Mennonite emigration
The emigration of Mennonites , especially from Germany and Switzerland, has led to the formation of larger Mennonite communities in America as well as in Russia . Today most of the Mennonites in the world live in America.
reasons
The Anabaptists were persecuted by state and church as early as the Reformation . The Swiss reformer Zwingli, for example, insisted that the Anabaptists should be beheaded by virtue of imperial rights and called on the city council of Zurich to exterminate the Anabaptists with all available means. Zwingli's successor in Zurich Heinrich Bullinger explains with reference to the Anabaptists: We have absolutely nothing in common with them! Luther saw ghosts and heretics in the Anabaptists and advised them to be judged unheard of and irresponsible . The Anabaptist mandate issued by Emperor Charles V in 1529 forbade the baptism of those who were baptized under threat of the death penalty . Several resolutions of the Reichstag stipulated that the Mennonites, known as Anabaptists, should be exterminated with fire and sword . Numerous Anabaptists died as martyrs. In this context, Anabaptist researchers today speak, analogous to the genocide , of an ecclesiocide, which was then perpetrated on the Anabaptists.
Most of the Anabaptist leaders who took part in the first Synod of Anabaptists in Augsburg in 1527 were also killed, which earned the synod the name of the Augsburg Synod of Martyrs . Many cities and princes issued mandates against the Anabaptists, such as that of the Bern Council of 1585.
The Mennonites were expressly excluded from the right ( ius emigrandi ) mentioned in the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 to be allowed to emigrate to countries of their faith. The Mennonites were also not recognized in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The northern Netherlands was an exception , where the Mennonites were at least tolerated from 1579.
Start of emigration
Many Anabaptists and Mennonites had to emigrate early on. The first Anabaptists from southern Germany and Austria often fled to Moravia , where communities of the also Anabaptist Hutterites had already formed. Many emigrated from Switzerland to the Vosges in Alsace and, especially after the Thirty Years' War, to the Palatinate , where they were tolerated by the electors in exchange for protection money. Many families also settled in the Emmental and later in the Bernese Jura in order to escape their captors. It was not until 1815 that the Mennonites were tolerated in Switzerland via an edict of tolerance . In West Germany, Krefeld and Neuwied became places of refuge for fleeing Mennonites. Several families from the Palatinate settled near Lemberg in Galicia in 1784 . After the First Partition of Poland, Galicia had become Austrian and Emperor Joseph II, with an edict of tolerance, recruited Protestant settlers to the region, which is otherwise populated by Russians . The last Mennonites living in Galicia were expelled after the Second World War .
Many from the Netherlands went to the newly founded cities of Friedrichstadt , Glückstadt or Altona . A Flemish Mennonite congregation was also founded in Lübeck . However, the vast majority of them emigrated to Royal Prussia , which belonged to the Polish crown , where they cultivated the lowlands of the Vistula-Nogat Delta near Danzig . Here they built dikes and canals and in this way were able to use the land for successful agriculture. As they brought economic advantages to the cities and landowners, their religion was tolerated here. Starting from the first settlements in West Prussia , urban communities also emerged in Danzig, Elbing and, at times, in Königsberg and, from 1713, settlements in Memelland .
When Royal Prussia came to the Kingdom of Prussia after the First Partition of Poland in 1772 , the situation for the Mennonites changed significantly. Although Frederick the Great granted them a new privilege in 1780 , the approximately 12,000 Mennonites in West Prussia, with their refusal of military service, now opposed the wish of the Prussian kings to enlarge their army . Although they were still exempt from military service, their further spread was prevented.
Russia and Ukraine
At the invitation of Catherine II and Paul I , thousands of Mennonites migrated from West Prussia to the Russian Empire from the end of the 18th century . The new settlers of Dutch and North German origins were supposed to cultivate the areas recaptured by the Turks. Over the course of a few decades, the Russian mennonites founded two large mother colonies with up to a hundred villages on the Dnieper River . The first settlement Chortitza has also become known as the old colony. Today there is the Ukrainian city of Zaporozhye . The second Mennonite settlement center Molotschna was called a new colony. During the second half of the 19th century, daughter colonies soon emerged in other regions of Russia, such as Barnaul (Slavgorod) and New Samara .
After the introduction of general conscription in Russia in 1870, around a third of the Russian mennonites emigrated to the USA and Canada from 1874 , where they settled mainly in Manitoba (western reserve and eastern reserve). Another 23,000 emigrated in the 1920s. From the USA some groups made their way to northern Mexico and as far as Paraguay .
See also Russian mennonites
North America
The first Mennonite emigrants to North America came in the late 17th century. They settled mainly in Pennsylvania , where they founded Germantown ( Deitscheschteddel ) with other German emigrants . In 1708 they were able to inaugurate the first Mennonite church in Deitscheschteddel. In addition to Pennsylvania, Mennonite settlements also emerged in Virginia , Ohio , Indiana and Illinois . From Pennsylvania, many Mennonites migrated to Canada in 1786 , where they settled in Ontario . In another large wave of immigration between 1717 and 1758, another 3500 Mennonites immigrated to Pennsylvania. Many of them were Amish . Between 1817 and 1860 more than 3,000 Mennonites came to settle around the Great Lakes . The Mennonite emigrants came mainly from southwest Germany , Alsace and Switzerland . To this day, many of them speak the Pennsylvania Dutch ( Pennsylvania Deitsch ), which was derived from southern German dialects . The first German edition of the Anabaptist-Mennonite Martyrs Mirror was printed in America in 1748 .
The newly formed congregations soon networked and founded regional conferences, from which the Mennonite Church was formed. In 1725, at a conference of Mennonite preachers in Pennsylvania, the Dordrecht Confession of 1632 was adopted. In addition to the existing church structures, the General Conference Mennonite Church was established in 1860 . The Mennonite Church USA and the Mennonite Church Canada later formed from the union of the two North American churches .
From 1874 Russian-German Mennonites joined the group, who emigrated to America before the introduction of Russian conscription. They mainly settled in Manitoba, Canada . From their ranks came the American Mennonite Brethren Churches ( Mennonite Brethren Churches ). Between 1922 and 1925, more than 20,000 Mennonites fled to Canada from the now communist-ruled Russia. The last major wave of Russian-German Mennonites immigrating to Canada took place between 1947 and 1954, when up to 10,000 people immigrated. Among them were also expellees from West Prussia . From Canada, in turn, many Canadian Mennonites moved on to Latin America in several waves . Between 1922 and 1926 and again in 1948, many Canadian Mennonites emigrated to Mexico and in 1926 to South America . These were mostly members of the old colonists and the Sommerfeld Mennonites.
Latin America
The emigration movement from Canada to Latin America began after the First World War, during which the Mennonites had to experience that neither their refusal to do military service nor their own German-speaking schools in Canada were secure. About 7,000 Mennonites therefore emigrated to northern Mexico in the 1920s and about 1,300 to the Chaco in Paraguay.
In Mexico there is a large colony of Mennonites around Cuauhtémoc . The formerly not particularly fertile region has become a larger apple-growing area through water drilling . In Michoacán , wheat production and cattle breeding dominate. Other settlements are located on the Yucatán Peninsula in the states of Yucatán and Campeche . In the meantime, they have successfully established themselves on the Mexican market with cheese and butter production .
The Chaco region in Paraguay was the center of the first Mennonite settlements in South America . The first settlement here was the Menno settlement in 1927 , which was built by Mennonite immigrants from Canada . The Fernheim settlement followed between 1930 and 1932 with the Filadelfia center (in German brotherly love ). Fernheim was founded by Russian Mennonites who fled Russia under Stalin . After the Second World War , the Neuland colony was finally created with the central town of Neu Halbstadt.
The settlements have been funded by the German side since they were founded. Even today there are several teachers who were placed and sent there by the Federal Office of Administration in Cologne . The German Society for Technical Cooperation is also active in the Chaco.
In 1958 Mennonites emigrated from Mexico to Belize in Central America , at that time still a British colony called British Honduras . There the Mennonites play an important role, especially for agriculture. Their settlements are found primarily in the Belize River valley and the Orange Walk District .
Between the two world wars, Mennonites fled from Russia and settled in Brazil and Uruguay . In both countries there was soon a very strong assimilation, so that over the decades the traditional Mennonite way of life and the German language continued to decline among many Mennonites.
The first Mennonites from the Paraguayan Chaco immigrated to Bolivia in the 1950s and founded their own agricultural colonies. In the late 1960s, larger groups of Mennonites from Mexico followed, who sought refuge in Bolivia from the modernization tendencies in Mexico. Subsequently, other conservative Russian Mennonites from Canada and Belize, as well as other groups from Paraguay and Mexico came to Bolivia. Conservative Mennonites then migrated from Mexico to Argentina in the 1980s .
In 2015 there were over 100,000 Russian Mennonites in Mexico, around 75,000 in Bolivia, around 40,000 in Paraguay, around 10,000 in Belize, as many in Brazil and several thousand in Argentina, all in all around 250,000 people. Latin America has thus become the main settlement area for Russian Mennonites.
From Mexico in particular, there has been a steady stream of returnees to Canada, especially since the 1950s, but also of emigrants to the USA, especially to the area around Seminole, Gaines County, Texas.
See also
literature
- Horst Penner : Worldwide brotherhood - Mennonite history book , 4th edition, Weierhof 1984
- Hans-Jürgen Goertz : The Mennonites , in: The Churches of the World, Stuttgart 1971
Web links
- Mennonite Weekly Review
- Article on the history of the old colonial Mennonites
- Hans-Jürgen Hübner: Germans in Canada
swell
- ↑ Clarence Baumann: Nonviolence as a hallmark of the community . In: Hans-Jürgen Goertz (Ed.): The Mennonites . Evangelisches Verlagswerk, Stuttgart 1971, p. 129 .
- ↑ Jan Christoph Wiechmann: Life like in the 17th century - Mennonites in Bolivia - The terrible idyll. They don't know about the wars in the world or about the internet. In Bolivia the Mennonites live their godly life as in the 17th century. Whoever does not obey will be beaten. Stern, December 17, 2014