In 1846 the Danish author, philosopher, theologian, and critic Søren Kierkegaard published a work titled Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Although I highly recommend reading that work, this post is not directly concerned with it, except for the fact that Kierkegaard’s title hints at the volume’s role as not only a wrapping up of what he had initiated earlier (the full title is Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments) but also an extension, an unscientific, even subjective and impressionistic, postscript to that work.
In the same spirit as Kierkegaard’s book, this post offers a concluding unscientific postscript to the Franztal series. Instead of rehashing the historical data in orderly fashion or revisiting the community report to see what details merit a second look, this postscript will recount (coherently, I hope) some impressions made along the way.
1. The Przechovka Church
We began the series because we had discovered in an earlier series (Przechovka Emigration; see here for the first post) that the widely accepted claim that the church at Przechovka in West Prussia had emigrated to Molotschna in a single group in 1820, then founded the village of Alexanderwohl the following year, was not the whole story. In fact, a larger group had emigrated to Molotschna in 1819, and many of them had established Franztal. To my knowledge, the Przechovka-Franztal connection has not been widely discussed, if at all, prior to this point. Why?
On the one hand, the Przechovka-Franztal group did not establish their own village church that might have claimed the Przechovka mantle. Rather, they attended the nearby Rudnerweide church led by Elder Franz Goerz; in so doing, they lost any obvious identification with the Przechovka church. On the other hand, the Przechovka-Alexanderwohl group not only claimed to be the legitimate heirs of the West Prussian church (see their Gemeindebericht here) but also held the visible symbol of that claim: the church book.
In time, the Alexanderwohl group came to be identified as the continuation of the Przechovka church. In one sense they were: they carried the history and traditions of that church from West Prussia to Russia and even beyond, to the plains of Kansas. However true that story may be, it is not the full story. An larger body of Przechovka members emigrated to Russia a year before the more famous group, and their stories should neither be forgotten nor omitted from the larger Przechovka narrative.
On a more personal note, although the Buller family became prominent within the Alexanderwohl church, the first Przechovka Buller to enter Molotschna (Jacob Jacob Buller) resided first in Franztal. Ironically, however, he lived there only two years before moving to join family and church friends in, you guessed it, Alexanderwohl.
2. The 1835 Census
As a novice only beginning to work with this primary source, I approached it with some unrealistic expectations. Having seen that the census recorded the movements of people within the colony (e.g., Jacob Jacob Buller is listed in Franztal and Alexanderwohl) and the deaths of those who had passed away before 1835, I assumed that it would be a relatively comprehensive source for reconstructing the history of Franztal. Unfortunately, I learned otherwise.
As we discovered in the previous post, the census does not contain evidence regarding the identities of five or six of Franztal’s twenty-three founding settlers. Think about that. In 1835, a mere fifteen years after the founding of the village, roughly a quarter of the founding settlers were either forgotten or omitted from the official record. If this is correct, and at present I see no other explanation, then we (or at least I) should temper our expectations when using the census or any other primary source. Even when the source is accurate, it may be incomplete, and we should keep an open mind until we know that we have all the facts at our disposal, not just some of them.
A second realization that this exercise produced was the absolute necessity of checking the primary sources themselves. I confess that thus far I have been working strictly from the English translation of the 1835 census, which is several steps removed from the (incomplete) original source: someone first transcribed the census material from a microfilm of the census; someone else then translated what had been transcribed and recorded it on the English translation.
Not surprisingly, mistakes entered the document all along the way. For example, Gerhard Heinrich Dirks of Franztal 1 is said to have moved to Rudnerweide in the English translation, but, in fact, he moved from Rudnerweide to Franztal, a correction first noted by Steve Fast (see here for his list of corrections). Therefore, not only is it imperative to approach the census with realistic expectations, but one should remain open-minded about any conclusions drawn from secondary sources; needless to say, one should also prefer consulting the primary sources whenever possible.
What I discovered through the Franztal series is how much I have to learn about the 1835 census and other similar resources. Reading Glenn Penner articles about Russian censuses in general (here) and the 1835 Molotschna census in particular (here) is valuable, but it is no substitute for working with the actual record, even in microfilm form. My understanding is that all LDS Family History Centers provide access to this and other primary sources. It may be time to visit the center 7.5 miles up the road.
3. The 1848 Gemeindeberichten
The Franztal community report gives the same impression as the Alexanderwohl report: although it contains a mistake or two (Johann Cornies was not head of Molotschna colony), it is largely accurate in historical terms. However, the value of the Gemeindeberichten extends far beyond their providing historical information. Their true value, I think, lies in their insider perspective.
These community reports were written by residents with firsthand knowledge of life in the village. They knew which events were important to the village’s history because they had often lived through those events themselves. They remembered, for example, the droughts, the swarms of locusts, and the devastating blizzards because they had experienced them. They were well equipped to describe the village gardens, orchards, fields, and pastures because they walked past them and worked in them every day. The value of the Gemeindeberichten, in order words, lies in their immediacy, their intimate connection to the village itself. One might even suggest that their unscientific nature is their greatest strength.
The biggest problem with these reports is that they remain largely inaccessible. They are all posted online, to be sure (see here), but few are available in English translation. Even when they have been translated (see, e.g., Alexanderwohl, Friedensdorf, Gnadenfeld, Rudnerweide, Tiege), details within the accounts may remain obscure due to our geographical and chronological distance from them.
It is because of these obstacles that Buller Time has now translated and commented upon three of the community reports: Waldheim, Alexanderwohl, Franztal. Only forty-one remain for Molotschna, plus many more for Chortitza and other non-Mennonite (generally Lutheran) German colonies in Russia. I trust that someday all the Gemeindeberichten will be available in English translation, so that as many researchers and readers who wish can wrestle with this primary source material for themselves.
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