Preservings $20 Issue No. 26, 2006 - Home at Plett Foundation

siblings were compensated by relatively small
cash payments. Or as in Russia, one might see
“ultimogeniture” at work, a system where only
the youngest son could inherit the farm.
Further, and maybe even more radical than
“bilateral, partible” practices in the “Mennonite”
system was the custom of estate division
upon the death of a parent, no matter whether
the surviving parent is the father or the mother.
In fact the Mennonite system required that
such a division occur so that at least one half
of the estate was set aside for the children of
the first marriage, at least on paper, before the
surviving parent remarried and another crop
of children came on the scene .
Making sure this all happened was the
Waisenamt. Historians often assume that the
Waisenamt was there for children who
had lost both of their parents,
that is, the true orphans.
It is important to keep in
mind that technically a child
becomes an orphan when only
one of the parents dies. Arguably,
then, the Waisenamt bore
the name “orphans’ bureau” not
because its duty was to parentless
children, but to ensure that
the property of the children
who had lost one parent was
protected. Thus, shortly after
the funeral of the parent, the
Waisenamt stepped in, took
record of the value of the estate,
and assigned one half of the estate
to all children equally. This
act allowed the children to claim
that part of their inheritance upon
turning 21. The surviving parent,
whether widow or widower, could
not dispose of that half of the
estate as they wished; they were
required to hold it in trust for the
minor children.
All this is written up in the
earliest document available for this
study, the 1810 Waisenverordnung
from the Khortitsa Colony in Russia.
3 That document adds a third
dimension to the Mennonite practice.
This is, that inheritance had an important
faith dimension, a factor apparent
from the very first line in the preamble:
“not without reason does the Holy Scripture
repeatedly exhort us to carry out what is just
and righteous.” This ideal was followed with
a warning from the biblical book of Isaiah
[10:1-4]: “Woe unto them that...turn aside
the needy from judgment, and...take away the
right from the poor...that widows may be their
prey, and that they [may] rob the fatherless!”
It is surprising perhaps that Mennonites in
Russia lobbied the government to make sure
that these principles could be preserved. 4
The 1810 version of the Waisenverordnung
moved quickly to practical matters. To ensure
that the rights of the children were protected,
the first article demanded an urgent early step
following a death: “within eight days after the
death of a husband or wife, the village administration
is to make an accurate evaluation...of
the estate” and “promptly submit a detailed
report to the Waisenamt,” that is, to the Orphans
Office in charge of settling estates.
The second step reflected a similar concern:
even if only one spouse died, guardians were
to be appointed to protect the interest of the
children. In the event that it was the father
who died, the widow, too, should have her
guardian, a well respected village man. And
to protect the inheritance of children under
the age of 21 from a dishonest step-parent,
the division of the estate must occur before
the remarriage of the surviving spouse or six
Every Mennonite Waisenamt had a printed rule book,
that included the regulations for how estates were to
be divided. (Jake Peters, The Waisenamt: A History of
Mennonite Inheritance Practices, p. 9)
weeks after the death of the spouse, whichever
occurred first.
Within the article outlining this step was
a fundamental aspect of the Mennonite system:
“of the remaining property the testator
or testatrix retains one half and the other half
goes to the inheritors [the children] in equal
amounts.” The surviving parent owned only
half the farm. Yet, to protect the farm from
being fragmented even before the children
had reached age 21, the ordinance at once
declared that “the [inheriting spouse], whether
man or woman, in every case remains the
possessor of the entire property” and that “the
inheritance of those under age remains...[in
the property] until the minor becomes of
age.” But in all circumstances the surviving
spouse was compelled to pay out the child’s
inheritance in the spring during the “week of
Pentecost” following that child’s twenty first
birthday. The ordinance’s lengthiest sections
attempted to ensure that these principles of a
“just” and equal inheritance were realized in
every conceivable scenario. 5
I have written about the social and religious
consequences of this system in Hidden
Worlds: Revisiting the Mennonite Migrants
of the 1870s. 6 But the question still remains
about the origins of this system and whether
Francis’s thinking that such a practice
may have come from the Flemish
region of Europe. In Hidden
Worlds I refer to an economic
historian H.J. Habukkuk
who wrote about partible-bilateral
inheritance practices
in the Rhine River Valley region,
including the Palatinate,
Flanders and Friesland, the
birth places of most of European-descendant
Mennonites. 7
But, in this equation, what was
the role of Flanders, the historic
birth place of most so-called
“Russian” Mennonites?
A quick survey of some
recent works suggests that the
very system we have designated
as “Mennonite” – bilateral,
partible, and divisible upon the
death of one of the spouses – was
practiced in Flanders almost 1000
years ago. We may think of that
time as medieval or even the dark
ages. Still, studies indicate that while
this was a time when the state was
relatively weak and could not offer the
same protection it did later, and that the
countryside was more violent than in the
1500s, special care was taken to ensure
that children inherited their fair share of
the estate, that boys and girls were treated
equally, and so too widows and widowers.
Consider for example the work of David
Nicholas. In an article entitled, “Of Poverty
and Primacy: Demand, Liquidity, and the
Flemish Economic Miracle, 1050-1200, published
in the American Historical Review in
1991, he seeks an explanation for the economic
take off in a part of Europe that had relatively
bad land. 8 One of the reasons for its success,
he argues, was that its inheritance system did
not allow for large estates to be built up or for
people to become impoverished.
He writes the following of medieval
Flanders: “Every time a married person died
in Flanders, a great deal of property was
ipso facto alienated from that person’s [clan
or household]. It was thus very difficult for
Flemings to build up estates to pass undivided
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