Mennonite German Soldiers: Nation, Religion, and Family in the Prussian East, 1772-1880

1. Viewing German Nationalism from the Bottom Up

C H A P T E R O N E ∏ Viewing German Nationalism from the Bottom Up I n the 1880s a popular nationalist melodrama of the Prussian stage was Ernst von Wildenbruch’s Der Menonit, which portrayed a particular religious minority in the Vistula Delta as cowardly traitors . This group of strict pacifists, the Mennonites, grew out of the sixteenth-century Anabaptist movement. In the German Empire their largest settlement was near Danzig/Gdanåsk. Wildenbruch’s play, set in this area, accused them of opposing the national cause in 1813 during the decisive final phase of the Napoleonic wars. Although its setting was historical, the play resonated with audiences at the founding of the second German Empire because its main themes captured three key threats to Protestant and Prussian conceptions of German national identity: subversion of the nation due to disloyalty in the borderlands, seditious religious difference, and disorder in the family. The two main Mennonite characters, Reinhold, a farm boy, and Maria, the congregational leader’s daughter, overcame all of these temptations to declare in word and deed that their highest loyalty was to Germany, not their religion or their family. 1 2 Mennonite German Soldiers Reinhold’s conversion from pacifist Mennonite to Prussian soldier, along with Maria’s support, was, of course, only fictional. Wildenbruch based his play, however, on a historical couple, David and Maria van Riesen, both of whom had been members of the Mennonite community of the Vistula Delta. David defied Mennonite religious scruples against participation in warfare and in 1813 abandoned his wife and family in order to join the fight against the French for reasons that can no longer be completely reconstructed. Beginning in 1772, when much of the area was seized by Prussia, Mennonites made considerable efforts to avoid Prussian military service. This struggle included excommunicating recalcitrant members like van Riesen. In this case his wife supported the church’s decision by refusing to accept him back as a husband when he returned from fighting. David van Riesen complained to the government that this action amounted to church interference in his private affairs. The resulting court case was finally resolved in 1818 by the High Court in Berlin in favor of Maria and the Mennonites, freeing them from the obligation to support or even become soldiers. Sixty years later, however, all Mennonites remaining in Prussia had changed their stance and accepted military service in some form, becoming German soldiers, in many cases quite enthusiastically. Although Wildenbruch got many of the details of van Riesen’s story wrong, like millions of other Europeans the Mennonites of the Vistula Delta did in fact make the passage in the nineteenth century from national indifference to national loyalty, as their ecclesiastical identity was dissolved by the growing possibility of individual choices and was eventually subordinated to a national identity. The transformation of indifferent peasants into glowing nationalists , exemplified by Reinhold and Maria in Wildenbruch’s play, fascinates historians of nationalism as much as it tantalized Prussian theatergoers in the early Kaiserreich. How did concern for and identification with the nation spread from educated elites to the masses? Is manipulation by elites, emancipatory activism by the masses, or some interactive arrangement between the two the more helpful model for understanding the process? This book argues that both “push” and “pull” factors transformed the Mennonites of provincial Prussia into German nationalists. A cen- tury of persistent and diverse governmental and social pressure impelled Mennonites to give their highest loyalty to the nation. The government politicized family matters by tightly regulating Mennonites’ property and inheritance rights and by circumscribing whom they could marry. At the same time more and more Mennonites gradually sought participation in the German nation in order to share in its social , cultural, economic, educational, and military achievements. In the end the majority chose to join the German nation, suggesting that nationalism , in fact, had tremendous appeal to outsiders. Mennonites calculated or felt that they had much to gain by joining German society. Their choice discounts notions that nationalism was manipulated or constructed by elites without regard to the interests of common people. Yet in making this choice they literally rewrote centuries-old confessions of faith to make soldiering acceptable. Military service was the lynchpin of the various connections to the nation, and the Mennonites’ experience documents how becoming soldiers became a necessary precondition to joining the...