Bernhard Harder

Bernhard Harder (born December 15, 1878 in Alexandertal Mennonite settlement Alt-Samara ; † July 15, 1970 in Hanau ) was a Mennonite entrepreneur , preacher and writer and head of the "Big City Mission for Hamburg and Altona".

Life

Origin and family

Bernhard Harder was the youngest of five children in the Mennonite family Julius and Elisabeth Harder from Klein-Lichtenau in Danziger Werder. The Harder family moved to Alt-Samara on the last West Prussian trek in 1878, where Bernhard was born shortly after their arrival. After the early death of Julius and Elisabeth Harder, their children were taken in by various relatives, as was the custom among the Mennonites. Harder was raised in Mennonite piety and tradition by both his parents and his foster family.

Bernhard Harder had been married to Katharina Dyck since 1899 and had two sons, the later writer and socialist Johannes Harder and the painter Alexander Harder.

Professional and spiritual career up to the Russian Revolution

At the age of 16 Bernhard Harder went to the Mennonite settlement of Molotschna , where he learned the metalworking and blacksmithing trade. During this time he was baptized by the elder of the Mennonite community in Gnadenfeld, Heinrich Dirks.

After his return he opened his own blacksmith's workshop in Neuhoffnung ( Mennonite settlement of Alt-Samara ), which, however, was not sustainable in the small colony. Together with three other entrepreneurs, he opened the “Harder, Wiebe and Co.” office building in the Russian market town of Koschki in 1909 to sell agricultural machinery and equipment . In a short period of time, sales were so high that several branches were set up in various parts of the country. In the following years Harder traveled extensively on business through Russia , including Siberia , and established contacts with foreign companies in Germany , Sweden and the USA, thus establishing a broad network of connections between the Mennonite colony on the Volga and international trading houses.

In addition to his business activities, Harder was involved in the youth work of the Mennonite congregation in the colony, where he also worked as a preacher.

After the outbreak of the First World War , Harder and his family were expropriated because of their German citizenship and, like 20,000 other German citizens, were interned in Orenburg , where they remained until the February Revolution of 1917.

After the outbreak of the Russian Revolution , Harder returned to the Mennonite settlement of Alt-Samara and began building a consumer cooperative for his closer home area. At the same time he got involved in youth work in the Mennonite community. After he had come to the conclusion through the first negotiations with the representatives of the Soviet revolution that any private economic initiative would soon come to an end, he decided without further ado to leave Russia. Together with over 20 other Germans, he and his family left Russia on an eventful trek and initially settled in Marienburg (West Prussia).

Activity during the Weimar Republic

After the end of the war in 1918, Harder was hired at a shipyard in Elbing . At the same time he began a broad and active preaching activity and youth work among the Mennonite congregations of the Kleiner Werder. In 1923 the missionary organization “ Light in the East ” in Wernigerode aH gave him the position of householder of the seminar and at the same time a teaching position for the former Russian prisoners of war .

Harder devoted himself actively and extensively to his biblical-theological studies and spent two years in several Polish and Baltic communities with lectures and courses on biblical and theological topics.

Engagement in the "Big City Mission for Hamburg and Altona"

From 1930 to 1950 Harder was the head of the “Big City Mission for Hamburg and Altona”, which included a home for babies, an old people's home, a “home for morally endangered female youth”, a seminar for community helpers in the Slavic communities of Eastern Europe, a large children's home and had a preaching place in the old Mennonite church on the Große Freiheit.

He edited the monthly “Wort und Werk”, which, due to its clear course, faithful to the Bible, received particular attention in circles of the Confessing Church even during the National Socialist period . After the end of the Second World War , Harder devoted himself to the reconstruction of the homes of the Metropolitan Mission, which were destroyed during the bombing of Hamburg in 1943 .

Last years of life and death

After his wife died in 1949 after almost 50 years of marriage, Harder moved in 1951 to his son, the painter Alexander Harder, in the Spessart. Here he wrote the book "Alexandertal: History of the Last German Tribal Settlement in Russia", which appeared in Berlin in 1955 and describes the history of the Mennonite settlement of Alt-Samara . In 1951 he married a second time. Bernhard Harder died on July 15, 1970 in Hanau .

literature

• Mennonite Yearbook 1954. Mennonite Publication Office, USA, pp. 3-6.
• Viktor Fast (Ed.): Temporary home. 150 years of praying and working in Old Samara (Alexandertal and Konstantinow) . Samenkorn, Steinhagen 2009, ISBN 978-3-936894-86-8 .
• Bernhard Harder: Alexandertal. The history of the last German tribal settlement in Russia. Kohnert, Berlin undated [1955].
• Wilhelm Matthies: History of the formation of the Mennonite colony of Old Samara . Alexandertal 1927, unpublished manuscript.