Halbstadt 1

As noted in the introductory post (here), Halbstadt was one of the first nine villages founded when the Molotschna settlement came into existence in 1804. However, Halbstadt was not merely a founding village; it was also one of the most important villages in the colony. By 1848, for example, when the report was written, Halbstadt had been the seat of district administration for over three decades. Halbstadt was also home to a significant number of industries and a teacher training school (see Klassen and Krahn). 

Given its prominence, it is not surprising that Halbstadt submitted by far the longest community report, roughly double the length of the next longest report. With that as background, we are ready to begin working our way through the Halbstadt Gemeindebericht. The report begins with the circumstances that led to the village’s founding.

According to the Most High Declaration of 1801, the Mennonites in the Kingdom of Prussia were not permitted to expand their properties or to purchase others in addition to their current ones, because, in accordance with their beliefs, they could not submit themselves to the canton obligation. As a result, they found themselves in distressed circumstances as the number of families increased.

Most High Declaration. The German “Allerhöchster Deklaration” has the feel of a technical legal term. In German, adjectives such as Allerhöchster are typically not capitalized; one exception to this rule is when the adjective is used in a legal context, as here. Interestingly, the declaration being referenced (see 1801 below) uses a similar term, “Verordnung Allerhöchst” (highest decree), which may indicate that those writing the Halbstadt community report had some familiarity with the actual decree—or perhaps the language of royal declarations of that time. Interestingly, later in this same paragraph the Russian emperor Paul is referred to as “Allerhöchst,” or Most High. The repetition of the same adjective may hint that the highest declaration of the Prussian king, Frederick William III, was trumped by a yet higher ruler, Tsar Paul.

1801. The declaration in view here is clearly that issued by Frederick William III on 17 December 1801 (for a translation, see Jantzen 2010, 262–64). That declaration was actually a clarification of an edict that his father, Frederick William II, had issued a decade earlier, on 30 July 1789 (Jantzen 2010, 256–60), and a subsequent regulation dated 12 February 1792 (German original available here). Each of these three documents merits a detailed discussion, but for the moment it is enough to to note that the December 1801 declaration prohibited Mennonites who refused to be registered for military service from acquiring additional land.

Expand their properties … purchase others in addition to their current ones. The limitation as described by the community report contains two elements, but the details are not immediately clear. Fortunately, the 1801 declaration itself provides additional clarity:

Those Mennonites, however, who continue to reject the common obligation to defend the fatherland will not be allowed in the future to increase their holdings in number or size and thereby to use the advantages associated with their freedom from military registration to displace Christians who are more useful to the state. (translation from Jantzen 2010, 262)

First, Mennonites who refused to be enrolled on the canton list were not permitted to expand the size of their current properties, presumably by adding property adjoining their current holdings (e.g., buying a 40-acre field that adjoins a 40 that one already owns). Second, these Mennonites were also barred from increasing the number of the landholdings, that is, by buying new plots of land that did not adjoin their current holdings. Paragraph 4 of the 1801 decree further clarifies:

Accordingly no Mennonite who is not ready to give up the military exemption will be granted a permit to acquire any type of property, rural or urban, that is not already the property of a Mennonite at the time of publication of this edict.… (translation from Jantzen 2010, 263)

The phrase “that is not already the property of a Mennonite” is key. As the decree goes on to explain, and as is made explicit in a later declaration, Mennonites could sell property among themselves, since a sale from one Mennonite to another had no effect on the number of men who could be called up to serve in the military from a particular area. What was not permitted was sale of land from a non-Mennonite to a Mennonite, since that would reduce the number of people obliged to serve.

they could not submit themselves to the canton obligation. The Prussian canton system also warrants an extended discussion, but for now it is enough to highlight a few points. In the mid-eighteenth century King Frederick William I instituted the cantonal system for military recruitment. The Prussian kingdom was divided into cantons, areas encompassing roughly five thousand hearths each (each house had at least one hearth, although some had more). Each canton was assigned an army regiment, and males within a certain age range within that canton were enlisted on the regiment’s roll and then could be called up to serve with that regiment. As a matter of faith, Mennonites were not to engage in military activity, so they could not participate in the cantonal system.

they found themselves in distressed circumstances as the number of families increased. The German phrase translated “distressed circumstances” carries the idea of something being pressed or compressed. In this case, crowding an ever-increasing number of families into the same space created an unsustainable and ultimately intolerable situation: too many people pressed into too small a space.

The first two sentences of the community report provide significant background on the events that led to the founding of Halbstadt: in 1801, the Prussian king Frederick William III decreed that Mennonites who wished to retain their exemption from the cantonal system would not be permitted to acquire additional land from non-Mennonites; Mennonites could purchase land only from other Mennonites who already claimed the military exemption. The result of this policy was predictable: as the Mennonite population increased, the percentage of families with access to land decreased. How the Mennonites responded is the subject of the next sentences in the community report, which we will take up in the next post.

Works Cited

Jantzen, Mark. 2010. Mennonite German Soldiers: Nation, Religion, and Family in the Prussian East, 1772–1880. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Klassen, Abraham, and Cornelius Krahn. 1956. Halbstadt (Molotschna Mennonite Settlement, Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1956. Available online here.