A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

-1963) 1. Developments in Canada In the late twenties the Mennonitische Rundschau emerged as one of the most popular Mennonite weeklies among the Mennonite immigrants in Canada, competing with Der Mennonitische Immigrant- enbote, also a weekly family paper published by D. H. Epp at Rosthern from January, 1924. 23 The Mennonitische Rundschau, the oldest Mennonite periodical to appear continuously under one name, made its first appearance in 1880 as the successor to the Nebraska Ansiedler. The Mennonite Publishing Company, Elkhart, Indiana, published it until 1908. From 1908 to 1923 it was published in Scottdale, Pennsylvania, by the Mennonite Publishing House. In 1923 the publication of the two German-language weeklies of the Mennonite Publishing House in Scottdale, Mennonitische Rundschau and Christlicher Jugendfreund, was transferred to Winnipeg by Hermann H. Neufeld, who at that time established the Rundschau Publishing House. Neufeld, a Mennonite Brethren immigrant from Russia, edited the Mennonitische Rundschau for twenty-two years (1923-1945) and helped to preserve its "Russian Mennonite character." Many of the older Mennonite immigrants in Canada remembered the "European edition" of the paper which had been widely circulated among Russian Mennonites prior to World War I, and hence they were eager to subscribe to it again in the new world. PUBLISHING FOR THE BROTHERHOOD 291 In 1940 the Rundschau Publishing House was reorganized into the Christian Press, Ltd. In 1945 this corporation was purchased by a group of brethren in the Canadian Mennonite Brethren Conference. The Canadian Conference purchased 400 shares of this corporation in 1946, and another 600 in 1956. At the sessions in Virgil, Ontario, in 1960, the conference moved to purchase the remaining 3750 shares and thus become the sole owner of the Christian Press Ltd. This step completed the gradual process of "polarization" in M.B. publications (as noted in chapter thirteen) and resulted in the operation of two publishing centers among Mennonite Brethren in North America — Winnipeg and Hillsboro. With the acquisition of the Christian Press shares by the Canadian M.B. Conference, the Mennonitische Rundschau did not become the organ of the Mennonite Brethren Church, but continued to serve as a Mennonite religious weekly of the larger brotherhood. In 1960 editor H.F. Klassen wrote about the historical significance of the Rundschau as follows: During the eighty years of its publication this paper has recorded the history of the Russian Mennonites, their trials and tribulations, emigrations and immigrations, drafting of their young men for government forestry service, family life, church life, education and social matters, wars and revolutions, terrible persecutions, refugee problems, pioneering in five countries in South America, language changes and economic struggles — all these happenings and more have been chronicled by the M