As explained earlier (here), the parallel series Alexanderwohl and Moving to Molotschna each has its own purpose: to reconstruct and record, to the extent that we are able, the early history of the village of Alexanderwohl, and to flesh out the story of the the Przechovka church members’ journey from the Vistula River Valley to the steppes of the Ukraine (New Russia), where they founded, among others, the village of Alexanderwohl.
To that end, this series has focused on the details of the journey itself, the preparations that had to be made before this Mennonite group could move to Molotschna, the inducements that the Russian government offered to encourage these productive farmers to leave their homes and settle in a new land, and, most recently, the conditions in Prussia that motivated the future citizens of Alexanderwohl to leave behind what had been home to their families for over a century.
The most recent post in the Moving to Molotschna series took up the first condition, or reason: the effects of the Napoleonic wars on the Mennonite community (see here). The thirteen years of conflict (1803–1815) between Napoleon’s French imperial armies and seven successive coalitions against him damaged the Mennonites of West Prussia/Poland financially and raised a challenge to their faith as it related to their historical commitment to nonparticipation in warfare.
This post covers the remaining four reasons that the Przechovka Mennonites gave for desiring to leave Prussia in 1820 (see Duerksen 1955, 79):
- They had no prospects to improve their lot in Prussia.
- They had no opportunity to become landowners in Prussia.
- Russia offered them about 160 acres to a family while in Prussia they were allotted only about 40 acres to a family.
- Their Russian relatives praised Russian conditions and urged them to come to Russia, also.
Reason 5 is straightforward and requires no explanation beyond noting that the earlier immigrants to Molotschna and perhaps even Chortitza remained in contact with the Mennonites still in Prussia. This is not surprising. Because the meaning of reason 5 is self-evident, we will focus our attention for the rest of this post on reasons 2–4, which are actually so closely related that they cannot be discussed in isolation from each other.
Reason 2 begins, logically speaking, with the reality of the situation after the Napoleonic wars: the Mennonites had suffered great financial harm both due to the increased taxation to which they were subjected and as a result of the destruction caused by the movement of massive armies across their farms and fields. The post-Napoleonic status quo was unacceptable, and they had limited opportunity in Prussia to improve their quality of life.
Why did the Przechovka Mennonites have no prospect for improving their lot in Prussia? Reasons 3 and 4 explain why: most Mennonites did not own land and had no possibility of acquiring it, and the average amount of land they could rent was only 40 acres, a fourth of what was available in Molotschna. Each part of the explanation warrants comment.
We have actually encountered reason 3, the limit on Mennonite land acquisition, in previous posts (see, e.g., here). As we have periodically observed, as a rule a Mennonite farmer did not actually own the land he farmed; rather, he held a forty- or fifty-year lease with its actual owner, often a member of the noble class, to live on the property and draw his family’s livelihood from it. Thus it had been and would continue to be the case that, in Prussia, the Przechovka church members could not become landowners.
To make matters worse, in 1801 the Prussian king Frederick William III issued a decree that severely limited Mennonites’ ability to acquire access to land. The relevant portion of the decree stated:
§4 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, so that the former exceptions are completely eliminated in the future and consequently the current number of nonserving Mennonite possessions may not be increased or expanded in any fashion. (Jantzen 2010, 263)
As explained previously, §4 states that no Mennonite who rejected military conscription would be given a permit to acquire property from a non-Mennonite. The unstated reason was simple: any non-Mennonite who owned or leased land also owed the Prussian state military service. The government was not about to reduce the number of men potentially serving in the militia by allowing Mennonites who were exempt to acquire non-Mennonite land. The solution of §4, then, was to restrict acquisition of non-Mennonite land to those who agreed to serve when called, whether Mennonite or not.
The king temporarily lifted this restriction in 1806 after the Mennonites delivered on their pledge of 30,000 thalers to be used however he saw fit (see the previous post and Klassen 2009, 178), but the restriction soon was put back in force and remained that way through the rest of the wars and even after Napoleon’s defeat by the Seventh Coalition. The Przechovka Mennonites of 1820 could not improve their lot, in part, because they were prohibited from acquiring the new land that would enable them to grow and restore their wealth.
Reason 4 is a natural outgrowth of the restriction behind reason 3. Because the growing Mennonite population was legally bound to subsist on the same amount of land that their religious community had owned twenty years earlier, the amount of available land per person decreased with each birth and each passing year. According to the evidence of the visa applications, the average amount of land available to a Prussian Mennonite family was 40 acres. Settlers in Molotschna, on the other hand, had the prospect and possibility of owning about 160 acres (65 dessiatines, or 175.5 acres, to be precise).
The conditions promised in Molotschna were doubly superior: not only would the settlers have four times as much land at their disposal in New Russia, but they would own that land, not merely serve as tenants on someone else’s property.
Considering all these reasons, but especially the possibility for a more prosperous life in New Russia than they could ever enjoy in Prussian Poland, a life that promised them exemption from military service for all time, it is not surprising that so many Przechovka Mennonites decided to uproot their lives from the Schwetz area and make the 900-mile, seven-week journey to Molotschna, there to found the village of Alexanderwohl on the virgin steppes of New Russia.
Works Cited
Duerksen, J. A. 1955. Przechowka and Alexanderwohl: Beginnings of Alexanderwohl, Tabor, Hoffnungsau and Other Churches. Mennonite Life 10:76–82. Available online here.
Klassen, Peter J. 2009. Mennonites in Early Modern Poland and Prussia. Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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