Klaas Reimer

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Klaas Reimer (born October 16, 1770 in Petershagen , Royal Prussia , Poland , † December 28, 1837 ) was a Mennonite preacher and founder of the community movement Small Congregation (today: Evangelical Mennonite Conference ).

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Reimer came from a well-off farming family in the Großer Werder. When he was twenty, he was baptized in the Flemish congregation in Gdansk . In 1798 Reimer finally moved to the town of Neunhuben not far from Danzig and married Maria Epp, who like him came from a Mennonite family and with whom he soon took over a farm job. In 1801 they both had a daughter. In the same year Reimer was also elected preacher of the Gdańsk rural community. Although he had no higher education or a degree in theology, Reimer now dealt intensively with the Bible as well as the martyrs mirror and the writings of the early Anabaptists. This solidified his pacifist attitude, but he also developed a strict moralism .

In 1804, Reimer and his family moved to the Ukraine , where they and other Mennonite immigrants founded a number of settlements within the Molochna colony . Reimer and his family became co-founders of the Russian Mennonites . His wife Maria died just two years later. Reimer married Helene Friesen the following year, whose marriage would eventually have ten children.

Reimer saw the further development of the Mennonite communities in Ukraine increasingly critical. Above all, the fact that the Russian-German Mennonites had complied with the Russian government's request for financial support for the fight against the Napoleonic troops met with his resistance. His criticism was shared among others by Cornelius Janzen, who like Reimer was active as a preacher in the Mennonite settlements of Ukraine. In 1812 a group finally gathered around the two of them and a separate parish was created, which was soon given the nickname Small Parish due to its size . In contrast to this stood the mother community of the Molotschna colony, which was known colloquially as the Great Community . The new congregation founded by Reimer emphasized above all moral aspects and demanded a simple lifestyle. Nonviolence was also one of the central pillars of the new group. The small community was not recognized by the authorities or the other Mennonite communities in the first few years. Cornelius Janzen finally turned back to the mother community in 1822, but the small community was able to establish itself in the long term. Reimer himself fell ill unexpectedly in 1837 and died that same year at the age of only 67.

The small community continued after Reimer's death. With the beginning of emigration of Russian-German Mennonites to North America in 1874 the congregation moved nearly closed after North America . Most of them settled here in Manitoba , Canada . A smaller group of about 36 families settled in Nebraska . The Small Congregation in Manitoba then expanded further and in the 20th century also increasingly opened up to the English language and not least to evangelical forms of congregation and worship. Since 1960 it has acted as an independent Mennonite community movement under the name Evangelical Mennonite Conference ( Evangelical Mennonite Conference ).

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personal data
SURNAME Reimer, Klaas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mennonite preacher
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1770
PLACE OF BIRTH Petershagen , Royal Prussia , Poland
DATE OF DEATH December 28, 1837