The Constructed Mennonite: History, Memory, and the Second World War by Hans Werner (review)

Memoirs and family histories play a significant role in Mennonite historical writing. Hans Werner has taken this venerable genre to a new level. Telling the story of his father, Werner not only brings to light a fascinating life but also makes a significant critical contribution to the historiography of Mennonites, immigration, war, family, and Canada.

Werner tells the story of his father in three parts: “Siberia,” “War,” and “Becoming Normal.” Each part has four or five chapters of compelling narrative subtly woven together with critical historical analysis, research into the psychology of memory, and commentary on his sources. What sets this work apart, though, is that none of this is performed pedantically, nor is it mere filiopietism. In his previous book, Imagined Homes: Soviet German Immigrants in Two Cities (2007), Werner provides first-rate analysis of the construction of “home” as Mennonites and other German-speaking actors migrate from the Soviet Union to southern Manitoba. What happens with Constructed Mennonite is a narrowing of that subject to an individual caught in the same matrix of historical forces and events. Understanding those events through his father’s storytelling, mixed with Werner’s thoughtful commentary on memory, orality, history becoming public, and the discipline of simply listening to one’s subject, has two simultaneous effects: it reveals how people live in the midst of historical trauma, and it makes history demonstrably personal.

Werner’s father over the course of his life had four first names – Hans, Ivan, Johann, and John – and fought in the armies of two totalitarian states, the communist Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. He would become a prisoner of war in an American camp and eventually find his way to live out his years, as Werner describes it, in a sleepy southern Manitoban town. Werner expertly guides us through places in Ukraine, Siberia, Germany, and Canada, as a skilled storyteller in his own right. Buttressing the oral memory of his father with archival and genealogical research certainly adds to the intellectual heft of this personal study.

Constructed Mennonite, though a family history, is refreshing for a number of reasons. It brings nuance to the Canadian Mennonite historiography by exploring the military service of one of its own. Furthermore, though the stories are significant and dramatic, Werner writes in an even-handed, at times muted, but always elegant fashion, to not simply produce a tale of salutary success. His most significant contribution to biography/family history is the second story told often in the concluding sections of each of the thirteen chapters. This ongoing “essay” on methodology, memory, orality, and source material could stand on its own but is much more effective in its quiet inclusion, never interrupting the storytelling, but providing us with theoretical hooks that draw the reader deeper into the material. We see this, for example, when he reflects on the nature of childhood memory, our common amnesia of pre-three-year-old memories, and the powerful role such memories play later in life despite covering only a brief (by comparison) span of time. Without being explicit, this thus invites the readers to reflect on their own lives and how we all construct narratives of ourselves.

Adding to the usefulness of the book is a glossary of terms, leaving the narrative uncluttered yet accessible to a broad audience. Werner provides us with a family tree, a useful index, and, quite suitably for a text such as this, a minimum of footnotes. There is a real sense of listening to Hans as he listens to his father.

The final chapter provides a suitable conclusion with an expanded exploration of the nature of historical narration without straying far from the humanity of the book’s focus. Werner opens the book with a moving account of visiting his father just before his death hoping for one more story, but not receiving one. He concludes his book-length exploration of his father’s life and the meaning of his storytelling with...