And Now Some History from Uncle Don

Mennonites in the Vistula River Delta

Uncle Jim asked me to contribute to his work in chronicling the history of the Toews side of our ancestry, largely because Gloria, Michelle, and I are the members of the family who have visited the area occupied by the former Molotschna Colony of German Mennonites.  I will attempt to provide some insight into the members of the colony in three steps: (1) identifying their origin; (2) describing their migration to south Russia; and (3) describing life in the colony.

Information regarding our Toews and Franz ancestry extends back only to 1780 with the birth of Franz Tows (later spelled Toews) in Altenau (near Heubuden), West Prussia.  As a result, we do not know the earlier origins of the family.  Luella Toevs Wiese (Franz Toews, From Heubuden, West Prussia, to Mountain Lake, Minnesota 1812-1898) speculates that early ancestors were part of the Waldensian movement which began prior to the Protestant Reformation (p. 6).  The available evidence indicates that our Toews ancestors were clearly identified as Mennonites, though some may have been connected with the Waldenses.

Peter Waldo (alternatively spelled Valdes or Valdo) was a wealthy businessman who took a vow of poverty, distributed his wealth, and began to preach in Lyons, France, from 1170-1176.  The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Lyons condemned Waldo and his fellow preachers because they lacked approved theological training and used a non-Latin version of the Bible.  These men continued their activity as itinerant preachers.  Pope Lucius III issued a papal bull titled Ad abolendam in 1184 which placed the Waldenses under a ban.  The Waldenses based their teaching on a simple reading of Scripture, accepting the Bible as their sole authority for all doctrine.  As a result, they rejected most of the seven sacraments of Roman Catholicism, insisted on adult baptism via full immersion, understood the elements of the Lord’s Supper to be symbols, and rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation, purgatory, confession to a priest, indulgences, and the practice of praying for the dead.  The movement spread rapidly to Spain, northern France, Flanders, Germany, and southern Italy, even reaching into Poland and Hungary.  Waldensian groups met in homes, stables, and other locations.  The Roman church moved from excommunicating them to persecuting and executing them.  The Waldenses were among the earliest Anabaptists.

Menno Simons was born in Friesland (northern Netherlands) in 1496.  He grew up in an area inhabited primarily by peasants and in an environment torn by war.  Simons trained for the Roman Catholic priesthood, studying Latin, Greek, and writings of the Church Fathers, but not the Bible.  He was ordained as a priest in 1515-16.  Because of concerns regarding the teaching of transubstantiation, Simons began to study the Bible in earnest for the first time.  He concluded in the early 1530s that infant baptism was not found in the Bible.  After he was transferred to serve as the priest of a church in Witmarsum, he came into contact with a group of Anabaptists.  While there were numerous Anabaptist groups whose belief systems varied, they generally adopted the following beliefs or practices: (1) baptism of believers only; (2) nonconformity to the world; (3) nonviolence; (4) free will; (5) freedom of religion; (6) the priesthood of the believer; (7) separation of church and state; (8) shunning; and, (9) a simple way of life.

Sometime later, Menno experienced a spiritual and mental crisis.  He wrote that he “prayed to God with sighs and tears that He would give to me, a sorrowing sinner, the gift of His grace, create within me a clean heart, and graciously through the merits of the crimson blood of Christ, He would graciously forgive my unclean walk and unprofitable life. . . .”

Menno Simons left the Roman Catholic Church on January 12, 1536, and was baptized by immersion soon after.  News of his conversion spread quickly.  By October of that year two men were arrested for sheltering him!  Simons was ordained by an Anabaptist group in 1537.  In 1539 he wrote the following in a tract titled Why I Do Not Cease Teaching and Writing: “For true evangelical faith is of such a nature that it cannot lie dormant; but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love; it dies unto flesh and blood; destroys all forbidden lusts and desires; cordially seeks, serves and fears God; clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; consoles the afflicted; shelters the miserable; aids and consoles all the oppressed; returns good for evil; serves those that injure it; prays for those that persecute it; teaches, admonishes and reproves with the Word of the Lord; seeks that which is lost; binds up that which is wounded; heals that which is diseased and saves that which is sound. The persecution, suffering and anxiety which befalls it for the sake of the truth of the Lord, is to it a glorious joy and consolation.”

Simons’ influence spread so quickly and widely that Anabaptists in the Netherlands were being called Mennonites or Mennists by 1544.  They multiplied in the regions of Friesland, Flanders, Eastern Frisia, and Holstein.  However, the Mennonites met with resistance and persecution from the people among whom they lived.  Religious persecution under Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, the 3^rd Duke of Alba, forced many of them to leave during the 16^th century.

In the 1530s Dutch Mennonites moved from the Netherlands and Belgium to the area of Danzig (Gdansk) in Royal Prussia.  It appears that Menno Simons visited this community in Danzig in 1549.  Dirk Philips led in the establishment of the first Mennonite church there in 1569.  Before long, approximately 1,000 Mennonites lived in the city.  Mennonites were permitted to practice their faith, but were denied citizenship.  As their business acumen led to growing prosperity, local residents complained.  As a result, opportunities to support their families became more and more limited.  In 1586 the Polish King asked the council of Danzig not to tolerate this “human plague” inside the city.

In 1562 a Danzig council member named Michael Loitz obtained a lease of property near the confluence of the Vistula River and the Tiege.  He invited Mennonites to settle there and to use their skills to cultivate the marshland in the Vistula delta.  They constructed windmills like those used in the Low Countries to drain the swamps and turn them into tillable land.  Mennonites were permitted to sponsor their own schools, but were required to pay school fees for the public school in addition.  Plautdeutsch, a mixture of Dutch and the Low Prussian dialect of the region, became the common language of Mennonites in the area.

The Vistula delta and the suburbs of Danzig became part of the Kingdom of Prussia following the Partitions of Poland in 1772.  12,032 Mennonites lived in what had become Prussian territory.  Their religious faith was tolerated, but the Mennonites were subjected increasingly to special laws and extra taxes.  Only men who served in the Prussian army were permitted to purchase land tenure.  Conscientious objectors were subject to special charges.  These regulations made the economic prospects for younger Mennonites quite bleak.

Luella Wiese lists some of the pressures faced by Mennonites in the Vistula valley toward the end of the two centuries in which they lived there.  Political power alternated between Prussian and Polish governments through the years, resulting in instability and the need to negotiate leases of land owned by Prussians.  Non-Mennonites attempted to drive Mennonite families from their land.  Catholic and Lutheran neighbors complained that the valley was being overrun by Mennonites, resulting in extremely high tax levies against their land and privileges.  The Lutheran church was supported by a tax on the land of its members.  Because Mennonites had ownership of 90,000 acres of property, the income of the established church and its schools was diminished.  In 1789 the ruler issued an edict require Mennonites to pay taxes to the state church and prohibiting them from purchasing any additional land in Prussia.  In addition, he demanded that Mennonite young men serve in the military.  Luella Wiese wrote, “It was time for the Mennonites to look for a new home.”

In 1786, an agent of the Russian government attempted to recruit settlers for regions which had been conquered from the Ottoman Empire.  During the decades which followed, approximately 6,000 Mennonites, most from the settlements in the Vistula delta, left for Russia.  They formed the roots of the Russian Mennonites who settled first in the Chortitza Colony and later in the Molotschna Colony.  Franz Toews II, my great-great grandfather, moved from Prussia to the Molotschna Colony at some point prior to 1851.  More about that in the next essay.