We have explored relatively completely the question with which this series began: Why did many Waldheim residents leave their village so soon after founding it? We were able not only to discount several explanations previously offered (they were not landless, nor were they tricked by Volhynian swindlers) but also to identify a highly probable reason: during the time of Johann Cornies’s greatest control over the affairs of Molotschna, the Waldheim congregation’s longtime elder was dismissed by the deputy of the Russian Guardianship Committe (possibly at Cornies’s bidding), so they and their elder, Peter H. Schmidt, left Waldheim to establish the village of Heinrichsdorf back in Volhynia, where they had previously lived.
That much of the story is fairly certain. Nevertheless, several intriguing questions remain, one of which we can answer here, two others asked in hopes that someone someday may provide insight, if not answers, to them.
1. Why did Peter H. Schmidt not resume his role as elder after the group left Waldheim?
Contrary to what we might expect, relocation to Volhynia did not result in Schmidt being reinstated or restored to his church office. According to the Heinrichsdorf church book, when the church was in need of competent teachers, the congregation elected two candidates, who were then confirmed by Tobias Unruh, the elder of the Karolswalde church some 70 miles away (see the full discussion in the Heinrichsdorf History series here).
The church book also confirms that Peter Schmidt still was alive and in the church, but clearly he was not serving as elder. It seems, at least in this case, that Schmidt’s service depended on governmental permission to do so. Because Schmidt had been dismissed by a governmental official, Deputy von Hahn of the Guardianship Committee, he was apparently disqualified from serving even though he and his congregation lived in an area outside of the Guardianship Committee’s control (though still well within the borders of the Russian Empire).
Perhaps there is some other explanation, but none leaps to mind. The fact that Schmidt played no role in leading the Heinrichsdorf church, even when it was “weak on teachers,” as the church book has it, implies that he could not intervene in the situation, since presumably he would have done so if the opportunity had been available to him.
2. What happened to the Wirtschaften (land allotments) of those who left?
Specifically, were the landowners among the group permitted to sell their allotments, or did they have to return ownership of those allotments to the village for redistribution to other settlers? Although one might assume that the landowners owned their allotments and thus could sell them to whomever they pleased, we do not, as far as I can tell, know that to have been the case. In fact, when one recognizes that the landowners did not have to pay for their allotment (the land was granted them), it would not be shocking to learn that people who decided to move five or six years later had no right to profit from selling the land they had worked and farmed for such a short time.
At least two considerations lead one to wonder if the landowners were entitled to sell their allotments. First, leaving Molotschna colony was not an absolute right, so those leaving may have had to accept distasteful conditions in order to secure permission (a pass) to leave. Second, unless I am mistaken, we do not know for certain when clear title, so to speak, was transferred to the landowner. The latter point leads more broadly to the next question.
3. Did the Molotschna settlers granted land have to meet certain performance conditions in order to qualify for it?
We know that plots of land were granted, given, to the settlers, but I have yet to read of the conditions they had to fulfill to keep the land as their own. Perhaps an analogous situation will help us think about this more clearly.
Several earlier posts touched on the U.S. Homestead Act (see, e.g., here), the federal program that granted land allotments to citizens or near-citizens who met certain requirements, the most important of which was that the homesteader had to live on the land and farm it for five years. If a homesteader filed the appropriate paperwork and fulfilled the requirements, the land became his or her at the end of the five-year period. Conversely, if a homesteader failed to meet the minimum requirements, that person lost all claim on the land.
Did the Molotschna colony operate according to a comparable approach? I do not know the answer to that, but perhaps one of Buller Time’s readers does. It is reasonable to think that anyone who owned a land allotment had to meet certain conditions in order receive clear title to the allotment. Moreover, what we learned earlier about Johann Cornies occasionally taking land from a lazy farmer and giving it to someone more worthy is consistent with the idea that landowners had to meet certain conditions not only to secure title to an allotment but also to keep that title once it had been gained.
If nothing else, the last two questions reveal how much we still need to discover about the laws and practices that governed and shaped Molotschna colony.
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