HALBSTADT LIEBENAU RUDNERWEIDE MARGE NAU OLOTSCHNA HISTORICA A.TLA.S Helmut T. Huebert LICHTFELDE OHRLOFF GROSSWEIDE R U E C K E N A U -- - - --- -~ OLOTSCHNA HISTORICA A_TLA_S JA luwS c-:~ · :-; .. 5.IL~'J.l7L _. ! . Nf6.........• 7,,.w/ '.i OLOTSCHNA HISTORICA .ATL.AS HELMUT T. HUEBERT [SB SPRINGFIELD PUBLISHERS WINNIPEG, CANADA 2003 Published by Springfield Publishers of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Huebert, Helmut T., 1935- Molotschna historical atlas/Helmut T. Huebert. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-920643-08-6 1. Molotschna (Ukraine)--Historical geography--Maps. 2. Mem10nites--Ukraine--Molotschna--History--Maps. I. Title G2152.M65H84 2003 911'.4771 C2003-906954-0 All cartography by Helmut T. Huebert. Some maps from the Mennonite Historical Atlas. A number of maps originally drawn by William Schroeder (marked with a WS in a lower comer). Other maps originally drawn by Helmut T. Huebert (marked with a HTH in a lower comer). Cover design by Lorie Mayer MOLOTSCHNA HISTORICAL ATLAS Copyright© 2003 by Springfield Publishers, 6 Litz Place, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, R2G OV 1, E-mail [email protected] All rights reserved. With the exception of brief excerpts for review or very limited copying of maps for strictly private use, no part of this book may be reproduced without written permission by the publisher. International Standard Book Number 0-920643-08-6 Printed in Canada by Christian Press lV DEDICATION This atlas is dedicated to our parents, all of whom lived in the Molotschna. Peter Rempel was born on Tiegenhof Estate, but then in the difficult times moved to Petershagen with his family. He was baptized in the Petershagen Mennonite Church. He completed his teacher training in Halbstadt, then taught in Rosenort. Katharina Baerkmann was born and raised in Ladekopp. She attended the Neu-Halbstadt Maedchenschule, then completed the teacher training in Halbstadt. She taught a year in the same school in Ladekopp where she had been a pupil. Peter and Katharina were married, and shortly after emigrated to Canada, in 1924. Gerhard David Huebert was born in Margenau. Orphaned by age eleven, he subsequently lived with his brothers. He preached his first sermon at the Alexanderthal Mennonite Brethren Church, where he lived with brother Heinrich. He went to the Gnadenfeld Zentralschule, living with his half-brother, Kornelius Martens. Katharina Willms was born and raised in Hierschau, and was extremely proud of her home village. After her mother died, she and her siblings planned to emigrate to Canada. Just prior to departure an attempted robbery at their house resulted in the murder of a friend. Gerhard and Katharina emigrated to Canada in 1926 with their siblings. They met in Alberta, and were married in 1933. This atlas is also dedicated to the thousands of Mennonites who did not manage to escape the terrors of what must have been one the most brutal regimes ever to have existed - both to those who lost their lives, usually after untold suffering, but but also to those who survived the long and dark night of barbaric cruelty. V FOREWORD The Mennonite Molotschna settlement region has been an area of central interest for students of Mennonite history for two centuries, really ever since it was founded 200 years ago. The first settlers of the steppe area just to the east of the Molochnaya River actually did not reach the territory until 1804, although earlier Mennonite land scouts had been there in the initial period of investigation of New Russia nearly twenty years earlier. They were not the first to seek out these lands for settlement. Russian peasants had been around since 1783, well before the Mennonite Chortitza families founded their colony on the Dniepr River to the northwest of the Molotschna six years later. A Mennonite grandmother once told her young grandchild about helping to begin the Mennonite village of Gnadenfeld in 183 5: "They came to barren steppe ... no tree, no bush, only tall dry bitter grass and prickly camel fodder grew on the dry, cracked ground." This volume has a great deal to say about the larger picture of which Gnadenfeld was a part, both in geographical terms, and in terms of people who founded not only that very important community, but many others as well. In all roughly 60 settlements were established along the Molochnaya River and its tributaries, the Juschanlee, the Kuruschan and the Tomak. The river then flowed south for 40 kilometres or so to the Molotschna Estuary and finally into the Sea of Azov. This volume is a multidimensional presentation of a development which is still a remarkable feat of colonization whether viewed in its Russian context, or in any other country of the world. Dr. John Staples, author of a path breaking recent study, "Cross-Cultural Encounters on the Ukrainian Steppe: Settling the Molochna Basin, 1783-1861," put it this way: "By the mid-nineteenth century ploughed fields were replacing pastures, here and there villages had become towns, with textile mills, forges, and brick works to serve the bustling communities." The author of the atlas has done well to use this most valuable new source of information. A series of general maps, some never published before, of the area as a whole, and then of most of the individual village communities help to recreate the format of the land and the larger regional interlock of Mennonite life and communal development of the settlement. It is not insignificant, although not stressed here, that neighbouring communities also had theii· role to play: the Orthodox Russian/Ukrainian peasants to the north and east, the Lutheran and Catholic Germans, as well as the Doukhobors to the west and southwest, and the Nagai nomadic tribespeople to the south. In due time the latter two groups would move on ( or be moved on - the Doukhobors either converted or were moved) elsewhere, but they are naturally in some way also part of this story as well. No one has ever attempted before the assembling of residence maps for the great majority of the Molotschna villages as this work has done. It will remain someone's challenge to find the remaining few; but the impetus for doing so is now in place. Establishments of villages of a certain style, with long streets, carefully laid out farmyards and house barn residences, self-sufficient in large measure with their mills and factories, schools and churches, large gardens, much admired groves of trees, community pastures, and of course land under vigorous cultivation all around, were the signature of these colonists. This was not only the Vl case in the Molotschna, but also in other similar colonies scattered across Russia, finally all the way to eastern Siberia, in the Amur region. A series of brief village histories, or even histories of their beginnings, does not want to portray itself as a full blown history of the Mennonite settlement as a whole. It does, though, depict in a real sense, important embryonic segments of the larger story which Heinrich Goerz set out to do in his book "Die Molotschnaer Ansiedlung", published in 1951 as part of the Echo Verlag series edited by Arnold Dyck. This, and a number of other books of the series have now been translated into, and published in English. Almost unlimited amounts of new documentation have made possible a major enhancing of that pioneer account. This volume definitely contributes to this augmentation. An earlier work by the author "Hierschau: An Example of Russian Mennonite Life,"and his contribution of the two editions of "Mennonite Historical Atlas" are superb examples of what that must involve for mapping and discussing the other villages and territories. It will most likely be the enviable privilege of this volume to become the premiere exhibit in the larger, several-day program ofMolotschna2004, an ambitious history conference of Mennonite and other scholars from various countries who hope to meet in Melitopol, Ukraine, next year. It is possible that small national gatherings may become the descendent meetings of the Melitopol event. Their focus will be the topic of this book, and the two will meet at the conjunction of this and other scholarly work which these conferences will undoubtedly produce. Looking beyond the volume at hand, one can more easily conceptualize how future Mennonite and other Russian historical projects might emerge. Many Molotschna families became a part of the final frontier of Mennonite settlement in Siberia as it developed after 1900, even up to the 1940s. That story is awaiting the touch of a hand like the one that has been at work here. Settlements such as Arkadak and Central, and the entire Soviet Mennonite experience of75 years need such a narrator and map maker as well. We hope that readers and students of this endeavor will not forget that dimension of the historical and community remembering task that is still ahead. Dr. Lawrence Klippenstein Mennonite Heritage Centre November, 2003 Vll INTRODUCTION This atlas is produced to commemorate the bicentenary of the founding of the Molotschna Colony in South Russia in 1804. But this is not meant to be a dry collection of ancient maps and recounting of irrelevant history. This atlas has been published to honour those whose blood, sweat and tears initially established the Molotschna, rising up from the arid windswept steppes to become the keystone of the "Mennonite Commonwealth," all the way to those who suffered untold hardship and brutality under the communist regime, as this achievement was methodically dismantled. I have used the name "Molotschna" on purpose, realizing that there are those who feel that it is more politically correct to call the colony Molotschnaya, or Molochna, or some other variant of the spelling.