Exiting Waldheim 8

We are approaching the end of the Exiting Waldheim series. Having explored various explanations of why many Waldheim residents left in the first place and then what sort of requirements had to be met before they left (i.e., securing a pass or passport), we are ready to postulate an explanation for why this group purportedly stayed away longer than other Molotschna Mennonites who left around the same time, that is, 1848.

The answer may (!) be found in the list of Mennonites who declared in 1845 their intent to leave. Steve Fast’s translation of the original document may be consulted here. The screen shot below shows how the information is organized.

Each family is numbered in terms of this list and their census number, followed by the name of the head of household, the number of males and females in the family at the last census and now, and, finally, whether the family has a written visa.

The list uses several terms to refer to the documentation that permitted the family to travel legally: visa, passport, and ticket. The latter is by far the most common. Since we do not know if the terms in the original document show the same variety as Fast’s translation, we should probably not make too much of it. Clearly the written authorization to travel to Volhynia is in view. 

These families were traveling a great distance, so they needed at least what the previous post identified as a pass. The list above explicitly indicates a length of two months for most families, which seems to confirm that a pass is in view; they would have needed a passport (which was also more expensive) only if their journey would have taken more than six months.

Note, however, that we have shifted from the language of being away for two months to traveling for two months to arrive at a new locale. In fact, the list shown above states that the thirty-three families listed were being “resettled to Volynskaia Guberniia.” In addition, later the document identifies some who did not secure the proper permission (see pages 4–5): these were “not allowed to be transferred to to Volynskaia Guberniia.” The list clearly demonstrates, in other words, that the passes discussed in the prior post could be used both for round-trip and one-way journeys such as the one undertaken by the Waldheim émigrés. 

All that is interesting in and of itself, but it is only the background for our main concern: How does the list hint at a possible reason that the Waldheim group stayed away so long? If you look closely at the document shown above, you will see that Elder Peter Schmidt appears in the second line, below his stepfather Cornelius Funk. Schmidt was apparently considered a part of Funk’s family, since he is grouped with him as family 1. What is particularly curious is that the document records (1) that Funk had a two-month passport (pass?) and (2) that Schmidt “left at night, secretly without passport.” On the one hand, Schmidt is grouped with Funk in terms of the list; on the other hand, Funk’s passport did not suffice for Schmidt, who clearly left illegally under cover of darkness. Other multigeneration families (see, e.g., our own family at number 24 on the list) seem to have been covered by a single passport/pass. Schmidt was not, which requires some explanation.

Another oddity about the list begs attention as well. The list itself is dated to 27 September 1845, but we know that the Waldheim group did not actually leave until sometime in 1848. This raises the obvious question of how an 1845 list can report someone sneaking away in the night three years in the future. The most logical answer is that the list was probably created in 1845, then updated and supplemented in 1848, after the group had actually departed.

Ultimately, we do not need to know with certainty when Schmidt’s name was added to the list; all that really matters is the clear evidence that he left Waldheim and Molotschna illegally—and therein may lie a clue to at least one reason why the Waldheim (soon-to-be Heinrichsdorf) group stayed away longer than other Mennonites who left Molotschna.

As Moon noted in the previous post, there was lax enforcement of the passport system in the Russian frontier, which certainly included Volhynia. Consequently, the Volhynian officials would have been unlikely to do much, if anything, if they ever discovered that Schmidt had traveled there illegally. As long as he was a productive member of the community, they would have cared little about his past.

Schmidt’s real difficulties lay back in Molotschna, where he had been removed from his position as elder. Not to heap suggestion on supposition, but one wonders also if Schmidt had applied for a pass and been turned down, simply because he was a known troublemaker (in the eyes of the governing authorities). Schmidt’s unauthorized departure, therefore, was both a reaction to his troubled life in Waldheim and a source of even greater trouble. He could ill afford to return to Molotschna, lest he be called to account for his unauthorized departure. In fact, Schmidt never did return, as shown by the record of his death, on 21 May 1866, in the Heinrichsdorf (Volhynia) church book.

Still listed under his stepfather Cornelius Funk (Funck), who also remained in Heinrichsdorf until his death (1859), Schmidt and presumably many who had some connection to him or felt loyalty toward him did not return to Waldheim. An interesting study would be to identify exactly who stayed and who returned and when. For example, we believe that David Buller and family returned sometime in the early 1850s, that is, within a few years of leaving Waldheim in the first place (see here). Who else stayed, and who else left?

As a guiding hypothesis, one might suspect that the congregants whom Peter Schmidt had led in their first sojourn in Volhynia, before that group and several others moved to Molotschna and founded Waldheim, were likely to have stayed with their spiritual leader for the duration. That is a reasonable guess, but it remains just a guess until we can identify more accurately who stayed and whether they were part of his flock early on.

All that is fun exploration for another post. For now it is enough to be aware of one possible reason why Schmidt and many other ex-Waldheim residents did not return south once Johann Cornies’s passing relaxed his iron grip over the people’s lives. Schmidt left illegally in the middle of the night, essentially burning a bridge behind him. The only rational choice for him was never to return. For good or for ill, that choice apparently affected many other lives as well.