Mennonite Life Includes Treatments of Anabaptist Mennonite Expe Rience in Literature and Social History
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MENNONITE LIFEJUNE 1994 In This Issue This issue of Mennonite Life includes treatments of Anabaptist Mennonite expe rience in literature and social history. The authors of the two lead articles, Anthony R. Epp and Calvin Redekop, are long time contributors to the pages of this journal. Epp reports on the works of the nineteenth century French authors Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian, who included Anabaptist figures in four novels, one play, and one short story. In Epp’s judgement, Erckmann and Chatrian must have had personal contacts with Alsatian Mennonites. The Erckmann-Chatrian Mennonite characters reflect the authors’ ideal of tolerance for dissenters. Anthony R. Epp is a member of the foreign languages faculty, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, Nebraska. He has been on a sabbatical assignment at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, during the 1993-1994 school year. Calvin and Benjamin Redekop tell a remarkable tale from experiences in a Men nonite settlement in South Russia as preserved in the Redekop family oral tradition. Such stories of bankruptcy, betrayal, and punishment can be a warning against any tendencies to romanticize the idyllic life of Mennonite villagers in the so-called “Golden Age” of Russian Mennonitism. Calvin Redekop is a retired professor of sociology, living in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is the author of Mennonite Society (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). This issue includes the Radical Reformation and Mennonite Bibliography, an an nual feature in our June issue. Barbara Thiesen is the Technical Services Librarian and Co-Director of Libraries at Bethel College. James C. Juhnke 2 MENNONITE LIFE MENNONITE June 1994 Vol. 49 No. 2 Editor James C. Juhnke Erckmann-Chatrian: Anabaptists in the Works of the Alsatian Author Duo 4 Managing Editor and Book Review Editor Anthony R. Epp John D. Thiesen The Naumenko Mill Fever 11 Editorial Assistant Calvin Redekop and Benjamin Redekop IV Barbara Thiesen Radical Reformation and Mennonite 15 Front Cover Bibliography The Benjamin Redekopp flour mill in Barbara Thiesen Bliznetsy near Petrovka about 1907 (company included Neufeld and Wiebe). Book Reviews 27 Back Cover Benjamin F. Redekopp and Benjamin Redekopp III, managers of the flour mills. Photo Credits Front cover, pp. 12,13, Calvin Redekop; pp. 6, 7, Anthony R. Epp; p. 8, Men nonite Library and Archives, Bethel College. MENNONITE LIFE (ISSN 0025-9365) is an illustrated quarterly magazine published in March, June, September, and December by Bethel College, 300 East 27th, North Newton, Kansas 67117-9989. Second Class postage paid at North Newton, Kansas 67117. POSTMAS TER: Send address changes to MENNONITE LIFE, Bethel College, 300 East 27th, North Newton, Kansas 67117-9989. SUBSCRIPTION RATES: U.S. one year, SI 5.00; two years, S22.0Ü. Foreign one year, SI8.00; two years S25.00 (U.S. funds). Indexed with abstracts in Religion Index One: Periodicals, American Theological Library As sociation, Chicago, Illinois; Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life, ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, California; and available online through BRS (Bibliographic Retrieval Serv ices), Lathain, New York, and DIALOG, Palo Alto, California. JUNE 1994 3 Erckmann-Chatrian Anabaptists in the Works of the Alsatian Author Duo by Anthony R. Epp Emile Erckmann (1821-1899) and all). Finally, their love of country, spe macy of preserving rights achieved Alexandre Chatrian (1826-1890), both cifically of their native Alsace and of through the Revolution, and the need for born in Alsace, France, collaborated neighboring Lorraine, both of which the religious tolerance. In recounting the over a forty year period, writing under Prussians under Bismarck incorporated wars of this period from the people’s the hyphenated name Erckmann- into Germany in 1871, contributed sub point of view, they consistently empha Chatrian as if they were one person, to stantially to their popular appeal. It is size the horror of war, sometimes in create popular literature of the sort as if they were trying to instill pride in detail which would rival the graphic which became school prize literature. region as well as country. portrayals of modern cinema. The ninety-third edition of one work, “When one has had the good fortune of be Without knowing why, I dragged myself out of the ruts and propped myself against the dating from the nineteenth century, tes ing born in the Vosges [Mountains],” lie said, “between Haut-Bar, Nideck and Geierstein, wall, and scareely had I done so when two tifies to the most tangible proof of their one should never dream of traveling.” (“Une sixteen pounders, each drawn by six horses, having created truly popular literature. Nuit dans le bois,” p. 2) turned the corner at the first house with all In a second sense, “popular” would de The authors continue this passage by de their strength, and the wheels rolled over the heaps o f dead and wounded as if they were scribe the market for their success, be tailing the wonders and bounty of na going over straw; bones snapped. Now 1 cause although their works have never ture as manifested in Alsace. With a de knew whence came the cries that I had been achieved status as required or even rec tailed map, one can find the Alsatian cit hearing, and my hair stood on end with hor ommended reading on graduate school ies, villages, waterways, and mountains ror. [The words in italics are eliminated from at least one English version.] (llistoire d'un lists in departments of French (at least where Erckmann-Chatrian situate their consent de I 81 3, p. 185) not in the United States) the people stories. Yet the horrors do indeed permeate all themselves clamored for those very Apart from their short stories, a genre their works dealing with war and works in which they found the authors in which the supernatural constitutes Erckmann-Chatrian see those horrors as portraying them with great realism their major theme, Erckmann-Chatrian inevitable. (from mores to costumes to language) grounded their historical literature, pri But that's the way men are: the fear of being rather than with the caricatures to which marily novels, almost exclusively on the captured makes them barbarians. ( Waterloo. Alsatians have sometimes been sub century of French history beginning Suite du Consent de 1813, p. 276) jected in the wider French culture. In with the Revolution of 1789. In creat Even in Yegof the Madman or the Inva cluded in that realism one finds occa ing what is called “national literature,” sion o f France in 18I4,a work in which sional references to Anabaptists as part they focused on the formative events of the authors preach the necessity of na of the human scenery. In still another that century: the French Revolution, the tional defense, Erckmann-Chatrian con sense the word “popular” applies to their phenomenon of Napoleon and the en tinue to underscore the inevitable bar works in that they retell French history suing Napoleonic Wars, the restoration barism which envelops human behav from the point of view of the common of the monarchy, the Revolution of ior in time of war, even the behavior of people who endure history rather than 1830, the Revolution of 1848, the Sec those on the “good” side. from that of those whom historians usu ond Empire under Napoleon III, the At the foot of the bank were heaps of ally treat as the heroic creators of his Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), and wounded, dragging themselves along the tory. As champions of the people, ground. The trodden-down snow was red the consequent annexation of Alsace- with blood. In the midst of the piles of dead Erckmann-Chatrian exhibit a fourth Lorraine to Bismarck’s newly-united were two young officers, still alive, but un “popular” trait by representing the rights Germany. able to disengage themselves from their dead of the people (such as religious toler Their works teem with a consistent set horses. It was horrible! But men arc, in fact, sav ance, freedom from oppression by an of viewpoints and prejudices: an abhor ages: there was not one among the moun alliance of state and religion, and the rence of war, the necessity of defend taineers who pitied those poor wretches; but, right to primary school education for ing the endangered fatherland, the pri on the contrary, they seemed to rejoice at the 4 MENNONITE LIFE sight. ( Yegof the Madman, p. 180-181) You think it is fine to take their country and when the two provinces were reincor In rare cases Erckmann-Chatrian even to make them French, in spite of themselves? porated into France. Already in the six That is sport. You think that is sport! Would express their stance against the horrors you like to become a German? Would you teenth century, Anabaptists had arrived of war with biting irony: like to obey the Prussians and put aside your in Alsace-Lorraine, and although per for excepting Nicolas Rabeau, former drum country for another? Would it profit us to do secution annihilated their early settle major for the fourteenth line, master of arms such a thing as that? Would it make us richer ments, the Anabaptists were again thriv and French graces, who had had the glory of to tear out the souls o f our neighbors? Would being skewered by a Cossack and o f render that leave us a good conscience? (Brigadier ing in seventeenth century Alsace. Un ing his soul on the field o f honor, with that Frederick, p. 52) der the reign of Louis XIV, in the wake one exception, all the others had gotten by Indeed they single out patriotism gone of his Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, with getting knocked about.