Marienwerder Land Sales 1

The last Buller Time post (Moving to Molotschna 4) ended by referencing a list of Mennonite land sales that Adalbert Goertz extracted “from a microfilm of records deposited in the Berlin archives under A181 Nr.11657 and 31520” (here). I have copied the list that Goertz created and pasted it into an Excel file, so that it can be sorted and viewed and analyzed from a variety of perspectives. This post begins a new series by providing a general description of the entire list.

The list records 203 sales between the years 1803 and 1856 (the year is unknown for twenty-three sales). The year 1819 has by far the largest number of sales: fifty-two, or 25.6 percent of all of the sales recorded for  the fifty-four years represented. The broader period 1811–1822 reflects a similar high rate of sales, with eighty-six sales reported for this twelve-year period: an average of over seven sales per year. A second period of high sales volume extended from 1833 to 1839, with thirty-six sales, or an average of five sales per year.

The sales are also reported by Kreis, the specific county (roughly speaking) within the Marienwerder district.

Culm	16 sales
Marienwerder	32 sales
Schwetz	81 sales
Stuhm	59 sales
Thorn	15 sales

Schwetz, the county of greatest interest to us, since that is where the Przechovka church was located, has the most sales listed by a fairly significant margin. The list also reports sales by village name, from Adamsdorf to Zieglershuben. Fifty-five different villages are listed (so an average of fewer than four sales per village). The table below lists the six villages with the most sales:

Przechovka	19 sales
Gross Usnitz	12 sales
Schulwiese	12 sales
Klein Nieszewken	10 sales
Ostrower Kämpe	9 sales
Konopat	9 sales

What is striking about this distribution is that three of these villages (Przechovka, Ostrower Kämpe, and Konopat) were associated with a single church: Przechovka.

Before we go further with any analysis, we should stop and reflect on what we know and see. First, although some of these lands sales may have been from one Mennonite to another, the majority were in all likelihood from a Mennonite who was planning to emigrate to a non-Mennonite. How can we say this? During this period of Prussia’s history, it was nearly impossible for a Mennonite to buy land, since such a purchase required a Mennonite buying land to agree to fight for Prussia when called upon to do so. Consequently, Mennonites who owned land and who intended to remain in Prussia held on to that land at all costs; if ever they sold their land, they would not be able to replace it without giving up a crucial tenet of the Mennonite faith.

Second, it is probably not coincidental that the highest concentration of land sales took place at a time and place where we have documented a significant amount of emigration: during the period 1811–1822, and especially in 1819, in the Schwetz area, specifically the villages of the Przechovka church. The sales records support the impression one gains from looking at Peter Rempel’s Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828, namely, that the Przechovka church accounted for a large amount of the emigration to Russia during that period. That was not the only period of high emigration, to be sure, nor was it the only area from which Mennonites emigrated, but it was a noteworthy time of large-scale movement to Molotschna colony.

We should allow for the possibility that the records that Goertz extracted are only partial and that the picture of Przechovka dominance is thus overstated. For the time being, however, until we are proven otherwise, we will take these records at face value as sketching an accurate picture of Mennonite land sales and migration to Russia during the first half of the nineteenth century.