Roots and branches
by Louise Bergen Price

 When Ed Hildebrand started attending MHSBC lectures after becoming a director in 1994, only 20-30 people were in attendance.  He learned that historical society events were not advertised, and that no computerized mailing list existed, only a number of multi-paged, typed and stapled lists that had been compiled from time to time.  It was no wonder that so few people showed up, he thought.

 Ed decided to take action. “Since I had no other responsibilities as a Director at that time I asked our secretary, Theresa Unruh at that time, shortly followed by Karletta Munchinsky, to convert these individual lists to a unified computerized membership and mailing list. When this was completed in late 1994, I undertook to prepare and mail out a notice about a month before the next meeting and all subsequent events. The result was immediately rewarded with a four fold increase in attendance at the next Heritage Lecture.”

 Since the back page of the notice was empty, Ed filled the space with notice of other events or items of interest to Historical Society members.  “It was always grandly called a newsletter even though it was originally only a notice of meeting,” Ed says.  Over the next few years, the newsletter grew to three or four pages.

 Ed was editor and sole contributor until 1999, when Henry Neufeld took over the job of editor.  Shortly after, Louise Bergen Price joined the editorial team, taking over the position of editor in 2001.  Contributing editors have been Helen Rose Pauls, Henry Neufeld, Lora Sawatsky, and Robert Martens; numerous writers, artists and poets have allowed us to use their work, or have produced work specifically for our newsletter.

 In 2003, the name of the newsletter was changed to Roots and Branches.  It appeared 4 times a year, at 16 pages per issue. This was later changed to 3 issues a year at 20 pages per issue.

 Most of the 700 newsletters from each printing are mailed to members.  Some are distributed at churches, others at MHSBC events, and the rest are available for visitors to the archives.   Since the newsletter also appears on our Society’s website, it has garnered readers all over the world.
 

A Mennonite History Conference, Siberia 2010
from a report by Peter Penner

 A new Mennonite History Conference is being planned to follow the conferences of Chortitza and Molotschna in 1999 and 2004.  On the planning committee that met in December 2007 were Royden Loewen, Hans Werner, Ken Reddig, Paul Toews, Olga Shmakina, Aileen Friesen, Peter Letkeman and Peter Penner.  The site of the proposed conference will be at the Akademgorodok University south of Novosibirsk.

 A report by Peter Penner states:  “In part this followed from the earlier Siberia-Initiative of 2001 which led to the employment of Novosibirsk scholar Andrej Savin to search out documents about Mennonites in the Russian archives of Omsk, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Barnaul, and also Moscow. This venture, organized by Paul Toews and supported by funds from the children of the late Peter Dick, Vineland, Ontario, resulted  the publication in 2006 of Savin’s  book listing about 1,000 such documents. (The English translation is: Ethno Confessions in a Soviet State: Mennonites in Siberia, 1920-1980, Annotated Archival Listing of Archival Documents and Materials, Select Documents.) This work is now in the process of being translated.

  “How the young Savin first came to notice was through his multiform publications in German translation in conjunction with Detlef Brandes in Düsseldorf, Germany. What especially alerted us to his astonishing abilities in Russian and German was his joint publication in 2001 with Brandes of the volume entitled Die Sibiriendeutschen im Sowjetstaat, 1919-1938. Their combined work indicated the fact that Savin and other Russian historians had already, within ten years of the fall of communism, fathomed much of the Mennonite story in Siberia in the midst of the Germans in Russia story.”

 At a second meeting in January, architect Rudy Friesen joined the planning committee.  The projected date of the conference is May/June 2010.  Early in 2009, a call for papers will be made that will focus on “Siberian Mennonites and other Religious Minorities in the Soviet Experience.”

 The conference will be co-sponsored by the University of Winnipeg  and the Russian Academy of Sciences.  Also participating with the North American team are Novosibirsk scholar Andre Savin, and archivist and Omsk historian Peter Vibe.  Victor Fast and Johannes Dyck will represent the Aussiedler community of Germany.