Exiting Waldheim 1

We will return to the Russian Steppe series as soon as time permits further research into the likely incidence of droughts in Molotschna colony, and we will begin the Searching for Benjamin’s Father series in due course. For the moment, however, we will pursue another trail, since recent reading has revealed possible answers to a question posed some time back.

As discussed in detail in the Waldheim Settlers series (see the blog archive to the right for October–December 2016), the village of Waldheim was established in 1838 by Mennonites moving south from the region of Volhynia. Over the course of four years (1838–1841), the village was populated by forty-plus Mennonite families (see especially here). Numbered among that group, of course, were Benjamin and Helena Buller and their son and his wife, David and Helena Buller.

The following Heinrichsdorf History series (December 2016–January 2017) continued the story. If you recall, a large number of Waldheim residents—thirty-three families comprising 276 individuals—decided in 1845 to leave their Molotschna village and to return to Volhynia. Surprisingly, just seven years after the founding of the village, a majority of its residents—including Benjamin and Helena and David and Helena—left to found a new village roughly four hundred miles to the northwest.

The obvious question is, Why? Why did so many who had uprooted their lives to move hundreds of miles southeast to found the village of Waldheim, who built houses and established homes, who plowed the steppe and planted crops, want to leave after only seven years, just when their hard work was likely to begin bearing fruit? People today do not move hundreds of miles on a whim, much less peasant farmers of the nineteenth century. The question of why many of Waldheim’s original settlers left begs to be answered.

The Exiting Waldheim posts that follow will explore possible answers to that question. We will begin by revisiting an earlier explanation that was considered and discounted, then turn to new explanations hinted at or argued for in several works relevant to the history of Molotschna. One point needs to be made clearly at the outset: there was probably no single cause for the exodus from Waldheim. Rather, it seems most likely that a combination of causes, or at least contributing factors, led to such a significant and serious decision. To be clear, this series will not so much seek to identify the answer to the question as it will use the question to explore all the possible factors that led to this momentous decision.