| Vol. 12 No. 1 | April, 2006 |
Roots and branches |
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The first generation of Mennonite creative writers were confronted by the starkly ambivalent sensibilities of their mother culture. On the one hand, Russian Mennonites of the nineteenth century were generally suspicious of the arts. On the other, they were relatively progressive, and reading had become a popular form of entertainment. Peter J. Klassen encountered these contradictions first in Russia and then in Canada, but began to write at an early age and continued to do so, passionately, throughout his lifetime. He was born on June 7, 1889 in Orloff, Molotschna Colony. When he was four, his family moved to Spat, Crimea which was a centre of Mennonite culture and boasted the first Mennonite newspaper in Russia. Peter was a great lover of learning. He began writing poems and stories, attended a business school in Simferopol and eventually obtained a teacher’s diploma. His first teaching assignment was in Ivanovka, near the Volga River. It was here that he met Elisabet (Liese) Loewen, and soon this poorly educated but fiercely intelligent woman became his wife. Klassen disliked life as an employee. For a time he was a dealer of farm implements, and later an operator of a small flour mill. The Russian Revolution disrupted the Klassen family plans, however, and Peter resumed teaching in Ebenfeld, near Ivanovka. With his natural confidence, Klassen was emerging as a Mennonite leader. He was frequently asked to intercede for young Mennonite men who were being forced into the army. In 1922 a Soviet agricultural representative refused to unlock the granaries in fall, and farmers were becoming desperate. German-speaking Catholics, Lutherans and Mennonites appointed Klassen to travel to Moscow and attempt a resolution. Despite the enormous risk, Klassen agreed, leaving instructions that if he were not to return by a certain date, the farmers were to break open the granaries and plant their seed. In Moscow Klassen managed to convince the Minister of Agriculture of the farmers’ case. He returned home to find the crops already six inches high. These events, later recounted in romanticized form in his novel, Heimat Einmal (Once a Homeland), made Klassen a marked man. A Jewish party member, who had been treated kindly by Klassen’s parents many years ago, warned Peter that he was on the Soviet blacklist. In 1925, after the necessary bribes, Klassen’s family, which now included five children, managed to escape to Moscow and board a cattle train for Riga, Latvia. The family sailed to England and on to Canada, landing in Quebec City and then travelling on by train to Rosthern, Saskatchewan. For the next two years, Peter Klassen did odd jobs, mostly in construction, and directed the building of a church in Hershel, the first to be erected by Russian Mennonite immigrants in Canada. Soon, however, the Mennonite Board of Colonization requested that Klassen minister to ten Mennonite families in Superb, Saskatchewan, where a new property had been purchased. Klassen agreed. He and his family would live here for the next twenty years. The small prairie town was somewhat stifling for Peter and Liese Klassen, who were more open-minded than most Mennonites of that time. Peter frequently read to his wife, even such authors as Moliére and Freud, far outside the traditional mainstream. The children were permitted to listen to Jack Benny and Hockey Night in Canada on the radio. The Klassen house was so crammed with books that they outnumbered the collection of the Superb library. Meanwhile Peter ministered to three local churches that formed a loose congregation, the Ebenfelder Gemeinde. The Klassen family home was frequently jammed with elders and parishioners. Making ends meet was a constant struggle, especially during the dirty thirties, but farm life, certainly not Peter’s forté, at least kept the children fed. Two years after arriving in Superb, Klassen resumed his writing.
Preferring to stay indoors during the winter, he spent much of his time
reading and writing. The Klassens were extremely committed to the preservation
of German, and hosted Low German literary evenings in their home. In his
poem, “Mein Bekenntnis” (My Creed), Peter expressed his devotion to his
heritage:
These sentiments were regarded with suspicion by the mainstream Canadian society, especially during World War II, and caused the Klassens some trouble. Klassen wrote extensively for Mennonite publications such as the Mennonitische Rundschau and Der Bote, but was perhaps best known for his whimsical children’s column, “Onkel Peters Ecke” (Uncle Peter's Corner), which appeared in Der Kinderbote (Children’s Messenger). He was also writing novels, loosely based on his own experiences under the Soviet regime, and often returning to a familiar cast of characters, the Günther family. Klassen's stories are exciting, and frequently feature cliffhanger plots. The language is a solid but limited Mennonite German. A pious theology of salvation is emphasized. Interestingly, female characters are often strong-willed, educated and attractive. The two-volume novel, Heimat Einmal, superbly analyzes Berko, a man consumed by desires for power and revenge; Berko is based on the Jewish-Russian individual who helped the Klassens escape the USSR. By 1948 farming life in Superb was no longer viable for the aging Klassens. From an early age, Peter had been sickly and often in pain from a bad back. Writing rarely brought in more than a pittance. He learned of a bookstore for sale in Yarrow, BC, quickly purchased the property, and made the move to the west coast. Compared to Superb, Yarrow was progressive and intellectually exciting. Friends were easily made, and life was made easier by the fact that Klassen only ministered part-time in the United Mennonite Church. His bookshop was a delight to him; he could frequently be seen sitting at storefront, smoking and conversing with passersby. With his keen interest in world affairs, he came to be regarded as something of an elder. The Mennonite community of Yarrow, however, was in decline, and the bookstore soon went bankrupt. Peter Klassen would never see an end to poverty in Canada. In 1951 the Canadian Mennonite Conference published 5000 copies of Klassen’s novel, Verlorene Söhne (Lost Sons), to promote peace principles. The book had been previously written, perhaps in serial form, but now became Klassen’s greatest success. It addressed one of his primary passions, the principle of Wehrlosigkeit (nonresistance), and in it Klassen struck a prophetic attitude. World War I, Klassen thunders, was a result of monied interests, Mammon. The response of Russian Mennonites to the war was weak and lifeless. The Mennonite community preached salvation, but without the essential element of peace: “Sie hatten versäumt, ihren Kindern die Wehrlosigkeit im täglichen Leben vorzuleben.”** (They neglected to live out for their children the principles of peace in their daily lives.) In January of 1953 Peter Klassen suffered a stroke that partially crippled his writing hand. On the morning of July 17 he told Liese about a dream in which he was in a wonderful and oddly familiar place. Peter went out to help in the raspberry patch; there he suffered a final and fatal stroke. He died two days later and was buried in Yarrow Cemetery. Liese Loewen Klassen was devastated by his death but lived to nearly one hundred, dying in Abbotsford in 1992. Peter Klassen was one of a pioneering generation of Mennonite
writers. Like most others, he managed to overcome the writer's isolation
from his audience by emphasizing content over form, ethics over “art for
art's sake.” Also like the others, he lived in poverty and wrote
for the pure love of it. Klassen heard and followed the voice that perhaps
artists know best:
[A fuller account of Peter J. Klassen’s life will appear in a volume of biographies of Yarrow individuals.] *Peter J. Klassen, “Mein Bekenntnis,” in Unter dem Nordlicht: Anthology
of German-Mennonite Writing in Canada, ed. Georg K. Epp and Heinrich Wiebe
(Altona: Friesen Printers, 1977), 27.
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Peter J. Klassen: Writing for pure love of writing