“I was born on the Kuban, Russia, and lost my father early, for I was only four months
old.” HHZ
Letter Zionsbote (7 May 1905)
“In connection with the organization of the Mennonite
Brethren in the parent settlement, the Mennonites in the Molotschna and
Chortitza colonies requested an additional grant of 17,500 acres from the
government … for a new settlement on the Kuban. …. In
1866 the settlement, which throughout its brief history consisted predominantly
of Mennonite Brethren, had its Mennonite privileges confirmed.
Mennonite
Encyclopedia, “Kuban Mennonite Settlement”
My great-grandfather Zimmermann begins his letter to the Zionsbote by stating that he was born in the Kuban, Russia. The Mennonite settlement in the Kuban region
was about 300 or so air-miles southeast of the Molotchna colony. If you look at a map of Russia, the southernmost end just east of the Black Sea, you will see a
strip of land that separates the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. At the southern end of that strip of land are
the Caucasus Mountains and the mountain republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan. The Kuban is the region just north of the
Caucasus Mountains. The Mennonite
settlement where Heinrich Zimmermann’s was born was in the west-central part of
this land at the foot of the mountains, just across the Kuban River from
the town of Nevinnomyssk, which, when the Mennonites arrived
in the mid-1860s, was only a small settlement around a fort.
The Mennonites who settled in the Kuban were almost all
people involved in the formation of the Mennonite Brethren, a protest group recently
separated from the established Mennonite church. That separation coincided with the explosion
of the landless population of the colonies that became critical during the
1860s. By 1860“over 60 percent of
Molochaia and 50 percent of Khortitsa Mennonites were without land.”[i] The Mennonite colonies were in crisis, a
crisis that coincided with the sudden availability of land in the Kuban when the
long, drawn out (150 years), Russian conquest of the Caucasus came to its
bloody end in 1864.
Russia was determined to occupy and “pacify” this region, a
region it considered essential to its defense.
Settling the land with people loyal to the Russian Empire seemed
essential. When the Mennonites of the
Molotschna and Chortitza colonies requested land in the Kuban they were granted
17,500 acres, and settlers, almost all of whom were Mennonite Brethren. Wohldemfürst, the village where my great-grandfather Heinrich was born, was
established in 1862. The land, however, was not easily pacified. In 1866, the year of Heinrich’s birth, the
Mennonite settlement was still in its own difficult infancy. The passage that follows is from the Mennonite Encyclopedia article on the Kuban:
Mennonite stubbornness paid off, and the Kuban
settlement began to prosper:
“Intellectual and spiritual life were also maintained on a high level. Their schools, with eight-year courses (ages 7-15) and excellent teachers, were unique for their high standards even among the Mennonites. In addition there was a music club, which owned a hall, and a library club. …
My great-grandfather Zimmermann’s
parents, however, did not enjoy that success.
They arrived in the Kuban in the early to mid-60s when conditions were
most difficult, the land untamed, the settlers ignorant of its demands, at the
very beginning of the hard trial-and-error that would teach them how to farm
this unfamiliar land. That Heinrich’s
father died during this time of rough, primitive conditions does not seem
strange. The wonder is that the
others—HHZ himself, his mother and little sister—survived. Was the father’s death the result of an
accident, perhaps, or a non-contagious illness like appendicitis? It’s impossible to know at this point. What we do know is that the father’s death
was devastating for little Heinrich, his mother and sister.
[i] James
Urry, None
but Saints: The transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia 1789-1889
(Hyperion Press, Ldt., 1989),p. 196.
