Russian Germans in Germany: A Free Church Phenomenon 

Albert W. Wardin, Jr.

German Settlement in the East 

With the prospect of economic opportunity, Germans from Central Europe with administrative and technical skills began to settle in the Russian Empire as early as the sixteenth century. Later, Empress Catherine the Great and Alexander I welcomed German peasant farmers with manifestos in 1762-1763 and 1804 respectively. The first settlers were Lutherans with a minority from Reformed and Roman Catholic churches. With the promise of special privileges, Mennonites first arrived in Ukraine in 1789. In 1856 German Baptist settlers began to enter the Baltic region from Memel, Germany, and in 1858 an indigenous German Baptist movement under Gottfried Alf began in Russian Poland that soon spread to western Ukraine. In the Russian census of 1897, Russian Germans numbered l,790,000. Germans were noted for their industry and contributions to the economy of the country. However, they maintained their culture and identity as Germans and did not assimilate with the Slavic population.1 

Pietists within the Lutheran Church, called Stundists, formed circles for prayer and Bible study under lay leadership. Lutheran Pietists, Mennonite Brethren, and German Baptists, both latter bodies with a Pietist and revivalist heritage, introduced Protestant evangelicalism among the Ukrainian population. 

Communist Control 

The Communist seizure of power in 1917 brought civil war, followed by famine in 1921-22. But beginning in 1922 Germans benefited economically from the New Economic Policy (NEP). In spite of the promotion of atheism by the government that included the teaching of atheism in the schools and the prohibition of religious schools, including Sunday schools, Germans enjoyed religious rights and were even allowed to establish a German Volga Republic. 

However, beginning in 1928-1929 until the end of 1955, the German population suffered one calamity after another: The introduction in 1928 of the first Five-Year Plan with its collectivization of agriculture, the famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine, and the religious legislation of 1929 that severely restricted church life. Even worse were attacks on all religions that closed all German churches, theological institutions, and central administrative centers. The Soviet regime sent church leaders to prisons and labor camps with many suffering execution. 

The German invasion of Russia in 1941 during the Second World War brought further calamity not only to the country, but as much if not more to the German population. All Germans were suspected as traitors. The government exiled almost 900,000 Germans from western European Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus, and the Volga River region (including the dissolution of the Volga Republic) to Siberia and Central Asia. The regime placed them in labor armies or left them to survive on their own. Until the end of 1955 Germans were under direct administrative control and were forbidden to travel. Their leadership was destroyed, their churches gone, and their language suppressed. In this 25-year period, possibly 25 percent of the German population died. 2

Revival 

In the 1940s and 1950s, in spite of exile and suppression and continuing religious restrictions, a religious revival began among the Russian German population, often led at first by widows. Underground gatherings engaged in prayer, Bible study, and the singing of old hymns. Religious life was returning to the older 19th century pattern of pietistic Stundist meetings under lay leadership. Revivals also attracted youth. A few of the older pastors who survived began to travel among the population. Denominational barriers among Protestant Germans began to break down with Lutherans, Mennonites, Baptists, and Pentecostals often worshipping together. Illegal and unregistered congregations began to be organized. Without ordained ministers, Lutherans formed lay brotherhoods, and Mennonites formed congregations with Mennonite Brethren again baptizing believers by immersion. 3 

German Baptists, although the smallest of German Protestant communities, found themselves in a more enviable position. To better control all Protestants, Stalin permitted the formation in 1944 of an umbrella organization for free church evangelicals called the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians and Baptists (soon changed to Evangelical ChristiansBaptists). It attempted to include most free church adherents, including Baptists, Evangelical Christians, Mennonite Brethren, and Pentecostals. The regime permitted the registration of a limited number of Russian Baptist congregations. German Baptists and Mennonite Brethren often joined Russian-speaking congregations, which in turn established separate German services, while some congregations were predominantly German. From a trip in 1987 Gerd Stricker, a Lutheran from Germany, reported that the All-Union Council included 65 German churches, primarily Mennonite, and about 300 Russian congregations that had German contingents. The Communist periodical, Neues Leben, reported in 1988 that about 70 percent of the Baptists in Kazakhstan were German. With freedom of movement after 1955, some Germans began to migrate where churches existed, such as to Karaganda in Kazakhstan where they formed large congregations.4 

Beginning in the 1950s Lutheran and Mennonite congregations attempted to maintain German services. At the same time a number of Lutherans and Mennonites (who had largely given up their advocacy of pacifism and opposition to oaths) were attracted to Baptist congregations. Many young people who were losing their use of German were attracted to Baptist churches for their vitality and music and opportunities for service. 5 

Renewed Repression—Then Perestroika 

With the imposition in 1960 of more restrictive regulations on the churches of the All-Union Council, Baptists began to split in 1961-1962 with the rise of unregistered Initsiativniki or Reform Baptists, who rejected state control of congregations, cooptation of leaders, and regulations prohibiting evangelism, publications, and religious education. These evangelical dissidents survived and attracted a number of Baptists and Mennonites to their cause, despite the regime’s imprisonment of their leaders, the suppression of their congregations, and the destruction of their secret printing presses when found.6 

The new regime under Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 and his program of perestroika and glasnost led to dramatic changes in religious policy. With the relaxation in religious restrictions, churches and public evangelism began to flourish. By the end of 1989 the regime had released all religious prisoners. 7 

Westward Migration 

With the removal of barriers to migration in 1987, a much greater opportunity than ever before arrived for Germans to leave Russia to settle in West Germany. With their history of woe and exile and religious restriction, the enticement of greater freedom, economic opportunity, and the possibility of recovering their German heritage in their native homeland was alluring. In 1987, 14,500 ethnic Germans departed the Soviet Union, followed in 1988 by 40,000. Then the migration to Germany became a flood. From a German population of approximately 2.5 million in 1985, almost l.8 million Germans had migrated by 1998. 

According to religious identification, Lutherans numbered almost one million and Roman Catholics approximately 370,000. German Baptists departing the Soviet Union totaled about 158,000, while departing Mennonites numbered 102,100.8 The migration of German Baptists seriously affected the membership of the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists in Siberia and Central Asia, although a number of churches and leaders survived. A significant percentage of unregistered Baptists left, which greatly reduced their numbers in the Soviet Union. Most Mennonites migrated, leaving only a small remnant. The breakup of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Communist Party rule in 1991 precipitated a large scale migration of not only German but Slavic Baptists and Pentecostals to Germany, and in larger numbers to the North American Pacific Rim in Canada and the United States.9 

Russian German Denominations in Germany 

In his dissertation on free church bodies in Germany, John N. Klassen listed three Russian German Baptist bodies, two with a significant mixture of Baptists and Mennonite Brethren, and one predominantly Baptist body with two Mennonite Brethren churches. He also listed three Mennonite Brethren groups and one traditional Church Mennonite body that baptized by affusion or sprinkling rather than immersion as is the practice of Baptists and Mennonite Brethren. In addition, a number of Baptist congregations and a small number of Mennonite Brethren in Germany were entirely independent. For 1998 Klassen recorded 356 Baptist and Mennonite Brethren congregations with around 61,500 baptized members, of whom 40,000 were Baptists, 15,000 Mennonite Brethren, and 6,500 Church Mennonites. Klassen noted that in 2003 Baptist and Mennonite membership had grown to 70,000. In 1998 he found 7,000 Russian Germans in churches or as single members affiliated with the Baptist Union of Germany and 2,900 in other affiliations. 10 Ten years later in 2013 Heinrich Derksen, president of Bonn Bible Seminary, claimed Russian German Baptists and Mennonite Brethren had formed 600 churches with a membership of 125,000 and a constituency with children of twice that number. In comparison, the Baptist Union of Germany in 2005 reported 85,000 members in 835 congregations. Russian German growth had come through aggressive evangelism, mostly among their own kind, and through church planting, as well as from children of their large families. Free Church Russian Germans are now far more numerous than they were in 1906 when the Russian Empire counted 15,000 German Baptists and 5,600 German Mennonite Brethren. 11

Russian German Distinctives 

It is not surprising that this body of free churches in Germany established their own congregations and institutions, given their turbulent history of 150 years in Russia and then resettlement in Germany, their experiences of persecution, their strong unregistered Baptist strain, and their long separation from Western life. Their theology is very conservative, if not fundamentalist, as they separate themselves from those with ecumenical and broader theological tendencies. As in Russia, most Russian German Baptists and Mennonites maintain an Arminian or free-will position, although some in the younger generation have now imbibed Calvinism from the West. Russian Germans have established their own theological institution, the Bibelseminar in Bonn. In 1996 it acquired as a campus the historic Haus Wittgenstein with space for offices, five classrooms, and a small library. The school today has about 100 full-time students and over 300 in long-distance programs. Since 2005 the seminary has had a special tie with Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, a Southern Baptist school that accredits its degrees, provides two professors, and contributes to an annual pastors’ conference. 

Russian Germans with ties to Reform Baptists have established two mission societies-- Missionswerk Friedensstimme in Gummersbach and Missionswerk Friedensbote in Meinerzhagen. Their work is primarily evangelism and sending material assistance to coreligionists in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Another mission, Hilfskomitee Aquila in Steinhagen, provides support mainly to Siberia and Kazakhstan. It publishes Aquila, a periodical that includes both mission information and historical material on Mennonites and Baptists in Siberia and Central Asia. 

The Cultural Challenge 

Russian Germans in the West are now confronted with serious cultural challenges.12 They live in a materialistic and increasingly secular society that accepts few constraints. Freedom of choice frequently supplants authoritarianism both in family life and in society. 

The simple cultural lifestyle of Russian Germans often sets them apart from German society. In addition, a growing division now exists in their own ranks between conservative churches of the older generation and less restrictive standards in churches of the second generation. The younger generation, forgetting its German language in Russia, but now forgetting its Russian language in Germany, has opportunities for work and play not available in Russia. 

All churches forbid the use of tobacco and generally alcohol, although some begin to tolerate drinking. Conservative churches oppose movies and forbid television, while many of the younger generation look at television, attend movies, and use the Internet. Some second-generation churches close one eye to youth attending discos. Congregations, however, provide their youth with numerous fellowship events. 

Conservative churches are against birth control while second-generation churches do not make it an issue. In conservative churches head coverings are obligatory for married women, and men and women sit separately in worship. In second-generation churches, in contrast, head coverings for women are optional, with no separation of the sexes. Standing is generally practiced for prayer. However, kneeling for prayer, common in Russia, is generally not practiced largely because of cold tiled floors in the West. Also in the West, the Russian custom of all participating in whispered prayer, while one or more lead out, is still common. On rare occasions hymns in Russian are sung, but not often. 

As in Russia, Russian German Baptists and Mennonite Brethren attempt to be separate from the world, but find that the world continues to encroach upon them. Nevertheless, they continue to provide their own unique witness, but now in a different context. 

Notes: 

1. Karl Stumpp, The German-Russians: Two Centuries of Pioneering (Bonn, Brussels, New York: Atlantic-Forum, 1966), 20.
2. Stumpp, German-Russians, 32-35; Johannes Dyck, “A Root Out of Dry Ground: Revival Patterns in the German Free Churches in the USSR After World War II,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 30 (2012), 98. 
3. Dyck, “A Root Out of Dry Ground,” 101-07.
4. For German services, see Dyck, “A Root Out of Dry Ground,” 108; Bratskii vestnik No. 2 (1986), 62, 65; and Gerd Stricker, “A Visit to German Congregations in Central Asia,” Religion in Communist Lands 17 (Spring, 1989), 25. Neues Leben, 13 January 1988, reported in Keston News Service, 21 January 1988, 9.
5.  For the attraction of Lutherans to Baptists, see Stricker, “A Visit,” 21, 26. For the attraction of Mennonites to Baptist congregations, see Dyck, “A Root Out of Dry Ground,” 108. For the attraction of German young people to Russian Baptist congregations, see Light in the East News No. 3 (June 1981), 10, and Stricker, “A Visit,” 27.
6.  For the Reform Baptist movement, see Michael Bourdeaux, Religious Ferment in Russia (London: Macmillan, 1968). For the attraction of some Mennonites to the Initsiativniki, see Dyck, “A Root Out of Dry Ground,” 107-08; Alexander Weiss, “The Transition of Siberian Mennonites to Baptists: Causes and Results,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 30 (2012), 133-38; Alexy V. Gorbatov, “Mennonite Associations in Siberia in the 1950s and 1960s,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 30 (2012), 69-70; and Mennonite Weekly Review, 25 June 1970, 2.
7. For the shift in religious policy under Gorbachev, see Kent R. Hill, The Soviet Union on the Brink: An Inside Look at Christianity & Glasnost (Portland, OR: Mulnomah Press, 1991). 
8.  Stricker, “A Visit,” 32; John N. Klassen, Russlanddeutsche Freikirchen in der Bundesrepublic Deutschland (Nürnberg and Bonn: VTR/VKW, 2007), 83-88. 
9.  For information on Slavic Russian migrants to the North American Pacific Rim, see Susan Wiley Hardwick, Russian Refuge (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 179-93. 
10.  Klassen, Russlanddeutsche Freikirchen, 111-31, 136-39.
11. Interview of Albert W. Wardin, Jr., with Heinrich Derksen, Bonn, Germany, 23 January 2013. Baptist World Alliance, Congress, 2005, 239. UnionsStatistik der Baptisten-Gemeinden in Russland, 1906 (Riga, 1907), 10; Abe J. Dueck, Moving Beyond Secession: Defining Russian Mennonite Brethren Mission and Identity, 1872-1922 (Winnipeg, MB, and Hillsboro, KS: Kindred Productions, 1997), 28. 
12. Much of the information on Russian German lifestyles is a response to a questionnaire sent to Johannes Dyck, head of the Institute of German-Russian Theology and History at the Bibelseminar in Bonn.