 133, 305 Nikolaipol, Russia, 141, 304 Nikopol, Russia, Mennonites in, 113

Paetkau, Henry, 332 Paine, Thomas, 62 Paltov, A.A., 106, 107 Pankratz, Helmut, 344 Pan-Slavism, in Russia and Mennonites, 106 Paraguay, Mennonites in, 181, 190, 240, 245, 267, 271,321,328 patriotism, 13, 57, 66, 79, 109, 130, 177, 212 Patriot Movement, see Dutch Republic, Patriot Movement Paul, Tsar, 20, 28, 29, 85, 89, 90, 97, 307 Paulus, Peter, 62, 63, 289 Peace of Augsburg, 22, 41 Peace of Westphalia (1648), 41 Peasants'War (1525), 18 Penner, Alfred (1935-95), 241, 243, 244 Penner, David J. (1904-93), Soviet Communist, 144 Penner, Erdman (1837-1907), 166, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 176,227 Penner, Gerhard, 78, 79, 81 Penner, J.H., 225 Penner, Jacob, Communist and Winnipeg alderman, 229, 253, 345

oath, swearing of by Anabaptists and Mennonites, 18, 21, 29, 33, 42, 44, 46, 51, 64, 65, 70, 71, 73, 74, 87, 126, 142, 144, 280 Octobrist, political party in late Tsarist Russia, 115, 117, 128 Odessa, 89, 93, 100, 106, 121, 134, 303, 307, 311, 312 Old Believers, 71, 122,307 Ontario, 163, 164, 170, 187, 192, 197, 208, 209, 250, 262, 317, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 337, 342 Orekhov, Russia, Mennonites in, 113, 305 Orenburg, Mennonite settlement in Russia, 104, 148 Orthodox Church, in Russia, 107, 118, 119, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 129, 135, 142, 143, 303, 307, 308 Osborne, Manitoba provincial seat of, 242 Ottawa, government in, 163, 164, 168, 169, 171, 172, 213, 234, 321, 337 Mennonites in civil service in World War II, 213, 339

395

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Penner, Peter 1, 129 Peters, H.A., 195, 332 Peters, Isaak (1826-1911), 309 Peters, Klaas (1855-1932), 169, 171, 175, 322, 325, 326 Peters, Victor, 216 Philips, Obbe (1500-68), 21 Plum Coulee, 166, 172, 174, 175, 176, 207, 326, 336 Poland, see Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth Polish Constitution of 3 May 1791, 290 Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, 35, 46 Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, 217, 341, 345 Portage-Neepawa, federal seat of in Manitoba, 239 Post, Die, Mennonite newspaper in Canada, 194, 209, see also Steinbach Post Potemkin, Prince, 85 Prefontaine, Albert, MLA (d. 1935), 211 Prefontaine, Edmond, MLA, 211, 214, 340 Prischib, German colonist village in Russia, 101, 138, 154, 157 privileges, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 18, 26, 31, 34, 41, 43-44, 56, 58, 61-64, 70, 74-76, 78, 81-82, 85, 88, 9091, 94-95, 100, 106-07, 109-10, 116-18, 126, 128, 130-31, 134-35, 139, 140, 144-45, 161, 163, 166, 185, 196, 256-59, 261, 263, 281-82, 328 Jews and, 33, 35, 41, 42, 44, 46, 48, 50, 53 Mennonites and, 44-45 in Prussia, 45-54 Privilegia Danish, 45 East Friesland, 45 Polish Prussian, 45-46, 48 Prussian, 44-54 Russian (1800), 85, 87-89, 91, 92-95, 97, 295, 296, 303 Privy Council London, Mennonite appeal to on schooling, 181 Progressive Conservative Party in Canada, 213, 214, 219, 225, 226, 227, 239, 245, 246, 249, 250, see also Conservative Party Progressives, political grouping in late tsarist Russia, 128 Prokhanov, Ivan, 125 Provencher, federal seat of in Manitoba, 211, 212, 215, 226, 338, 342, 351 Prussia, 5, 11, 34, 35, 36, 38, 45, 47, 48, 49, 51, 53, 63, 64, 85, 87, 90, 94, 99, 108, 163, 175, 279, 281, 283, 284, 312 citizenship in, 66, 70-71 constitutions in, 66, 72-73, 74-75, 77-78, 81, 293 military reforms in, 77-81, 294 Royal, 47

Quakers, 71 Quiring, Walter (1893-1983), 334 Raduga, Mennonite publishing house in Russia, 125, 131, 308, 309, 311, 314 Rechtsstaat, idea of, 54, 181 Red Army, 138, 139, 144 Redekop, John H., 7, 11,13, 334, 342, 343 Redekopp, Henry W., 240, 242, 245 Reformation, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 17, 18, 26, 33, 35, 39, 47, 69, 221, 255, 256, 270, 271, 276, 309 Reformed Church, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 31, 34, 35, 38, 41, 50, 55, 56, 58, 63, 69, 70, 71, 72, 277, 278, 283, 284, 288 Regehr, T.D., historian, 11, 315, 319 Regier, Erhart, MP, 221, 343 Reimer, Al, 243, 252, 253 Reimer, H.H., 336 Reimer, Heinrich, owner of Yushanlee estate, 105 Reimer, J.J., 340 Reimer, Jacob, 172 Reimer, Klaas R. (1837-1906), merchant, 231 Reimer, Peter P. (1877-1949), Elder, Kleine Gemeinde, 211 Reinlander (Old Colony) Mennonite congregation in Manitoba, 173, 217, 329 Religios-Wirtschaftlichen Verbandes aller Mennoniten Osten Russlands, Sibiriens, Kaukasus und lurkestans (1922), 317 Rempel, Bernhard H., Social Credit candidate, 217, 341 Rempel, C.F., Social Credit candidate, 341 Rempel, David G. (1899-1992), 109, 295, 296, 301, 306, 310, 316, 318 Rempel, Gustav, Ekaterinoslav city councillor, 304 Rempel, Heinrich., Ekaterinoslav city councillor, 304,327 Rempel, J.J., 336 Rempel, J. (1883-1941?), Elder, Gruenfeld, Ukraine, 143 Rempel, Johann G. (1890-1963), 339 Rempel, Wilhelm, 170 Rkeinlander, newspaper (1908), 326 Rhineland, electorate of in Manitoba, 170,171, 172, 173, 174, 176, 180, 205, 210, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 225, 227, 323, 324, 326, 328, 336, 337, 339, 340, 342, 344 Rhineland Bate der Germania: den mennonitischen Ansiedlnngen in der Mimizipalitdt Rhineland und Umgegend gewidmet, newspaper in Manitoba, 326 Richardson, R.L., 172, 173, 324, 327 Ries, Hans de (1553-1638), 28, 29, 32, 34 Riesen, Peter von (1779-1847), 72 Rieuwertsz, Jan (1616-87), 56

396

INDEX

Ris, Cornells (1717-90), 32 River East Mennonite Brethren Church, 244 Roblin, Rodmond, Premier of Manitoba, 176, 180 Roosen, Gerrit (1612-1711), 34

Rosenfeldt, electorate in Manitoba, 169,170, 171,

172, 173, 176, 324, 328 Rossmere, Manitoba provincial seat, 244, 245, 246, 249, 250 Rosthern, 175, 187, 238, 303, 337 German-English Academy, 238 Royal Canadian Mounted Police, reports on communists and fascists, 338 Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, 222, 343 Royal Prussia, 35, 47, 48, 49 Rundschau, 332, 334 Russia, Mennonites, in Imperial and revolutionary Allgemeine Bundeskonferenz des Mennonitengemeinden, in Russia, 124 alternative service among, Forestry Service, 103, 104, 106, 121, 127, 130, 144, 188, 301, 331; medical services (1905, 1914-17), 130, 133-34, 141,313 commonwealth, 104, 106, 109-10, 128, 133-34, 148, 189, 195, 199, 259, 260, 261 confessions of faith, 124-25, 129-30, 135, 307 congresses in Russia (1917-18), 134, 148, 188, 196 constitutional issues and, 103, 110, 114-17, daughter colonies of, 105-06, 301 democracy among, 105-06, 116-18 education issues, 101, 103-05, 300, 301 emigration from, 97-98, 299 elections among, 115, 116-17, 128-29, 136, 306, 313 estate owners, Mennonite, 105, 113, 128, 138, 146, 316 Great Reforms (1861-C.1880) and, 96-105, 297 identity issues, 106-08, 132, 133-34, 312 immigration and settlement, 81-82, 85, 87-88, 90 intelligentsia, 116, 128, 132 Kommission fur Kirchenangelegenheiten (KfK) 125, 143 landless, 96, 104, 301, 314, 318 local government and, 42, 64, 72, 89-90, 9293, 96, 100, 105-06, 296, 299, 304 loyalty to autocracy, 107-09, 131-32 Mennonite Brethren, 120-21, 126-27, 129-30, 307 Mennozentrum (1917), 135, 138, 195, 196 Ministry of State Domains, in Russia, 92, 98, 101, 299

nationalism and, 106-08, 128-29, 131, 133-34, 302, 308, 312 Privilegium (1800), 74, 81, 85, 87-89, 91, 9295, 97, 109, 119, 129, 295, 296, 303 Provisional Government (1917), 62, 133, 13536, 152, 185 revolutions and, (1905), 85, 111, 114, 115, 116, 118, 120, 121, 131, 141, 229, 260, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 310, 325; (1917), 115, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 141, 144, 146, 152,185, 195, 233, 304, 308, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 319, 325, 333 "sect" idea and, 119, 122-24 self-defence units (Selbstschutzen) in Civil War, 139, 200, 305, 311, 313, 314, 334 urbanism among, 99, 111, 113, 304, 305 Volga settlements on, 81, 148 Russlander immigrants to Canada 1923- , 216, 217, 219, 223, 226, 227, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 243, 248, 249, 250, 253, 261, 262, 329, 332, 337, 338, 344, 345 Canadian Colonization Association, 190,191 Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization, 186, 330 Canadian Pacific Railway, 186, 233 citizenship in Canada, 189, 202-03, 209-10 debts of, 187, 193, 195 Germanness among (Deutschtum), 196, 20001, 208, 210, 223, 334, 313 Liberal Party, support for, 208, 209, 223, 334 Mennonite Board of Colonization, 190 Mennonite Immigration Aid, 196, 197, 333 Mennonite Land Settlement Board, 190, 331 Mennostaat, idea of (1930s), 192, 197, 199, 200, 333 Nazi sympathies among, 199, 200, 210, 212, 236-37, 245, 262, 334, 335, 336, 338, 347, 348 political involvement in Canada, 202-03 local government, 208-09, 337 settlement patterns of, 187, 190-91 urban tendencies of, 192, see also Winnipeg, Mennonites in, Vereinigung der seit 1923 eingewanderten Mennoniten, 187 World War II, reaction to, 212-13 Zentrale Mennonitische Immigrantenkomitee, 185-202, 330, 332, 334, 335 Samara, 121, 317 Saskatchewan, 168, 175, 179, 187, 196, 200, 208, 214, 219, 238, 326, 328, 332, 335, 337, 343 school question, 328, 329 Saskatchewan Royal Commission on Immigration and Settlement (1930), 201, 335 Saskatoon, elections in and Mennonites, 349

397

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

Sattler, Michael (c. 1490-1527), 18, 19, 275 Sawatsky, Walter, 319 Sawatzky, P.P., 141 Schellenberg, Harry, 351 Schimmelpenninck, Rutger Jan (1761-1825), 60, 61,62,64,65,288 Schleitheim Articles, 18-19, 21, 24 Schonfeld, Mennonite settlement in Russia, 101 Schonwiese congregation, Winnipeg, 233, 234, 237, 238, 239, 246, see also First Mennonite, Winnipeg Schreyer, Ed, Premier of Manitoba, 245, 246, 249, 350 Schroeder, Heinrich H., 201, 334, 335 Schroeder, Peter, 128 Schroeder, Victor, MLA, 249 Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel, 42 Schulz, Jacob, 350 Selkirk, federal seat of in Manitoba, 239, 245 Shantz, Jacob Y., 164, 168, 170, 321, 322 Siberia, Mennonite settlements in, 128, 148, 150, 151, 196, 311, 312, 317 Siemens, F.F., 328 Siemens, J.J. (1896-1963), cooperative movement supporter, 215 Siemens, Julius, banker, 167, 169, 174, 322, 323, 324 Sifton, Clifford, 168, 169, 171, 172, 175, 178, 322, 324 Simons, Menno (c. 1496-1561), 15, 21, 30, 132, 285 Smerchanski, Mark, 226, 228 Smissen, Jacob van der (1785-1846), 75, 278 Smith, C. Henry (1875-1948), 272, 315, 317, 333 Smith, Preserved, 269 Social Credit, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 241, 244, 341, 342, 347 Social Democrat Party, 229 socialism, 8, 115, 138, 141, 143, 147, 148, 185, 193, 215, 229, 232, 235, 242, 245, 248, 308, 309, 312, 314 sociological studies of Mennonites, 12, 13, 243, 273 Solomon, Justice John, 246, 247 Sommerfelder Church, Manitoba, 173, 179, 324, 336, 349 Sonnenfels, Joseph von, 54 South America, Mennonites in, 11, 45, 258, 262, 267, 271, 336 Soviet Union, 186, 187, 189, 193, 195, 197, 199, 201, 208, 209, 232, 234, 240, 260, 261, 269, 329 Soviet Union, Mennonites in Allrussischer Mennonitischer Landwirtschaftlicher Verein and, 147-51, 155, 313, 316, 317

alternative service issues and, 144, 145, 149 anti-religious campaigns of state, 143, 144 Bolshevik Party, see Communist Party class issues, 140, 144-45, 315 collectivization (1929- ) 152, 153, 193, 318, 338 Communist Party and, 138-40, 151-52, 154-55, 156, 158, 217, 260, 269, 314 education issues, 143, 158, 319 emigration (1923-29), 149, 316, 317, 320 identity issues, 137-38, 155-56 landless, 140, 141, 153, 314, 317 local government, 152-58, 260 nationalist policies of communists, 154-55, 319 New Economic Policy and, 142, 151, 315 political leadership, 147-48 Russian Republic, 147, 315 sympathizers with communism and, 140-41, 144, 315 Ukraine 85, 143, 147-48, 152-56, 186, 201, 243, 245, 313, 314, 315, 318, 319, 320, 334, 338 Verband der Burger Hollandischer Herkunft, 147-51, 154-55, 200, 316, 317, 318, 319, 332 Spinoza, Baruch, 56, 285 Stach, Joseph, 311,312 Stael, Abraham, Dutch minister, 287, 289 Stalin, Joseph, 217, 236, 330, 338 Stanley, Municipality of Manitoba, 170 state, studies of Anabaptist/Mennonite attitudes to, 6-7, 9-10, 11 State Duma, Russian, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 123, 124, 125, 128, 131, 132, 133, 306, 309, 310 State Peasants, 89, 92, 96, 104, 296 Stauffer, Joseph Emmett, 325 Stayer, James, 9 Steinbach Post, Mennonite newspaper, 213, 327, 332 Steinbach, Manitoba, 194, 209, 211, 216, 217, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 231, 250, 252, 333, 338, 339, 340, 344 Stinstra, Johannes (1708-90), 57 Stolypin, Peter, 124, 308 Streuber, H., 235, 347 Sudermann, Leonhard (1821-1900), 99, 299 Synod of Dort (1618-19), 27, 277 Taraska, Peter, 241 Teyler Foundation, 62 Thiessen, A.K., 333 Thiessen, A.J. "Bus," 218, 225, 342, 344 Thiessen, Abraham (1832-89), 140 Thiessen, EC. (1881-1950), 188

398

INDEX

Thiessen, J., 113, 116 Thiessen, J.J. (1893-1977), Elder, Saskatoon, 188 Thiessen, Jack, 280, 284, 344 Thiessen, Johann J., Ekaterinoslav city councillor, 304 Thiessen, Peter J., candidate for MLA, 225 Thomas, Alexandre, 73, 75 Thompson, Robert, leader of Social Credit, 342 Thorn, Mennonites in, 35, 47, 80 Todleben, Eduard, 99 Toews, David (1870-1947), 209, 333, 339 Toews, H.P., 339 Toews, Heinrich J., Ekaterinoslav city councillor, 304 Toews, S., 217 Toews, Vic, 351 toleration, 7, 25, 26, 28, 35, 41, 51, 56, 58, 71, 118, 256, 268, 277, 278, 280, 285, 307, 308 in Russia, 119-24, 135 Ukrainian state (1917-18), 138, 186 United Council of Religious Groups and Communities for the Defence of Conscientious Objectors, Moscow (1918-20), 316 United Farmers of Manitoba, 211 United States of America, 60, 161, 323 Unruh, Benjamin H. (1881-1959), 136, 139, 313, 334 Unruh, Viktor, 203 Unser Blatt, Mennonite periodical in Soviet Union, 150 urban life, Mennonite politics and, 42 in Canada, 192, 237-38, see also Winnipeg, Mennonites in in the Dutch Republic, 28, 29-30, 55-59 in German states and Germany, Altona/ Hamburg, 33-34, 42-43 Prussia, 43-36, 44-48, 65, 75-76, 79, 80, 283, 293, in Russia, 99, 111, 113, 304, 305 Ursinus, Zacharias, catechism of, 38 Valuev, Count P.A., Russian minister, 114, 298 Velitsyn, see Paltov, A.A. Verband der Burger Hollandischer Herkunft, see Soviet Union, Mennonites in Victoria, Queen, 163 Vogt, Henry, Mennonite lawyer, 182, 329 Vogt, Roy (1934-97), 250, 251, 252, 253, 351 Volk, concept of, 66, 95, 199, 336 Volkszeitung, newspaper in Winkler, 325 voting, Mennonite objections to, 165, 171, 173, 177, 179, 182, 208, 211, 212, 218, 223, 321, 323, 325, 338

Voth, Andreas, teacher, 298 Vreede, Pieter (1750-1837), 60, 61, 62, 63, 288, 289 Waldeck, 69 Waldheim, Molochna, 320 Walkof, John R., 208, 337, 340 Wall, Jake, 228 Wall, Johann, 81, 94, 294, 298 Warkentin, C.H., 236 Warkentin, Hermann, 293 Warkentin, Jacob, 91, 92, 93, 296, 297 Wartime Elections Act of 1917, 181 Waterlanders, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 277 Waterloo, Ontario, 170, 208, 212, 270, 334, Weber, Max, 115, 305 Wedel, Cornelius H. (1860-1910), 11, 272 West Prussia, 48, 73 Westphalia, constitution of Kingdom of, 291 Whittaker, William, 203, 236, 335 Wiebe, Cornelius W. (1893-1999), 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 227, 336, 337, 340, 343 Wiebe, Georg, 36 Wiebe, Gerhard, 159, 171 Wiebe, Johann Philipp, 113 Wiebe, Philipp (d. 1870), 101 Wiens, Claas, 296 Wiens, G.G., 334 Wiens, Heinrich (1800-72), Elder, Molochna, 93, 94, 297, 313, 314 Wiens, Jacob, 326 Wiens, Jacob, of Lowe Farm, 177 Wiens, B.B., 332 William I of Prussia, 77, 79 Williams, George H., 8, 9, 269 Willms, A.M., 339 Willms, Jacob, 242 Winkler, Enoch, 169, 170, 171, 172, 176 Winkler, Howard, 205, 210, 213, 293, 336, 337, 338, 340 Winkler, town of, 166, 171, 172, 173, 174, 177, 180, 205, 207-08, 210, 213, 216, 218, 232, 322 Mennonite Brethren in, 170, 175, 176, 203, 205, 207, 335, 336, 337, 338, 346 Winkler, Valentine, 170, 171, 172, 174, 176, 180, 205, 322, 323, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 336 Winnipeg, Mennonites in, 164, 166, 167, 173, 181, 196, 200, 203, 210, 217, 219, 224 295, 307, 308, 312, 315, 316, 317, 319, 321, 322, 323, 325, 326, 330, 332, 333, 334, 335, 339, 341, 346, 347, 348 communists in, 229, 231, 345-46 elections in, 241-42, 244-47, 249-54; contested issues concerning, 245-47, 350 General Strike (1919), 232

399

MENNONITES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLEHOOD

German communities and, 235 local government and, 234-35, 241 Mennonite Brethren in 231-33, 239, 244 North Kildonan, 233, 234, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 348 North Winnipeg, electoral seat of, 229 post-war immigrants, 240 Russlander in, 232-34, 235, 236, 237-38, Nazi sympathies of, 236-37, 347, 348 religious differences among, 239, 244. 348 Unicity, 240

Witte, Sergei, 113 Workum, Friesland, Mennonites in, 58, 287 Wiirttemberg, 67, 74 Yasykovo, 141 Yoder, John Howard, 267, 269, 343 Yushanlee, Mennonite estate in Russia, 105 Zagradovka, Mennonite daughter colony in Russia, 301 zemstva, 100, 111, 113, 117, 153, 304, 305 Zijpp, Nanne van der (1900-65), Dutch historian, 7, 267, 287

400