No. 7 - Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches

Ich hab' aus dem Brunnen der Steppe getrunken
Wo keiner trank
Wenn die Abendsonne im Westen gesunken
Und der Grillen Reigen erklang ...
Fritz Senn at 90 Years
A Living Mennonite Memory
by Victor G. Doerksen
When I visited him last summer,
Gerhard Friesen (Fritz Senn) was himself
little more than a gentle, careworn
reminder of a world which seems very
distant to most of us today. Blind, and
removed from immediate contact with
the bustling, present-day Mennonite
world, Fritz Senn himself no longer can
remember what he so vividly captured
in the best German verse written by a
Mennonite poet: the sights, sounds and
smells of the steppe, the flavor of a
world long departed, of a simpler, sturdilyordered
world that seems very unreal
to us now.
Today we live in another world, both
physically and spiritually: many Mennonites
have become modern with a
vengeance. Hard work and relatively
clean living have propelled us to a
prominent position in a complex democratic
society. At the same time we join
with others in a search for roots, for an
orientation in terms of a past that is
meaningful to us - and this is where
the achievement of Fritz Senn (like that
of Arnold Dyck and others) becomes
28 ! mennonite mirror ! march 1983
one of practical value. For he has captured
the sense of that world, its simple
rhythms, its haunting sounds, sights and
smells, in verse which is truly Mennonite.
Its images are the stuff of that
rural way of life made into patterns
which show the working of the Mennonite
mind.
Most of all, Fritz Senn embodies the
homesickness of the displaced person,
that architypal Mennonite who finds
himself constantly on the move, uprooted
from any and all territories and
not really knowing why, since his love
of the land is well demonstrated. And
nls poems always show variations of the
puzzlement at this fate, the wondering
about guilt and punishment and the uncertainty
about these 'Ieadings' as for
example the lines:
Zwischen Menschen und
Damonen
Wollten wir nicht langer wohnen,
Zogen aus, und sind zerstreut . ..
Manche haben es bereut . . .
This kind of doubt is not very evident
among the North American Mennonites
of today. We are glad to have escaped.
But when we see our brothers and sisters
in the Soviet Union, we are gripped
by the sadness of the great separation
which has changed so many lives and
our history.
Fritz Senn can help us to appreciate
something of what has been lost; his
imagination takes us where his heart
has always been :
Rings Weizen wogen, Thymianduff,
Und Duff von Minze, Lauch und
Dill und Teer,
Dort komm ich her. -
The poem "Heimkehr" represents an
imaginary return to the old world and to
the poet's childhood and youth. On his
90th birthday we cannot use the conventional
greetings, but we want to
honour a poet whose memories can
give us many happy and wistful returns.