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Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radical Reformation, Simons articulated and formalized the teachings of earlier Swiss founders, with the early teachings of the Mennonites founded on the belief in both the mission and ministry of Jesus, which the original Anabaptist followers held with great conviction, despite persecution by various Roman Catholic and Mainline Protestant states. Formal Mennonite beliefs were codified in the Dordrecht Confession of Faith in 1632, which affirmed "the baptism of believers only, the washing of the feet as a symbol of servanthood, church discipline, the shunning of the excommunicated, the non-swearing of oaths, marriage within the same church", strict pacifistic physical nonresistance, anti-Catholicism and in general, more emphasis on "true Christianity" involving "being Christian and obeying Christ" however they interpret it from the Holy Bible.
Plautdietsch or Mennonite Low German is a Low Prussian dialect of East Low German with Dutch influence that developed in the 16th and 17th centuries in the Vistula delta area of Royal Prussia. The word Plautdietsch translates to "flat German". In other Low German dialects, the word for Low German is usually realised as Plattdütsch/Plattdüütsch[ˈplatdyːtʃ] or Plattdüütsk[ˈplatdyːtsk], but the spelling Plautdietsch is used to refer specifically to the Vistula variant of the language.
The Russian Mennonites are a group of Mennonites who are the descendants of Dutch Anabaptists who settled in the Vistula delta in West Prussia for about 250 years and established colonies in the Russian Empire beginning in 1789. Since the late 19th century, many of them have emigrated to countries which are located throughout the Western Hemisphere. The rest of them were forcibly relocated, so very few of their descendants currently live in the locations of the original colonies. Russian Mennonites are traditionally multilingual but Plautdietsch is their first language as well as their lingua franca. In 2014, there were several hundred thousand Russian Mennonites: about 200,000 live in Germany, 74,122 live in Mexico, 70,000 in Bolivia, 40,000 live in Paraguay, 10,000 live in Belize, tens of thousands of them live in Canada and the US, and a few thousand live in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.
Johann Peter Klassen (1868–1947) was a Russian Mennonite poet and writer who emigrated to Canada in 1923 but wrote primarily in the German language. He was born 27 May 1868 in Neu-Schönwiese near Alexandrovsk (Zaporizhia) Ukraine, the third of four children of Peter Abram Klassen and Aganetha (Schultz) Klassen. His father had four children from his first marriage to Anna Janzen (1828-1863).
Chortitza Colony was a volost Yekaterinoslav Governorate granted to Plautdietsch-speaking Russian Mennonite for colonization northwest of Khortytsia Island and is now part of Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Chortitza was founded in 1789 by Mennonite settlers of Dutch ancestry from the Vistula delta and consisted of many villages. It was the first of many Mennonite settlements in the Russian Empire. Because the Mennonites living in these villages emigrated or were evacuated or deported at the end of World War II, or emigrated after the collapse of the Soviet Union few Mennonites are living in the area today.
Molotschna Colony or Molochna Colony was a Russian Mennonite settlement in what is now Zaporizhzhia Oblast in Ukraine. Today, the central village, known as Molochansk, has a population less than 10,000. The settlement is named after the Molochna River which forms its western boundary. The land falls mostly within the Tokmatskyi and Chernihivskyi Raions. The nearest large city is Melitopol, southwest of Molochansk.
Molochansk is a city in Tokmak Raion, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine. The Molochna River flows through the city. Population: 6,099.
The Fernheim Colony is a Plautdietsch-speaking settlement of Mennonites originally from Russia of about 5000 in the Chaco of Paraguay. Mennonites from the Soviet Union founded it between 1930 and 1932. Filadelfia is the administrative center of the colony, seat of Boquerón department and is considered the 'Capital of the Chaco'.
Mennonite settlements of Altai arose after the 19 September 1906 act of the Duma and State Council of Imperial Russia, which provided for a resettlement bureau to distribute free land in Altai Krai. During 1907–1908 an area of over 6,660,000 ha of the Kulunda Steppe was set aside for settlers.
Alt Danzig was a German settlement in the southern Russian Empire, present-day Ukraine. Its name comes from Danzig, Gdańsk in present-day Poland. Alt, meaning "old", distinguishes this community from Neu Danzig, another German settlement in this area of the Russian Empire. The German colony Alt Danzig is also known as Old Danzig along with the existing local village of Karlovka were united in Krupskoe after the October Revolution in Russia.
Mennonites in Belize form different religious bodies and come from different ethnic backgrounds. There are groups of Mennonites living in Belize who are quite traditional and conservative, while others have modernized to various degrees.
The Mennonites in Bolivia are among the most traditional and conservative of all Mennonite denominations in South America. They are mostly Russian Mennonites of Frisian, Flemish, and Prussian descent. As of 2013, there were about 70,000 Mennonites living in Bolivia, that population has grown to around 150,000 as of 2023.
Khortytsia is a large island on the Dnieper River in Ukraine.
Randolph, originally known as Chortitz, is a small community in the Rural Municipality of Hanover, Manitoba, Canada. The community has an estimated population of 70 and is located 1.6 kilometres north of Highway 52 on Provincial Road 206 about 11 kilometres west of Steinbach. Randolph is located within a half kilometre of the longitudinal centre of Canada.
The name Old Colony Mennonites is used to describe that part of the Russian Mennonite movement that is descended from colonists who migrated from the Chortitza Colony in Russia to settlements in Canada. Theologically, Old Colony Mennonites are largely Conservative Mennonites.
Dolynske is a village in the Zaporizhzhia Raion (district) of Zaporizhzhia Oblast in southern Ukraine. Its population was 690 in the 2001 Ukrainian Census. Dolynske is the administrative center of the Dolynske Rural Council, a local government area.
The East Reserve was a block settlement in Manitoba set aside by the Government of Canada exclusively for settlement by Russian Mennonite settlers in 1873. Most of the East Reserve's earliest settlers were from the Kleine Gemeinde or Bergthaler Mennonite churches.
The Sommerfelders, also called Sommerfeld Mennonites or Sommerfeld Mennonite Church, are a subgroup of the so-called Russian Mennonites that took this name in Canada in 1894, coming originally from the Bergthal Colony in the Russian Empire. Many of them left Canada for Latin America starting in the early 1920s. They now live in Canada, Mexico, Paraguay and Bolivia.
Nehrungisch is a subdialect (Mundart) of Low Prussian, belonging to the Low German language variety. It was spoken in East Prussia and West Prussia, in the region around the Vistula Spit near Gdansk. The easternmost locality where this variety was spoken was Narmeln, and it was spoken from Narmeln to Krakau (Krakowiec). The dialect survives in Chortitza-Plautdietsch, a dialect of Low Prussian brought to Ukraine by migrants from the Vistula region. Nehrungisch shares features with Eastern Low Prussian. The distinctive features of Chortitza-Plautdietsch as opposed to Molotschna-Plautdietsch include long /u/ realised as very front (ü), <eiw> for Molotschna-Plautdietsch <au>, <oa> diphthong front, <kj>/<gj> for Molotschna <tj>/<dj> as well as verbal infinitives and plural suffixes ending in –n.
Werdersch is a subdialect of Low Prussian, which itself is a subdialect of Low German. This dialect is spoken in Poland and was spoken in the former province of West Prussia. Werdersch is closely related to Nehrungisch and Plautdietsch.
References
- Schroeder, William. The Bergthal Colony. 2nd ed. Winnipeg: CMBS, 1986.
- Table 1. Compilation of Mennonite Villages in Russia, Prepared by Tim Janzen