Hierschau

The field of Mennonite history is rich with publications of various types and appropriate for readers of all levels. This blog has had occasion to mention some of them from time to time, such as From Kleefeld with Love (Harder 2003), Cross-Cultural Encounters on the Ukrainian Steppe: Settling the Molochna Basin, 1783–1861 (Staples 2003), Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies (Cornies 2015), A Mennonite in Russia: The Diaries of Jacob D. Epp, 1851–1880 (Dyck 1991), None But Saints: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia 1789–1889 (Urry 1989),  and The Coming of the Russian Mennonites: An Episode in the Settling of the Last Frontier, 1874–1884 (Smith 1927), to name just a few.

The nice thing about all of these books is that they can be purchased easily or, in the case of The Coming of the Russian Mennonites, downloaded freely. Unfortunately, a number of older but no less important works are not so readily available. For example, Heinrich Goerz’s The Molotschna Settlement (1993) is out of print and available only from used booksellers. So also most other titles in the Echo Historical Series, such as Goerz’s Mennonite Settlements in Crimea (1992), David H. Epp’s Johann Cornies (1995), and Gerhard Lohrenz’s Zagradovka: History of a Mennonite Settlement in Southern Russia (2000). 

Yet another volume that fits into this category—too little known and not easily acquired—is Helmut T. Huebert’s Hierschau: An Example of Russian Mennonite Life (Huebert 1986). As far as I am able to tell, Hierschau is out of print, thus unavailable from Amazon and most other online booksellers. The book is offered for sale at the Kindred Productions website (here), with whom the original publisher, Springfield Publishers, cooperated. But it seems that Springfield has gone out of business, so for all practical purposes the book is or soon will be out of print.

This is unfortunate (and avoidable—see below), since Huebert’s work should interest anyone with a desire to learn more about nineteenth-century Molotschna. The village of Hierschau, if you recall, was only a kilometer down the road west from Waldheim, where David Buller lived out his days. Further west, but still along the same road, was Alexanderwohl, the home of many Bullers and the center of our interest in recent weeks. Hierschau, in other words, was right in the middle of the area where our ancestors lived. In fact, several Bullers lived in Hierschau itself from its very earliest days.

Huebert is more a storyteller than a professional historian, but he seems to be a careful storyteller who conducts thorough research and narrates only what he knows to be accurate. Huebert’s skills  and expertise are evident in every chapter; the following excerpt, in a section on the Molotschna colony’s climate, is but one example of the informative yet engaging style on display:

Overall yearly precipitation was low, averaging 30–35 cm (12–14 inches), most of this coming in May, June and July. Unfortunate­ly, the rain often came in the form of violent rainstorms, sometimes accompanied by hail. A 1901 report from Tiegerweide mentions that it was hot and dry, except for thunderstorms with hail in early May. This was followed by great downpours in the last half of June; much grain on the steppe was flooded away; vegetables in the gardens on a number of occasions were under four feet of water. Another description of the same period tells of a terrible storm on June 23, 1901, in which a severe weather system with rain and hail wrought great destruction in Muntau, Halbstadt, Petershagen and Ladekopp. Standing grain was flattened by hail, fruit was destroyed, much foliage knocked off and gardens were damaged. Even some old majestic trees were twisted off or uprooted. Hailstones were as large as walnuts and were “piled up as high as the windows.” Many laden and empty wagons were overturned, and buildings, particularly barns and sheds were damaged. In the forests and gardens there were many dead crows, songbirds and doves. Though there was no loss of human life, some people had black eyes and swollen ears. The storm was likely quite widespread, since other villages in the Molotschna also reported severe damage. (Huebert 1986, 21)

So much for an illustration of his style. What about the contents of the book? Huebert’s work begins by setting the background: beginning with the rise of Anabaptism and specifically Mennonitism, through the emigration first to Poland, then to Molotschna, whose physical features and ecology he describes in detail. He then moves to the establishment of Hierschau in 1848, filling in the details as needed by drawing on the patterns and practices from other Molotschna villages. For example, he reconstructs the founding of Hierschau as follows:

As had been the case in Landskrone, it is likely that applications were accepted in the Molotschna for sites in the new village, in this instance to be a model village. If there were more applicants than sites, the correct number would have been chosen by lot. The site, and likely the village plans were already drawn up by Johann Cornies, so it re­mained to mark out the streets and yards by plowing a furrow along the borders. (Huebert 1986, 40)

Huebert then recounts as much of the history of the village as he is able, often by means of a brief biography of a prominent citizen. Passing through the golden age that characterized the latter part of the nineteenth century, he turns to World War I and the Russian Revolution, the years of the Soviet-created famine, and, finally, the hardships in and aftermath of World War II’s Eastern Front, after which Hierschau ceased to be a Mennonite village.

I write all this to make several points. First, Huebert’s Hierschau is both informative and an engaging read, so I encourage anyone interested in the history of Molotschna colony, or the Russian Mennonite experience in general, to secure a copy to read, if ever you have a chance.

Second and more important, Huebert’s Hierschau is an example of a valuable piece of Mennonite history that is in danger of being lost to the sizable group of Mennonites whose interest in Mennonite history is more casual and personal than academic or professional. Important works such as Huebert’s Hierschau, as well as all of the Echo Historical Series volumes and similar works now available only from used booksellers, should, in my view, be brought back on the market so that they receive the broad readership that they deserve.

The technical aspect of bringing these books back into print is simpler than many realize. As long as one has a clean copy of the book, it can be submitted to a print-on-demand printer, who will scan the book into a PDF file that can be printed as a paperback or hardcover book, then printed “on demand,” that is, whenever an order is placed. The cost of putting a book such as this back into print is usually less than $200, often much less.

If one wants to invest greater time and effort, it is a relatively simple thing to do to scan a book, then use the OCR (optical character recognition) function of Adobe Acrobat to turn the scanned pages into actual text, that is, letters and words and sentences and paragraphs. One can then copy that text into a page-layout program such as Adobe InDesign so that the finished product looks like a brand new book. That InDesign file is then output as a PDF file that can be sent to the on-demand printer for printing and sale, just as before.

Even better, once one has a PDF file of the book, one can create a Print Replica Kindle version that can be read on any computer, tablet, or similar device. The cost of creating this Kindle e-book is zero; all that it requires is a few minutes of time on a computer. So, if one wanted, one could make a book such as Huebert’s Hierschau available in both print and e-book format, so that it is not lost to future generations of Mennonite readers.

None of this is difficult from a technical perspective. The only real challenges are determining who owns the rights to a given book (i.e., who would need to give permission to have the book published) and identifying an entity to serve as the publisher of these books. This latter task is not something for an individual to take on; rather, some Mennonite organization would need to be the one who officially publishes and, more importantly, sells the books. If such an organization exists, they could do a great service by preserving these artifacts of the Mennonite past.

We will return to our normal fare in the next post, but I wanted to get these ideas down in writing and, more important, out before Buller Time’s readers, some of whom might be in a position to move them toward reality. I am always happy to talk publishing (my email address is at the upper right of the blog); it is, after all, both my career and my passion—after Buller Time, of course.

Works Cited

Cornies, Johann. 2015. Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies. Volume 1: 1812–1835. Translated by Ingrid I. Epp. Edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Dyck, Harvey L., ed. and trans. 1991. A Mennonite in Russia: The Diaries of Jacob D. Epp, 1851–1880. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Epp, David H. 1995. Johann Cornies. Translated by Peter Pauls. Echo Historical Series 3. Winnipeg: CMBC and Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

Goerz, Heinrich. 1992. Mennonite Settlements in Crimea. Translated by John B. Toews. Echo Historical Series 13. Winnipeg: CMBC and Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

———. 1993. The Molotschna Settlement. Translated by Al Reimer and John B. Toews. Echo Historical Series 7. Winnipeg: CMBC and Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

Harder, John A., ed. and trans. 2003. From Kleefeld with Love. Kitchener, Ontario: Pandora Press.

Huebert, Helmut T. 1986. Hierschau: An Example of Russian Mennonite Life. Winnipeg: Springfield.

Lohrenz, Gerhard. 2000. Zagradovka: History of a Mennonite Settlement in Southern Russia. Translated by Victor G. Doerksen. Echo Historical Series 4. Winnipeg: CMBC and Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

Smith, C. Henry. 1927. The Coming of the Russian Mennonites: An Episode in the Settling of the Last Frontier, 1874–1884. Berne, IN. : Mennonite Book Concern, 1927)

Staples, John R. 2003. Cross-Cultural Encounters on the Ukrainian Steppe: Settling the Molochna Basin, 1783–1861. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Urry, James. 1989. None But Saints: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia 1789–1889. Winnipeg: Hyperion Press.