Bullers in the Soviet Union

My recent reading has focused on two topics: Mennonite life in Siberia/Kazakhstan, and Mennonite life during the early decades of the Soviet Union, particularly during the time of Joseph Stalin’s reign of brutality and terror. The two topics overlap to some extent, since Mennonites were numbered among the millions of foreign residents and other enemies of the state either executed or exiled to the east, to Siberia/Kazakhstan, during the 1930s and 1940s. 

Our natural interest in these topics increases when we consider that members of our broader family lived in different areas of the Soviet Union, from present-day Ukraine in the west to Kazakhstan in the east, throughout this entire time. Several years ago, for example, we read of three Buller children living in Kleefeld in 1930 (see here). We wondered then, and we ask still today: Whatever happened to Katja Buller, her siblings, and her parents? What was their fate within the Soviet state?

More recently (here) we revisited David Buller’s youngest son Heinrich and his son Heinrich, who moved with David’s widow (his second wife after Helena Zielke) to Kazakhstan in 1908, nine years before the Russian revolution that eventuated in the formation of the Soviet state (see further here). Evidence leads us to conclude that the family remained in the area, which means that they still lived there when the Soviet authorities began exiling Mennonites and other people classified as German to this area in the 1930s. 

We have also encountered other Bullers in Kazakhstan, such as Oma Buller and her granddaughter Katharina Heinrich Buller (here) and Heinrich Buller of Konstantinovka (here)—all of whom are in some way related to us. No doubt other Bullers can be identified in various regions within the Soviet Union during this time, if one looks hard enough and long enough and is blessed with good fortune in the search, and each discovery of a previously unknown Buller can lead us to wonder what life was like for that subject of the Soviet state.

The various strands just mentioned have converged into an idea, or at least a hope of an idea, for a series of posts on Bullers in the Soviet Union. The series has two goals: (1) to identify members of our broader family living within the Soviet Union roughly from 1917 through the end of the twentieth century; and (2) to learn more about the early years of the Soviet Union and especially the Mennonite experience within that polity. I do not know how successful we will be in discovering Bullers within the Soviet Union, but we will try just the same. If nothing else, our exploration of Mennonite life—and death—in that context will give us empathy for what so many faithful endured and appreciation to Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller for making a life-altering decision that has given to many of us the opportunity to enjoy life within a reasonably free society.

What’s Next?

With the Franztal series at an end, the question arises: Where now? I am open to suggestions, if any come to mind; you can use the Click Here to Contact Me link in the upper right to send your ideas. Although Buller Time has been quiet the past several weeks, reading and thinking about matters Mennonite and Buller have continued.

For example, we have heard from several members of the broader family. A son of Peter E Buller (see here), who was Grandpa Chris’s younger brother, emailed to make contact and fill in some blanks on that branch of the family. His memory, since confirmed by Dad, is that Pete and his wife Elsie Fast Buller took over the family farm after Peter P and Margaretha moved to California in 1936 (see here). Dad recalls that several years later when Uncle Pete and family were preparing to move to Iowa, they held a farm sale, and he believes that a Farmall (F20?) was sold by lottery at that sale.

According to Pete’s son, the family moved to “Salix, Iowa, due to the dry years, to Chicago for Moody Bible Institute, back to Iowa because of WWII, and to Omaha for Grace Bible Institute in 1945.” Chris and Pete had a good relationship and traveled together at least once: “In February 1957, I got to go with them and Matilda (and Esther?) to visit Grandpa PP Buller and Aunts Sarah and Marie in Upland, CA.  … We traveled in Uncle Chris’ 1956 Ford sedan (six adults and me as a seven year-old boy sitting on a little folding stool).”

Many of you will recall that Pete and family owned a nursery for many years in Omaha. If anyone has memories (or photographs!) of that family branch that you would like to share, please contact me.

Buller Time was also contacted by a granddaughter of Klaas P. Buller, Grandpa Chris’s older brother (see here). I know less about this family (which means more room for readers to contribute their own memories), but Dad’s recollection is that Klaas lived south and east of Peter P and Margaretha. This is consistent with our earlier suggestion that Klaas and family lived on 120 acres of section 13 of the Henderson Township in York County (see the map here). Dad remembers that place well because he broke his leg there jumping off of a feed bunk; he still had the cast on his leg on the third birthday in 1936.

He also recalls that Klaas and family moved to Lushton for a while and had a shoe repair shop there a block west and a block south of the post office. Eventually Klaas moved to York, I believe, and one of his daughters remains there. Again, if anyone has further information about Klaas’s family, please share it with the rest of us.

In the meantime, I will continue to read and explore and think about what topics might be of interest to Buller Time and its readers.

Franztal 23 and (probably) last

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.

Franztal 22

The previous post compared three lists—the 1835 Molotschna census, our list of 1819 immigrants from Przechovka, and Peter Rempel’s list of 1819 settlers—in order to begin to identify Franztal’s founding settlers. A comparison of the names in these sources revealed thirteen of the twenty-three landowners in Franztal, including Wirtschaften 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 24. This post will work through the remaining Wirtschaften to see if we can identify the other ten owners.

Our procedure will be straightforward. We will identify the Wirtschaft by number and give the name of the person who lived there according to the 1835 census. We will survey the available evidence about that person—and any others listed at the same location—and draw whatever conclusions we can about who first settled that Wirtschaft.

1. Gerhard Heinrich Dirks (GM 61557) moved to this plot from Rudnerweide in 1828, so we know he was not the original settler. The census does not list any other inhabitants, so we cannot suggest who first owned this Wirtschaft.

2. Jacob Johann Neufeld (GM 61562) moved to this plot from Grossweide either in 1820 (so his entry under Grossweide) or 1829 (so his entry under Franztal). This discrepancy is at least in the English translation of the census, perhaps also in the original. If Neufeld moved to Franztal in 1820, he was the original settler of this plot; if he moved in 1829, he was not, and we are unable to suggest some other candidate.

4. Peter Jacob Pankratz is apparently GM 43141, since the name of the father, wife, and daughter on the census matches the information given for this individual. Peter was born in 1806, which means he was fourteen when Franztal was founded. Clearly, he was not an original landowner. Interestingly, he had a connection with our family. Peter’s father Jacob (GM 43069) died in 1808, after which his mother Ancke Pankratzen (GM 32957) married Jacob Peter Buller (GM 318737; for a post documenting the confusion that surrounds Jacob, see here). She died in 1813 while still in Prussia, and Peter Pankratz was presumably left with his stepfather Jacob Buller. What is curious is that Peter Pankratz is not listed with Jacob Buller when the latter emigrated in 1820 (Rempel 2007, 172). What happened to Peter Pankratz that he did not emigrate with Jacob Buller? It is tempting to think that this Peter was one of the drivers named Peter Pankratz within the 1819 traveling party (see here). How and when he came to own Franztal 4 is unknown, as is the identity of the original owner of the Wirtschaft.

5. Although we already identified Peter Andreas Richert (GM 48279) as the original owner, it is worth mentioning that he died in 1821. His plot was taken over by Peter Peter Janzen (GM 29972), who moved to Franztal 5 from Rudnerweide in 1822. We should also note that Jacob Jacob Buller (GM 5587) lived at this plot from 1820 until he moved to Alexanderwohl in 1822. This Jacob was the son of Jacob Peter Buller mentioned in number 4 above.

7. The census reports that Jacob Jacob Goerz (GM 61582) emigrated to Molotschna in 1821 and then moved from Tiegerweide to Franztal in 1822. Therefore, he was not among the original twenty-three landowners, and we have no clues as to the original settler of this Wirtschaft. 

9. Dietrich David Block (GM 61603) left Prussia for Russia in 1818 (Unruh 1955, 360; Rempel 2007, 109). He is not listed at any other Molotschna village, so it is reasonable to think that he settled first in Franztal and was one of the original landowners. 

12. Peter Peter Ratzlaff (GM 47898) was twenty-two in 1835, so he was six when his family moved to Molotschna in 1819. His father Peter Heinrich Ratzlaff was the original owner of Franztal 6, so the most reasonable explanation is that the son Peter took over Franztal 12 when he established his own family. We have no further evidence as to who was the founding owner.

13. Andreas Jacob Pankratz (GM 43136) came to Molotschna late. According to Rempel (2007, 172), he received a passport in 1820 but was unable to sell his possessions and so stayed in Prussia. Later (2007, 194) we read that a second visa was issued in 1824. The English translation of the census states that he moved to Molotschna in 1829, but one wonders if the 4 has been misread as a 9 (Steve Fast’s list of census corrections does not indicate any error; see here). Whichever date is correct, we can conclude that Pankratz was not an original landowner.

16. The census reports that Kornelius Kornelius Siemens (GM 61663) emigrated to Russia in 1817, which is confirmed by Rempel (2007, 106). The census further states that he moved to Franztal from Ohrloff in 1820. The Kornelius Siemens listed at Ohrloff 22 appears to be a different individual (and, contra GM and the index here, I see no Kornelius Siemens listed at Ohrloff 25). Assuming that the Franztal listing is correct, Siemens was an original landowner in Franztal.

20. According to the census, Heinrich Peter Janzen (GM 225175) moved to Molotschna in 1817 (see also Rempel 2007, 105). The census adds that he moved to Franztal from Lindenau 30, where he was apparently landless in 1820. Janzen was thus one of Franztal’s founding landowners.

21. Peter Peter Janzen (GM 61689) is reported to have emigrated in 1819 (neither Rempel nor Unruh lists him in any records). He is not listed in any other village, so we may conclude that he settled first in Franztal and was one of the original landowners. His residency there was short, however, since he passed away in 1822. Franztal 21 passed to his second son, Klaas, who continued to live there at least through 1857, after which the property apparently passed to Klaas’s son Jacob (see the voter lists here). 

23. According to the census (also Unruh 1955, 370), Peter Jacob Schmidt (GM 61708) emigrated in 1822 and resided first in Alexanderwohl; he moved to Franztal 23 in 1824. He was therefore not one of the original landowners.

This exercise has enabled us to identify at least four, possibly five, more original landowners, but five or six remain unknown. In the next post we will recap what we have learned thus far and make some concluding observations about the nature of the sources on which we must rely.

Works Cited

Rempel. Peter. 2007. Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828. Edited by Alfred H. Redekopp and Richard D. Thiessen. Winnepeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

Unruh, Benjamin H. 1955. Die niederlandisch-niederdeutschen Hintergründe der mennonitischen Ostwanderungen im 16., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Karlsruhe-Rüppurr: self-published.

Franztal 21

After spending several weeks learning more about Konstantinovka and the Mennonite experience in Siberia/Kazakhstan, we are ready to return to Molotschna colony, specifically to Franztal. When we last looked at this small village, we had just completed the translation of the 1848 Gemeindebericht (here). 

If you recall, Franztal was founded in 1820 by several groups, the largest of which had emigrated from West Prussia (Poland) the previous year. We identified as many of of the group as we were able in an earlier series titled Przechovka Emigration (see the first post here). The goal of this post is to begin to weave together several lines of evidence to form a more complete picture of Franztal’s early days and beyond.

The 1848 community report provides several important clues. 

In April 1820, fifteen families from the district of Schwetz near Kulm in West Prussia arrived to establish a village among the others. It was considered appropriate by the authorities and a commission chosen for settlement to set up each village for twenty fireplaces [residences] but to cultivate only fifteen of them and to leave the others empty for their descendants. However, in a subsequent review of the plans, it was found that the villages would not get their proper land, so all fireplaces had to be occupied immediately, and one village had to be distributed among the others. So it happened that on 18 May of the same year, eight more families of immigrants from the same district were added to the village. …
The first fifteen families of this village formed a single party in their immigration but did not have a leader. Of the others involved, some traveled with the large party whose leader was the now long-deceased elder Ohm Franz Goerz, and some also came to the country in small parties without a leader.

The key facts are as follows: (1) although Franztal had twenty-four Wirtschaften (plots) when it was fully occupied, it was established with only twenty-three (15 + 8); (2) fifteen of the plots were settled by members of the party we traced in the series Przechovka Emigration. With that background, we are ready to consult several different lines of evidence to see how many of Franztal’s original settlers we can identify. Those lines of evidence include the 1835 census as our foundation, plus our earlier work on the Przechovka Emigration party and the list of 1819 settlers in Franztal recorded in Peter Rempel’s Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828 (2007, 157–59).

The table below presents the names retrieved from the three lines of evidence. It first lists the twenty-four landowners in Franztal, followed by the other heads of household who lived in Franztal but did not own a Wirtschaft there (25–29).

Wirtschaft	1835 census	Przechovka list	Rempel list
1	Gerhard Heinrich Dirks
2	Jacob Johann Neufeld
3	Georg Jacob Nachtigal	Georg Nachtigal	Georg Nachtigal
4	Peter Jacob Pankratz
5	Peter Andreas Richert		Peter Richert
6	Peter Heinrich Ratzlaff	Peter Ratzlaff
7	Jacob Jacob Goerz
8	Tobias Peter Schmidt	Tobias Schmidt	Tobias Schmidt
9	Dietrich David Block
10	Peter Kornelius Abrahams	Peter Abrahams	Peter Abrahams
11	Kornelius Johann Richert	Kornelius Richert	Kornelius Richert
12	Peter Peter Ratzlaff
13	Andreas Jacob Pankratz
14	Peter Peter Block	Peter Block	Peter Block
15	Heinrich Christopher Hooge		Heinrich Hooge
16	Kornelius Kornelius Siemens
17	Peter Peter Becker	Peter Becker	Peter Becker
18	Peter Peter Janzen		Peter Janzen
19	Adam Adam Ratzlaff	Adam Ratzlaff	Adam Ratzlaff
20	Heinrich Peter Janzen
21	Peter Peter Janzen
22	Peter Peter Unrau	Peter Unrau	Peter Unrau
23	Peter Jacob Schmidt
24	Peter Jacob Becker		Peter Berg [Becker]
25–29	Heinrich Jacob Ratzlaff Benjamin Peter Ratzlaff Adam Peter Ratzlaff Peter Peter Becker Peter Benjamin Frey Johan Johann Stephen Julius Gerhard Durksen David Heinrich Goerz Peter Daniel Daniels Jacob Franz Duerksen Kornelius Kornelius Quiring Peter Wilhelm Janzen Peter Peter Unger Berhard Jacob Matthies Jacob Peter Schoenke Abraham Abraham Weyer Abraham Peter Unger Franz Franz Peters	Heinrich Ratzlaff Benjamin Ratzlaff Adam Ratzlaff Peter Becker Peter Frey	Heinrich Ratzlaff Benjamin Ratzlaff Adam Ratzlaff Peter Frey Johann Steffen Julius Doerksen David Goertz Peter Daniels Kornelius Quiring Berend Mathies Abraham Weier Peter Unger

Based on this presentation of information, we can draw several important conclusions.

1. Appearance of a name across all three lists indicates that the person settled in Franztal in 1820 and, unless indicated otherwise, still lived there at the time of the 1835 census. For Wirtschaften 1–24, this also points to eight of Franztal’s original landowners: Georg Nachtigal (3); Tobias Schmidt (8); Peter Abrahams (10); Kornelius Richert (11); Peter Block (14); Peter Becker (17); Adam Ratzlaff (19); and Peter Unrau (22).

2. Appearance of a name in the census list and the Rempel list also indicates that the person settled in Franztal in 1820 and probably remained there in 1835. The only difference between this group and those in number 1 above is that these settlers were not part of the Przechovka group; they emigrated from some other part of West Prussia (i.e., the “eight more families of immigrants”). The group includes four heads of household: Peter Richert (5); Heinrich Hooge (15); Peter Janzen (18); and Peter Becker (24).

3. Only two names appear on the census and our Przechovka list but not on the Rempel list, and only one of them is identified as a landowner: Peter Ratzlaff (6). An earlier post (here) identified this individual as an original settler in Franztal, so we can add him to the group of known settlers.

By correlating the information available to us, we are able to identify with reasonable certainty over half of Franztal’s original settlers: thirteen of the twenty-three who settled that first year. If we accept the Gemeindebericht report that fifteen of the original landowners were from the Przechovka group, we can further deduce that we have identified nine of them; six remain. Having identified four of the non-Przechovka group (as reported by the Gemeindebericht), we have four more to identify, if that is possible.

We will seek to identify the other ten founding landowners by working plot by plot in a subsequent post, but we should not neglect one final observation from the comparison of lists.

4. The Przechovka and Rempel lists for Wirtschaften 25–29 identify thirteen heads of household who came to Franztal at the same time as all the others but apparently, at least as far as we know at this point, never owned their own plot. A few of the landless thirteen may have intended to earn their livelihoods through other means (e.g., blacksmith, weavers), but most probably hoped to farm their own plots. It would (will?) be interesting to see how many of these thirteen stayed in Franztal over the long term.

For now, however, we will keep our focus on Franztal’s original landowners—in the following post.

Work Cited

Rempel. Peter. 2007. Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828. Edited by Alfred H. Redekopp and Richard D. Thiessen. Winnepeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.