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Rustic Reich: The Local Meanings of (Trans)National Socialism among Paraguay's Mennonite Colonies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 2018
Abstract
This article compares two German-speaking Mennonite colonies in Paraguay and their encounters with Nazism during the 1930s. It focuses on their understandings of the Nazi bid for transnational völkisch unity. Latin America presents a unique context for studying the Nazis’ relationship to German-speakers abroad because it held the allure of being the last prospect for German cultural and economic expansion, but was simultaneously impossible for the German state to invade. The Menno Colony was made up of voluntary migrants from Canada who arrived in Paraguay in the 1920s. The Fernheim Colony was composed of refugees from the Soviet Union who settled alongside the Menno Colony in the 1930s. Both groups shared a history in nineteenth-century Russia as well as a common faith and culture. Nevertheless, they developed radically different opinions about völkisch nationalism. The Menno Colony's communal understanding of Germanness made völkisch propaganda about Hitler's “New Germany” unappealing to their local sensibilities. They rejected all forms of nationalism as worldly attempts to thwart their cultural-religious isolationism. The refugees of Fernheim Colony, by contrast, shared little communal unity since they originated from diverse settlements across the Soviet Union. They viewed Germanness as a potential bridge to an imagined German homeland and believed that the highest goal of völkisch unity was to promote communal unity. Resembling other German-speaking communities in Latin America, the two colonies—which seemed identical to Nazi observers—held vastly different interpretations of völkisch nationalism at the height of the Nazi bid to establish transnational German unity in Latin America.
Keywords
- Type
- Diasporic Belonging
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2018
References
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59 English Standard Version.
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85 Ibid.
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87 “VDA Pressemitteilungen Dezember 1932,” Der VDA und die deutsche-amerikanische Press, 5, quoted in Grams, German Emigration, 13.
88 Thiesen, Mennonite and Nazi?, 85.
89 A. Braun, “Eltern hört!,” Menno-Blatt, Jan. 1935: 2–3.
90 “Protokoll einer KFK-Sitzung am 8. Mai 1935 in Philadelphia,” Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies, Fresno Pacific University, Fresno, California, quoted in P. Klassen, Die deutsch-völkisch, 35; and Thiesen, Mennonite and Nazi?, 92.
91 For an account of German attitudes toward Hitler and Nazi party bosses, see Kershaw, Ian, “‘Führer without Sin’: Hitler and the ‘Little Hitlers,’” The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.
92 Thiesen, Mennonite and Nazi?, 97–98. See also “Protokoll einer Elternversammlung in Philadelphia, Col. Fernheim zwecks Behandlung der vorliegenden Fragen unserer Zentralschule. Stattgefunden am 5. Nov. 1935,” Fernheim Colony Archive, Filadelfia, Paraguay (no file number).
93 Warkentin, “Hildebrand, Peter,” 203–4. Hildebrand provided his own reasons for the dismissal, including his high level of education and his production of Schiller's Die Räuber, which the Kommission considered to be “corrupting.” See Hildebrand, Odyssee wider Willen, 185–99.
94 Like other “Volk” composites, “Volkstum” is a difficult word to render in English though it implies a sense of national character or consciousness. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn developed the concept in the early nineteenth century and it was appropriated (and argued over) by members of the Nazi's völkisch movement. See Klautke, 124; Götz, 65–66.
95 Thiesen, Mennonite and Nazi?, 98.
96 Hoerder, “Local, Continental, Global Migration Contexts: Projecting Life Courses in the Frame of Family Economies and Emotional Networks,” in Freund, Alexander, ed., Beyond the Nation? Immigrants’ Local Lives in Transnational Cultures, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 21–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 22.
97 Loewen's Village among Nations provides an excellent description of the Steinbach Post's importance in the Menno Colony's transnational network.
98 It was altogether rare to see Menno Colony Mennonites contributing to Menno-Blatt. Peter J. R. Funk, “Kolonie Menno,” Kämpfende Jugend, May 1936: 1.
99 P. Neufeld, “Antwort auf den Artikel ‘Kolonie Menno,’” Kämpfende Jugend, May 1936: 1–2.
100 Ibid.
101 Kliewer spoke to this sentiment when he claimed that the Menno Colony was part of “Germandom” even though they “rather unconsciously feel” it. See his “Mennonite Young People's Work,” 126.
102 Richard W. Seifert, “Bericht über die Reise nach der Mennoniten-Kolonie Fernheim mit S. H. Herzog Adolf Friedrich von Mecklenburg,” 15 Feb. 1936, PA AA, R127972d, 163–65. Nikolai Siemens, “Dr. Josef Ponten,” Menno-Blatt, Oct. 1936: 6; “Ein Gesucher,” “Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz,” Menno-Blatt, Oct. 1936: 5.
103 Harvey, Elizabeth, “Emissaries of Nazism: German Student Travelers in Romania and Yugoslavia in the 1930s,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 22, 1 (2011): 135–60Google Scholar, 138.
104 Lekan, Thomas, “German Landscape: Local Promotion of the Heimat Abroad,” in O'Donnell, Krista, Bridenthal, Renate, and Reagin, Nancy, eds., The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 159Google Scholar.
105 Block, Ulrike, “Deutsche Lateinamerikaforschung im Nationalsozialismus–Ansätze zu einer wissenschaftshistorischen Perspektive,” in Carreras, Sandra, ed., Der Nationalsozialismus und Lateinamerika: Institutionen—Repräsentationen—Wissenskonstrukte I (Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut Preußischer Kulturbesitz, 2005), 11–12Google Scholar.
106 Wilhelmy, “Bericht,” 71.
107 There is a discrepancy concerning the date the organization was founded. Friedman (Nazis and Good Neighbors, 21) claims it was 1929, while Grow (Good Neighbor Policy, 52) claims it was 1931. Frank Mora and Jerry Cooney likewise use 1931. See their Paraguay and the United States: Distant Allies (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007), 95Google Scholar. Ron Young explains that in 1928 a group of Paraguayan Nazi Party members formed an “organization center,” but no official Landesgruppe (national party unit) was formed until August 1931. By 1933, there were sixty-two party members, making it the third largest in South America.” See “Paraguay,” World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (Santa Barbara: ABC CLIO, 2006), 505Google Scholar.
108 Grow, Good Neighbor Policy, 52.
109 Ibid., 49.
110 Ibid., 49–51. See also Mora and Cooney, Paraguay and the United States, 94–96.
111 Grow, Good Neighbor Policy, 51.
112 Ibid., 34.
113 H[erbert] Wilhelmy, “An die Deutsche Gesandtschaft in Asuncion: Bericht über meine Reise im südlichen Paraguay,” PA AA, R127972d, 69–70, 69.
114 Ibid., 69.
115 Ibid., 70.
116 For a complete description of Wilhelmy's trip, see his coauthored publication with Schmieder, Oskar, Deutsche Akerbausiedlungen im südamerikanischen Grasland, Pampa und Gran Chaco, Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen, Neue Folge 6 (Leipzig: Deutsches Museum für Ländkunde, 1938)Google Scholar.
117 Wilhelmy, “Bericht,” 73.
118 Ibid., 77–78; “Fritz Kliewer to Landesleiter des VDA Landesverbandes Weser-Ems,” 18 Nov. 1937, PA AA, R127972d, 52.
119 Wilhelmy, “Bericht,” 77.
120 Ibid.
121 Ibid., 78.
122 Ibid., 77.
123 Wilhelmy did not have the last word concerning Nazi impressions of Mennonites in Latin America. Party member and businessman Walter Schmiedehaus published a positive report on conservative Mennonites who relocated from Canada to Mexico in the 1920s, titled “Das Russlanddeutschtum in Mexiko,” in the Deutsches Ausland Institut-affiliated publication Jahrbuch der Hauptstelle für die Sippenkunde des Deutschtums im Ausland 4 (1939): 187–94Google Scholar.
124 “Fritz Kliewer to Landesleiter,” 55–61.
125 Ibid., 59.
126 Ibid., 60.
127 “Jakob Siemens, Heinrich Pauls, and Abram Loewen to B. H. Unruh,” 29 Sept. 1937, Paraguay Fernheim Colony 1937, IX-6-3 Central Correspondence, 1931–85, Mennonite Central Committee Files, Akron, Pennsylvania.
128 Freeden, “Über die Möglichkeiten,” 118.
129 After meeting with both sides in 1934, Ayala admonished the Mennonites that “the [Paraguayan] people had the impression that the Mennonites were firmly united and considered them as an example.” Interestingly, the quote reveals that Ayala hoped the anti-nationalist Menno Colony would help promote Paraguayan national unity during the Chaco War. See Friesen, Martin W., New Homeland in the Chaco Wilderness, 2d ed., Balzer, Jake, trans. (Loma Plata, Paraguay: Cooperativa Chortitzer Limited, 1997), 435–37Google Scholar.
130 Ibid., 419–37.
131 In contrast, the Fernheim Colony maintains a relatively large archive with extensive documentation of its Nazi past.