Alexanderwohl 2

The previous post surveyed the layout of Alexanderwohl, modern Svitle, by means of an 1874 map and a modern satellite photo. The next few posts in this series will narrow our focus to individual sites within Alexanderwohl, in order to expand our familiarity with this Mennonite village. We begin with the Alexanderwohl school.

According to the 1874 map, the school was located in the plot across from where the church had been built. Rudy P. Friesen agrees: “The village school was located at the centre of the village, parallel to the street and directly across from the church” (1996, 210). That description is consistent with what we saw earlier on the map.

However, closer examination of the satellite photo, and comparison to Friesen’s description and the map, raises a question. According to Friesen and the map, the school was apparently located below the letter a in the photograph below, but the structure below the letter b seems more consistent with the shape of a school and with the description of the school as being parallel to the street. So where was the school located? Although the map and Friesen’s account might seem to favor the a location, the b site appears to be the more likely.

This is not to call into question Friesen’s expertise on the schoolhouse. In fact, Friesen identified the building on location during one of his several tours of Molotschna. He knows which building is the old schoolhouse; this is a matter of locating in the satellite photo the building that he identified. He describes the building as follows:  

The exterior walls were built of brick with modest ornamentation. The front entrance faced the street. The building is still in use today. The walls have been plastered and the roof has been replaced with corrugated cement-asbestos. (1996, 210)

Friesen’s comment about the front of the school facing the street supports the idea that the structure under the letter is the old schoolhouse. His photographs of the schoolhouse point in the same direction.

The top photo shows the front and the west (left) end of the structure. Notice that both Friesen photo and the b structure in the satellite photo have the same extension to the back (away from the street). This would seem to confirm that, although the school was across from the church, it was not directly across from the church building. 

Google Earth offers one last perspective that presumably settles the matter. The photo is taken from the north. The building in the foreground and parallel to the street is the schoolhouse; the building across the street in the background is on the site of the church. 

We still do not know when the school was built, but at least we are able to put a place with a name. We will do the same in the next post, as we learn all that we can about the Alexanderwohl Mennonite church.

Work Cited

Friesen, Rudy P., with Sergey Shmakin. 1996. Into the Past: Buildings of the Mennonite Commonwealth. Winnepeg: Raduga.