Johann Cornies Papers: Relevance

The last two posts (here and here) focused on two letters found in the papers of Johann Cornies: one written to Cornies by a Russian governmental official named Andrei Fadeev, the other written by Cornies to a fellow Mennonite named Johann Wiebe. The letters reminded us of a number of significant points.

1. In Fadeev’s telling, the Privilegium that the Russian crown promised Mennonites included four key elements. Specifically, Mennonites

•   were liable only for insignificant taxes, apparently not what the nobility paid.
•   enjoyed the right to include the proceeds from liquor sales in the community treasury.
•   received larger land allotments than those granted to other foreign settlers.
•   were exempt from military impositions, billeting, and military marches through Mennonite villages.

2. These royal privileges, Cornies points out, were available only to colonists, that is, Mennonites who settled on crown land (e.g., the residents of Molotschna colony); those living on the land of nobles, whom he labels free settlers, had no claim on them.


3. In fact, free settlers had no guaranteed rights; they enjoyed only those rights and privileges that they could negotiate with their landlords. Other realities further limited their options.

•   A noble might grant rights to a settler little by little or not at all.
•   The contract between a noble and a settler could not exceed twenty years.
•   After a contract expired, the settler had to leave the noble’s estate and find somewhere new to live.
•   A Mennonite settler was not guaranteed a place on crown land such as Molotschna colony.

4. Given the significant disparity in rights enjoyed and guaranteed, Cornies regarded the situation of the colonist on royal land to be far superior to that of the free settler on a noble’s estate.

Why is all this important to our family? As mentioned in the last post, Cornies cited as examples of free settlers the Mennonites in villages such as Michalin, Ostrog, and Dubno—villages in Volhynia, where our ancestor Benjamin Buller lived before he moved to Molotschna. According to Cornies, the Mennonites in Molotschna were far better off than those living in these Volhynian villages.

Earlier posts on the Bullers in Volhynia discussed the context within which our ancestors emigrated from Prussia to Volhynia and the terms under which they secured the right to live on and work the land owned by the nobility. Those discussions remain informative, but the sharp distinctions drawn by Cornies between a free settler and a colonist settler are particularly instructive.

1. Although it seems that Benjamin Buller and all the other Mennonite settlers in Zofyovka, Volhynia, were given “the rights and privileges conferred on Mennonites in the Emperor’s Privilegium” (here), this was only due to the estate owner’s generosity. These rights were not automatically conferred on them simply by virtue of their emigration to the Russian realm.

Further, those rights were neither guaranteed nor permanent. In all probability, their enjoyment of those rights was subject to the noble’s continued goodwill. What could settlers without clearly grounded legal rights do if he chose to suspend them? Further, the moment they moved from the noble’s estate, they left their special rights behind as well.

2. Earlier we read that the contract with the noble was “ewigen Zeiten,” or forever. However, Cornies states that the longest contract term possible was twenty years. In light of the fact that the Mennonite community did not remain in Zofyovka forever, one suspects the forever nature of the agreement was more symbolic legalese than binding term.

How long the  lease actually lasted remains unknown, but Cornies’s comment helps explain why some Volhynian Mennonites were so frequently on the move: although it was possible for a tenant to remain on an estate for a long period (up to twenty years and perhaps even longer under renewed contracts), the reality seems to have been that tenancy contracts were relatively short and frequently not renewed, which led to a high incidence of migration from one place to another.

3. At some point—we do not know precisely when, but certainly before twenty years had passed—Benjamin Buller and the other Mennonites left Zofyovka, and we next encounter Benjamin in an 1833 record, when he was in Ostrowka, or Ostrog, one of the villages that Cornies mentions (for further discussion of Benjamin in Ostrog, see here).

Several points merit special note. (1) Cornies offered his comment about Ostrog in December 1830; in 1833 Benjamin was among the Mennonites living in Ostrog, and he may have been living there for a number of years. Consequently, Cornies’s comment about Ostrog is directly relevant to Benjamin’s situation. (2) Benjamin is listed as a farmer who was leasing land from yet another noble. Cornies is once again shown to be correct: free settlers such as Benjamin could move from one noble’s estate to another. (3) Finally, Cornies’s opinion about the superiority of life as a colonist living on royal land was shared by the Mennonite tenants of Ostrog. Their names were on the 1833 list because they had registered their wish to “leave Volhynia and settle with their brethren in the Tauridian Governorate,” that is, Molotschna colony, which was in the Taurida district. They, too, recognized that life as a colonist on royal land was far more desirable than scraping out a living as a tenant.

4.  Benjamin did eventually become a colonist in Molotschna colony, but clearly only by special permission. As Cornies explained, free settlers could not move to crown land and thereby automatically enjoy all the rights granted to invited colonists.  Benjamin and the other Ostrog Mennonites had to apply to the ruling authorities not only for permission to move but also to be regarded as a colonist entitled to the rights of the Privilegium.

Thanks to the Cornies papers, our understanding of Benjamin’s situation is much clearer, so much so that we probably need to revisit the earlier posts on Benjamin’s time in Volhynia in order to correct and clarify our earlier suppositions in light of this new information. We should also reconsider Benjamin and family’s later move from Molotschna back to Volhynia (at Heinrichsdorf) and what conditions he may have encountered there.

Before we do so, however, I think we will quickly retrace our steps back to the 1833 list of Ostrog Mennonites, to explore further how Cornies’s comments may shape and sharpen our reading of that document.