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

we will see you again soon.
I hope with all my heart that I will find you
and the children all in good health and good
spirits. If I find it so then with various other
circumstances I will be moved to praise and
honour you. That will be a great joy to me, and
my sincere love for you remains as always.
God’s best to you always!
Your faithful husband
Johann Bartsch
The three-man delegation arrived in Danzig
on a Saturday, 30 October/10 November, a market
day just before Martini (St. Martin’s Day),i.
e. 31 October /11 November 1787, which was a
Sunday. The trip had taken them one year and
eleven days. The three men now headed straight
for the Russian consulate on Langgarten Street
and were warmly welcomed there. People generally
were astonished to see the delegation again,
many having doubted that they would in fact
return. Interest in emigration was significantly
heightened at once, and people came from near
and far to discuss the future of the move. Trappe
set about immediately to report to the consulate
and then also to the Mennonites themselves.
The Russian consulate quickly gave the
green light to proceed with the emigration.
Trappe now prepared a report to the churches
with a further invitation to become part of the
move, noting especially the land grant feature
of the terms of settlement. He also invited all
interested parties to gather at the Russian consulate
on 8/19 January 1788 at nine o’clock in
the morning, to receive the original documents
of the Charter of Privileges and the supreme
imperial cabinet resolutions, as well as other
information pertinent to the emigration. Trappe
then distributed this report in the two Mennonite
congregations of Danzig and other locations on
21 December/1 January 1788.
Johann found his family had managed quite
well in his absence, their great longing to have
him back notwithstanding. Susanna had milked
their cows daily and had it picked up for delivery
to the city several miles away. They may have
had help from neighbours and others to get by.
By all accounts her needs had been well met.
No doubt they now spent hours discussing
The Danzig Mennonite Church worship house (19th
century). Photo credit: H.G. Mannhardt, Die Danziger
Mennonitengemeinde: Ihre Entstehung und ihre Geschichte,
1919). Frontispiece.
Johann’s experiences,
and hearing him share
many stories about the
trip which the letters
had not included. Most
certainly they thanked
God again that he had
been given a safe trip, a
journey of much longer
than expected duration,
and not without various
difficulties along
the way.
They now needed
to look at the question
of emigration themselves.
What all their
own family reasons
were for going is not
specifically known.
The remuneration
and rights promised
by Trappe to him and
Hoeppner assumed the
move. Nothing Johann had seen or heard had
seemingly dissuaded him from joining other
Danzig and Prussian Mennonite families who
would be planning, as they saw it now, to move
to the Berislav area of New Russia, under the
rule of Vice Regent Grigorii Alexandrovich
Potemkin and Tsarina Catherine II, and establish
a new home there.
Significance of the letters
The four letters Bartsch wrote to Susanna
in 1786-87 did not provide her with very much
information about what the delegates experienced
on the trip, or about the discussions they
had with officials and others as they went along.
There would obviously have been a great deal
to say – a book could have been written about
that year plus some days, as journalists and other
writers would look at it today. There is some oral
evidence that Hoeppner may have kept a travel
diary, although a manuscript of this kind had not
surfaced for research so far. We may assume that
Trappe will have reported to the authorities at
Kremenchug or St. Petersburg, or both. Perhaps
Hoeppner wrote to people back home and filled
that information gap, but again, we have no letters
from this trip showing that he did.
There could have been other letters by
Bartsch which too did not survive. He did write
a good deal when the emigration got underway
and later, it would appear. These four seem to
have been designed to be more or less personal
letters which could reassure Susanna that all
was going well on the trip, and that he himself
was in good hands, namely in Trappe’s and
Hoeppner’s – and that wherever they stopped
provisions were at hand. That would have meant
a great deal to Susanna. Perhaps this was what
she was most interested in, as seemingly Bartsch
surmised.
That the correspondence could be undertaken
does speak of a postal system that functioned
well enough to get the four letters through. We
are not aware that Hoeppner wrote to his family,
and the community, as Bartsch did. There may
A scene from Alt Schottland, a Danzig suburb inhabited by Mennonites, around
1688. Photo credit: Kurt Kauenhowen, ed., Mitteilungen des Sippenverbandes der
Danziger Mennoniten-Familien Epp-Kauenhowen-Zimmermann III (Dezember
1937) Heft 6, 202.
in fact have been personal couriers who could
take mail with them alongside the regular mailing
system. The 7 October 1787 letter seems to
suggest that.
We do become better acquainted with
the personal piety and spirituality of Bartsch,
perhaps more than through anything else that
he wrote. A great deal of Christian concern is
reflected in the writing, and his love for Susanna
and his family is amply documented there. It
is still a good question to ask: How was it that
Bartsch, with three small children, and still
a young man, had the courage and readiness
to undertake this venture? Material rewards
alone? Hardly.
Bartsch’s counsel to his wife may seem
somewhat patronizing to readers today, and
some may wonder if she was given to frivolity,
or at least that there was some reason for him
to worry that she might not be up to be head
of the home during his absence. Or again, his
patronizing tone may be due to the style of male
headship as understood and practiced in those
days. It has even been suggested that the “very
young son” mentioned in at least one of the
letters may not have been a child of Susanna
and Johann, but only his. One can ponder these
questions but in the available documents there
is silence on them so far.
The letters also offer some orientation to the
time line of the venture, and give the first indications
of what would become the transit route
to the settlement site in the next two years. The
delegates blazed the trail, as it were, for many
families who would come later – 228 in the first
wave of the emigration. Bartsch himself would
lead one of the emigrating family groups in late
fall of 1788.
To study the emigration, we need now to
look at other writings of Bartsch, which are
also translated for non-German readers. Perhaps
future articles on this topic will widen our
perspective on the Prussian emigration to New
Russia which this total corpus of extant writings
offers to readers today
82 - Preservings No. 26, 2006